the daily snivel
The Cremation of Crashy McGee
A rant that doesn't really go anywhere, despite promising amounts of energy and spite.
The computer I use at work is most respectable. It's an AMD Duron 1200 system with 256 megabytes of RAM and a 20 gigabyte hard drive, running Windows 98 Second Edition. Technically speaking, it's got four times the clock speed of my desktop PC at home, and twice the clock speed of my iBook. It has twice the memory of either machine. In an ideal world, this computer should work quite well.
But man, does this computer ever hate me. We've had a stormy relationship since I first started working at CBCN, with an initial honeymoon period that was sweet and lovey-dovey, but nothing but marital strife ever since. I feel abused. Explorer has been crashing almost every day (sometimes more than once), which effectively takes the OS with it since they're so closely related. Media Player is even worse about it. I like listening to music at work, but the cost of this luxury is unforeseen disasters that can wipe out everything I'm working on unless I save every couple of minutes (which I do, because computers have long taught me to be paranoid about that).
I scanned it for viruses today -- or at least, I tried to. It turns out that our prescription of Norton Antivirus has run out, and it hasn't updated its definitions since March. I will have to talk to someone about that. But, undeterred, I installed a copy of McAfee Antivirus that was sitting in a drawer. To my delight, not only did it want me to pay it money for the privilege of having an updated antivirus engine and updated definition set, but it crashed Windows upon start-up without fail. I never got past the login screen before I got the dreaded Blue Screen of Death. I had to boot in safe mode and delete a handful of .exe files from the McAfee directory just to be able to run Windows again and uninstall the darn thing properly. I downloaded a trial copy of Panda Antivirus, which was able to determine (finally) that I had not just one virus on my computer, but ten of 'em. Mostly Klez and Bugbear worms, which have probably been on this thing through several generations of previous users. I rid my system of them, and am cautiously hoping at least some of my performance issues will now go away.
Well, that was short-lived. Between the end of the last paragraph and the beginning of this one, it all happened again. I could feel it coming, however, and saved a copy of my blog to Notepad before happy computing dreams crumbled yet again.
This isn't going to be a Windows vs. Macintosh rant, or at least it's not meant to be. I mean, sure, my iBook is immune to just about every virus, worm, and backdoor shenanigan out there, and -- sure -- iTunes never crashes the way Media Player does, and even with half the RAM it doesn't skip or lag playing music when there are too many other applications open (in fairness, the iBook doesn't yet have enough RAM for me to want to run three other applications while ripping files). But I was brought up on PCs and I would hate to start pretending that they're just computers for suckers. I obviously like my newfound platform, but then again some people like it when other people pee on them. Why flaunt either pleasure unnecessarily? For a lot of people Windows PCs work, and for some people they work well. To be sure, I'm also a devilish user. I push the computer too hard. I don't run demanding video games, no, but but I run four or five different programs at once and repeatedly switch between ten or twenty windows as I work. Mainly, I'm just annoyed that I've lost a good two hours of my day to sloppy code, a registry from hell, and the viruses which proliferate on a steady diet of all of the above mixed in with user ignorance and dodgy system security.
I mean, really. All I wanted to do was listen to the used copy of Bjork's "Post" CD that I bought last night while out with Broken.
The best I can say is that I'm glad the W32.Blaster worm that's slaughtering everyone's networks doesn't work on Windows 98, or I'm sure we'd have that, too.
I'm mad at computers for being so evil. I'm mad at Microsoft for largely being responsible for making them that way. I'm mad at IT managers who insist on having ONLY Windows systems that tumble like a deck of cards when an attack hits the system or the OS is out of date. I'm mad at lots of things. Heck, I'm mad that I'm lonely, and computers certainly haven't solved that problem either.
Why, I'm probably also mad at you.
The computer I use at work is most respectable. It's an AMD Duron 1200 system with 256 megabytes of RAM and a 20 gigabyte hard drive, running Windows 98 Second Edition. Technically speaking, it's got four times the clock speed of my desktop PC at home, and twice the clock speed of my iBook. It has twice the memory of either machine. In an ideal world, this computer should work quite well.
But man, does this computer ever hate me. We've had a stormy relationship since I first started working at CBCN, with an initial honeymoon period that was sweet and lovey-dovey, but nothing but marital strife ever since. I feel abused. Explorer has been crashing almost every day (sometimes more than once), which effectively takes the OS with it since they're so closely related. Media Player is even worse about it. I like listening to music at work, but the cost of this luxury is unforeseen disasters that can wipe out everything I'm working on unless I save every couple of minutes (which I do, because computers have long taught me to be paranoid about that).
I scanned it for viruses today -- or at least, I tried to. It turns out that our prescription of Norton Antivirus has run out, and it hasn't updated its definitions since March. I will have to talk to someone about that. But, undeterred, I installed a copy of McAfee Antivirus that was sitting in a drawer. To my delight, not only did it want me to pay it money for the privilege of having an updated antivirus engine and updated definition set, but it crashed Windows upon start-up without fail. I never got past the login screen before I got the dreaded Blue Screen of Death. I had to boot in safe mode and delete a handful of .exe files from the McAfee directory just to be able to run Windows again and uninstall the darn thing properly. I downloaded a trial copy of Panda Antivirus, which was able to determine (finally) that I had not just one virus on my computer, but ten of 'em. Mostly Klez and Bugbear worms, which have probably been on this thing through several generations of previous users. I rid my system of them, and am cautiously hoping at least some of my performance issues will now go away.
Well, that was short-lived. Between the end of the last paragraph and the beginning of this one, it all happened again. I could feel it coming, however, and saved a copy of my blog to Notepad before happy computing dreams crumbled yet again.
This isn't going to be a Windows vs. Macintosh rant, or at least it's not meant to be. I mean, sure, my iBook is immune to just about every virus, worm, and backdoor shenanigan out there, and -- sure -- iTunes never crashes the way Media Player does, and even with half the RAM it doesn't skip or lag playing music when there are too many other applications open (in fairness, the iBook doesn't yet have enough RAM for me to want to run three other applications while ripping files). But I was brought up on PCs and I would hate to start pretending that they're just computers for suckers. I obviously like my newfound platform, but then again some people like it when other people pee on them. Why flaunt either pleasure unnecessarily? For a lot of people Windows PCs work, and for some people they work well. To be sure, I'm also a devilish user. I push the computer too hard. I don't run demanding video games, no, but but I run four or five different programs at once and repeatedly switch between ten or twenty windows as I work. Mainly, I'm just annoyed that I've lost a good two hours of my day to sloppy code, a registry from hell, and the viruses which proliferate on a steady diet of all of the above mixed in with user ignorance and dodgy system security.
I mean, really. All I wanted to do was listen to the used copy of Bjork's "Post" CD that I bought last night while out with Broken.
The best I can say is that I'm glad the W32.Blaster worm that's slaughtering everyone's networks doesn't work on Windows 98, or I'm sure we'd have that, too.
I'm mad at computers for being so evil. I'm mad at Microsoft for largely being responsible for making them that way. I'm mad at IT managers who insist on having ONLY Windows systems that tumble like a deck of cards when an attack hits the system or the OS is out of date. I'm mad at lots of things. Heck, I'm mad that I'm lonely, and computers certainly haven't solved that problem either.
Why, I'm probably also mad at you.
