Poor Biff’s Almanac — On Sundays, Linux, and Cagney

 

What is it about Sunday nights that just makes them suddenly appear out of nowhere?

One minute you’re driving away from work on Friday afternoon thinking you have a never-ending weekend ahead of you in which to finally knock out that never-ending to-do list that’s been hanging over your head since 1985 … and the next thing you know it is Sunday night and time for bed and the only accomplishment you can claim without laughing is that you finally managed to polish off that box of Christmas cookies you got as a gift and were worried you wouldn’t be able to finish before they went stale.

But enough about my accomplishments.  I don’t want to come across as bragging.  Sure I’m humble, but I don’t want to flaunt it.

Actually, now that I think about it, I did manage to complete something.  It wasn’t on my to-do list, but I accomplished it anyway.  It was on a to-do list I had back in, I think, 2014 or 15, but that I accidentally threw away in 2015 while executing a New Year’s resolution I’d made myself to clean up my home office.  That “clean the office” activity also lost steam after I’d thrown out the to-do list.  At that point there was no evidence that I’d ever made it so I felt confident in abandoning it.  The coppers had nothing on me, see?  Yeah.  Nuttin’ at all, see?  Yeah.

OMG, where was I?

Oh yeah, the thing I managed to accomplish tonight.  Yesterday, I excavated a relative’s old Dell laptop out of the depths of my office closet.  Since I am an electrical engineer, all of my relatives think that I collect old, defunct, or obsolete laptops.  The conversation usually goes something like this:

Relative:  “Hey, you’re an engineer.  You should take this old laptop of mine.  I got a new one.”

Me:  “Oh … um … thanks.  I guess.”

I haven’t the heart (or the courage … or the brain … or some other Oz character) to tell them that I know next to nothing about laptops outside of how to turn them on and swear at them while they do interminable Windows updates.  My inability to speak up has netted me a cache of useless laptops.

Anyway, I took this aged Dell laptop that weighs an impressive 20 pounds (whose lap was THAT designed for?) and is abysmally slow and fired it up.  It booted after about 30 minutes and then set about doing about three years of Windows updates.  I just left it and came back to it the next day (today).  Then, while laughing maniacally while lightening lit up the room intermittently, I installed Ubuntu 17.10 (with Gnome) on it.

Take that, Microsoft!  Your precious laptop is now a Linux machine, see?  Yeah.  A Linux machine, see?  You coppers will never take me alive, see?  Yeah!

[Why the heck to I keep slipping into a Jimmy Cagney mode?]

So yeah … I now have a 20-pound Dell laptop running Linux.  Sure, it boots about 30 minutes faster than Windows did.  Sure, the cooling fan doesn’t run as fast as a 747 jet engine’s any more.  Sure, the new Gnome desktop is pretty.  Sure, it’s got LibreOffice on it (which is almost as good as MS Office … just like a Kia is almost as good as a Lamborghini).  But it still weighs 20 pounds.   And looks like something from the 1980s.

But now I can write “Extensive Linux experience” on my resume.

And, really, isn’t that what life is all about?