Watching paint dry vs. watching your disk defragment
Monday, December 10th, 2001 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robinturnerI've found that Led Zeppelin not only makes housework less tedious, it also helps to relieve the boredom of defragmenting your hard drive.
"Wait!" I hear you say. "Isn't this Robin the condescending Linux user who never defragments because Linux doesn't fragment in the first place?" (oh yes, and if you're thinking "Wow, you don't have to defragment your hard-drive!", remember that this technology has been around since the early 80's).
OK, I confess, I've been using Windows a lot recently. The culprit is my new graphics card, which means I can finally play all these groovy 3D-accelerated games. A friend of mine gave me a copy of Max Payne, and I've been spending most nights pretending to be a rogue police officer massacring drug-dealers. Not exactly politically correct, but then neither is using Windows. The problem (apart from incipient fascism) is that it strains my system resources to the extent that Windows keeps crashing on me. I've been used to Windows crashing ever since I reluctantly changed over from an Atari in 1991, but there's a big difference between Windows crashing when you're doing something trivial, like writing course materials, and having it freeze on you when you're doing something really important, like blasting people with a pump-action shotgun.
Oh well, at least I seem to have found a Windows program that doesn't crash. It's called Notepad, and I'm using it to write this. I admit it doesn't have all the features of even the most basic Linux/X-window editors, like syntax highlighting. It doesn't compile source code, send e-mail, do Rogerian counselling or make your coffee like emacs does. But it does have a certain Spartan simplicity.
Actually, this could be a great new idea to rescue Microsoft's ailing credibility. Forget all the fancy stuff, just write simple programs that work flawlessly. First project, "Hello world".
"Wait!" I hear you say. "Isn't this Robin the condescending Linux user who never defragments because Linux doesn't fragment in the first place?" (oh yes, and if you're thinking "Wow, you don't have to defragment your hard-drive!", remember that this technology has been around since the early 80's).
OK, I confess, I've been using Windows a lot recently. The culprit is my new graphics card, which means I can finally play all these groovy 3D-accelerated games. A friend of mine gave me a copy of Max Payne, and I've been spending most nights pretending to be a rogue police officer massacring drug-dealers. Not exactly politically correct, but then neither is using Windows. The problem (apart from incipient fascism) is that it strains my system resources to the extent that Windows keeps crashing on me. I've been used to Windows crashing ever since I reluctantly changed over from an Atari in 1991, but there's a big difference between Windows crashing when you're doing something trivial, like writing course materials, and having it freeze on you when you're doing something really important, like blasting people with a pump-action shotgun.
Oh well, at least I seem to have found a Windows program that doesn't crash. It's called Notepad, and I'm using it to write this. I admit it doesn't have all the features of even the most basic Linux/X-window editors, like syntax highlighting. It doesn't compile source code, send e-mail, do Rogerian counselling or make your coffee like emacs does. But it does have a certain Spartan simplicity.
Actually, this could be a great new idea to rescue Microsoft's ailing credibility. Forget all the fancy stuff, just write simple programs that work flawlessly. First project, "Hello world".
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Date: 2001-12-11 01:22 am (UTC)