Microsoft Windows fills life with drama. Everyone hates it, but everyone keeps it on their desktop. Why?
"Hey Bob, I need that sales report by 1 pm today."
"Can’t get it to you by then, I’ll be here late. Got this problem in
Windows that I need to track down. Something is corrupting the
registry, and I’m on the phone with MS Tech Support right now. They say
they have a service pack. Looks like the afternoon’s shot."
"Oh, okay, good luck man." And you can almost hear him say, May the
force be with you, like Bob, is locked in battle with the forces of
darkness, defending all that is good and noble, while at the same time
risking his very existence. We need for our mundane mostly non-creative
work days to be filled with meaning, excitement.
You don’t believe me? Watch an office go into crisis mode after
somebody opens an email with a virus attachment. All kinds of crisis
management actions get kicked into place. First somebody shuts off the
Internet connection, then they quarantine the guy’s workstation. Then
the forensic team, made up of PC Week readers start to speculate on
what’s been affected and how to fix it. I think we have to reformat.
Should do a sweep of the entire network. We have to change all the
passwords. And out come the service packs… and oh there are many.
This could be weeks of work. You can almost detect the glee. There’s
this smell of semi-anxious nervous exhilaration.
It’s an attack! We’re under attack! This is HISTORY! It’ll be rough
men, but we’ll weather this. We’re in it together. If we go down, I
just want to let you know that you’re the finest group of people that
I’ve ever had the pleasure to know.
And you can hear the ratta-tat-tat of automatic fire, and the screams
of "I’ve lost ALL my data!" amongst the chaos and the drama.
Sigh, I feel left out. Linux never lies to me about the level of drama
in my life. Never. It lies about as much as a hammer. Linux is boring.
Linux forces you to do work, or face the fact that you are not being
productive. Sometimes Linux pisses me off. It doesn’t crash. It never
loses my work. I never get a virus. I feel left out.
These other people are living this incredible drama that magazines
write about. News channels are dedicated to it. The federal government
is hot on the issue. Everybody has it. Everybody complains about it.
The entire nation is embroiled in this compelling soul draining soap
opera that is Microsoft Windows.
And me? Little ol’ me? I sit unhappily in front of my Linux workstation
wishing to procrastinate… searching for a struggle, a cause,
something, anything. But there I sit. Guess I’d better get back to work
or I won’t have anything to eat.