Looks More Like a Puma

If you’re a new Aggie, and your mom is thinking about joining an Aggie Moms club, try to get her to join the Aggie Moms Club of Atlanta (Texans please note that the word Atlanta not followed by the name of a state means Atlanta, Georgia; not Atlanta, Texas). Why the Aggie Mom’s Club of Atlanta? Because at the end of the fall semester Aggie Moms make care packages, and while most students find themselves with a little bag that has a couple cookies and a pencil in it; we get this:

The Package. Dwarfing everything in my room.

Nothing less than a Swiss Army Knife could get it open

Such a quantity of projectiles. No one in the dorm dares oppose me anymore.

Whoa! Where did my mom find this? You know they just don't make 60's TV shows like they used to...

A cling-on (Klingon?) bear making himself at home on my uniform.

...and on my mug...

...and on my trombone.

And then there's all the food. It's pretty ridiculous; I had to stand on my chair to get it all in one picture. EDIT: After reading the bottle more carefully, I discovered that the Bubble Solution is "Not for human consumption."

Ah, that's what the bubble solution is for

So…shout out to the Aggie Moms, y’all are awesome.

What the heck is Windows?

This continues my little series on what’s good and bad about the various operating systems for personal computers (by which I of course mean computers for persons, not non-mac computers). Last time I listed the things I hate about Linux, and the next entry in the series will be the things I like about Windows.

Performance - is the reason I got tired of running Windows in the first place. Windows seems to have a habit of bogging down in awkward places like when right clicking on anything in File Explorer, or when trying to use the Start Menu. I hate logging onto Windows machines in various labs because I inevitably end up waiting for about a minute while Windows “Loads my personal settings” (I don’t have any personal settings!), and then when it looks ready, you still usually have to wait for another 30 or 60 seconds before it becomes responsive.

Security - means you have install some kind of anti-virus software which is inevitably a resource pig. Sure security is a really hard problem, but they could at least do the simple things, like salting passwords. I can take a cd which I downloaded for free and put it in your Windows computer and it will tell me your password, because unlike every other system that stores hashed passwords, Windows doesn’t use salt them to make the hash unique for each machine.

Reliability - means most Windows user have to restart their computer. Often. And then there’s my favorite Windows anecdote. The US Navy actually had a trial “Smartship” program which integrated all of the ship’s systems together using a network of computers running Windows NT. It worked fine until one guy accidentally entered some wrong data which cause a divide by zero error which crashed the system leaving the ship dead in the water for 3 hours. Curiously, I haven’t heard anything about that program since.

The little things - which I had no idea were missing until I started using Ubuntu Linux regularly. Things like:

• Lack of ssh/scp. I don’t know of any built in way to communicate with a server in Windows
• Lack of workspaces. So simple and useful. So glaringly absent.
• Always on top. This is an option for every window in Ubuntu. Really simple. Really useful. Really not available in Windows.
• UI Customization. I can completely change every menu, icon, sidebar, and shortcut on my desktop in Ubuntu. In Windows, I can have my Start Menu on the bottom or the side or the top. And that’s about it.
• Notepad. The worst text editor ever written. Could they not put more than 15 minutes of effort into it, or better yet just bundle in one of the 5 gazillion existing free text editors?
• Printscreen. Why do I have to paste into Paint to get an image file?
• Cmmand prompt. Everything is backwards from all the other operating systems.
• “Are you sure you want to send file XXX to the Recycling Bin?” Isn’t that kind of the point of having a Recycling Bin? That you don’t have to be sure?

And finally, my absolute favorite is this dialog right here.


Seems innocent enough, until you try the “Restart Later” option. That makes the dialog go away for all of 10 minutes, and then it pops up right back in your face, asking you the same stupid question and giving you the same stupid countdown. Of course you’re trying to use your computer so you click “Restart Later” and of course 10 minutes later it pops up again with another dose of helpful Windows user interface…

Well, I guess that’s about it. Windows isn’t all bad though. Stick around through the commercial break and I’ll tell you what I like about it.

I recently went to an interview at Naval Reactors in Washington DC (which went well), and I observed that everybody that I talked to about it beforehand wished me “good luck”. Everybody save one, that is, and naturally this exception caused me to pause and consider. I know I would have said good luck, but I would have hated it even as I said it. Good luck? I don’t even believe in luck (the concept of random chance is incompatible with that of a sovereign God). And even if I did, what good does it do for me to wish it upon someone. The only function served by the phrase is to express some kind of good will and solidarity (and even that gets thrown out in bizarre situations we’ve all seen such as an individual wishing good luck to both sides in a sporting event). As it turns out, there’s a much better alternative which is what my one exception said. Rather than an empty expression of her hope for my good fortune, she simply said that she’d pray for me. Now that is a meaningful and practical thing to say to someone, and having observed its clear advantages, I have resolved to strike the phrase “good luck” from my vocabulary.

Don’t worry I haven’t forgotten: more on operating systems next time…

What the heck is Linux?

This kicks off a little series about operating systems. If you’ve heard of Linux but you’re really not sure what the deal with it is, here’s your opportunity. Stick around for a few posts, and I’ll give you what I think are the pros and cons for Ubuntu Linux and Windows. (For the mac-lovers who are probably steaming right now, I’ll try to work in some stuff about OSX. The thing about that is that I haven’t used it for any extended period of time and don’t know much about it).

Network Manager - is just plain flaky. It goes through phases for no apparent reason. It’ll go through a phases where it works perfectly, then one day it will suddenly not be able to connect to a usual wireless network. Eventually I figure out some trick to make work again (toggle the wireless switch…or the power) and that’s about when it shifts to a different phase with a totally different problem. This thing is so creative with the problems that it has, I sometimes have a hard time beleiving that it is a deterministic piece of software.

Hardware Support - is often lacking. Honestly I’m actually really impressed by how well this works on a variety of machines with a variety of peripherals. Still, it’s pretty frustrating when your printer is on the list that either doesn’t work, or only works after sifting through forums and fiddling with config files for a day.

Networking - is hard. I have yet to figure out how to get to windows machines on the LAN without knowing their IP address. I didn’t work on it for very long, but shouldn’t it be pretty straightforward?

Open Office - is the number one reason why I don’t recommend Ubuntu to every single person. Compared to MS Office 07, it is just plain lacking in terms of features, ease of use, and the experience in general. Every time I use it, I found out some little thing that isn’t there. The other day it was that you can’t crop pictures that are inserted into a text document. The day before that it was that charts in the spreadsheet program can’t be displayed in log scale. Admittedly, that’s probably a rarely used feature; but when you need it, there’s no substitute. And the only thing I know about the slideshow program is that I started it once when I had a presentation to make, tried to work with it for 5 minutes, then rebooted my computer into windows to use PowerPoint. I haven’t looked at OpenOffice Slideshow since.

So I was kind of shooting for a top 10 list, but I could only come up with 4. Next time I’ll be back with Things I hate about Windows (I wouldn’t expect it to be as short as this one).

The erhu is a traditional Chinese Fiddle with two strings. It is a versatile instrument and performances can range from the elegant to the adorable to the less-elegant to the seductive to the just plain amazing.

*For some reason these links do not work in Internet Explorer. I am not motivated to fix the problem, download Firefox.