Adam's not a Mac guy.

Even as late as Monday, he was trying to talk me into buying a crappy PC notebook to replace the dead laptop. "Don't buy a Mac," he said, with that patented "I-have-a-degree-in-CS" sneer that they teach in Introductions to Computing Systems. "You'll end up hating it."

I've had to wrestle the iBook out of his control both evenings now. He's fascinated by it. "Do you realize," he said last night after I convinced him to let the book just sleep in peace. "That you're running a system that's completely Microsoft-free? That you're living the geek dream of relying upon open source and an OS not developed by Uncle Bill? Do you know how absolutely jealous I am?"

"Green with envy?"

It's funny how he can make his eyes pop out like that.

He wants to take the computer around to both sets of parents to show it off; he's scheming for a day next week when he can lug it to work and show it off to his boss. And I know him. That "show off to boss" is actually a cunning attempt to score a Mac of his own. Using his Jedi powers of confusion (which is mostly stringing buzzwords and industry slang into sentences into gobbledy-gook that sounds good), he'll probably have his own, faster, better Powerbook by the end of the week.

And how he'll lord it over me. "Look," he'll say. "I have a better Mac. Mine's faster. Mine's better. Mine's prettier. Mine's titanium. I'm so much cooler than you."

Well, doy.