Before you continue..

I'd like to annoy you. Would you like to continue? This page contains both secure and non-secure items. Would you like to continue? You are navigating away from the page you were just reading, would you like to continue?

And so it goes. I am working in a differnet facility today and using a Dell desktop with the standard company build, i.e. I'm stuck with IE. No Safari. No Firefox. No nothing. And these machines, unlike the ones built for IT people like myself, are locked down so you can't install Firefox or Safari or anything else for that matter. Using Internet Explorer as a browser is downright painful. I have forgotten how annying it can be to surf the Internet using IE. No tabs (in this release). Dialog box and dialog box. No built-in spell check (thank you Firefox). Colors are all screwed up. It never ends.

The Dell itself is rather cute for a desktop. The footprint is small yet there is a DVD player. Several front facing USB ports are a welcome sight (but forget about doing anything fun with them, like booting into a different OS - the BIOS on this machine is locked down and I'm not cracking the case to drain the battery). In fact this machine would make a fine Ubuntu desktop were I not so entrenched with OS X at home.

So today I suffer along with the standard software build. Why not use my laptop? Good question with a stupid answer: I left the power supply at home and can't find a spare. D'oh.