W00t!! We survived yet another year! Well not yet, but very soon at least. I have a perfect record so far at breaking my own schedule! Not only did I not get my first post in on Wednesday, I completely humped the week in the ear by completely blowing off any posts what so ever. In my defense, I was futile-y attempting to install the 64 bit version of either Ubuntu or Debian on my new computer system at home. Not only did I manage to not get either distros to install completely (or partially for that matter), but I also got a crash course in the inner workings of file systems (ext3 to be specific) and linux swap "drives".
As to rub the whole situation in my face, the 32bit version of Ubuntu installed beautifully. It was exactly what one expects when installing Ubuntu. Kubuntu, from the Ubuntu base, installed and ran. This being said, it ran, but it didn't run great. All of the KDE cute little animations ran smoothly, but when you brought up a window, and tried to drag said window across the screen, it lagged and or jumped like I haven't seen in an OS for ages! I checked out the specs on the system, and I was utilizing about 70% of the processor, and almost a full gig of memory! Now this may or may not have anything to do with my problem, but I did think it was plenty weird. So needless to say, all my free time now is being spent pouring through the Ubuntu forums trying to figure out what the hell's going on.
Speaking of my new computron, I have to geek out over it for a little bit. Ahem. *cough cough* I GOT A NEW COMPUTER! Yay for me. Anyway, this year I decided to go with a Dell, because given the situation (I did some contract programming for a firm, and rather than give me cache, I whored myself out for computer hardware.), it was easier just to send them the specs on the system that I wanted, and have them ship it to me. The other reason that I went with Dell was that they finally are "building" computers with AMD processors. So I picked me up a Dell E521 with a AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2 gigs of ram, 320 gigs of HD space (for all the pr0n ya know), a 19 inch Ultrasharp LCD monitor, and an ATI x1300 pro. I know the card is a little weak, but it was the best one that they had available, and it beats the living pants off of the old radeon 1700 pro that I was using.
Ok, I feel better now, and I have a feeling that, given my neurotic propensity towards geek-ness, we'll be revisiting this topic again. So with that, on to Christmas.
I hate Christmas. With every fiber of my being, I despise the holiday. There are some people in the world who just say that they "hate Christmas" to sound cool, or feed some anti-social urges, but in all honesty, there are very few ANYTHINGS out there that cause such a violent and uncontrollable loathing as Christmas. I probably sound very bitter, so I'll explain.
In any given Christmas, there are 2 unavoidable factors, Family and Tension, and both seem to feed off of one another, creating a series of days that go down in personal history as "The Longest Days of my Freaking Life".
I was recently married, and I used to joke that the best way to handle in laws was to marry an orphan. I should have taken my own advice. Without going into great detail, any time family is together, it is tense at best, and nuclear (as in explosion) at average. There is no one in the family apt at "Just letting it go". Everything is seen as a personal attack, and counter to those means.
For instance, we had the in laws over for a nice supper last week. The father and 2 brothers were sitting in the living room watching TV, the youngest son gets up to get a soda and steps over my dog. Now Ms.Tinklepants (name changed to protect the innocent) is a weird dog and freaks at the weirdest things, one of which is someone stepping over her. So the father and the older brother take it upon themselves to chastise the youngest, vocally and severely. The problem, it's My Dog in My House. Once again, I'm sure we will revisit the topic of in laws many times in the future, so we'll just let it go at this.
Then there's tension. As in any marriage, there is plenty of tension as 2 people learn to live with each other. In my wife's own words, I am a stacker (I find comfort in making logical piles of corresponding and related items) while she's a sorter (neurotically labeling everything in it's own box inside a bigger box of labeled items). She's also a control freak (which is weird because she prefers to be controlled "in bed"), while I'm too apathetic to be controlled. She's the kind of person who has her Christmas shopping done a full month ahead of time, while I sit there on the day before the day before Christmas going "Meh, I'll figure something out." You can just about imagine the fireworks that come from a combination such as this.
That being said, I need to get back to work, so that I can pay the Christmas Bills (yet another "benefit" of the holiday).
Neurotically Yours,
~M.
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