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A TORRID ROMANCE! BUT, he's Mac, she's Windows...
.250Savage
Member Posts: 812 ✭✭✭✭
I was working on the O'mally case when I uncovered this information. I took another slug of bourbon, briefly stopped cleaning my trusty .45 (hadn't THAT brought me through several back-alley scrapes!), and decided this was too important to not let everyone know about. Even though I knew "they" would probably kill me for this...
Is Love Cross Platform?Fiction by Lucas Roebuck The air condition decided to take a vacation. I flapped my shirt so the sweat wouldn't stick. I stared up at the whirring ceiling fan, following each twirl with my eyes. I was covering the business beat for Marty who, like the air conditioner, was also on vacation. I imaged Marty and the air conditioning unit sitting on the beach together in Cancun, sipping some umbrella drink. I hate business, I thought, as I took a deep breath of the humid, hot air and fidgeted in my chair. If you are a reporter on a small daily newspaper, you cover for all sorts of things that you're not qualified for. I'm atechnology writer, a Mac-geek, but I've subbed for sports writer and fashion critic alike over the last few years. "Lions pitcher Jos? Torres should have over-clocked that ball in order to avoid the denial-of-service attack provided by Gulls batter Frank Johnson", I once wrote. "French designer Marie Berteau obviously needs a memory expansion in order to remember that orange and green can cause quite a fashion kernel panic." "Spencer Lewis," a gruff voice called from the glass office in the corner, "Get your sorry [expletive] down to my [expletive] office right now!" Rufus Lobeck, editor-in-chief of the Times, ran the newsroom with the colorful language of a Marine drill sergeant. An unlit cigar, well chewed, hung from his mouth. The scent of whiskey oozed through his pores. His wrinkled vest was short a button and had pockets stuffed with crumpled notes. "Spencer, I need you to grab your iBook and head down to First Bank," Lobeck said. "See if you can generate a feature on Elizabeth Kelly, the branchmanager who was just promoted to corporate VP." Great, a boring profile piece, I thought. "Boss, what is the news value in this? I mean is this a real --" "Shut your trap, Lewis," he barked. "When you're editor, you can question my news judgment. Besides, how many female bank executives do you know? There's a story here my boy. Go find it and get the [expletive] out of my office. And don't even think of [expletive] coming back until your sorry [expletive]has a story on it." I took the cue. I swung by my desk, grabbed my iBook, and hopped into my rusty-white 1966 Plymouth Valiant. The car ground to life and I peeledtowards the downtown branch of First Bank. *** The receptionist looked at me skeptically. "It says here you1re a technology reporter," she said as she adjusted the curlers in her hair while glancing my business card. "Miss Kelly is a busy person. Are you sure this can't wait until tomorrow, Mr. Lewis?" "Listen sister," I said. "You just let Miss Kelly know that she can't hide from the press. We're going to find her out." "I'm sure she's real scared mister," the receptionist pulled out a copy of Modern Maturity and started flipping through it. "Come back tomorrow. She'sbooked up today." Then an angel walked into through the door. She had dangerous curves and locks of fire. She wore a red skirt that matched her hair, a bright white blouse and had a smattering of freckles across her pale face that made me weak at the knees. I was born a sucker for a redhead. "Did you know that a face without freckles is like a night without stars?" I said to her. The redhead looked at the receptionist. "Who is this man?" she asked. "I'm sorry Miss Kelly," the receptionist said. "He's from the newspaper. Says he wants to do a story on you. I told him to take a hike, but he's still here. By the way, your copy of Windows XP has arrived. Should I call Tech Support and have them install it?" Elizabeth Kelly looked me straight in the eye, her emerald green eyes burning with a cool disgust. I felt like a cad and a fool. How could this be the new bank VP? She didn't look a day over 24. Windows XP? Yuck, I thought. "No, I want to install it myself. What paper are you with, Mr., uh...?" she asked me. "Lewis. Spencer Lewis. I'm with the Times." "You're name isn't familiar. I've never read any business stories by you." "Well, normally I