The Lowest Common Denominator

Note: I originally wrote this in May of 2006. I find it still very applicable today.

I’ve been thinking a bit about capital punishment lately mostly because it’s part of the assignment that I’ve been working on for the tail-end of my ethics class.

I very much used to be gung-ho when it comes to this. My argument went along the lines that:

1. God killed people in the Old Testament.

2. Society has to be just. You should have the option to kill others if they kill to act as a deterrent as well as to administer justice.

However, in looking over Jesus’ possible take on it all, I think I might be changing my stance on this. Not that I’m going to stand in line with a sign in front of a state execution (those are few and far between these days anyway). I’m wondering if we’re catering to the lowest common denominator here, and if that’s necessarily what Christ would do?

Check it out: we most often are first concerned about our inner-circle (ourselves, family, and friends) before others. As such, our first priorities are tailored to meet some sort of need by that particular circle. Sometimes we spend time to provide, sometimes we spend time to enjoy ourselves, sometimes we spend time because we want to look as good or better than our friends from a financial or affluence point of view.

One of the criticisms I have towards government law in general is that it’s most often cold in its administration of justice. This is required because there is a snowball’s chance in hell that the judge and a jury would include you in that aforementioned circle. As such, they administer justice based on facts and responsibility. That’s all well and good, but we aren’t called to be cold as a person who follows Christ. Christ was never cold and calculating, although he had lots of opportunities to be so. When he was being brutally killed, he asked that God would forgive them for their ignorance.

My point is really this: if we spent as much time interacting, communing, and caring for others as we do trying to “make-it”, we could affect a lot of change in this manner we could maybe assume the best about someone instead of the worst.

Somehow, I find it hard to believe that Jesus would support killing as a form of justice. Maybe he would, but we’re talking about a guy who gave up his life so that we, the most unjust and most deserving of death, could live.

Thank God for his injustice!

Apple event impressions

Today, Apple announced new versions of iMac, iLife, iWork, and a small refresh to the Mac Mini line (which a lot of people thought was going away, including myself). My impressions:

• The new iMacs look great! However, I really do not like the glossy screens. I’m glad that I got my iMac with the standard, uh, “mat” display. I wonder if they are OLED?
• The new keyboard does not look very comfortable (I’ll report more on this when I get a chance to go to the Apple store).
• iLife ‘08 looks very cool. I think the two applications I will use the most are iPhoto (which I use on a regular basis anyway) and iMovie. iPhoto has some very cool upgrades having to do with “events.” Interestingly enough, I was just thinking that there needed to be better ways to organize photos yesterday.
• iWeb still doesn’t seem to have the power and flexibility that I might want for everyday use. However, the “gadgets” and code snippets are cool.
• iWork ‘08 seems like a fairly small refresh, but still cool enough. I rarely use iWork for anything right now, so I doubt I’ll be upgrading to ‘08 any time soon.
• I’m stoked that they refreshed the Mac Minis!

There you have it. The next big announcement for the Mac will be Leopard in October … can’t wait!

Reepi the Apple-Dog and switching

I took some time today (all of about ten seconds) to … ahem … affix my last Apple sticker onto our Taco Terrier Reepicheep. He then decided it would be fun to attack our other dog, Caspian, while sporting the new logo on his stomach.

I spent a lot of time at the beginning of this year trying to figure out a way to justify the purchase of a Mac. When Apple announced that all Macs would use an Intel processor at WWDC 05, I was busy trying to get Windows XP to look like OS X using a combination of tools (mostly from Stardock).

The announcement of Parallels Desktop for Mac finally put the goal of using a Mac for everyday use without having to change jobs to a graphic designer or Mac programmer in sight. All I had to do was, in essence, wait.

And wait.

And wait.

I was waiting for a few things to take place. First of all, I wanted a seamless Windows experience. I didn’t want Bootcamp, and I didn’t want a windowed version of Windows running inside OS X. I wanted Windows windows to appear beside OS X windows. I wanted to seamlessly run my development applications (such as Visual Studio and Optimum) alongside iPhoto and iCal. Finally, when Coherence was announced, I decided it was time to begin the quest to buy a Mac.

The poor performance of my primary Windows machine conveniently gave me a great “in” to begin researching the cost of a replacement computer.

Not wanting to waste copious amounts of money simply to get a “stylish” computer, I began the part of buying something you want that consists of justifying every amount you can spend.

For one, I already had two nice Dell 20″ monitors (see pic) that worked just fine. I wanted to get a setup that would allow me to continue using my two monitors as, I reasoned, I already paid for them. That left me with two options: the first was to get a Mac Pro. This was a problem as it was way beyond the amount of money I could throw at the new purchase. The other was to get a Mac Mini, which has no support for dual monitors (while I know that Matrox makes a dual monitor solution that can be used with a Mac Mini, I had no desire to settle for what is essentially a, well, hack. I wanted native support, baby!)

Realistically, that left me with no Mac.

I tried to price out the different Mac Pro models, but try as I might, there was no way I’d be able to afford one. I decided that the only way to get my Mac was to get an iMac and sell one of the Dell monitors.

After that was decided, I went about comparing the price(s) of a similarly equipped Dell to an iMac. Now, the ace I had up my sleeve (or at least the one I thought was up my sleeve) was my student discount which, for all intents and purposes, knocked about $100 to $200 off of the total price.

I ran the numbers through both the Dell and Apple websites, and found the comparable Dell to be about $200 more expensive than what I thought was my price for the iMac. However, I reasoned that the iMac’s design, having everything all in one package, would definitely be worth the extra money. On top of that, I really wanted the Mac and didn’t really want the Dell. Of course, I could have built a computer using parts off of Pricewatch for even less than Dell offered, but that wouldn’t be fair to the Mac … I can’t build one of those! :-)

Finally, in April of 2007, I visited the Apple webstore with intent to buy. Right before checking out, and with a 20″ iMac already in my virtual shopping cart, I decided to look at the “refurbished” section of the Apple store.

And that’s when things got good!

I found a 20″ iMac for about $100 less than even my student discount could provide. I quickly tried to add it to my shopping cart, but it was too late … in the short amount of time between seeing and clicking, it had already been purchased. Unfortunately, there weren’t any more iMacs below the 24″ model available. The 24″ model was selling for $1700, which was (and is) still a great deal. However, it was a bit out of budget for me.

I bought it anyway.

When I did get the computer a few days later, it came with the upgraded video card (256MB), the upgraded processor (2.33GHz), and one 1GB SODIMM instead of two 512MB SODIMMs (this was important to me because I needed 2GB to run the Windows VM effectively).

In future posts, I’ll relay my experience(s) migrating from an all-Windows environment to the new Mac environment. As it stands now, I have a lot to learn about the culture surrounding my new computer!