Yeah, fine, I'm a Parallels fanboy. I admit it. I'm proud of it. I own the title, and I happily disclose this fact to you.

I also don't work for the company. The company hasn't given me any freebies (which is good - I dig what they're doing - doesn't matter much anyway since their consumer product is only $79). They haven't offered me anything. Unlike some people who write about companies and products, there's no conflict of interest. I just like 'em.

I got to visit the Renton, Washington office yesterday. Ben Rudolph invited me up to say hi, chat about this and that, and let me do a Channel 9 style interview with him. It was a weird experience for me, a guy who spent the past three years working for Microsoft, where many individual product teams dwarf the size of Parallels. I hadn't been inside a small business in ages. I don't even know if "small business" is the appropriate term, but after Microsoft, a company could have ten-thousand employees and still seem small to me (Parallels operates with far fewer than that - I'm just showing how my perspective may be a little skewed).

It took Ben all of eight minutes to walk me through the company to meet the employees, all of whom he knows by name. I've never worked at, or contracted for, a company with that kind of intimacy. Over the years, I've had a lot of coworkers named "Hey, You," "That Guy in that One Department," "Are You My Manager?" and "Who Are You?" Remembering womens' names was no problem since there are only three in the entire tech industry, but the guys... different situation.

There are exceptions. All of Channel 9, for example. Leaving that team was hard because I liked everybody*. I even knew who my manager was (Jeff). I'm also still in touch with my first manager, Paul Murphy, even though we might not communicate for months at a time. The guy, after my run at MS and all the companies before, remains the most amazing person I've ever worked with/for. If you're still out there, Paul, then know that you won. Of course, you're so irritatingly humble that you'll either give an understated thanks or refuse the laudation all together, but I refuse to withdraw the sentence. You're guilty of rocking (there - I made it into a bad thing - now you can consider it criticism, internalize it, and learn from it).

Back to Parallels.

Another way to think of it is that, if Microsoft plays the arena, Parallels is the club show. The company is young. They have that dot-com era optimism, except that they have a product. It's amazing what having a product can do for a company.

During the two hours I was there, I developed an understanding for Parallels (the product). When using it, I get this feeling that it was built for consumers in general rather than just geeks. It has all the stuff geeks want, but it's accessible to the secular world as well.

The people I met didn't look like they were dragging their feet through the day. They genuinely wanted to be there. And, speaking of the people I met, there was another event that told me I was in a different world: when Ben and I went back to some of the other offices (the company is spread out on one floor of an office building with other businesses on the same floor), I saw the same people twice.

I need to be clear: I'm not trying to talk the smiggedy-smack about Microsoft. Microsoft is still my frame of reference, and whatever I saw at Parallels I contrasted with Microsoft. They're opposites in so many ways that it's impossible not to let my jaw go slack when thinking about the two.

That out of the way, like I said, I'd see the same people twice. Even in my own building at Microsoft, I didn't know much about the people outside of JeffSand team. If they were in the offices on the other side of the atrium, then, as far as I was concerned, they might as well have been working for a different company. This doesn't even touch on the other floors of the building, which, to me, were good targets for NASA exploration, sending probes in, testing the carpet ('cause there's no soil to scoop), sending images back, searching for signs of life...

Dissimilar to the maximum.

I was impressed. When I post the interview (it'll go up in segments), you'll get to see how they do things out Parallels way. When you learn about the timeframe, what they've accomplished, and how they did it, you'll hopefully see why they get so much respect from me.

Because of this, and other aspects of my experience up there, I'm in my support-the-things-I-like mode. Over the years, I've gotten a lot of help. From the New York Times to the iTunes staff, people have helped me because, as they've said, they just like what I do. Neither the New York Times nor the iTunes staff had anything to gain by helping me. Although I don't pull quite as much weight as either group, I get excited about stuff and want to promote it even if it doesn't amount to a whole lot (oh, but I'm catching up - yeah - here I come, New York Times - like a frikkin' Mad Max steamroller with a blower, big bloody spikes on the front, and a hot woman in a furry bikini manning the M60 - cower, New York Times - cower and wave the white flag, you pathetic excuse for a worldwide newspaper with epic distribution and countless awards for "news" and other things nobody cares about - also, thank you for publishing the article about me - I'd like to say that it bought you a little mercy, but I'm afraid we've hit a BSG Cyons vs. Humans conflict - New York Times's children are returning home - Ok, that doesn't make sense, but it sounds really deep and sinister, and it worked for the TV show, and it'll be printed on the flag I'm going to plant in your office when I singlehandedly introduce you to a little friend of mine I like to call Rory's Fists of Glory for Rory - it's a bit of a tongue-twister, and when you're all trying to say it, I'm going to turn off your computer so that you can't make your little informative pamphlet, and then I'll win, and that's all there is to say about that).

Yeah. So, these are my goals:

1. Promote Parallels because I like them/it.

2. Destroy the New York Times all by myself.

And don't wish me luck; the New York Times needs your support much more than I do.

The way I want to help promote Parallels today is to try and get those of you who have used it to head over to the Macworld Reader's Choice' Awards page and vote for Parallels as the best third-party software of the year.

For a company the size of Parallels, this sort of thing can actually make a difference, and that's cool.

Aight. Back to writing about a deposed god and his nemesis, sandwich...

* [Forgive me for any misspellings] Steve, Jeff, Charles, Janine, Erik, Ernie, Laurence, The Young Michael Sampson, Adam, Duncan, Tina, Laura, Jesse (before he left), Larry, Joshua, and David.