Desktop Background

Coworker pops by to get some documents from my desk and makes a quiet throat clearing noise to get my attention. I rummage through the stack of papers on my desk to retrieve whatever he needs from me, and hand it to him.

“Dude, you were totally zoning out.”
“Huh?”
“You were staring at your desktop image for like two minutes straight. I usually try to have some code on my screen when I do that”
“I’m not staring. I’m waiting for Eclipse to load…”

As if to confirm my statement, the Eclipse splash pops up on my screen.

“Fair, enough…” he smiles knowingly “You might as well go get some coffee from downstairs… This is not gonna be ready any time soon”.

Advanced Internet User

Dramatis personae: me, two other developers and one marketroid.
Scene: Marketroid tries to download pictures from the interwebs

Marketroid: How do I download this?
Me: Use the download link… I mean…
Developer 1: ALT+F4
Developer 2: Yes, what he said.
Me: Yeah, Alt+F4 will work too.
Marketroid: Agh! WTF! You guys are assholes.

[Assholes share a heartfelt laugh]

Marketroid: Why is this thing so slow?
Developer 2: Because you are using Internet Explorer.
Me: Also, I think your computer has been with the company longer than any of us.
Marketroid: What is wrong with Internet Explorer?
Developper 1: ಠ_ಠ
Me: Sigh…
Developer 2: This guy is worse than my girlfriend…
Developer 1: Stop being a girl, and use a normal browser
Marketroid: Ok, how do I…
Me: Ctrl+W
Marketroid: Is it going to close the window again?
Developer 1: No, this is legit.
Developer 2: Yes, we just found out your are a girl, and we don’t pick on girls.
Marketroid: Ok… WTF! Shit!

[Coffe cup toast of triumph and one awkward high five]

Marketroid: Ok, now this is telling me I need to log in with LIVE account. What is LIVE?
Me: It’s Microsoft’s attempt to re-brand Hotmail.
Developer 1: Yeah, it’s like – it’s still Hotmail, but people won’t laugh at you when you email them.
Marketroid: What’s wrong with Hotmail now? I use it for my personal email!
Me: Oh god!
Developer 1: [facepalm.jpg]
Developer 2: Dude my grandmother uses Hotmail. You don’t use Hotmail! You just don’t.
Developer 1: Sop being an old lady!

Woha!

My cubicle is near filing cabinets so the filing brigade members sometime stop by for a chat, and to steal some Altoids from my desk. I usually have some mints or other snacks on my desk, and it does attract all kinds of strange creatures from time to time. One day our CFO pops by. And by CFO I mean one of the interns who we dubbed the “Cheif Filing Officer” mostly because he seems to have invented his own version of the alphabet.

I’m currently in the process of re-building some machine. I’m elbow deep in computer guts, there are little screws and ribbon tapes, and expansion cards everywhere. My Matrix screensaver is rolling idly in the background. CFO catches a glimpse of it, and goes:

“Woha!”

I laugh because I think he is doing Keanu impersonation. He is not.

“What is that?” he points at my screen.

I turn around just to confirm my screen did not suddenly do anything unusual and succinctly explain that it is my Matrix screen saver.

“Oooh! Cool.. I thought you were like programming or something”.

The Sequel

I’m on the phone with a client.

“So do you guys have a database of any sort over there? You know, like MySQL, Postress, Microsoft SQL Server, etc..”
“Hold on, let me ask my boss… No, we don’t seem to have any of these.”
“Ok, no problem. So I’m going to put down no database. We will set one up for you from scratch.”
“Wait… My boss says we have something called My Sequel. Will that work?”
“Yes…”

On that note, which way do you pronounce it? MySQL or my sequel? I actually spell out SQL because I honestly don’t see how you get the word “sequel” from that. But to each his own. Let me know your favorite pronunciation in the comments.

Also, share your own stories.

They bicker and argue about the sports teams as if they were text editors or something. And no I’m not kidding here. I know that most of the readers here are going to say “You are full of shit Luke, there is no way anyone could get that worked up about sports” but they do. For no reason whatsoever too.

It's almost like editor wars.

I mean, the editor debate has merits. It is about the most efficient and productive way of editing text files – which is what we programmers do for a living. Picking the right work tool is incredibly important. Sports on the other hand – well, that’s just entertainment. And yet people get really worked up about them.

For example, being seen wearing a shirt with the logo of the wrong team is reputation destroying, friendship ending sin and anyone committing it deserves fate worse death. Kinda like being caught using the wrong text editor.

I figured I might as well post this here, so that we can all benefit from this. Next time you see people behaving irrationally when sports are involved, think back to text editor debates. It is a bit like that.

Seriously, never leave college! © xkcd

Yep, once you leave academia no one will actually understand what you do. Unless you are working for a geek friendly company that was funded and is currently managed by geeks, people will be more impressed with your “Outlook configuration” skills than with your programming. People will assume that you actually went to school to learn “computers” – ie. how to fix and configure them. Programming being just a small but intricate case of “computer configuration” process.

Case in point, have you ever notice how people tend to use words configure and program interchangeably? Hey can you program this address into my Outlook? Can you program my excel to open those Office 2007 documents? Can you program my laptop to work with your wifi connection?

Of course this language quirk probably stems from the fact that we commonly say “program” when we mean configure when working with other electronic devices – like VCR’s or DVR’s for example.

Oh, and the only time you will be praised on your programming is when your GUI is actually visually impressive. Yeah, GUI – that most insignificant part of the software most of us throw together the last minute – that’s the only part people in the real word actually notice:

The chart on the left is generic, and random but you get the idea

Ah… Real world is a funny place. If you love to program, love solving difficult problems, love being challenged and want people to appreciate your skill, and knowledge and you want to do actual computer science for living then you should really consider getting a PHD, becoming a professor and staying in the academia.

