The Last Last Straw

Ok Linux. I gave you a fair shot. I put up with learning a lot of new stuff, actually, that was a good thing. Rather, I put up with having to learn a lot of new stuff. Don't get me wrong. It isn't all bad. When I am developing, the only thing I ever get jealous of on another os is textmate. Other than that, nothing. The tools are familiar and functional. So as a development platform, I enjoy it very much. But should I try to entertain myself, woe be my weekend.

But I guess in a way, that was probably good for me. I ended up troubleshooting instead of watching DVD's. That's okay. I can live without DVD's. It's pretty annoying to spend 2 days on a problem and then decide that you'd rather live with the problem than solve it. It's kind of the "Our Princess is in another castle" feeling, except not as fun. However the jumps in World 8,1 usually straight kill you just the same. Okay, so the metaphor is a little off track, but you get the idea. Maybe there's some merit in getting no payoff for a weekend of being sure the solution was right around the corner though. Probably good for you... very zen.

More concretely, here are the things that have really bothered me, but fixing them seemed like it would take a few hours/days I never really wanted to spare.

1. .doc- This one is a killer. I would LOVE if everything was open document formats, or rather, I wouldn't care, so long as it was easy for me to... oh... I don't know, do something weird like... write a resume? A lot of places prefer doc to pdf. And yeah, I know that there are ways to contort your system using wine and a *legit* copy of word... because I said, "free windows, screw that, but yes I will be paying for a word processor." Absurd. I don't care who figures this out, but someone should.

2. My friend messaged me "Hey Evan, China is launching a space shuttle. It's streaming live at somewebsite.com!" I tried to fix streaming video countless times before to no avail. Before I got a tv, I was relying on my computer for news stuff. Luckily, I got to see the pres/vice pres debates, but there have been a lot of times where I'm disappointed by the how well my system "just works," even after hours of configuration.

3. DVDs. Old ones work, but not new ones? Region this, format that. Got the Simpson's movie for Christmas last year. My computer didn't like it because it was too new, and my DVD player didn't like it because it was one of those furry barbarian Western DVD's.

4. No support for my XD picture card. I was making a birthday video for a friend in Japan, and nope, no way to send it. I had never used my card reader before, so I didn't know that it wouldn't work. I just can't trust parts that are untested, and that bothers me. Well damnzers. I guess I need an external card reader to.... wait, no, that's idiotic. I have a card reader on board. I don't need another piece of hardware to trip over.


I guess other than that, everything works pretty well. It has a few things that make it terrible as my computer, but it has a lot of things that make it great as one of my computers. I think that's the key.