We're going to have to make this quick, folks, because it's been one loooooong short week, and we're fading fast. That said, tradition mandates that today is Wildly Off-Topic Microsoft-Bashing Day, and we would never besmirch the solemnity of the occasion by bringing in such unwelcome vectors as logic, rationality, or conclusions forged in any time longer than that of a knee jerk. We have standards, you know?

For example, faithful viewer chipGeek pointed out an article in Seattle Weekly penned by a former Microsoft employee who has since become so fed up with how his ex-boss's products are "endlessly frustrating to use" that he finally took the plunge last month and bought a G5: whereas his Wintel required that he restart at least once per day and pummelled him with bizarre behavior like self-bulleting word processing documents and hit-or-miss shutdown commands, with his G5 he was "surfing the Internet, sending email, and ripping a CD" all within "the first five minutes." As this former Microsoftie puts it, "OS X has been a breath of badly-needed fresh air after Windows."

So the chipGeek passed it along to us, describing it as Microsoft-bashing, but "thoughtful, well-reasoned Microsoft-bashing." And it is-- which means its wholly inappropriate for our purposes here today. Heck, it never even once stoops to the level of a dirty personal attack! Good read, though.

Instead, let us turn to a Washington Post article (as forwarded to us by faithful viewer mrmgraphics) called "The Ballmer Treatment," which sounds to us like some new fad diet or something, but it actually refers to the guy's hands-on style of micromanagement when he finds a department in Microsoft that's just not kicking enough kiester. Case in point: the company's Business Solutions group is posting net losses each quarter, so Ballmer is sweeping in to make some changes. He's cutting 100 jobs, adding 100 more (different ones, one would hope), throwing an extra $150 million at the problem (always a clever solution), and-- here's the kicker-- requiring that the division's head, senior veep Doug Burgum, now report directly to him.

In other words, Burgum is now going to have to see Ballmer-- a lot. And of course Burgum claims that "it's a great benefit for our business to engage with Steve at this level," but c'mon, he has to say that stuff to the press. Privately, we expect he's freaking out about months of vastly increased one-on-one Ballmer exposure, because, well, wouldn't you be? We'd be living in constant fear that he was going to start shrieking and jumping around like a howler monkey on banana-flavored crack, or maybe sweating through the elbows of his shirt and chanting "developers... developers... developers..." over and over again in a cracking voice. Icky!

The thing is, this is Ballmer's modus operandi; the Post reports that he "has a long history of getting personally involved in rescuing struggling Microsoft units," to the degree of even having "moved his office to Microsoft's RedWest campus to delve into the company's Internet efforts." In other words, if you screw up at Microsoft-- lord help you-- he comes near you. How sick is that? No wonder the company's so profitable.