That’s really the only place you can actually interact with other people who understand, appreciate and perhaps even admire your work. Your real work that is. Not just praise you on a well designed GUI but look at that meticulously crafted algorithm, and really, really get how much work you put into it. Academia is also the only place you can get paid for hacking away on really obscure, abstract projects that really interest you but have no real world applications (yet). Things that only you and a select group of other PHD’s in the same field will actually find use for. You know, applications that will have no retarded users who will complain about trivialities, and ruin everything all the time.

The only problem of course is that these people who understand you will be few and far in between. Most of them will work at different universities. Likely most of your fellow faculty members who you will see every day will have no clue about your field of research. They will politely nod and try to hide their yawns when you talk to them about your craft. Hell, most people in your field will likely be bored to death by the stuff that fascinates you. Unless of course you pick a popular research area, in which case you will have to deal with a lot of competition. Obscure stuff is much more convenient.

Oh, and you will probably need to teach bunch of classes to young impressionable people who will do everything in their power to actually fail your course, and not retain any information you are giving them, no matter how hard you try.

So yeah… You’re screwed either way.

I guess, what I’m trying to say here is that ours is a lonely, thankless craft. But someone has to do it, eh?

And yet, people insist on treating them as if they were conscious, living beings. They curse at them, blame them or worse yet – give them cute names. It’s not only silly but also counter productive. This behavior is basically empathic imprinting. Personification slowly but surely imbues the inanimate machine with either positive or negative emotional discharge. It pools up inside of the machine, fills all available spaces, covers every inch of the surface and then starts thickening. After several months of being bathed in waves of unrestrained empathy, the concentration is high enough it starts acting like a spectral equivalent of the primordial soup. It becomes a bubbling cauldron of psychic emanations. Sooner than later there is a spark of cognition, and the whole thing coalesces into a non-physical emphatic sophont entitiy. For the purpose of this article I will refer to these entities as “Machine Spirits (or MS)” but they are not true ghosts – at least not in the way we understand them. An MS specimen is nothing more than an empathic echo. While sapient, it’s thought patterns are shaped entirely by the emotional input provided by the human. As such it is incapable of exhibiting emotions other than it was exposed to. Being a specter born out of emotional energies it usually possesses no logical faculties and exhibits highly irrational and capricious behavior.

Machine Spirits use your computer as a physical host body that anchors them in this universe

The exact patterns of course depend on how the user treated their physical host (ie. the computer). For example, people who think the computer hates them, will give a new beginning to a being that knows little more than hate. Those who despise technology will have to deal with spiteful specters. Machines that were pampered and loved on the other hand will loving and playful personalities. This may not seem like a bad thing, but you have to remember that these beings are purely irrational, run on raw emotion and are incapable of reasonable thought. Thus a loving spirit for example decide to manifest their fillings by arranging bits on your hard drive into pleasing patterns irreversibly corrupting your data in the process.

What’s worse, since Machine Spirits are bound to a physical host and manifest in the physical universe rather than the spectral realm, they must have some mechanical means for their cognitive processes. Most (if not all) MS entities learn to steal CPU cycles and reserve memory areas for their own purposes which severely degrades the performance of the machine they inhabit. This is precisely why a brand new store bought computer is usually blazing fast for about a year, and then slows down, eventually grinding to a halt. It usually takes anywhere from 6 to 18 months for a user to successfully imprint an emotional echo on a machine and create an MS entity. As the specter grows and matures it requires more and more resources which explains a sharp decline in performance on machines that are over 2 years old.

MS entities enter dormant state when the hardware is powered down. They are irrational beings and their minds and emotional patterns are fully formed “at birth”. Still, over time they acquire new experiences which can alter their personalities. Unlike their original makeup these experiences need to be physically stored somewhere. Most MS entities steal hard drive space to accomplish this. This is why many users with MS infected machines often notice shrinkage of free HD space, but are unable to explain where that space is used.

There are two known ways to remove an MS entity from a piece of hardware. First one, is naturally the wipe & reinstall procedure. Unfortunately id does not guarantee removal of the spirit, but it can at least “reset” it to it’s original state by wiping it’s experience cache from the hard drive. Sometimes this experience is traumatic enough for the MS entity to self terminate or go into an indefinite dormant state.

The other method is starvation. While MS does not actually feed, it does thrive in environments rich in emphatic emanations. Of course it is a highly subjective, and finely tuned emphatic receptor that can only detect emotional waves directed at its physical host. It remains ignorant of all other emotional background noise. Since MS entities have no sensory apparatus (and no, they actually can’t learn to operate web cams and speakers) emotional deprivation works similar to sensory deprivation in living beings. It will slowly drive them insane. But unlike physical entities, specters can essentially will themselves out of existence. In other words if you stop personifying your computer, it’s embedded persona will eventually go away.

The problem with his that experienced machine ghosts develop defense mechanisms against this technique. They will for example try to provoke emotional response from the user by crashing the system, corrupting data and causing all kinds of other mischief. In worse case scenario they will dump themselves to hard drive and go dormant for a while but without releasing any of their tied up resources. This is why this method is most effective when combined with reformatting and re installation of the OS. A confused, vulnerable and freshly amnesiac MS will be much easier to starve than a a malicious ghost with baggage of experience to draw on.

Neither of these methods is 100% successful, and you have to keep in mind that the entity may still take over your box after sufficient amount of time has passed. Once you get a machine spirit, getting rid of it is very difficult. Buying a new computer is usually the only solution that works. But if you keep personifying the new machine, it will eventually develop it’s own specter.

