In 1984, my grandfather bought me my first computer, an Apple IIe. Best present I ever got as a kid. I used a program called Bank Street Writer to do all my reports in junior high. I learned BASIC and drew using LOGO. I played that goofy Star Wars text game a hundred times and wore out the floppy disc for the 1984 Olympics game. I had a dot matrix printer, which gave me amazing power.

A couple years later, I turned our high school newspaper into a demi-profitable venture and the first thing we did was buy a couple Macs and a laser printer so that we could run our copy out in a column-sized strip, cut it out with scissors and post it up with glue sticks instead of sending it out to be typeset.

In college, one of the few fringe benefits of running the student publishing operation was unlimited late night access to top-of-the line Macs.

In my first job in Dallas, I was the only guy with a Mac in the office. It was an early black-and-white Powerbook. I had it because I did editing and layout and that's what you used for such things.

In my first couple years at D Magazine, I ran a shoestring-and-bubblegum Mac network for our editorial, art and production staffs. Everyone thought I was smart because the computers generally worked. I wasn't -- but the computers generally worked, so they didn't know any better.

Then, when I got promoted to The Business Side, I almost balked. Not because of the responsibility or the unfamiliarity or the sudden need to wear shoes every day. It was because I had to switch to a PC because I had to have access to the accounting system. It was a tough call, but I'm ambitious. So I bit my lip and after more than a decade with Apple, I switched.

Now it wasn't as bad as you might think. I managed to stay relatively sane and use my trusty PC to learn about the Internets, which got me here today.

When I first started working on our business plan, I still had my old job -- so I needed a separate computer from my company-issue laptop. I briefly thought I had a chance to get back to my Mac roots. Unfortunately, I didn't have an extra laptop in the budget. Apple wasn't giving me credit, so I wound up with the Dell 700m that has been attached to me via skin graft for the last two and a half years.

I'm not exaggerating even a little bit when I say that thing hasn't been turned off for even 48 hours total since I bought it. And I'm a gadget junkie, so it was bloated with all sorts of extensions and geegaws. In recent months, staffers have mocked me for my slooooowww computer.

And even though this isn't a good time to buy another computer, a slew of bluescreen errors the past couple weeks, coupled with diminishing performance and random losses of data told me that it was time to get a new toolbox.

Fortunately, two years and change of incorporation sans bankruptcy apparently means something -- Apple obliged with a nice lease, and I'm typing this on a spanking new MacBook Pro. The transition, save for some nonsense getting my Outlook data transfered (a final poke in the eye from Microsoft), has been effortless if not pleasurable.

I could extol all its virtues, but suffice to say -- I've missed you over the past decade, Mac 'ol gal. Glad you're back. Ssh. Don't tell the missus. She'll be jealous...