Taiwaneers

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.