SlashNOT

matthew Strebe writes: Drew Bullard, an expert old school Unix administrator and sysadmin for a large university, was shocked to discover that he had accidentally become a common law mac user. Associate Zach Little explains.

“We were having beers after work when Drew pulled out his laptop and fired it up to browse a website. I realized then that he’d had that Mac for quite a while. I asked him how long, and he said He’d picked it up in early 2002.”

“I was like, ‘dude, you realize that makes you a Mac user, right?’ and he was like ‘Zach, you know I only bought a Mac becuase I’m a Unix sysadmin. Besides, you have to use a Mac for seven years before you become a common law mac user.’ And I was like ‘Dude, that’s in Texas. This is California. The law here is three years. You’re a mac user now, man.’”

“He was all bummed out. I know he got really burned by a Sun laptop in the early nineties and swore off ever sticking with a computer long enough to be “official”. I guess he just didn’t realize how much time had gone by.”

“He got really drunk, and kept talking about what a great laptop it was and how it didn’t really seem that much like a mac because it was so Unix compatible. It was like he was trying to talk himself into it. I don’t think I help things when I mentioned that he had more than half of his data stored in proprietary mac only formats that he wouldn’t be able to export if he decided to move on.”

“Finally, he was like ‘Damn, I guess we ought to just make it official. I’m a mac user.’ and then he drank himself to oblivion.”