Today I met the new computer science curriculum specialist that was hired by my college.  This gent’s resume include a stint as an Apple developer.  When I met him I made mention of how I thought Apple software developers were long lost in the bit record of computer history.  His response was that he was now a Linux guy and that it had been about 10 years since he had written any Mac software.  I pointed out that the last Apple software I wrote was back in 1984, long before Apples became Macs.

This got me thinking back through my history with computers.  I think back to my first internet access which was circa 1992 and consisted of dialing up the local university and logging into their AIX system.  In those days the WWW was just getting started and one browsed webpages using Lynx, a text only web browser.

All this thinking made me somewhat nostalgic.  So much so that I popped in ‘Pirates of Silicon Valley’ .  The one memorable part of this movie was how much of dumbass Steve Ballmer is protrayed as.  He seems to have more interested in Playboy and partying than anything else.  The scary thing is that now he is the big dog of Microsoft since Bill Gates stepped down last week.

Now that I think back, Bill Gates really started making his money about 1980.  In those days I was learning BASIC on a TRS-80 Model II.  If only I had been the one with $50,000 and Bill had been in 9th grade at Washington Junior High in Ottumwa, IA.

Tags: Computers

I just watched the complete 4th season of Boston Legal and now that it has 13 episodes left in its upcoming 5th season, I will say that this is a program I will truly miss.

I don’t know if it is the whacky way that they present cases from today’s headlines or the balcony discussions between Alan and Denny at the end of every episode.  I generally pay little attention to current events and I find it interesting the Boston Legal uses current cases as the basis of their stories.  One example was the episode where Alan argues before the Supreme Court in the death row case of the Louisiana man convicted of raping a child.  This was a case I wasn’t even aware of and just this past week I read that the court struck down the death penalty in this situation.

In the episode Mr. Shore took the court to task on their various political leanings using language that would normally get us smacked with a contempt of court citation in real life.  I wonder how many members of the court watched themselves being lambasted on TV.

I really did look forward to the debates on the balcony every episode and it was interesting to watch Denny Crane over time.  In the beginning he was an unapologetic Republican.  All hail the great and might G Dub, the NRA, and wealth.  In this past season even the hard core republican in him clearly soften to show, like many fellow republicans, that the Bush tenure was really starting to wear on a little too long.

I wasn’t exactly fond of the rotating cast but in later seasons the other cast members clearly took a back seat to Spader, Shatner and Bergen.  It was almost as if the show was spending its cast budget on the big three.

All in all the show was an offbeat look at current events, one which satified my twisted sense of humor.  I am not really looking forward to the 5th season since I know it is coming to an end but I am used to seeing networks chop shows that don’t have stellar ratings in as little as two episodes.  Boston Legal never had stellar ratings so how it made it this far I will never know.  I am just happy that it did.

Tags: Boston Legal, TV