For a project we’re going to embark on soon, I have a lot of money in my checking account. Like, a real lot.

When you realize you can buy that absolutely gorgeous blue used Aston Martin V8 Vantage right down the street in straight cash, it’s a bit harder to resist.

Of course I am resisting. I want to do the project far more. I don’t even want an Aston Martin. Even if I were truly rich, I’d probably not buy one. But it’s so damn pretty.

It’s just so much harder to resist is all I am saying when you can show up with a briefcase full of hundreds, point to the car, fling the briefcase open and say “Gimme.”

Any illusions Americans have about living in a free society should now be completely destroyed.

They should’ve been already, but the revelations of late leave absolutely no room for doubt.

Agreed, completely:

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.

Why anyone – especially any business — would use a US company or software, I have no idea. Wish I didn’t have to myself.

The company I work for hosted their mail in Canada. That was much wiser than I thought at the time.

Anything that starts with “If you love Thomas Kinkade’s art…” gets a big NOPE and a close of the window from me right away. Nothing that comes after that can be any good.

Today, I am taking an image of my main machine that I can reload at will. I don’t plan to upgrade any software really in the future as it’s all getting worse and more difficult to use as it’s made idiot-friendly, metro-fied and all useful features taken away.

I don’t know how long this will last me. I am hoping I can get five years out of the browser (Firefox 22) before technology advances and I can no longer correctly view lots of web pages. The Windows 7 install itself given the history of XP should be ok for another 10 years or so.

In a way, this is sort of like the opposite of getting old. The senescent usually complain with great vitriol about the “simpler times” as the world gets too complicated for them.

Instead as the world is simplified I am not able to cope as I need the complex and powerful tools to undertake activities that interest me as well as for working.

Never could’ve imagined as I’ve watched software and hardware advance since the early ‘80s that we’d come to a point where software actually starts getting far worse and is less useful and capable.

In fact, some of the software released now is less capable due to its over-simplification and idiot-friendliness than applications I used in the mid-80s.

That is just unconscionable.