write for the technology section, but --" "How old are you? Twenty-six?" "Twenty seven. Listen, dish," I said, trying to play cool even though I felt like I was caught of guard, "I'm the one who is supposed to ask the questions around here. I'm the reporter remember?" "Sent a boy to do a man's job, I see," she said. "Alright. I'll give you an interview." Oh, she's one to lecture me about age. *** I sat down in her office and flipped open my iBook to start taking notes. "What's that?" she said, pointing and the "Key Lime" iBook on my lap. "It looks like a toy." "It's an iBook. You know. A Macintosh." "Oh, you're one of those." "You know Elizabeth -- do you mind if I call you Elizabeth?" I said. She took off her copper wire-rimmed glasses. "My friends call be Betsy. You can call me Miss Kelly." "Right, Betsy," I defied. "As I was saying, I am very fond my Macintosh. Not only does the Mac OS have the best looking user interface, but it's easy touse." Betsy pulled out a Compaq Armada Notebook and set it next to the shrink-wrapped copy of Windows XP. "Are you taking notes, boy?" she said. "I didn't rise to the top of this bank by wasting money. I started as a purchasing manager here in 1998 and when those artsy-fartsy folks down in advertising wanted Macs, I sent them equivalently configured Windows PCs for half the price. Businesses survive by controlling costs." I thought about how Macs had been more competitively priced these days. "But my iBook is both cheap and easy." She stood up, her face growing red. She leaned over her desk, getting into my face. "I assure you, Mr. Lewis, that I am neither cheap, nor easy." "But you look even better than the Mac OS," I said. *** I never wrote that story on Miss Kelly, but came up with a hard drive crash excuse for that curmudgeon Lobeck. Betsy and I did have dinner that night.And the following night. And we saw a movie the week after. It didn't take long for us to get to the deciding point -- should we forge ahead in ourefforts to make ourselves code compatible? Or was that Click of Death I heard closing in on our Zip-drive relationship (easy but unreliable). "Spence," she said, taking a sip of something bubbly. "I don't think this is going to work out. Oh, I've had a lot of fun in your candy-coated Mac OS Xworld, but deep down in my heart I'm a Microsoft Access girl." "But Betsy," I said, taking her hand, "Elizabeth. Listen, this can work if we want it to. Men and women are compatible, we just need to find a mutuallanguage to discuss things on, like Java." "Look at the specs," Betsy said. "What do we have? You're a romantic word jockey for a two-bit newspaper and I'm a no-nonsense bank executive. We just both happen to be computer geeks. But we even fight about what operating system we should use. We're pathetic." "But you're so cute when your angry," I said. "I love to see your face turn the same color as your hair." "See, when you say things like that -- so frivolous, so meaningless," she asserted. "Just like all the bells and whistles in your operating system. You're very good at dancing with your words, but when it comes time to get serious, I know that you're just wasting my time." I couldn't believe it. I was getting dumped. Into the recycle bin. Erased. Control-Alt-Deleted. "I need the security of being the de facto standard. There are a lot of great things about you, but you're too much of a risk for me. Good-bye, Spencer," she said as she stood up, a solitary tear running down her freckled face. I never saw her again. I stood up to head to the bar to drown my sorrows, but sometimes when your life gets really screwy real fast, it's best just to reboot. I skipped the bar and went home and crashed in bed. *** Is love cross platform? I wish I knew. In the old days, the boy who was courting should agree with the father in politics and the mother in religion, but in the modern age whom do you need to agree with on operating systems? I haven't given up on cross-platform relationships entirely. I met this brunette UNIX programmer when I was covering a Web hosting convention in town. I'll bet as long as with don't start talking about command lines verses GUI, we'll get along great.
Lucas Roebuck is a media consultant who tries to date platform agnostic women. E-mail your true tales of cross-platform love at lucas@roebuckcompany.com. c 2001 Lucas S. Roebuck[This message has been edited by .250Savage (edited 03-29-2002).]
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