The church helped in someone’s landscaping and home improvement this weekend. My post hole digging skills were refreshed. I hadn’t done that since working at the trailer park when I was younger. I also proved my incompetence in trying to screw things together that didn’t have the precision of computer screw holes. Lesson learned – don’t use screws on anything except computers. I also troubleshot a couple of peoples’ computers. I realized some of the problems in novice computing. It’s illegal to download music for free, but there are legal websites where you can listen to it for free. It’s illegal to download movies for free, but you can go to hulu.com and legally watch movies for free. If you’ve never even heard of the concept of piracy, how do you tell the difference? And then there are all the nasty tricky “anti-spyware” programs that actually put spyware on your machine. Windows is always warning you you’re unsafe if you virus scan with Trend Micro Housecall (Vista incompatible…yay) on the web instead of a known installed program. In the end, what realistically happens is that the machine becomes virus-laden and slower and slower. The kids go to music sharing sites and you have 20 toolbars on Internet explorer all “helping” you. I really couldn’t think of any tips for a novice to insure they wouldn’t be having the exact same problems within a few monthsÂ…aside from avoiding Windows, which would make lots of stuff incompatible (Netflix Watch Instant, Office docs in Open Office, etc.) It seems the current price of using the internet is that you either have to spend insane amounts of time becoming an expert or just accept your dual core machine running like a 386.
For my own personal future reference, it’s allergy time. Tilting the head downward in the slightest results in an unsightly torrent. Juniper pollen is medium. Mulberry pollen is high. The Sudafed does nothing, but I just noticed it’s the useless phenylephrine instead of the real pseudoephedrine. Pseudoephedrine can be used for meth, so they seem to be trying to phase it outÂ…or maybe only sell it behind the counter. Albuquerque pollen count
Turns out it’s a cold.