How Mark Went Over to the Dark Side

For better or worse, Mark has taken that fateful step over to the Dark Side. This page examines the events leading up to his fall. This page serves as a warning to others. If you notice the early warning signs that Mark experienced, please get help immediately.

January 12, 1998

Mark starts a new job at Schroder Investment Management Japan. For the first time in several years, his workstation (HP Vectra VL) is running Microsoft Windows. To add insult to injury, it is Windows 3.1!

March 12, 1998

After running NetBSD on mac68k hardware for about a year and a half, Mark began to feel the craving for more speed (and real color X). So he put together a home-built PC from parts purchased at various stores in the Akihabara district of Tokyo. This plunge into the world of Intel architechure was a major step. The Asus motherboard was bundled with Japanese Windows 95, but he casually tossed the CD aside and installed NetBSD/i386 on his new machine. Compared to his Centris 650, the P200 system seemed to fly and 24-bit color at 1024x768 was very impressive.

Late March, 1998

Mark becomes the coordinator of a project to upgrade the company workstations on the client side from Windows 3.1 to Windows NT Workstation 4.0. Over the next few months, he works to create a standardized bilingual (English-Japanese) build that includes Windows NT Workstation 4.0 and Microsoft Office 97. However, at home, he continues to use NetBSD and does not even have a Windows computer at all. Meanwhile, he undergoes Windows NT 4.0 Server training.

April through November, 1998

Mark and his colleagues develop and implement a standard Windows NT 4.0 Workstation build that is bilingual and includes Microsoft Office 97. All user workstations are converted to the new build. In the process, Mark soon realizes he can now build an NT workstation in his sleep.

October 18, 1999

Mark gives away his unused Centris 650. In the background, you can hear the sound of raspy breathing as if someone was on a respirator.

Late November, 1998

With the client-side upgrade completed, the focus of Mark's job changes. Now, he is in charge of Intranet development usinf Internet Information Server. With this change, he has been doing scripting in Perl as well as learning JavaScript and VBscript.

December 25, 1998

His oldest daughter receives a Disney CD-ROM game for Christmas. The CD is a Mac/Windows hybrid, so they run the game on his Macintosh. The game crawls on the 2x CD-ROM drive and 66Mhz PPC with 20MB of RAM. You can hear a voice faintly whispering, "Mark, come over to the Dark Side."

December 28, 1998

At work, Schroders is getting rid of some old obsolete equipment. Mark notices that with some of the parts he has, plus those at work, he could easily build a PC if he just gets a motherboard, CPU, and case.

January 2, 1999

Mark puts together another home-built PC using a AMD K-II 300Mhz CPU and Soyo motherboard with built-in sound. The rest of the parts he gets for free or already has. He digs out that old Windows 95 CD-ROM and installs (gack!) Windows 95. He proceeds to install the CD-ROM game and the game is not only usable, it flies compared to the old Macintosh. Important Note: the speed difference undoubtedly came mostly from the 24x CD-ROM drive vs 2x drive on the Mac.

March 27, 1999

Mark obtains and installs Windows NT 4.0 Server. He creates a dual-booting system with Windows NT 4.0 Server English on the C: drive and Japanese Windows 95 on the D: drive. He even installs Internet Information Server and sets up a test Web server. Now, he is really a Windows user.

April 2, 1999

Mark gives his IIcx with NetBSD to an aspiring NetBSD user. He donates his upgraded-to-PPC-IIvi to the local Mac users group. On the way home from work, he stops and gets study guide books for taking Microsoft Certified Professional exams.

April 27, 1999

Mark is drawn farther into the Dark Side by getting MCP certification.

July 1, 1999

Mark obtains MCP+Internet certfication and decides to complete MSCE certification. You can follow his path to MCSE here.

August 6, 1999

Mark reaches his goal and now has MCSE certification. To celebrate, he buys himself a present. All you can do is shake your head and sigh.