day one at work

A new office for everyone. The excitement of moving in. A new desk. A standing hatch. With a place to keep my books. My own (colour!) printer. Stationery. A phone. Huge. Feature-rich. Desk hog. Cool black Dell Precision (no flat panel monitor, though). Speakers with the slick minimalist curvaceous base. An IntelliPoint mouse (with thumb controls to flip between pages). Dealing with .NET and Windows XP. Before Microsoft came out with its new[sic] OS[sic], XP referred to "eXtreme Programming", a rather productive form of peer programming. XP (formerly known as Whistler) officially stands for eXPerience (don't believe me, try webopedia). And I can testify that it is, indeed, an experience. Sometimes one of eXtreme Pain {other possible meanings}. Always interesting. And the whole notion of Domains and Groups gets even more confusing. Being a strong Linux follower, I had to ask about the predominance of Windows in the development and server environments. The reason was simple: support. And it's a valid one too. I know RedHat offers different support options for firms that decide to employ Linux as a solution, but Microsoft and the other large players seem to have set a certain standard in support (what corporates can ask for or expect and what they can expect to receive --- straight-faced and tongue-in-cheek). Hopefully this will change one day to open the field to more alternatives. Right now, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer are the killer apps that define Windows. Once viable alternatives are available, the "walls of Jericho" will collapse.