Thank ya Gates

Last night (Sunday, August 15, 2010) I fired up good old Microsoft Word® on this here computer.
Of course it’s Word for Mac, the Apple Macintosh computer. I drive an Apple MacBook Pro laptop.
I got it as part of Microsoft Office®. It includes Excel and PowerPoint and other glitzy apps.
It replaced my Word and Excel98, both classic applications that won’t work under the OS-X on this computer; Snow-Leopard, which no longer has Classic-mode.
I hardly use it.
I only use it to make envelopes and labels, and do case-change.
There were other Word-tricks I used to do with it at the Mighty Mezz, sort and convert-to-table.
But I haven’t needed to do that since I retired.
I use iWork “Pages” as my word-processor. I’m using it now.
I tried Word some time ago, and it punished the sloppy keyboarding of a stroke-survivor.
It slammed you into the ozone if you hit a hot-key by mistake.
Worse yet was vaporizing everything I had just done.
AppleWorks was friendlier, the word-processor we used at the Messenger during my employ.
AppleWorks no longer exists, replaced by iWork I guess.
It too is friendlier.
It doesn’t punish a stroke-survivor.
So I fired up Word to do an envelope.
Envelope completed, I hit Command-Q, quit Word.
Nothing.
I mouse the menu; quit is grayed out.
Now what! Have I gotta force-quit Word?
With OS-X you can do that.
You don’t have to pull the plug.
“Sure is ironic I gotta force-quit Word,” I think.
I’ve been noisily told Word is the Alpha and Omega.
“Thank ya Gates,” I think.
I never have to force-quit Pages.

• “Word98 and Excel98” only worked under an earlier Apple operating system, e.g. 9.2 in my case. The version of OS-X I had, “Tiger,” had a 9.2 buried in it; classic-mode. —More recent versions of OS-X, e.g. Snow-Leopard, no longer have “classic-mode.”
• “Case-change” is to change the case of letters, e.g. all lower-case to all upper-case. Word can do this. There are other case-change functions, e.g. Title-Case and Sentence-Case.
• The “Mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over four years ago. Best job I ever had. (“Canandaigua” [“cannon-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 15 miles away.)
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993.
• The ones telling me Microsoft is superior are my siblings, all PC users. Since I use a MAC, I’m of-the-Devil.
• “Gates “ is Bill Gates, head-honcho of Microsoft. MAC users always say Microsoft is inferior. (Don’t know as it is.....)