I visited my parent this weekend and gave them my Mac. I'm going to miss it, but they had been using an old PC running Windows 98. It was time to get something a bit more recent.

The one thing I didn't like about OS X was the lack of virtual desktops (though they will apparently included in 10.5). Now that i'm mostly using Windows I was pleased to find out that XP supports them via Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP - the implementation isn't as good as the ones found in a linux distro, but's it's still nice to have.

A couple things I learned from the trip: if you're driving south from San Francisco on highway 101, you will pass a billboard advertising Ubuntu - what has the world come to? And Steam sucks, I had downloaded the Half Life 2 demo awhile ago and thought i'd check it out this weekend, but my parents only have a dialup connection and I couldn't be bothered to find a phone cable and set it up. I really like the concept of steam and the potential for online distribution of games - but seriously, I need a net connection just to play a free demo of a game?

Also, I find

">this video combining a Dick Cheney speach with quotes from Scarface is well done, and pretty much sums up how I feel about the vice president.