The solution? Don’t do it! Your computer is a machine. It is a tool. It is an extension of yourself. It has no personality, and no mind of it’s own. Stop pretending like it does. Stop talking to it. Stop blaming it for your own mistakes. Stop talking about it as if it was alive. Don’t ever personify it – even jokingly. Don’t even think about it as an entity of it’s own. A computer is a conduit of your will – a transmission medium that connects you to the internet. Nothing more. If you think of it in any different way, you are just asking for trouble.

All of this also applies to modern cars which have computerized on-board diagnostic systems. Did you ever have that annoying “check engine” light flashing on your dashboard for no reason whatsoever? Yeah, now you know why. Don’t fucking personify your car either!

I encourage you to share our own personal experiences with machine ghosts in this comment thread.

Our regular UPS and FedEx delivery people usually need a signature. Still, I can hear them coming in and usually greet them as they are walking in, as my cube is actually near the door. Sometimes they smile, sometimes they wave or return the geeing. Sometimes they even stop by and chat with us. But not the US Postal Service guy.

In fact, I don’t even know if he is a guy. He could be a woman. Or both. Or neither. He could be some grossly mutated monster for all I know. I have never actually caught a glimpse of him. I have never heard him open or close the office door. Sometimes, if I’m really attentive I can actually hear the characteristic *plop* sound a bundle of letters makes as it hits the desk behind my back. But every time I turn around, the mailman is long gone. Once I even jumped out of my cubicle to see him walking out the door but he just wasn’t there. He vanished before the mail even hit the desk, alerting me to his presence.

This is what happens when a retired Ninja takes a job at the post office

I consulted this experience with my coworkers, and none of them has seen this evasive mailman either. It’s a bit of an office mystery at this point. Is he a man? Is he a woman? How old is he? Is he a Ninja? Is he an ex spy? Former mercenary? A retired hit man? Shadow person from a parallel dimension? We just don’t know!

Every time we set a trap for him, he actually manages to outsmart us. When someone sits in the empty cubicle he leaves the mail on top of the filing cabinets just outside of it. If someone happens to be filing, he just drops it on the floor by the door. If someone is standing an staring at the door he will wait till they turn around, crack the door open just a tiny bit, slide the mail in and then bolt for it.

I even asked the FedEx lady if she has ever seen our mailman, but she never actually met him despite sometimes delivering packages minutes before or after him. Bizarre!

I actually considered setting up a web cam pointing at the door, trying to capture him in action. But then maybe that would be a mistake. Perhaps there is a reason why he does not reveal himself to us. Perhaps the truth is just too frightening. Also, seeing him sneak in would probably ruin this mystery thing we have going on right now.

“Dude, Firefox 2.0 is ancient! What about Chrome and IE8?”

Well, the point is that it was not ancient when I wrote that post. Back then it was cutting edge. But we came a long way since then and so I decided to post a short update to that post.

Of course there is really no point for me to update the entry for Lynx or Dillo because not much has changed for those apps. In fact, a lot of the browsers on that old list sort of faded into obscurity. For example IE overlays such as Maxthon became obsolete around the time IE7 introduced tabbed browsing. Others such as Netscape or AOL browser are hardly even around anymore. So in this post I will mainly concentrate on the leading browsers. You know, the ones that actually support modern standards and have large user bases. Oh, and Lynx.

