Atomictumor

While I was spreading peanut butter on one slice of bread and jelly on another for the kids lunches this morning, I kept thinking about several articles I’d read.

There’s an interview with John D. Crossan where he talks about the first Christmas.

Our conversation ranged from virgin births and Roman censuses to how you became a god in the ancient world, and why it was a bad idea to mess with shepherds.

After seeing all the plastic nativities, who’d guess that the Christmas story was all about revolution.

The nativity story is far richer and more challenging than familiar sentimentalized versions allow. Not simply tidings of comfort and joy, the gospel stories of Jesus’ birth are also edgy visions of another way of life, confronting the status quo and demanding personal and political transformation.

There’s this article about a black guy who got bullied, shoved, cussed and generally terrified by some racist ford pickup truck driving assholes earlier in the week. He was walking home when this happened.

Then there was this article that the Oak Ridger ran about the parents of Ashley Paine. The Paines are saying the city hasn’t done near enough to make Oak Ridge streets safe. Ashley Paine was run over by a school bus earlier this fall.

Mom called yesterday and told me that my sister’s best friend from school died earlier in the week. She was at work when she collapsed. An ambulance rushed her to a hospital where the doctors couldn’t keep her heart beating. It just stopped working and that was the end.

And so it goes.

What does all this have to do with Christmas?

I don’t have a clue.

and so does UPS.

Feel like I ought to reintroduce myself here, since it’s been so long since I’ve posted something. So, Hi. I’m Bos. I fuss at kids.

We went to the Oak Ridge Christmas parade this morning. These two kids came along about half way through the long, long parade and planted themselves right in front of us. I don’t know what beauty queen, tractor or politician was waving by but I got tired of them snarking up all the good candy and leaving the old busted up mints and sweet tart chalk pills for my two. It just wasn’t right. There was plenty of road for all of us since the horses hadn’t come along yet and pooped all over the road. It was fun driving along after the parade and hitting as many of the olive green piles as we could.

So I told the two grabbers to move on. They just looked at me and I told them again to get out of my kids way. They moved. Later I got the feeling that the folks fussing across the street were directing their angry mind powers at me. So I stared back at them. Merry Christmas I said to the folks throwing candy at us (some of them have good aim…)

I could have handled that better.

When I got the laptop out of the box, if you remember, it wouldn’t boot up Vista. After a lengthy conversation with a Dell Tech, I got Vista onto the machine and all was well.

I ran across the Linux based operating system Ubuntu while I was looking to buy the laptop. Here’s a review. Dell currently offers a line of machines with the OS right out of the box and so does this company called System76.

I was sold by Ubuntu’s ideals and I liked the open source/free nature of the beast. I wasn’t all that excited about Vista either. Given all that, I downloaded a live CD of the Ubuntu desktop and put in my lappy. The live CD was an easy, no commitment way to test drive the OS.

I liked what I saw. It worked just fine and did what I wanted. I knew from a few reviews that I was going to have to tinker to get it to run proprietary formats like mp3s and dvds. That was alright with me, so I installed the OS and fixed it so that I could dual boot both Ubuntu or Vista. I wasn’t ready to go whole hog, yet.

Ubuntu turned out to be a lot more work than I expected. I had to get it to recognize my ATI graphics card. The fancy wiz-bang effects didn’t work. I had to download fixes for those. I had to download fixes to get the fonts to render properly. The startup resolution was off which made the startup time take forever (longer than vista). Then firefox started disappearing on me. Other windows did the same. It was weird and enough is enough. I surrendered and decided to reinstall vista and thereby wipe out Ubuntu.

Ha, Ha. If only it were that simple. I put the Vista disc in the machine and cranked it up only to a blue screen. One came every time I tried.

Yesterday, AT, AKA Ladyfriend (going to have fix an autotype on that name…) came over with the boys. We ate pizza while AT tinkered with the lappy. After a few false starts he got the hard drive to reformat. We were hopeful that I could load Vista after that point, but alas it was not to be. All I got was one blue screen after another.

Now, I should say here that I don’t think Ubuntu is to blame for all my problems. I have a bad hard drive on my lappy. That’s what the third Dell Techie told me this evening. He said that the IRQL, the NFTS, the bad pool caller errors (what a great name!) all point to one thing — the hard drive. His solution was to send me a new hard drive for me to install myself. Something just doesn’t seem right about that, so I asked if that was my only option. I asked for a straight out refund. He said I’d have to talk to “Senior Management” about that. They will call me in a couple days.

Who knows what these Senior Management types will offer me, but that’s how it goes.

The search for a laptop has come to a close. I decided to buy a refurbished Dell after I nearly bought a cheap, used Apple. The Apple for sale turned out to be a Craig’s List scam, but fortunately nothing ventured and nothing lost. I’ve come to the conclusion that Craig’s List is not worth the trouble. I hope you have better luck.

The Dell Outlet is a great thing. It’s easy to use and fun. The deals are always changing. Two computers I thought about buying were gone by the time I got through dithering over them. It may be a ploy on Dell’s part to make you, think less, buy quicker and spend more. The wizard is probabably sitting behind Dell’s curtain putting the refurbished units up for sale and pulling them back again. That’d be tricky, indeed.

So the computer I bought is an Inspiron 1501. It’s kind of plain jane as far laptop design goes, but for the money it’s powerful enough. And I need that extra power, right? I was pleased when I ordered it.

Do you remember ordering things when you were a kid? I’ve always loved getting boxes in the mail. I remember saving G.I. Joe coupons so that I could order special figures and vehicles. Hasbro was smart and offered discontinued toys this way to kids like me who wanted what they couldn’t find in the store. I looked for Storm Shadow for months, searching every K-Mart and K-Bee store I came across. