Neanderpundit

Now, I’m a Windows user, I have no choice, absolutely none of the software I must use to do my job can run on a mac (And no, there is no magical software that will emulate an IBM on a mac that works, period). I have been messing with computers since 1980, have been on the internet more or less continuously since the Telnet days of the mid 80’s. I have used Unix, Linux, all the windows products, all the Mac products, and frankly, I have a hatred for all things computing that is unparallelled by anything else in my life. The computer is a tool to get me to the websites I want to see, to get my stuff out there for others to read. If I could do this any way but via computers, i would, in a heartbeat. When I go on vacation, I go where there are no computers, no phone service, barely power.

I have been using Win2k pro for many years now, and I can say that it is the most stable operating system that I’ve ever used; it runs and runs well.

Then we got WinXP at work. We replaced several computers, and upgraded others. I got a new Toshiba notebook with Winxp pro.
I install all the critical updates, I keep everything up to date, and do so religiously.

Still: WinXP crashes several times every single day. Now, granted, I use some pretty sophisticated software, but in all my years of using the software with Wn2k, I never had a solitary crash. At least ten times every day, I must deal with a popup from Dr Watson telling me “oh, there was a problem, do you want to send a report? ”

NO, YOU FUCKNUGETS. I DO NOT WANT TO SEND A REPORT. I want the software to WORK. i want it to FUNCTION the way an operating system was MEANT TO FUNCTION.
I was not put on earth to BETA TEST YOUR FUCKING SOFTWARE, YOU ASSCLOWNS OF EVIL! IF YOU WANT ME TO BE YOUR BETA TEST DEPARTMENT, I CAN SUGGEST SEVERAL PLACES WHERE YOU CAN INSERT YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM!

I cannot believe the gall of Microshaft, trying to pawn off this bullshit as a functional operating system. I think there’s a lot to be said for Win2k, and the fact that it WORKS. I’d like to grab the fuckweasels responsible for generating this code and insert them into the CD rom drive and laser etch a copy of Win2k onto their heads. I’d like to have a pushbutton on my desk, that would shock a Microshaft software engineer everytime I have a problem with the software. I’d like to take these numbskulls, mix them up with the morons running the Illinois Tollway, and use therm to PATCH POTHOLES. Good Lord, you idiots. Fix this shit before you start pumping the market full of it.

Last weekend I spent some time working on the Ogwife’s car, ther’s a leak that’s been evading me and I tried to find it, to no avail. Still, I got the oil changed and did some other normal maintenance work.

Problem was, I let the other car see me doing it. Usually, I just keep one car in the garage at a time, when I’m working, but sunday I wasn’t doing anything too difficult, so i left the truck inside.

Big mistake. Usually, I can go to the auto parts store and pick up supplies in whichever car isn’t dismantled, and it happyly goes along. Letting them both sit in the same garage, though, one got jealous enough that it felt it needed some money spent on it too. So today, on the way into work, the Exploder decides it needs a new alternator.

$300 later, (towing plus parts) I’m back on the road, and feel a kinship with the Goatse guy. Damned jealous cars.

Yeah, Rob, I can run a trot line. Never caught an alligator, but I caught plenty catfish, and loved eating them. I got finned more than enough times to make me get a big pair of pliers and grab those bastards with the pliers and not my hands.

My dad had a friend who has a cabin on the east fork of the white river in Indiana. Bill adams was his name, we called him Grizzly Adams (because that was popular at the time, and because he never shaved, and he needed to. He was one big hairy old boy) Anyway, Bill had a nice new fiberglas fishing boat, and we all went out to try it out, running trot lines and bank lines- a bank line is a single drop with three treble hooks and a big heavy weight, tied to a thin piss-elm sapling on the bank. You could just motor by, see if the sapling was twitching, and know which bank line had a fish.

Well, I got to drive the boat, and Bill and his son leaned over the end and took fish off, rebaited the lines with liver or wheaties, I’d back the boat out and nose up to the next line.

Bill had found a couple snags, the river was dropping pretty rapidly and the lines got tangled up fast, so we regularly had to unhook a line from an underground snag. Anyway, one of those times, Bill slid his thumb down the line trying to find the snag, and slid it into a snapping turtle’s mouth. The snapping turtle, thinking lunch had arrived, and unhappy about the treble hook it swallowed, bit down. hard.

Bill came back into the boat with speed you don’t expect from a 40 year old guy, fliped the snapper onto the deck, in the midst of five barefooted kids. The turtle still had Bill’s thumb, and was spoiling for some toes, before bill pulled out his boat gun and shot five rounds through the turtle AND THE BOTTOM OF THE BOAT.

I hurried back to the dock where we quickly swam under the boat with sink putty to cover the holes, Bill went up on shore blleding like a pig, dad used a circular saw to cut the turtle in half and get Bill’s thumb out, and everyone drove off to the hospital.

Later that same night, nursing Jim Beam and smoking cheap cigars, Bill showed us how to cook turtle meat and how many onions to put in hushppies. His thumb doesn’t quite point in the direction it’s supposed to, but it mostly works fine.

And I learned some important things about trot lines.