Riding a Purple Magic Pony

Recently my husband got his dream job ruling over the data farms as a Linux Sysadmin. I get to hear all about what he does at work and as someone who was a former Apple employee and PC technician, I don't know a damn thing about Linux and this is largely an ignorance I have cultivated. I am a hardware person, I love the parts and the puzzle of putting them together and getting them to work. Learning Red Hat seems like choosing to learn an obscure foreign language I'll only ever speak with my husband, never mind that actually sounds kinda cool. Off to borrow his books on Fedora Core.

Ok, I'm back.  Red Hat also apparently is really awesome about spreading around the free marketing swag. One day, Colin was sick and lost his chance at a red felt fedora just like the one on the Red Hat Fedora logo. He didn't quite degrade to lip quivering but there was definite shoulder slumping. Today he came in with a ball cap, a pen and a mouse pad. I made sure to look appropriately impressed by his swag.

Colin: You know, Red Hat is really good about swag, we all got some really cool stuff.

Me: If you're into that sort of thing, yeah.

Colin: Yeah. You know what I never see? The Windows admins never get Microsoft swag. I find that odd.

Me: Yeah, well even if they got it, they probably wouldn't wear it.

Colin: Why not?

Me: Well, you wear that stuff and think it's cool because it's relatively uncommon for people to use linux. So, it's like showing off that you can do something awesome that not that many people can do.

Colin: And the logo is cool.

Me: Yeah, much better that multicolored geometrical shapes.

Colin: I suppose that's true.

Me: Linux geeks are all proud to show off their Linux flavor logo just like Mac geeks are all happy to show off the Apple. What has Windows got? Also, it's dead common. Very difficult to be proud that you can do something everyone can do. I mean it's as if Linux admin's ride a silver surfboard to work, Mac admin's ride a purple pony that can do magic and Windows Admin's drive a car.

Colin: So even if it's a Maserati, it isn't a purple magic pony or a silver surfboard that can go through time and space.

Me: Yep. I mean, would you wear a T-Shirt proclaiming by inference that while the rest of the world is filled with magic ponies and silver surfboards that the only thing you can make work is a car? That's pretty weak sauce.

Colin: Admittedly, getting those silver surfboards to work is a total bitch sometimes.

Me: When when you do, it's cool.

Colin: It can even be fucking awesome.

Me: My Point. Purple magic ponies on the other hand are dead easy.

Colin: I suppose that explains why you ride the Ponies.

Me: Too many years of driving a car.