fedora – Stories That Are All True

If you could meet a historical figure, who would it be and why?

I am not posting so late because it’s Thanksgiving. I am posting so late because my keyboard decided not to work on Android anymore and I’ve been fighting with it most of the morning. I finally just charged my iPad because I want to watch “For All Mankind” when I’m done. Catching you up because that’s how my day has played out so far- autistic meltdown in which I proceeded to slap the shit out of my tablet and remembered breaking it was a thing I could do and stopped. Just red mist rage with absolutely no emotion behind it except hatred of an inanimate object.

I’m going to have to get a new computer soon, because my desktop is toast. I think it’s the motherboard, because the PCI lanes are hosed (professional opinion, not fact) and my external graphics card has joined the choir invisible. So, I switched over to the onboard AMD and that’s when I realized it wasn’t PCI that was fucked. It was the whole thing. I’m trapped because I really want a Raspberry Pi, but there are so many damn things that won’t run on it bare metal, because the software is written for Intel/AMD chips and not ARM. It’s like putting Windows software on a Mac with Parallels. Software emulation only works if the chip is STUPID fast to cover the gaps in coding.

For instance, I can’t realistically play Skyrim, the absolute only game I play (I used to play Fallout 3 because it’s set in DC, but I’m over it.). I imagine that it *might* run on the ARM version of Windows, but I can’t imagine it working out well. There’s plenty of emulation like Steam decks and all that, but it’ll make the game run like a three legged dog on a Pi.

The historical figure I would like to meet most is Linus Torvalds, because he’s the genius behind all of this. Raspberry Pi would not be a thing without Linux, and he lives in Portland……..

which is handy, because he might be the only other person in the city that celebrates Finnish Independence day with Bryn and me.

Linus and I have our differences. He prefers KDE (linux desktop- menuing system and all that). I prefer MATE (pronounced like the tea) and Cinnamon, which look like Windows 95 and 7, respectively. It’s a Windows-type interface and workflow that doesn’t constantly try to sell me something. Let me tell you, that is the beauty of linux in a nutshell….. which in retrospect is a good joke because Tim O’Reilly & associates actually wrote “Linux in a Nutshell.”

And here’s the thing. If you’re not married to Windows software, you won’t really notice a difference. There are certain things you’ll want to install, like Microsoft Office, with emulation and not that LibreOffice isn’t perfect when you create and maintain documents in it. Microsoft Office plays well with others most of the time, not 100%. I wouldn’t install Microsoft Office unless I was working for someone that required it, because the file format will open in Office and if something is wrong, I can just print a PDF instead. For every piece of Windows software that you have, there is an alternative. It’s just a learning curve that believe me is worth it. Every time I think about popups asking how likely I am to recommend Windows to my friends, or a reminder to buy Microsoft-branded server space, or subscription-model software, my eyes twitch.

The only thing I pay for in terms of software and security updates is my VPN. I flip it to Canada so I can be an American trying to be a Canadian while watching a movie about Americans trying to be Canadians.

This reminds me of a quick aside. The very first time I went to the International Spy Museum (and I know just how big a laugh I’m going to get here) it was at the old digs on F St. You walk in and there’s a collection of covers on the wall. They tell you to pick one, because you’ll be required to maintain it. What they do not tell you is that it is going to be a series of computer-based questions. So, I pick this kid named Colin from the UK, and I proceed to come up with mannerisms, accent…… like a jackass in front of all these people……. but I take most things literally. AuDHD for the win. That day, I did not consider myself as going to the museum. I was a whole ass exhibit.

Back to you, Bob. Let’s go to the phones.

Linux gaming is getting better and better in terms of graphics card support being equal to Windows, but there are really no Triple A open source titles. Xonotic is a ridiculously fun first person shooter, but it doesn’t look like Rocket League or anything. The one open source game that I think is really well done is 0ad. You build civilizations (you can literally think about the Roman empire), and the game mechanics are much like StarCraft. You gather resources and fight other nations.

OUTSTANDING.

Again, we would not have any of this without Linus, and I get to be astounded by its progress every single day because I started with an idealistic Red Hat phase in college. I flirted with The Fedora, but I married Debian. I call Red Hat “The Fedora” because it reminds me of the time someone snapped at Carmen Sandiego on the new Netflix series, calling her “Fedora the Explorer” and I died for a second.

Speaking of Carmen, I like how her backstory is ridiculously muddled from spy to thief. She has worked for all of the intelligence agencies (they phrase it as “so many she’s forgotten”), and in the new series is basically counterintelligence, stealing from thieves and collaborating with government spies. It looks like MI-6, but it could be anything generic. The English woman and the French man are partners.

On Carmen Sandiego, you will find my alias. He’s called “Player,” and his entire job is to sit there at the computer, also obsessed with news and intelligence. He takes in information as fast as I do, bright as fuck.

Coded autistic, especially because his graphical user interface looks a lot like The Fedora.

Thank you for everything, Linus. I hope you have a nice Finnish Independence Day. Next year…. in Jerusalem, eh?

Daily writing prompt

What are you doing this evening?

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It’s been a whirlwind of a few days, so tonight I am sitting in front of my computer. Not by choice, really. I need the quiet. I crave it. Tonight, though, I’m rescuing a computer that I hosed myself. I’ve only been working with partitions and drives for 30 years. One of these days, I’ll make some progress. Anyway, I run Ubuntu Cinnamon and Windows 10, but I don’t use Windows except when I want to play Skyrim, so a quarter to never. I’m not a big gamer. I’m interested in how computers work and I know what I’m doing all the way up until I don’t. The best thing ever is cloud storage, because I don’t spend much time on anything. I reformat the whole thing and start over.

