Here's why I can't have nice things: Sometimes I like to tinker, and when I do, I can't stop swimming out of my depth.
Nothing in my home is safe from a screwdriver, or worse. Not my car, not the thermostat, not the guitar amp, nothing. My "nice" PC has seen its fair share of registry edits to the operating system -- don't even ask about the test mule. I even "upgraded" the battery door on my BlackBerry with a sliver of cardboard and some behind-the-scenes scotch tape. The damn thing slipped open too easily -- why should I endure that when better living can be had through office supplies?
Trouble is, many times I don't entirely know what I'm doing; I'm just sort of learning it along the way. Half of you reading this by now think I'm a fool. You'd probably heckle me over a lot of the stuff I try, but you need not waste your breath -- there's a constant voice in my head doing that job already. Still, I press on. Once the lid is popped and the wires are lying all over the floor, there's really no choice.
The other half of you have the same problem I do. In fact, you're probably more than half; a lot of you aforementioned hecklers likely see the same traits in yourselves. It's a combination of curiosity, slightly over-inflated confidence, and an optimistic disposition. Without people like me, lots of big things never would have happened -- like the moon landing, or the crash of '29.
There are limits, of course. A risk assessment is always called for: Is what you're about to do likely to result in the involvement of a lawyer, paramedic or coroner? How about smoke, a blue screen of death or electric sparks? Will the electric sparks be big or small? If you break something, can you afford a new one? Will it be worth the learning experience? Will it be fun? Are you sure you don't need a new one anyway? Because if you break this one, there's a new model out that's better, and you can say this one died in the name of science.
Crime Against Nature
The last futz job I tried was probably one of the least ethical and most disgusting degradations of consumer technology I've ever committed in my whole life.
I tried to make Windows Vista look like Mac OS X.
Doing that is far more depraved than what
Psystar and other Hackintosh makers do when they run Leopard on a non-Apple machine. Sure, it's not Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) 
hardware, but it is true OS X Leopard, and I bet if you stare at the screen for a few dozen hours, the fact that you're not using Cupertino equipment will slip your mind for a moment.
But contorting Vista to merely give the appearance of Leopard is like trying to cross-breed a razorback with a dalmatian just because it'd be fun to see the results. It's sick.
I found this Windows theme, dubbed "Vista OS X," on Lifehacker, a blog that features interesting downloads from around the Web as well as ideas and tips on making yourself a more productive peon. I don't know exactly how thoroughly the editors of Lifehacker vet the stuff they feature, but usually everything works as described. Buyer beware, naturally -- never mind that most of the stuff on there is free.
Pining Away for a Dock
Once downloaded, Vista OS X comes with an installation program that will basically teach the OS how to look like Leopard at the most superficial levels. You even get an Apple logo on startup rather than a Vista logo. There's also a utility for running a sorta-kinda version of Spaces, as well as something that shoves the windows' buttons over from the top right of the frame to the top left. And it comes with a large-scale image of Leopard's trademark purple aurora. Perfect for wallpaper, right? Not quite. There are limits to the sacrilege I'm willing to commit.
But my goal wasn't really to get people to think I was actually running OS X on a Gateway (NYSE: GTW) laptop 
. I realize that the differences between Leopard and Vista go way beyond the appearance of the windows and the shape of the buttons. If I'd kept Vista OS X on my computer for more than an hour, I'd probably have reverted back to standard Vista shapes and colors just for the sake of propriety.
No, all I really wanted was one thing: a Dock. OS X's Dock has always been a thing of art. It wrangles in all your commonly used programs into a static row at the bottom, then enlarges whatever icon you mouse over. Stacks makes it even more useful -- if your Dock's looking a little overloaded, group some programs into Stacks and watch them fan out for your selection. People who use a Mac all the time: I hope you never take your Dock for granted. Appreciate what you have.
The Dock in Vista OS X looked promising at first. There it was, complete with reflective icons and even a fair amount of customization potential. The Stacks feature was there too, and I even felt like I could get used to Spaces. All the more tragic, then, when I came upon a glaring shortcoming. Every time I launched an application from the Dock, it would leave a jumbled, mangled pile of graphical garbage in its wake. It was as though the icons forgot to disappear in one place when they moved to another. It was some sort of animation flaw -- maybe it was the program, maybe it was my hardware -- and it's difficult to describe, but suffice to say, it was lame.
Rolling Back the System
Without a decent Dock emulator, this unnatural program had no place on my computer, so I prepared to euthanize it with the built-in uninstaller utility. That, however, did nothing. It would tell me Vista OS X was uninstalled. It was clearly still installed. So a system restore was in order. I'm used to that.
System restore is a great tool for people like me, but I'm always a little hesitant to use it. I feel like doing it too much will turn a computer into the cybernetic equivalent of some empty-headed, pill-popping Hollywood starlet. I have no technological basis for that fear; I just feel that something that convenient can't be good for you.
Is there a moral to this story? Maybe the moral is for me to stop poking around in my computer's brain stem or else I'm going to turn its CPU into Swiss cheese and be left with nothing but a smoking pile. Perhaps the moral is to never take candy from strangers. Or maybe the moral is that my computer can't be just a little bit Apple, and if I want a Dock, I need to get myself a MacBook.
But I'm not sure I should, considering the kind of wanton abasement I'm willing to drag a computer through.
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