	Firefox You are not sure why people complain about Internet Explorer so much. It is a perfectly serviceable tool for downloading Firefox on a new windows machine. You have tried different browsers but you feel they are all vastly inferior to FF. Flock does too much, Chrome does too little, Safari is to fancy and etc… Its not like these browsers have better features anyway. At least not for long. Any cool, worthwhile and innovative feature will be either added in the next Firefox release, or has already been replicated in the form of an extension. Every time you switch browsers you are amazed at how different the web looks. Your favorite websites are covered with banners, useful AJAX based features are gone… Then you realize that other browsers don’t actually have Adblock, Greasemonkey and Stylish extensions that you rely on. You also get annoyed when you try to test your websites in other browsers since they don’t have access to the full version of Firebug. Seeing how there is an extension for everything out there, you can’t imagine ever needing another browser.
	IE5 Kill yourself.
	Google Chrome You love Google Chrome because as everything made by the big G it is fast, sleek and stable. Now you can check your Gmail and Google Reader feeds and Google calendar in style as you edit your Google Docs in a separate tab, chat in Google Talk, get your directions from Google Maps and build applications for Google App Engine. You are not really concerned that Google probably knows more about your personal interests, hopes, dreams and desires than your own mother. After all, their motto is “don’t be evil” right? Also, the tear-off tabs were awesome killer feature until Firefox totally copied them. Still, your browser runs every tab as a separate instance so there is really no way for one website to crash the whole browser… Until one does, that is – but that happens rarely.
	IE6 There are two possibilities here: You are using a locked down company computer – in which case, WTF are you doing reading this? Go back to work you lazy bum! Also, your sysadmin is either lazy or stupid. Or both. You are to stupid to live and/or you enjoy ruining the internet for all of us. In addition your machine belongs to at least 17 botnets and you pick up new trojans daily. You often wonder why your internet is so slow but you are definitely not going to install some shady “Fox Fire” or “Intranet Explore 8” whatever that is. It’s probably a virus or something. I hope you fall into a ditch, break your ass and die all alone as punishment.
	IE7 As a rule you don’t use Windows Update. You are probably running Vista in it’s original, pre-SP1 shape and form. Your computer it is infected by 5 billion viruses and trojans making it barely usable. You heard that there is a newer version of Internet Explorer out there but you don’t care. You don’t like change. Finally, you assume that your computer is so slow because someone told you that Vista sucks. I mean, yes – it does, but it doesn’t suck that much. Your computer is slow because you are running outdated browser on an un-patched OS. And I’m not going to help you with that because you are ruining internet for everybody.
	IE8 You are one of the few windows users who do know how to use Windows Update. Hell, you might have even went out of your way and downloaded IE8 yourself though I doubt it. No, seriously – most people clever enough to know what a browser is know better than to use IE. But you might just be a loyal Microsoft customer who simply likes the new browser for all of it’s “innovative” features. Someone told you that IE8 is actually pretty standards compliant, but of course you don’t know what that is. You would probably be pretty proud that your browser of choice passes the ACID2 test but you don’t know what that is. Also, I might actually consider helping you to remove all these nasty trojans from your machine since for once you are not actually ruining the internet for us.
	Opera You really don’t give a fuck that both IE8 and Firefox 3 can pass ACID 2 test nowadays. ACID 2 test is like so 3 years ago. Now it’s all about ACID 3 and non of these upstart browsers can render that one properly. Yeah, Google Chrome sort of took over the “fastest browser” niche these days but Opera still kicks ass. It’s fast, sleek and has lot’s of unique features. Besides, all of those other browsers have their keyboard shortcuts ass-backwards.
	Safari You are a mac user… Or you are one of those sad Windows people who suffer from a Mac envy. You know who I’m talking about – folks who buy a discount Dell and then use Window Blinds or other styling tool to make their Vista look just like OSX. Does anyone else use that browser? I don’t know. Not that it’s a bad browser. It was the first one to successfully pass ACID 3 test. Not only that, but it’s Webkit engine is used by myriad of other browsers – namely Konquerror and Google Chrome. And these other browsers tend to stick out like a sore thumb on a Mac.
	Flock You keep telling people that Flock is not just a fork of Firefox with some web 2.0 and social networking extensions grafted in, but they won’t listen. Screw them then. You know damn well that your browser is better – perfectly engineered to integrate itself with the myriad of social media and content generation platforms.
	Lynx, Links, etc… Graphics are overrated. Who needs them. You browse the web for content, not for flashy designs and lolcat pictures. You use Mutt for email, Midnight Commander to manage your files, vim as your text editor. If a website contains a captcha you download it using feh, and display it in the framebuffer. Hell, you don’t even have X installed on your primary machine – you are that awesome. Of course X is installed on your backup laptop which you use to go on youtube and to download pr0n but no one has to know that.
	Chromium You are essentially like the average Chromium user but lazy. In a good way. You are to lazy to actually deal with the Windows bullshit so you run Linux. To lazy to compile stuff or fuck with RPM’s so you run Debian. To lazy to download Chrome so you run Chromium that’s available via apt.
	Konquerror You firmly believe that carpet should match the drapes and that the browser should match the desktop environment. Also, for some reason you like browsers that double up as file managers – you know, like IE did back in the day. Then again Konquerror is webkit based so it has to be fairly decent. All that hard work done by Google and Apple trickles down to your browser slowly but surely.
	Epiphany You firmly believe that carpet should match the drapes and that the browser should match the desktop environment. Besides, Ephiphany is gecko based so it has to be fairly decent. All that hard work done by Mozilla foundation trickles down to your browser slowly but surely.
	Seamonkey You fondly remember the days when a web browser used to have a built in calendar, email client, HTML editor and some other useful tools. Those were the good days. You don’t care for the newfangled fast loading browsers the youngsters use these days. Also, you don’t like when kids are anywhere near your lawn.
	Kazehakase You don’t tell people about your browser of choice in person. You have learned a long time ago that they will ask you to spell the name, and that’s just not possible. You just send them a link. In casual conversations you refer to your browser as “that browser” or kazehe-something-or-other. But hey! It’s Gecko based, lean, mean, infrequently updated and seemingly abandoned. Um… That last part is not so good, but it’s still a decent browser.

Yes, yes. I know I ignored your favorite browser. Chances are it is irrelevant, and/or it hasn’t really changed much since the last post. And if I totally miss-characterized a group of users and made you mad, please remember that posting “fag” in the comments does not count as constructive criticism. Other than that, feel free add suggestions and/or your own descriptions for users of other browsers.

Not only that, but I am clearly not an early adopter. I am a late adopter if there is such a thing. I’m the guy who was still running WordPress 2.0.5 in April 2009. Remember that? Yes, that’s how bad I am.

In fact, I would still be running Windows XP on my main gaming box if the hardware did not become so obsolete that it spontaneously fossilized under my desk. My current gaming box has Vista on it, but only because I came with the hardware and I was to lazy to do anything about it.

You want to ask me about upgrading anything? You’ve got a wrong guy.

Unfortunately most people don’t get this. In fact, most people who ask me about Windows 7 can’t possibly comprehend that spiel above because they simply don’t understand terms such as early adopter, wordpress or fossilization. I figured I might as well use this entry to answer the most frequently asked questions I get in my inbox and IRL.

Maybe this will answer some of your burning Windows 7 questions. Or maybe you can emails this to some of your clueless friends/relatives who keep bothering you with these questions every day.

When is Windows 7 coming out?

Do I look like I care? Do you know how to google? Let me google that for you. How hard was that? For your information, it came out last week. You missed it! You know why you missed it? Because it is not something note worthy. Now piss off.

Is Windows 7 Better than Vista?

Probably. I mean, Windows XP is better than Vista. Hell, Windows 2000 is better than Vista. Sitting on an angry porcupine while being hit in the face with a putrid piece of shit spiked with sharpened nails that was shot out of a cannon and is flying at Mach 3 is better than Vista. I can’t imagine Microsoft actually being able to top Vista when it comes to how badly it sucks. Then again, I have been wrong about them in the past. In fact, every time I gave them the benefit of the doubt and assumed that they will do something right, they went ahead and did the exact opposite.

