There is a place, deep in the heart of Tampa’s urban wilderness, where the locals go to cool off. Like an oasis in the midst of desert wasteland, it is a place filled with life. It is also a place of death defying falls, unrelenting surf, and the never-ending smell of Coppertone. This place has a name, and its name is Adventure Island.

Theme parks are a place where even the hardiest native Floridians can wither and perish during the summer months. They can have the fun cooked right out of them, leaving behind a scorched, dried out husk. But a water park? Well, at least it won’t get dried out.

Three things led to my decision to go Adventure Island on Sunday, the look of joy on my kid’s faces as they splashed in the water, the promise of a little cooling off, and Cheryl telling me I had to go. However, one thing almost called it off before it started: the weather forecast. Our local weather experts had forecasted a 60% chance of rain before noon, a 17% chance of rain between noon and 3 p.m., and a 40% chance of rain after 3 p.m. Personally, I think weather personalities are jumping up and down on the thin part of the branch as it is – without giving hour by hour forecasts. Fool me once,

So we left home at 11:45 a.m.

Come one, it’s a water park for cripes sake! What’s a little rain at a water park? If you can swim around in diluted children’s urine (chlorinated for your convenience), you can stand a little water dispensed from nature’s distillery, right?

Um, yeah. The thing with rain is that it can be quite cold. That’s why we spent twenty minutes getting intimate with the side of a building yesterday afternoon. Being wet is one thing, but the cold wet from a Florida summer storm is pretty uncomfortable fully clothed – let alone in your swimming skivvies. Then there’s thunder.

Being cold and wet is one thing, but throw in a little thunder and lightning and even the slow of foot will be prancing through the parking lot like gazelles on the Serengeti.

We were home by 3:15.

I am constantly finding odd shaped pieces material lying around. Often, I have no idea where they came from. The most insidious of these objects fall in that grey area between vital cog and piece of scrap. At first glance (and the second and third), I can neither tell where they belong or how important they may be. (The art of determining a mystery object’s likely value is something I don’t feel like describing right now.) There’s a place in our house for these odd fragments of technological mystery, whichever horizontal nook or cranny that happens to be closest when I discover it. We’ve had several odd pieces of plastic lying around the perimeter of the kitchen counter that have been waiting to be claimed by their rightful owners – for years.

Enter my wife, the world’s foremost expert on clutter extermination. Each new piece of seemingly useless plastic collected on the counter sends my wife one step closer to a 12 step program. “Joooooohn! What is this?” “I have no idea, but DON’T throw it away. I might need it.”

Sure I will.

I can’t help myself. You never know when such an item will turn out to be a missing foot from my iBook. I’ll bet you didn’t know iBooks had feet, did you? Who hasn’t had the dream where you take apart the malfunctioning electric juicer, only to recognize the missing part as something you threw away the day before trash day?

Yeah, that one’s rough.

So there I was at work this morning. I came across a tiny, cylindrical piece of plastic on my desk. Without thinking, I did something that goes against everything I stand for – I tossed it over my shoulder. Alright, tossing crap on the floor doesn’t go against EVERYTHING I stand for, but work with me here. You’re a reasonably intelligent person. You know what’s coming next, as soon as it left my hand I saw what it belonged to. Thirty-three years of training and practice, flushed right down the crapper. I just don’t know what’s got into me. It’s just a prayer for the dying, for the dying, Sorry, I got a little distracted by the iPod. What was I talking about again? Right, I was talking about why I wasn’t working, like I’m supposed to be, being at work and all,

“Cats and dogs, living together, mass-hysteria!” – Bill Murray, Ghostbusters

97.5% of the folks out there who bought a PC this year won’t care one whiff about this – but what do they know anyway? First, there was the Macintosh. Then, there was Wintel. Now (or in 2006 anyway) there is Macintel. This is just like finding out Darth Vader was Luke’s father. There’s a great disturbance in the force.

Sure, the sun will rise in the morning, but what will it be shining on – the bastard child of good and evil? After years of toiling in a Betamax wilderness, will Apple find greater success with a less elegant, but more common and cheaper VHS? We few – we merry enlightened few – what will happen to us? Will Rosetta be more rose or rube? Will my next computer purchase bring a wave of necessary software upgrades? Maybe Luke will unmask Vader in the end and find out he can be saved – that the goodness in him can prevail.