Miner Thoughts
My Mac Magazine #28, August ’97

Don’t you just hate it, when all that’s on TV are summer reruns? You’ve already seen them once, and now they want you to suffer through them again. What’s a person to do?

Well, if you’ve come to Miner Thoughts for something fresh and new, you’ve just added to the number of blunders you’ve already made today because all you’re going to find here is, you guessed it, a summer rerun!

The following little ditty appeared in the April, 1996 issue of My Mac.

The reason I’m submitting an old, used piece is not what you may think. I’m not on vacation, soaking up the sun on some swanky beach. In fact, I haven’t taken a vacation in 10 or 12 years.

This isn’t a piece that I think is great and deserves to be read a second time. In fact, as poetry goes, it really stinks. I didn’t get lazy or forget to write something for this issue. In fact, I always have 2 or 3 columns in the works at any given time.

It’s because of one of those columns (one that I have been working on for the past six weeks), that my submission deadline came and went, and although I had 3 columns in various stages of completion, I didn’t feel I could put endings on any of them in the time I had left, which was none.

I got carried away with the column I’ve been feverishly working on for this issue. So far it consists of more than 5,000 words and I’ve begun to separate it into chapters. I gave some thought to submitting this mastodon of a story in sections but didn’t feel the separate chapters were strong enough to stand on their own, so I’ll wait until I finish the whole thing before I throw it at you, hopefully by the September issue.

I will, however, tell you the story is about a man named Buford who wants to make a career change, from a disgruntled and bored truck driver, to…, well, he’s not really sure to what. But he explores several options, one of which takes place inside the mansion of the chief character of my poem below.

 

Secret Thoughts of Bill Gates (The rerun)

 

 

On the verge of the upcoming millennium
Dinosaurs all dead and destroyed
All await the new version of Pentium
And software from me and my boys+

But my plan differs entirely
The Pentium does not play a part
That’s right! I’m a Macintosh user
Have been right from the start

+

Late at night in my mansion
Though tell anyone, I will not
I use the Macintosh System
It’s so much easier then DOS

+

I know the Macintosh System
works best under all kinds of stress
Unlike my Windows solution
which I know is clumsy, at best

+

Windows will always sell more
I’m baffled, I can’t understand
Why people choose my Windows
If a Mac is close at hand

+

It should be obvious to everyone
I think with a modicum of glee
Why else am I trying to copy
The Mac OS to the tee

+

Moving ahead to the future
The year two thousand and two
The bureaucrats relax monopoly laws
At a cost, but I’m no longer blue

+

Microsoft has the marketing
Apple has the machine
I bought out the company Intel
Cause PowerPC is my dream

+

I took over Apple Computer
In the year two thousand and three
The Mac O/S I coveted
Now belongs to me

+

I bought out IBM
And Motorola too
The PowerPC is mine now
And I know just what to do

+

I’ll use the Apple computer
PowerPC installed
The Mac O/S in it’s innards
Can be beat by nothing at all

+

I’ll tell the world’s computing masses

My computer has what it takes

May I present to all of you

The future, no Windows, called AppleGate

+

I’ll say to them of all the rest

They’ll go the way of the dinosaur

`Cause AppleGate is truly the best

And Windows will be no more

+

The only software from now on

That Microsoft will make

Is software that will only work

On my computer called AppleGate

+

Now all the world’s computers

Are running the Mac O/S

It may be called The AppleGate

But it’s still, The Mac, The Best

 


Pete Miner (pete@mymac.com)

Leave a Reply