228: Ain't the PC Great?

Well, maybe not great, but most people do use one fairly often, especially younger people.
In fact, I believe every single younger person I've met in the last 10 years can type pretty well (at least as far as speed goes - can't vouch so much for accuracy and punctuation) and uses a PC quite a bit.
Not surprising since they basically grew up using them.

For me, I first used a PC waaaaaay back in 1979 while in the 9th grade.
It was a Radio Shack TRS80, nicknamed the Trash 80, and even back in those crude days when PCs were slow, it had a reputation for being slow with not much computing power.
But, it was still a personal computer, and that was enough to get the real computer geeks in class all worked-up.
They'd basically point at the monitor screen while jerking each other off after one of them "wrote" a program where the word "HI" continuously scrolled down the screen.
To these geeks, that was an awesome sight and a really interesting topic and a fantastic way to spend your time.

I thought the PCs we used were crude and a joke, and I probably wondered where all of these super computers that were actually useful for something were being hidden away at.
In fact, the typical PC of today, like the one I'm using right now, is what I somehow expected to be using, one where you can actually use it for browsing for and reading and viewing interesting things, uploading pics and sending pics, communicating with others, etc.
Basically, I wrote-off the PCs we had then and lost interest in about a half-hour.

Luckily, by the time PCs got like they are today, along with the Internet as we know and use it, I bought one for myself and made myself into the Internet Man that I am today. :)

And, in fact, I used my PC to post my comments on a site called Motorcycledaily.com , where there was what basically amounts to a back-slapping advertisement for a new Honda motorcycle coming out for 2011, called the CBR-250R.
It's a single-cylindered street bike all dressed-up to look like Honda's top-of-the-line sport bikes, but in reality, it's a budget bike that doesn't bristle with techno-tricks like a good suspension or brakes, and probably comes with a fairly wheezy (in stock form, anyway, like my own WR-250XX) engine that is so muffled that you can barely hear it run while riding it.

The article was yet another in a long line of articles written by paper magazine and Internet authors over the near-30 years I've been reading motorcycle magazines and websites.
Basically, it introduces the new bike, makes it sound like the greatest thing since sliced bread, exaggerates the good points, and downplays (or even doesn't mention at all) the bad points, like the one about the bike feeling completely weak and gutless while in traffic and fighting for a spot.

Historically, 250cc single-cylindered street bikes (or even ones with bigger engines) were flops on the sales floor, so, I'm curious to see how this one sells.
And we all know, it's not how well you personally like a bike that really gauges it's success in the manufacturer's eyes.
No way, Jose.
It's how many they sell.
Sell, sell, sell.
Because, you know, corporate types only live to sell, sell, sell.
It's part of who they are.
It's in their blood.

Off to jerk,
-John