So at the office I just (sorta) wrapped up a Linux coding project that's been sucking up most of my available cycles for a while now. And fresh of that, I've been tasked with tweaking a different app to make it play nice with Vista. Understand that 90% of my coworkers are Java & web folks who know zilch about underlying operating systems, and I wear both the Unix and Win32 guru hats in these parts. Which is good, most of the time. It certainly makes for great job security.

It's even convenient to start on Vista now because I just got a shiny new Core 2 Duo box, which may be just barely fast enough to run Vista halfway decently. But there's a problem. Corporate IS has decreed that Vista is Verboten companywide. I can't blame them, of course, and I think I actually crowed about that policy here once upon a time, but now it's becoming a problem. The official line is that I *can* install it on my new box, but if I do I can't connect it to the network. I may have to go to IS in the near future, hat in hand, and beg them to bend the rules just this once on my behalf. For stupid freakin' Vista, of all things.

[ I've used Vista exactly once before, while trying to fix my mother's fancy new HP touchscreen machine. Ten minutes of that, and I concluded that Vista is evil and everything about it is wrong. But mom likes it because of the flashy graphics. When I told her my home is Windows-free, she looked at me like I was from Neptune. But at least I fixed the problem, which turned out to be the lack of a USB cable between the computer and the printer. :) ]