Fuck you, Windows(R)

I decided to copy The Fighting Librarian and purchase a netbook for myself. For those of you unfamiliar with the now supersaturated market of "ultra-portable" computers, these are, simply, very small laptops with limited processing power.

Let me start by saying I love my Asus EEE PC. It's little, it's light, it's got a battery that will last past judgement day.


<---Actual size.




The Catch: It comes preinstalled with Windows XP.
I'm not a fan of Micro$oft, as most of you know, but I was going to swallow my pride for the sake of ultra-portable internet bliss.
So I get everything set up and I was surfing the web while watching a little Band of Brothers. And right as the courageous members of Easy Company were being shelled by the Germans while foxholed during the Battle of the Bulge...I got a virus. I got three viruses.
Windows informed me of this in the most annoying way possible. Three pop-up windows that could not be minimized or hidden. These windows informed me that my computer was infected and that I should click this link to clean the computer. The link brought me to a website proffering some anti-virus software for only 59.99. "Bullocks!" I exclaimed. I can live with a couple of viruses. exempli gratia: people live long happy lives with HPV.
So I close the pop-ups and go about my business. The thing is, these windows keep popping up. Literally every 20 seconds, these same three windows would pop up and obscure my entire screen, rendering my machine useless.
The thing is, the application sending these annoying pop-ups was hidden somewhere on my computer. I couldn't even find it and delete it. This process took me a long time since I would need to stop the search every 20 seconds to close those damn pop-up windows.

Eventually, I threw up my hands and decided to wipe that ungodly operating system from my hardware.

The solution:



Linux, sweet linux. Ubuntu is beautiful. Ubuntu is virus-free. Ubuntu costs nothing. The GUI is simple, efficient, and did I mention that it's free? Did I mention that it comes with a copy of OpenOffice which can open and edit word documents just like Windows Office? Did I mention that it's free?

So, I'll let you know how it goes, but so far so good. The installation wasn't exactly foolproof as my computer has no optical drive. I needed to install Ubuntu on a usb drive and make the drive bootable.

I gotta run, I'm in Luck, WI right now at West Denmark Family Camp. More on that later.

Sprocketplug Out

it gives you insomnia™

So it's finals week. That means a few things. It means I have to endure the begging and pleading of students: "But I'm only 15% away from an A, can't you do something?"
It means I have to grade hundreds of pages of exams.
It means I drink Red Bull.
It means that after I'm done grading at 12:00am, the residual caffeine in my blood keeps sleep just outside my grasp.
It means that as I write this I am semi-conscious and I am listening to Ingrid Michaelson's The Chain, a beautifully mellow song that ends in a lovely round:

So glide away on soapy heels
And promise not to promise anymore
And if you come around again
Then I will take, then I will take the chain from off the door

Plan for the summer:

1) Workout (for reals this time)
2) Learn French (a lá Rosetta Stone)
3) Play my newly bought (but not yet received) Rock Band 2
4) Film a movie following students about to take the Statistics Qualifier Exam

So the question is: What should I name my Rock Band? Here's the shortlist:

Rachel and the Lady Killers
The Stoic Unicorns
The OCD Elves
James Taylor Overdrive
Civil Hands
One Man Down
Challengers of Change
Aphrodite's Itch
Temporal Fugue
Inebriated Koala
The Sprangettes
Madrak and the Holy Rollers
P and the Values
Starbuck and the Vipers
Circular Logic


What would you call YOUR band?