Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Take That Ball to the House! Pound it!

It is the twenty-fifth of December and that means the fat man cometh to bestow gifts onto those deserving. To all of those who are naughty, may the Krampus take mercy upon your eternal soul. I doubt that is the case though since you all are a high class people.

Anyway, to all of you out in the interweb, we here at PORTEmaus wish all of you a Merry Christmas. For our Jewish friends, I hope that a Happy Chanukah was had by all and that it was a glorious Festival of Lights. Not to leave our brothers who celebrate Kwanzaa out, may it be a joyous celebration as well.

It is another year gone and hopefully, the New Year will bring some up to date archives and possibly a redesign. At the very least, I will get cracking on my belated review of Skyfall and the best/ worst of lists. As always, I hope that the past year has went well and the next one is even better... Well, barring the country falling off the fiscal cliff.

Your humble servant,
Manny Funkowitz

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Armageddon watch: Signals of the end times. Part Five.

As one might know, the world is going to end on Friday. After all, if an ancient civilization (even one where the multitude of believers cannot locate the country of origin) or that incredible documentary starring John Cusack says that it is going to happen, then we best pack it in. Yep, game over. It was not a missing zero that did us in, it was the prophecy of Mayans.

Now, we here at PORTEmaus take such things seriously, we broke Harold Camping and once time travel is created, yours truly plans on socking Nostradamus in the kisser. Why do we believe in such eventualities? I am glad that you asked, we are going to the five revelations that have cemented our fate. The first of which was the creation of Windows 8.

Do not get wrong, I (as an Apple user) had high hopes for the once dominant software juggernaut and the latest version of their operating system. It looked like (kinda) snazzy and frankly, looked like a movement away from the same old tired Microsoft product. Sadly, I was wrong after demoing it at work, one fateful day in October. It is a colossal mess, all of the snazzy aesthetics would feel right at home on a tablet, cellular phone or the xBox but do not fit the average user's desktop.

In fact, that was Microsoft's replacement for the start menu... Good job, Ballmer. Plus, you marketed the OS with advertising that is reminiscent of an old man trying desperately to be cool. You guys are trying too hard. What next, are you going to offer candy to the neighborhood children? Hopefully, the Mayan's are right and the world ceases to exist, so no record of this blunder is accessible by alien life forms.