Here is the deal – the crazy people who actually got this OS this early seem to think it is an improvement over Vista. Then again these people are likely Microsoft fanboys (why else would they get the new OS so close to the release date) so their opinions should be taken with a grain barrel of salt.

Should I upgrade?

No you should not. Wait till Microsoft releases Service Pack 1, then buy a new computer. Windows 7 will be included. If you don’t like this answer go ask someone else. I don’t care how good this new OS is. It can be printing hundred dollar bills for all I care. My position still stands. Don’t. There will be bugs, there will be driver issues, and there will be upgrade hiccups to worry about. The fact you are asking me about this tells me you are not a computer whiz, so if something goes wrong, you will be fucked cause I sure as hell am not helping you out.

Not reason enough for you? How about this – it’s a waste of money. You see, Microsoft is an evil bastard company that forces computer manufacturers to install their OS on every single piece of hardware they sell. This means that a year or two from now, when you are buying a new computer you will have to buy Windows 7 again.

No, I’m not shitting you. Remember that time I was ranting about the “Windows Tax” and you thought I’m just being a retarded open source loon? Yeah, that’s what Windows tax is. It means that Dell (for example) won’t give a flying fuck that you already have a copy of Windows 7 at home. Windows is part of their bundle, and they won’t take it out. Unless of course you can find the tiny hidden link to their Linux based model – but that narrows down your choices quite a bit.

Also, if you buy an OEM version bundled with the computer you will be paying much, much less. Microsoft basically discounts their OS down to fraction of the retail price to make sure that it ends up on every single piece of fucking hardware sold in the world. Don’t waste your money.

But I hate Vista! Should I Upgrade?

No. You should suck it up, and listen to me next time you are buying a computer. What did I tell you about Vista last time around? It’s a piece of shit. What did you do? You went and bought it. This is your punishment for not listening to me.

Actually, I don’t care. Go ahead and upgrade. Just make sure you back up all your data befo… Oh, what? You don’t want to upgrade anymore? You are scared now? All I said was to backup your data. If you want to upgrade your OS, you should be prepared to have your system hosed. I’m not saying it will get hosed – I’m saying shit happens.

And don’t come running to me when you fuck shit up. You know what I’m going to do if you come to me crying that Window 7 ate your hard drive? I’m going to hire Verne Troyer to Shoryuken you straight in the dick. And no, I’m not joking.

Will Windows 7 run on my computer?

It won’t even if it will. Let me put it this way – if you are asking me about this, it means you are to dumb to look up your system specs, google up Windows 7 requirements and do a quick comparison. If you can’t perform a simple task like that, you should not even be considering an upgrade. You should go and buy a computer with Windows 7 already installed whenever it’s time for you to get a new machine.

If you can check this information, then why the fuck are you bothering me with this shit?

Ok, here is the real answer: if you are running Windows XP right now, then no, it won’t run. If you are running Vista and it is sluggish as hell, then Windows 7 will also be sluggish as hell. The new OS is allegedly faster but it still has Vista guts under the hood so it won’t make your machine into a speed daemon.

If your current box is an evil beast from hell that can actually run Vista reasonably fast hen yes, Windows 7 will run on your system and you will probably see some performance gains (assuming the reports about the speed are true). Still, you will be wasting a lot of money due to the Windows tax.

Will you install Windows 7 on my computer?

Absolutely, categorically no. Hell no, fuck no, no to the tenth power. No infinity. Fuck you! Fuck your dog! Fuck the horse you rode in on. No. I have better shit to do than this.

Unless… Unless you are a girl and when you use the voice when asking me. I will then invariably assume that you are somehow inexplicably into me, and that upgrading your OS is my ticket into your good graces. Now you know my weakness so don’t abuse it.

Keep this in mind though: if you give your computer to your girlfriend, and attempt to have her sex me into installing Windows 7 for you and I figure you out then its Verne Troyer + Shoryuken + your testicles – when you least expect it.

That’s all I have for today. If you want to add to this FAQ please post your questions and answers in the comments. If you are a Microsoft fanboy who found this whole post incredibly offensive, and who is planning to call me a fag in the comments, please note hat a) I moderate this shit, b) you should look into obtaining a sense of humor and c) your post will have your IP attached to it. You know what that means right? I can use that IP to find out where you live. And then… Verne Troyer, Shoryuken, etc.. So keep it civil.

You know who I’m talking about, right? The simple folks who are easily confounded by technology and keep insisting that you fix them computer. People who think that software engineer, web developer and systems administrator are just fancy names for a “PC Technician”. People who actually enjoy watching all these horrid Reality TV shows. People who won’t watch a show or a movie if it is labeled as Science Fiction, but love shit like LOST (which is pure time traveling SF lately). People who have never actually even seen a RPG rulebook but who think it is stupid because they once saw a D&D game unfavorably depicted on some sitcom.

We could collectively refer to them as “the mainstream society” but that’s a bit unwieldy. It would be best to have a short word we could apply to them – just like geek applies to us. Of course it does not have to have a negative connotation either – cause we don’t want to be elitist or anything.

I mentioned this to a few people and we came up with a list of words that could apply here. Someone brought up the term Muggle as a primary candidate. My initial instinct is to reject it though, because it was popularized by J. K. Rowling. The term Muggle refers to a non-wizard in the Harry Potter universe. It is really a very close match to what we are looking for and some people have started to use this word to describe non-geeks. Sadly, I feel the term is a bit inappropriate. There is nothing more mainstream than Harry Potter books and movies. I mean that is all these people read. Well, that and Twilight.

