I always considered myself a right-brained person -- sensitive, outgoing, intuitive, creative. So it surprised me when I took a test that showed my brain skews sharply to the left. Learning to love my
Macintosh computerInstead of the loose, imaginative and sociable guy I've always seen in the mirror, the test exposed me as introverted, analytical, structured and compulsive about being on time.
When I shared this with people who know me, expecting them to be as astonished as I was, I faced only putdowns. "What was your first clue?" they'd sneer. "When the first item on your list of lifetime goals was to spend more time making lists?"
I tried to deny my cranial orientation, but I had to admit it was true when I realized how well it explains one of my great frustrations: why I can't bond with my Macintosh computer.
I became a Windows PC person when I was handed an old IBM 386 some left-brainer left behind when he upgraded to a 486. I later got the 486 when he upgraded to a Pentium. Eventually, I got my own Pentium, mastered the Windows operating system and became comfortably productive.
But I always harbored Mac envy. The Mac is hip. Right-brained people use it to do cool things like dream up art work, make awesome photos and design colorful news pages.
The best right-brained writers I know use Macs. They write in brilliant bursts of insight and inspiration. They make remarkable connections between dissimilar things, producing dazzling metaphors that drill their points into readers' minds.
I toiled jealously on my PC at mind-numbing tasks like budget projections, organizational charts and operating plans.
Last year, I finally got my Mac. We're moving toward Mac-based publishing and I needed to switch if I wanted to participate in editing the newspaper.
I expected instant spasms of creativity. I was certain the magical machine would unlock my long-stifled imagination.
Instead, I found myself forever battling a brat of a computer that simply wouldn't do what I asked. I've come to hate it, which produces terrible guilt. It's like loathing a cute little puppy.
Mac fanatics say Macs work the first time, every time, right out of the box. Hogwash! Not a day passes when I don't waste precious time begging my Mac to work so I can do my work.
My Mac freezes up and needs to be rebooted a half-dozen times a day or more, squandering minutes I can't afford to lose and interrupting my train of thought each time. I rebooted my Windows PC about once a month just to see if it was paying attention.
Dealing with the Mac is so aggravating that I avoided going home one night this week because I couldn't bear facing my Mac Powerbook and its medley of unresolved system conflicts.
BLAINE, our Mac guru, tells me my problem is that I have too many peripheral devices, software titles and utilities loaded on my Mac. Well, I had similar stuff on my PC and it worked fine.
"Stop, you're killing me with talk like that," says Blaine who, like most Macophiles, regards the Mac as a theology rather than a computing platform.
Part of me wants to throw my Mac out the window at one of the right-brained daydreamers down at the bus stop. But my dominant left brain keeps telling me that if my logical mind takes a systematic approach, I can reason with the thing.
If my Mac would open the word processing program without crashing, I'd make a list of the necessary steps to do that.