Gary’s Friend Ate My Dashboard

Freddi wanted to check out my dashboard setup. Good idea, I thought. Then I open it up showing him all these perfect little widgets I’ve collected, and Larry shows up—Gary’s friend, the one who’s always hanging around. Grabs the dashboard icon and bites it before I can even screenshot the thing. Just like that. My Flappie widget, the daily Buddhist wisdom, the little green-eating reminders. All of it, gone.

This happens to me every few months like clockwork. Suddenly I’m convinced that a weather widget is better than looking out the window, that I need an animated clock instead of just glancing up, that my life genuinely requires a blue Wikipedia widget so I don’t have to type wiki into Google. I’ll use it for maybe a day, feeling smart about the whole setup, and then reality sets in. I never actually touch F12 anymore. My Mac mini’s getting slower. Every Flash site makes me feel sick. By the second day the thing’s off and I’m pretending it was never there.

I’m not really a dashboard person. Some people upgraded to Tiger just for that. Not me. Flappie stays dead. Maybe Nicki, Nicole, or Wichi can convince me otherwise. I’m not holding my breath.