J. K. Rowling books are so popular because they appeal to the lowest common denominator. I’d describe them as mediocre at best. I do see the irony of using a term found in such a book to the mainstream society as a whole. But I don’t like the fact that the word is so tightly associated with Harry Potter fandom.

Another suggestion was to call them Norms, normies or Normans. I don’t like it because it suggests that it is not normal to be a geek. That’s not the type of message I can really get behind.

A slightly better word in the same vein is Mundanes. Unlike “Norm” it actually casts a positive light at us geeks. It suggests that we are extraordinary and exceptional. Mainstream people are simply average, uninteresting and not special the way we are. It underlines the main difference between a geek and non-geek. A geek embraces technology, thrives on new ideas and dares to dream. A non-geek tends to be satisfied by the status quo and stays away from things that he/she does not understand.

Still, I’m not 100% happy with it. The slight negative connotation will probably prevent it from being widely adopted.

Here is my idea – and I’m just throwing it out there knowing full well that it won’t actually catch on – Streamers. Just think about it, it works on multiple levels:

1. It’s actually a shortened version of “mainstreamer” (which is not actually a word, but who cares)
2. Indicates a person who follows of flows with a stream (or direction) of thought
3. Rhymes with “dreamers” which sort of suggests the nature of their condition – the mainstream people are captivated by their own fabricated dream filled by Hollywood gossip and biased, non-journalistic, ratings driven media reporting.

   The White Wolf Mage games used to label the non-mages as “sleepers”. In that world everyone was capable of magic, but only certain people would “awaken” and discover their magical potential. The same may be said about being a geek – anyone has a potential for it, but only certain people actually embrace that side of their personality.

4. It sort of has a cool ring to it – so people might not even get offended by it

It also could allow us to create brand new phraseology to go with it. Let me give you some examples:

in-stream – a geek thing that became accepted or embraced by the mainstream culture. A good examples of stuff like that are Twitter or Rick Rolling. Both originated as geek-only past times, but crossed over to popular culture and are often discussed in mainstream media.

out-stream – any in-joke or technology so far removed from mainstream that it won’t be understood by an average “streamer” without an in-depth explanation. Examples would be obscure internet memes or stuff like emacs vs vi arguments.

What do you think? Do you like any of the terms above? Do you think we actually need a word to describe non-geeks? If you have an idea on how to name them, I’d love to hear it in the comments!

One Monday morning I’m rolling into work at 9am. I’m sleepy, cranky and I desperately need coffee in my system. You would feel that way too if you only got 3 hours of sleep. It’s not like I was doing anything fun the night before either. I just didn’t feel like going to sleep, because I knew it was Monday. Did you ever feel that way? Did you ever try squeeze few more hours out of your late evening because you knew you are going to work next day and you wanted to postpone it as much as you could?

It’s not even that I hate by job – I don’t. It’s just that it is a job. I hate the idea that my weekend is over, and that I wasted the whole two days of freedom sleeping, doing household chores and/or spending quality time with friends/family. I could have been so productive if I didn’t do all that other stuff! Of course if I spent my whole weekend doing projects or blogging I would be upset I didn’t get a chance to sleep or hang out with friends/family so it is a lose-lose situation for me. Sunday evenings I have that uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach that tells me that my two allotted days of fun are over, and I have to wait at least 5 more days to get another two.

It was not like this when I was in college. School was fun! Sunday evening I could look forward to a full day of hanging out with other smart people with similar interests to mine, and sitting in on interesting lectures during which I would learn tons of new stuff. Most of my friends could not wait to graduate and start working and get the fuck out of MSU. I secretly wished that I could be like Van Wilder – an 8th year senior with at least 3 more years to go. Sadly, I couldn’t afford that, and it would mean that I would have to figure out how to fail or drop a class or two. It’s one of these things that I have never mastered and I always suspected it would require more effort than just ingesting the knowledge and getting an A.

So I roll in to work, and the administrative admin girl gives me a nasty passive aggressive look and tells me I need to call so and so immediately cause she broke her computer. It’s actually a lot of information to output, but somehow she manages to spit it out at me in a single burst that hits me on the head like an iron hammer. The method of delivery gives me an impression that it is not ok for me to stop by the kitchen and get that cup of coffee that I desperately need first. So I make my way towards my desk trying to figure out an alternative way to reach the kitchen without passing next to her desk. I fail, so I resign myself to field this call before coffee.

I crank open my laptop, plug in the external monitor, keyboard and mouse, and dial the number while the computer is booting up. After two rings the lady who broke her machine, and is now standing between me and my morning coffee picks up. She is audibly distressed. I put on my best happy voice and blurt out my usual greeting and inquire how is she doing. Not that I care.

I hate talking on the phone. If I’m talking to you on the phone and you are not my best friend, or a girl that I’m fond off I do not give a flying fuck how you are. I probably secretly wish you were dead so we wouldn’t have to have this conversation. But I will probably ask you how your day was or something like that, because it’s part of the protocol. It is the SYN-ACK equivalent of English language. I have learned it when I moved to US and now I just blurt it out automatically, and respond back. It is so ingrained in me by now, that I spit out the canned response even if the other person violates the protocol.

“Morning Luke!”
“Good morning! How are you?”
“Oh, I’m good. Listen, did you get that thing I sent you?”
“I’m fine, thank you…” – Oh, fuck!

Funny thing is that we actually did not have this silliness when we were growing up in Poland. There was just no reason to ask this question, because everyone knew that the other person’s day was fucking miserable. If you are asking a Pole how his day was your better brace yourself for a long litany of complaints. That’s the sort of things we do – we complain at each other. When you meet a neighbor in an elevator you usually chat about how shitty the weather is, how this elevator is a piece of crap, how the stairway smells like piss and the super is not doing his job and etc. That’s the kind of small talk we do. Then, if there is time, we escalate it to “oh, you think that’s bad – listen to the bullshit I have to get done today”. This airing of complaints is sort of therapeutic.

