Good fences make good neighbors. Bad cursors make for cussing.

Survival under one roof in a long marriage, sharing a condo with teen sons, having a joint checking account or a shared minutes cellphone plan requires finding basic areas of agreement, and fencing known issues of disagreement outside the playing field.  The same is true for business partnerships, and that most dangerous zone of the shared computer.

To get along persons in any partnership must agree, or else agree to disagree and avoid the topics of

• Religion
• Politics
• Tidiness standards
• Vegetarianism vs. grilling big hunks o' beef
• Paper vs. plastic
• Cat or dog
• Recycling vs. being an irresponsible blight upon Mother Earth
• Manual vs. automatic transmission
• Apple vs. PC
• Planning ahead vs. frolicking frivolously in the present
• Thanksgiving at my parents'/Christmas at your parents'
• Talk radio vs. NPR
• Whether children can wear cowperson boots with Hawaiian print shorts
• Being perky before coffee vs. staying wisely silent until coffee kicks in

The choice of a screensaver and desktop theme should be right up there with the worst partnership/buddy breakers. An office passive-aggressive power struggle between fishy themes with seashell cursors for one, and falling autumn leaf screensavers and acorn pointers for two is threatening to maim the small business where I work.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder