Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Geek or Weak?
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2003 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
My PC has been nonfunctional for months, since a few really unfortunate accidents where I hit the power strip button without shutting down. Last night I finally attempted to reinstall the operating system with a Debian CD that Michael had lent me.
For those of you who don't know (and if you are a computer geek, don't read this paragraph, as the simplifications will annoy you): I use Linux at home, not Windows or the Mac OS. There are many flavors of Linux, many independent distributions each concentrating on enhancing certain aspects of the software. Debian is the "I'm such a geek, I want all the functionality you can possibly give me, and if something doesn't work I'll fix it myself by hacking the code" distribution. The Debian organization is also well known for its commitment to software freedom.
Well, I shouldn't have done the Debian dance. I should have used one of the "You don't really know what you're doing, do you?" distributions. As of right now my computer is running a very minimal installation of Linux, but I can't figure out how to connect to the Net, so I can't download the software that I need. I was too exhausted to use Michael's computer to trawl the Net for help documentation, and he wasn't here, so I just cheered myself up with my Firesign Theater tape and went to bed. I've waited nine weeks, I can wait another few days.