When I moved to US I was surprised to see that this sort of thing made Americans extremely uncomfortable. I talked it over with a few fellow immigrants and they confirmed it – Americans are hypocrites and they bottle it all up. No matter how shitty their day is, they will usually tell you they are doing magnificent, and try to sound as if they were never happier in their life. If they start complaining, that means that something really, really bad happened and you should probably leave them alone.

After living here in US for over 10 years now, I have perfected my poker face and I can usually put on a good show during the greeting protocol and sound like I’m peachy-keen even if I’m groggy, sleep deprived, cranky and annoyed. It’s sort of a reflexive thing now – every time I hear a greeting, I smile and spit out the routine response in a happy voice.

So I exchange my greeting with this lady (fortunately without major fuckups – she followed the protocol) and he opens with:

“Luke, do you remember that memo you sent out about laptop security?”

Vaguely I remember a document that I drafted a week ago. It was pretty much a list of common sense things that every computer user should know about. Stuff like password protecting your windows, locking your screen when you leave the laptop unattended at a client location, not leaving the laptop on the back seat of your car overnight and etc…

Wherever she is going with this, can’t be good… I acknowledge remembering the memo – after all I wrote it. If I couldn’t remember it, that would be a problem.

“Well, I followed the instructions you included there and I set my laptop password…”

Btw, did I mention that this lady calls the help desk every day? Literally! We usually don’t even create support tickets for her unless it’s something serious because it would pollute out system with entries such as “user couldn’t figure out how to remove bold formatting from a heading in MS Word”. She is a nice lady, but I sometimes think she would be much better off in a line of work that would not require her to use a computer… Or any electronic device for that matter.

“I even wrote it down on a piece of paper here. But it won’t accept it now, and I’m locked out of my computer”

There we go. Latest and greatest in a long chain of computer issues. I run her through the usual troubleshooting steps – caps lock, alternate spellings, etc. Nothing gives any result. I somehow start suspecting that her registry hive got corrupted. I’ve seen this issue before once – user simply could not log into windows in the morning.

Finally I make her log in using the Administrator account and change the password again. This works fine, ruling out my registry corruption theory. This lady somehow managed to set up a new password on her laptop, type it in twice into the required boxes and then write down and memorize something entirely different. Splendid.

She of course did that on Friday evening, so she was locked out of her computer for the whole weekend and she didn’t think it was a good idea to call me on my cell and let me know. I’m pretty sure I will get blamed for the fact she didn’t do any of her work over the weekend sometime down the road.

This, ladies and gentlemen is just one of the reasons why I hate Mondays. People do stupid shit on the weekend and then we need to rescue them first thing in the morning. I could have been drinking coffee and writing code during that time. But no – I had to help this lady to reset her windows password.

Sigh… I can’t wait till the weekend.

Almost all known Smurfs live together as a single tribe of roughly a 100 specimens. They are short, bipedal, intelligent humanoids. They walk upright, have hands with opposable thumbs and have a highly developed skill of using tools to build their mushroom carved houses, and simple garments they wear. Few members of their species also seem to have a high affinity for magic. Most smurfs wear simple white trousers with a hole for their tale, and a Phyrgian style cap. Removing the hat seems to be a taboo in their society.

Most specimens appear virtually identical, and exhibit male sexual characteristics. They all refer to themselves using masculine pronouns. Only few members of the tribe have special identifying characteristics and those seem to be special cases. One of these is Papa Smurf which seems to be the elder of the tribe, and wears an impressive gray beard while all the other smurfs do not seem to be able to grow facial hair. Another is Smurfette which exhibits female sexual characteristics. She however is not a natural member of the species. More on that later.

Smurfs seem to be sought after by alchemists because they seem to be able to function as a biological Philosopher’s Stone. I was unable to uncover whether they are a mere catalyst that enables transmutation, or whether they actively participate in the reaction. The census among researchers seems to be that the smurf is “used up” during the transmutation which may explain why they are so rare.

We also know that Smurfs don’t reproduce in captivity. All attempts to breed them for research purposes to this date have failed. Not only that, but the wild smurfs have developed advanced defense mechanisms that make if very difficult to locate their settlements. They utilize some sort of chemical or magical deterrent which makes it nearly impossible for predators and/or human researchers to locate their village. Because of these factors their reproductive cycle was never observed or documented. There are quite a few theories on their mating customs, and actual reproductive mechanisms. I would like to discuss the most popular and most probable of these.

Sexual Reproduction: Hive Queen Theory

Most people who have never really did any research on the Smurf species, naively assume that they reproduce sexually by means of the Smufette – the single member of the species who exhibits female sexual characteristics. This model of reproduction is very popular among insects, which usually have a single queen per hive and majority of their population is either male, or asexual. Considering the existing natural parallels it is easy to see why this theory seems to enjoy great deal of support.

Unfortunately this theory can’t be correct, since the Smurfette since she was artificially created by Gargamel. This prominent Smurf scholar noted that all the Smurfs in the tribe exhibited male characteristics and decided to see how they would react when a “female smurf” was introduced into their mist. It is not clear how exactly did he produce the female specimen, but it is clear that she was a man made construct and she was not a full fledged smurf. For example, she could not be used in transmutation. Smurfs initially deemed it a defective specimen, and only assimilated her into their society after Papa Smurf uplifted her into state of “full smurfdom”. After that magical ritual she theoretically became a viable Philosopher’s Stone, but she did not lose her female characteristics.

