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Jul. 3rd, 2011 10:08 pmSo I have two new pieces of technology to play with: one is a new phone that can actually text, store music, etc. -- all the bells and whistles everyone else has had for five years. Sweet! The other is a replacement for my big HP laptop (Hera, I think I named her) that died due to a malfunctioning cooling fan just before graduation in May (the replacement, being the same model, has been named Dionysus, the Twice-born). Also sweet!
The problem with new technology is that transition period as you break it in and customize it. For instance: unless/until I can convince my dad to take me in with both old and new phones to the phone company, all my contacts are languishing on my old phone. I, like many people in my generation, no longer learn people's phone numbers; I just stick them in my phone. I can still rattle off the numbers for my house, my mom and dad's cell phones, my dad's old Seattle-based cell phone, my mom's work, my best friend's house, and my youth theatre company. Everyone else is SOL.
The laptop is equally frustrating. I've been using my netbook, Baby, exclusively since we took Hera in to Best Buy. That's a good month and a half, and for most of that I've been running Ubuntu on Baby, courtesy of my cousin. I love Ubuntu. I'm used to all its quirks. And I've got my Firefox and Google Chrome and Pidgin all set up on Baby just the way I like them, with all the extensions and add-ons I want, all the history I need. The last couple of days, I've been slowly downloading, installing, restarting, and refilling everything I need onto Dionysus -- and even more slowly customizing the look of Windows 7 to work more like the Ubuntu interface I've gotten used to.
(If you're catching a bit of nose-wrinkling at Windows 7, you're not wrong. I like Windows 7 better than I liked Vista -- not hard, that -- but dammit, I really love Ubuntu. Which raises the question, of course, of why not install Ubuntu on Dionysus? Answer: I don't really want to give up having a Windows machine, especially a Windows machine with a CD-ROM drive. There are undeniable advantages, like being able to install games and TurboTax without fiddling around with Wine. Which maybe makes me a bad geek, but man, sometimes I just want to be able to do my taxes without figuring out what extra packages I need to install.)
The problem with new technology is that transition period as you break it in and customize it. For instance: unless/until I can convince my dad to take me in with both old and new phones to the phone company, all my contacts are languishing on my old phone. I, like many people in my generation, no longer learn people's phone numbers; I just stick them in my phone. I can still rattle off the numbers for my house, my mom and dad's cell phones, my dad's old Seattle-based cell phone, my mom's work, my best friend's house, and my youth theatre company. Everyone else is SOL.
The laptop is equally frustrating. I've been using my netbook, Baby, exclusively since we took Hera in to Best Buy. That's a good month and a half, and for most of that I've been running Ubuntu on Baby, courtesy of my cousin. I love Ubuntu. I'm used to all its quirks. And I've got my Firefox and Google Chrome and Pidgin all set up on Baby just the way I like them, with all the extensions and add-ons I want, all the history I need. The last couple of days, I've been slowly downloading, installing, restarting, and refilling everything I need onto Dionysus -- and even more slowly customizing the look of Windows 7 to work more like the Ubuntu interface I've gotten used to.
(If you're catching a bit of nose-wrinkling at Windows 7, you're not wrong. I like Windows 7 better than I liked Vista -- not hard, that -- but dammit, I really love Ubuntu. Which raises the question, of course, of why not install Ubuntu on Dionysus? Answer: I don't really want to give up having a Windows machine, especially a Windows machine with a CD-ROM drive. There are undeniable advantages, like being able to install games and TurboTax without fiddling around with Wine. Which maybe makes me a bad geek, but man, sometimes I just want to be able to do my taxes without figuring out what extra packages I need to install.)
