Computer | Taiwaneers

Not Much To Tell

Michael's Posts, Our Taipei Life, University 1 Response »

Oct 202009

It’s been a few weeks since my last post so I figured I had better get on the ball. The problem is there is not much to tell. I mean sure, I can tell you that Emily is super busy and harried with schoolwork and that I’m not but is that really post-worthy news?

If you are a praying person you can pray for Emily. She is incredibly challenged by this semester’s workload and doing her utmost to measure up. I, on the other hand, have one of the lightest loads of my academic career right now. With that in mind I’ve been trying to work on becoming more in tune with the housework and meal needs and all the jobs that Emily remembers so naturally but that I just don’t even think about. I want to be better at having all that stuff in my head constantly and being able to remember that the bathroom needs cleaning, or the roommate needs to be reminded to do their cleaning job, or the groceries need buying. And then once I get that stuff in my head on a constant basis I want to do those things.

I’ve been having fun building my Mandarin vocabulary. It is a constant challenge but I’m hoping the consistency of lessons and such will help solidify all these new words into my brain so that I can actually benefit from them in real situations. Our good friend Sandy has agreed to do some language exchange with me and she is a really, really good teacher. We are so blessed!

Oh, I just remembered there is something I can talk about. Last Saturday Emily and I went to Guang-hua Market electronics district and bought a new desktop computer. Both of our laptops are 4 plus years old and are getting quite temperamental. We have high hopes for our new computer! Guang-hua Market seemed like a geek’s paradise. Picture a billion little stores that had all these menus of computer components. You could buy each component individually or put them together to create a new computer. Emily and I ended up at this store and the guy had this order sheet and basically filled in what type of each computer component we wanted. He told us to come back in thirty minutes and the computer would be built. Great way to buy computers as far as I’m concerned because I could choose how good/expensive I want our computer to be!!

ubuntu

Michael's Posts, Our Taipei Life 4 Responses »

May 062009

First of all the only proper way to start this post is to say that my wife is a genius.

A few months back Emily was having serious problems with her computer. Her computer’s memory seemed to be shrinking even though she wasn’t doing anything until finally she had nothing. For a few months we just shared one computer, then after researching a whole bunch of different options she found this Linux-based operating system called ubuntu. She put it on her computer hoping that the problem would be solved, however ubuntu didn’t jive with her acer Aspire 5000. For some reason it wouldn’t connect to the internet and in this day-and-age who wants a computer without internet? Well she ended up putting windows back onto her laptop and the problem was solved by just that act of wiping and reloading. End of story, or so we thought.

About a month ago windows gave me a little pop-up thing on my computer. It asked me if I wanted to “verify the authenticity of my copy of windows” or something like that. Even though my copy of windows has been bought and paid for, thanks to my former employer who gave me the laptop (thanks Dick!), its just instinct for me to stick it to the man whenever I can so I told the pop-up “no I don’t want to.” Well the pop-up didn’t like that. I can’t be certain but I think my rejecting that pop-up caused my computer to start doing everything really, really slowly. Just to open up a Word document took enough time for me to go to the bathroom and come back. I stopped using my computer and Emily and I were sharing hers.

Well I suffered through the lengthy time commitment of getting all the stuff on my computer onto our external hard-drive and then I took Emily’s ubuntu CD and loaded it onto my computer, wiping out windows and everything else. Voila the problem has been solved and my computer is back up to running well again!!! The problems Emily’s Acer had with ubuntu don’t seem to be an issue for my Dell. I’m so pleased. The man tried to stick it back to me and because I have a brilliant wife who found really cool free software I was able to say “oh no you didn’t.”

All that to say I’ve been having computer problems but they seem to be lessoning. It is a little difficult for me to get used to ubuntu (aka Linux) not being a geek. I am learning as I go on how I can get the programs I want to operate on it but it can be frustrating at times. In fact the other day, right after I put ubuntu on my laptop, I was telling Emily how it was crap because nothing works on it. Now a few days later I see light at the end of the tunnel. I take my hat off to the open-source world. They have my thanks and gratitude for creating ubuntu and a whole bunch of other open-source software that I have been using more and more, especially since its compatible with ubuntu and a whole bunch of the stuff that you have to pay for isn’t.

Am I becoming a computer geek? Probably not, I can say though that I use Linux. I can’t say I use it because I think its just that cool. I do have to admit that I use it because I don’t really have the money to buy a copy of Windows instead. But at the end of the day I am one of the cool kids with an OS thats not Windows or MAC. How do you like me now Microsoft….you and your crappy windows that tried to sabotage me.