Interestingly enough, the other Smurfs seemed to accept her and even exhibited primitive courting behavior. No actual copulation was observed, and the Smurfette never became pregnant. This suggests that the smurfs were either not biologically equipped to actually mate with this particular specimen, or that due to her origins Smerfette was sterile.

Either way, she cannot function as the hive queen for the Smurf tribe because she is a man made construct and tribe itself predates her.

Sexual Reproduction: Parthenogenesis

The smurfs must have been able to reproduce before Smurfette was introduced into their midst by Gargamel. Some researchers suggest that Smurfs are a singe sex race, and that they reproduce via process similar to Parthenogenesis. Unfortunately, parthenogenesis is a reproductive process which allows to take the male part of the population out of equation. It allows the female of the species to conceive and give birth without fertilization taking place.

Since all members of the species seem to exhibit male characteristics, this mode of reproduction seems unlikely. Then again, it is actually unclear whether or not smurfs are actually male. They do have a mammalian, almost human appearance but it does not mean they are mammals and that their sexual differentiation occurs among the same lines as in humans. It is entirely possible that all smurfs are actually female, despite of their outward appearance.

We have actually seen a very similar example in the movie Enemy Mine. In the film, Dracs (an alien species of reptilian looking humanoids) appeared and sounded masculine to humans – but in fact were a race of females reproducing via Parthenogenesis.

Sexual Reproduction: Hermaphroditic Race

Continuing along with the same line of reasoning, all smurfs could also be hermaphrodites. In other words, they could all poses both male or female genitalia. Popular, but rather silly theory claims that the smurf hats actually conceal a male sexual organ, while their trousers conceal female organ. According to that theory Smurfs reproduce communally via stacking where the whole tribe gets in a circle and copulates with each other. This is rather silly.

It is actually more likely that Smurf reproductive cycle is similar to that of Gethenians from Ursula K. Le Guin novel Left Hand of Darkness. The species described in the novel was peculiar in that it’s members exhibited no sexual characteristics whatsoever during most of the year. They looked androgynous or slightly masculine most of the time. The also seemed to refer to themselves using masculine pronouns – at least when communicating with humans. Once a month however they would enter a state they dubbed Kemmer in which they would develop either male or female characteristics. Each member of the species could develop characteristics belonging to either sex and they could alternate assuming male or female roles from Kemmer to Kemmer. In fact, the sex they would assume was largely dictated by the sex of their partner. Thus if one of the “lovers” started exhibiting male characteristics, the other would automatically and reflexively start developing female traits.

This model of reproduction seems very applicable to Smurfs. Their androgynous, slightly masculine appearance could be their asexual form. Papa Smurf exhibits super-masculine traits (the beard) which might be required by his position (the elder leader, and the alpha male of the tribe). It would also explain why some Smurfs would court Smufette which was permanently exhibiting female characteristics. They were reflexively responding to her femaleness which in turn was triggering their own reproductive instincts. However, as we established before – the Smurfette might actually be sterile.

Asexual Reproduction: Spores

It is possible that Smurfs reproduce asexually. They seem to live in a strange symbiosis with various species of mushroom. My personal pet theory is that Smurfs are actually an intelligent species of fungus and that they reproduce via Spores similarly to Orks from Warhammer 40000 universe. Let me quote you some of the fluff that explains Ork reproduction from the Gorga Morka background materials:

Orks have not only survived, they have prospered and are more numerous than humanity. This at least is due in part to how they reproduce. Orks reproduce through the release of spores, which grow into a plant-like womb underground that nourishes the bodies of the various Orkoid species. This is the entire basis of the Orkoid ecosystem, producing first Squigs, then Snotlings who cultivate the Squigs and fungus, then Gretchin to build the settlements, and finally the Orks themselves. This means the Orks, where ever they go, will have an abundance of food, slaves and other resources, a moving ecosystem that supports them as they go on their Waaaghs!

Smurfs could use a very similar mechanisms. Their bodies release spores throughout their lifetime. Some of these spores grow into the giant mushrooms they use for housing. Others may be used for food. Some spores grow and gestate and produce new Smurfs. New smurfs would probably grow in fungal cocoons either underground, or inside of the big mushrooms found around their village. They would emerge from them fully formed and adult looking. This would actually explain why all Smurfs appear to be roughly the same age. Papa Smurf looks older, since he probably belongs to an older generation. He was probably born elsewhere, and the current smurf tribe might likely grown from his own spores.

No Reproduction: Homunculus

Lastly, we must consider and alternative theory. It is entirely possible that Smurfs are not able to reproduce at all. A lot of evidence such as their peculiar alchemical properties, their all male appearance, and the fact that Gargamel was able to produce faux Smurfs with relative ease suggests that they are actually an artificially created species. The Smurfs may actually be a breed of rogue Homunculi that was created by Alchemists to aid in transmutation studies, but somehow escaped into the wild and established their own society.

If this is the case, they likely have no genitals and are probably unable to reproduce since most known examples of Homunculi are sterile and asexual. It is however possible they are able to replenish their numbers via magical means. For example, Papa Smurf seemed to be able to correct Gargamels flawed design of Smufette. This suggests that he has at least functional knowledge of the magic involved in Smurf creation. It is entirely possible he would be capable of making new smurfs from scratch.

Of course it would help for us to know how exactly did Gargamel create his experimental female smurf. Unfortunately no detailed notes of that experiment have survived, and as far as we know he was unable to examine his specimen after it was transformed in the Smurf village.

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Before you say anything, please take into account that I do realize that this whole article is entirely pointless. Yes, smurfs are fictional, and this whole essay is simply me, over-analyzing a kids cartoon that never really meant to be analyzed this way. Still, it amused me and I hope it was an entertaining read. Please feel free to post your own alternative theories on smurf reproduction in the comments.