Vista Sidebar Saves Husband

A buddy of mine was up late last night doing network maintenance at the office and didn't get home until late. When he got up this morning, he went about his normal routine, probably blurry eyed. He had breakfast with the wife and kids, gave the wife a kiss and took off for the train station (the typical beginning of a 90 minute, 70 mile commute).

So, he's resting there on the train, half awake, when another passenger sat next to him and booted a laptop into Vista. He decided to snoop the stranger's session as he has not been playing with the new OS much. Of course, Aero was on and the differences between Vista and XP were clear.

While looking over the different desktop experience, he was drawn to the sidebar. This user had the Calendar gadget up. If you haven't seen it, by default it's huge and very prominent (see pic). "The 7th, the 7th, the 7th. It's already the seventh?", he thought, "OH CRAP!"


He snaps awake, grabs his cell, dials his wife and sings "Happy Birthday to You!" A bunch of explaining was due, but much was forgiven. It was funny that such a non-necessary feature, on by default, saved his day.


Later during the day, I caught him burning a DVD of Vista and preparing to run GParted on his HDD...


Oh, and before I get in trouble, Happy Birthday, Sarah!