I finally got my computer dual-booting into Windows, and everything I need for work installed on the Windows partition. That only took two days.

It’s not Apple’s fault; BootCamp couldn’t be simpler or easier to use. And I guess it’s not Windows’ fault either, since once I had an official install, it worked without hassle. It’s just that it’s been so long since I’ve used a machine that didn’t already have everything pre-installed, I’d forgotten what a pain in the ass it is to get everything up and running. Even if it is just a matter of clicking “Next” and waiting an hour.

So far, everything’s worked pretty much as expected. A couple of crashes and failure to boot, but that’s included in the “working as expected.” I installed a virus scanner (and on its first scan, on a clean install of Windows XP I’d done just one day ago, it reported four viruses found — no joke) and Firefox and everything I need for work, and it all works fine. For yuks I installed Civilization IV, and that works fine.

I also tried out that Parallels Workstation. Even in beta, it works exactly as advertised, allowing both OS X and Windows to run simultaneously. I’ve already uninstalled it, though, since at least in the Beta version, it can’t access any of my Mac files or even the Windows files on my other partition. Which makes it, at least at the moment, a non-functional novelty. (But a very solid one, I’ve got to admit).

And I got out of Windows as quickly as possible. Call me an OS snob; that’s a fair accusation. Windows just feels all underpowered and ugly now. Maybe Vista will improve the experience, but everything I’ve seen just looks like Microsoft trying to do OS X. Even if they succeed, why should I care? All of the apps I need that are Windows-only are still going to be as ugly and kludgey in Vista as they are in XP. And the home-user stuff that Vista’s emphasizing — photo viewers, music players, etc. — don’t promise anything I’m not already getting from iPhoto and iTunes and the like.

The internet is full-to-bursting with self-important nerds who are simultaneously obsessed beyond reason with the minutiae of their chosen hobby and convinced that they could do a better job than the people currently in charge of that hobby.

This isn’t breaking news. It happens with movies, comic books, television series (somehow, Joss Whedon remains exempt), and I imagine it happens with stuff I’m not a nerdy fan of myself. I’ll bet that the world of Civil War re-enactments has its own little dramas playing out, with people resentful at the ego-maniac glory hound who insists on playing Grant with copper buttons on his uniform although any real devotee of history knows that Grant insisted on bronze buttons because of an incident in a copper mine when he was three.

So if this behavior is all just part of the natural gestalt of the internets, why does reading The Re-Imagineering Blog make me want to hit the writers of that site repeatedly over the head with a manure-filled sock?

Because, as we’ve learned from Robert Louis Stevenson and countless Lifetime TV movies, we fear the darkness that lives within us all. And I hate the Walt Disney World version of the Enchanted Tiki Room, and I think that the WDW version of The Tower of Terror is infinitely better than Disneyland’s.

I just don’t think you’ve got to be such a damn douche about it.

These guys call their blog “Re-Imagineering,” but they don’t do much other than bitch and moan, and parrot back public-relations quotes from Walt Disney about magic and imagination as if they’d just won some kind of argument. You could make a pretty convincing argument that the greatest talent of Disney (the man) was in selling himself and his ideas. As much as we like to believe otherwise, the real world doesn’t reward you with such a long-lasting legacy and reputation based on talent alone — you can be the greatest visionary the world’s ever seen, but it’s not worth anything if no one listens to you.

So all the Disney quotes and truisms that get passed around do have some genuine value. It’s just not so much value for making a theme park, but selling it. Of course, that’s not all that Disney did — he had great ideas and very importantly, knew how to find the guys who knew how to make those ideas work, and get them on his side. Any idiot can just say, “Disney theme parks should be magical.”

And they do, repeatedly, all over the internets. There’s all kinds of moaning and hand-wringing and people saying, completely without irony, “What would Walt think?!?” But if the guys on this blog are putting themselves forward as “Pixar and Disney professionals,” it’s not enough to just complain about how things just ain’t like they used to be. They need to put up or shut up.

And, incidentally, stop being so long-winded, pompous, and sanctimonious. Everything I read from the writers of that site reminds me of the Achewood strip where they prank call Garfield.
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