Today I thought I wouldn’t have to. I used timeshift to back up my hard drive in case I hated what I was installing (Kubuntu, to try out KDE Plasma), which is like Time Machine on a Mac. I thought I had a complete copy of everything. Turns out I do, but the version I restored the drive from was not the same, so the files didn’t overwrite properly. That means I was trying to boot into two versions of linux at once. Guess what? It didn’t work. I said “fuck” a lot and then got back to it. Linux gonna linux, but Wes Borg was right. Every OS sucks in its own particular way. Like in relationships, you just have to decide which disk flags you’re going to ignore. That was a little partition manager humor for you there.

For 90% of you, I can’t explain the joke without you falling asleep. Just nod and laugh. I change topics a lot. Lean in.

I’m feeling punchy because I had to use DOS. That doesn’t make sense unless you’ve been a linux user for years, because I don’t know about other IT guys, but I constantly type linux commands in DOS and get way too angry at the fact that it doesn’t work. Within linux, it’s the same way. In Ubuntu, the extension for an installer is .deb, like Windows .exe. In Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS, the extension is .rpm.

I was once looking at the folder that says RPMS in the command line and still typed sudo dpkg -i *.deb. But that’s nothing compared to the number of times I’ve reinstalled drivers because something didn’t work and then discovered after much tearing of hair that it was off/unplugged. This is very, very easy to do with network printers, when the printer could be on a different floor. Because SURE AS SHIT no employee will tell you correctly whether it is on or off. Ask a server administrator how many times they’ve driven three hours to press a button. Don’t wonder why we’re dicks anymore, because that number shouldn’t even have to be greater than one, but it is.

I laughed so hard I nearly died the first time I read “Bastard Operator from Hell.” My friend Donnie and I nearly had to call an ambulance for both of us when we heard “Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie” do “Welcome to the Internet Helpdesk.” The latter is really funny because it’s what users say to us. The former is what it would be like if we could get revenge. There is always so much “don’t want to” in “can’t.” That’s because it’s learned helplessness. Why be in any way knowledgable if someone always comes to bail you out? That’s our job and it’s okay, but years and years of questions like “can you install Firefox for me?” are great. Easy. The facepalm is when the user says, “do I have to turn my computer on?” I have also had people want me to walk them through how to do something in M$ Office when their computer is at home and they’re calling from the car. Even if I could explain it without you doing it while I’m talking, how would you ever retain that information? You’ll call back.

Being a woman in IT Support is very hard. I mean, it’s hard anyway because it’s soul sucking to watch people be that stupid that consistently. I wouldn’t sound like such a dickhead if the problem wasn’t so dire. But it’s worse for me because there are simply some people who refuse to believe I know something about computers. Some days they’re right. 😉 (Reminds me of an overhead voice at the Spy Museum that says “you’ll have to survive on your wits.” I turned around and said, “grrrrrrrrl, we fucked up now. I’m like Josh and Toby from The West Wing. If I miss wheels up and Donna wasn’t with me I’d have to buy a house.) Though I’m a bit spacey at times because I’ve forgotten more than I’ll ever know about computers, if you got a problem, yo I’ll solve it. I have managed the impossible with data recovery more than once…… as well as doing a lot of other people’s work for them because they just don’t want to do it. I understand if it’s a technical issue with the operating system. But when your entire job is putting courses online and you try to pass it off on IT because you have a technical issue every 30 minutes because you won’t learn anything about the software you’re PAID TO USE, that adds up, especially when the questions are about where buttons are laid out and you’ve helped them eight times that day. It’s the equivalent of getting frustrated and going to the bathroom at school to take a break. And you can feel guilt free about it becaue it’s not a problem with you. It’s a problem with your computer.

At other times, things spiral because people aren’t thinking. Their computer doesn’t work, and the electricity is out. Or they’ve plugged the power strip into itself instead of the wall (yes, really. I figured it out over the phone, but it took 45 minutes because I never would have assumed to check something like that. He said it was plugged in, and there weren’t camera phones back then.) It’s gotten a lot easier with remote desktop and the fact that when I ask people for pictures or screenshots, they can do that on their phones. Most people don’t know how to use screenshot programs on a PC, but they can do it on an iPhone.

Even iPhones have their issues, though. One of the professors I worked with couldn’t get her iPhone to play music in the classroom. She called IT, but the only problem was that the aux cable didn’t fit through the case.

When you get into web development, two things about that. The first is that people tell you they only want you to do the design, but they have a million changes to add in terms of copy even though I’ve set it up where they don’t have to use HTML tags at all (a content management system like WordPress). They don’t want to manage their web site, they want you to do it. They’re no good at computers. They’re making $150,000 a year to learn that kind of software, because sure as shit the person that asked me to make said web site is going to be “in charge of social media.”

The second is that web sites are like art. Everyone wants the art, no one wants to pay for it. You can design the most fabulous site in the entire world, and they’ll tell you that. Many times. You give them the bill, and it’s the shittiest web site they’ve ever seen. Plus, friends and acquaintances won’t think anything of asking you for hours and hours of coding for the “exposure.”

I would not like to work for more people that don’t want to pay me, and there’s an “Argo” quote for every occasion. I’m paraphrasing Lester, but “exposure ain’t worth the buffalo shit on a nickel.”

The other thing is that when people ask you to make a web site, you’ll give them a flat fee for the code. But they’ll call you every time they have a change for the next ten years and get angry if you say it’s $40/hr. They want you to do it for free, forever.

And now you know why I have such a hell of a time as a cook. There are no Karens there.