I have no self control. Steve Jobs ownz me.

I admit it. I'm a gadgetaholic. I'm trying to get better, honest I am! But just when I think I've kicked the habit, something comes along and says 'buy me.'

The company that has consistently pushed my 'oooh shiney electronics' buttons for the past two years is Apple, and as anyone knows, Apple is not known for affordable pricing. Damn you, Steve Jobs, damn you! How much money must you so forcibly extract from me each month? First it was a Powerbook almost two years ago. Yes, I admit it, I wanted a laptop, and I was really tired of dealing with Linux annoyances on laptops (suspend? 802.11g? things "just working"? BWAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAA). Of course, I could never run Windows (except for casual gaming), so I decided to risk it and buy one of those sexy aluminum 15' Powerbooks.

I was almost immediately in love. The best part was everything just worked. A few people at work had various iBooks and Powerbooks, but they were pretty rare (I did work at Red Hat, after all, so pretty much every engineer and suit used Linux, except for the few Mac holdouts). I started enjoying bringing it to meetings where everyone would, at first, snicker slightly at someone not using a Linux laptop. I would smile, throw a verbal quip or two, and close the lit on their laptop -- which would crash about 50% of the time. Who's sneering now!

About a year later, though, you did it again, Mr. Jobs. You released that damnable Mac Mini. Affordable, aesthetically pleasing, and tiny. How could I resist? I figured it would be my little toy computer, but no, oh no, somehow it became my desktop (which was embarassing -- a 1.4GHz machine with 512mb of RAM being my main desktop when I had a perfectly good AMD64 with 1GB sitting next to it). I soon realized your ploy, though. You wanted me to do the upsell. The Mini was great, but it was slow. I hate slow computers, and I know you know that, Steve. You know that.

So finally about two months ago, I gave in and got a new Powermac. Man oh man this thing is sexy. Interior and exterior, hardware and software... everything is amazing (well, except the stupid mouse and slightly awkward keyboard, but those are clearly afterthoughts and I had my own anyway).

Time still passed. I managed to avoid the Shuffle and the Mighty Mouse, though both were pretty cool. I thought, maybe, just maybe, I had kicked the habit, or at least sated it for a while (though I knew deep down that right when the Intel-based powerbooks roll out, I'll be needing an upgrade). I thought I had that inner strenght to protect my poor bank account from your vicious pillagings.

I was wrong. I held out for a few days, but I broke down. I'm your bitch, Mr. Jobs. I'm your bitch. My 4gb black iPod Nano should be here this week, hopefully. Damn that thing is gorgeous.