Playing with fire... I mean technology.
In my never ending quest for the next great thing I've been playing around with a lot of stuff lately. Google Wave has some interesting potential, but it is mostly useless right now. A lot of people I know complain that there are just not enough people on it... I have over two dozen invites now and no one that is interested. Part of the problem is a lot of people don't want yet another thing to deal with and I can't blame them.
Beyond the social buy-in issue there is an egregious lack of functionality. Sure, it's a "preview", but some of the things you can't do are just inane. Maybe some day it'll be a neat communication tool. Right now it's a bit lame, and annoyingly slow in Firefox.
That takes me to the next point of exploration: Chrome. I've long said I was going to try out Chrome when they had a Mac version, but that was back when I used a Mac on a regular basis. In the time it has taken them to get the Mac version into a public Beta (I think it's been at least 6 months now...) I switched to hardly ever using a Mac unless I need to use Omnigraffle (and if anyone can recommend a good Windows/Mac alternative to that lovely app I'm all ears).
Two or three months ago I switched from Mac as my primary operating system to Linux (Ubuntu). Aside from some ongoing issues with dual screen support it has been mostly great. I've been hearing about the Chrome Beta for Linux now so I guess the time is right.
I'm also exploring Linux flavors. Aside from some very early versions of Red Hat my first real experience with Linux was Ubuntu and it looks like I picked the right one. I tried to switch to Red Hat recently because it was what the inventory system we have at work supports (supposedly) and it was a complete failure. Fedora wasn't too bad, but I still had issues. I tried Open SUSE this week but it had some show stopping problems, and at the recommendation of a Facebook friend finally tried Linux Mint. The last option was certainly decent, but it is based on Ubuntu and I haven't really found a reason to pick it over the upstream yet.
All this switching around, in operating systems, web browsers, and other programs reminds me of my initial adjustment period switching from Amiga to Microsoft. I tried everything to make the new operating system feel more at home. What I really wanted was something that just worked without having to switch the way I operated too much. By now I've become somewhat accustomed to switching how I operate. I just want something that runs smoothly once I settle in.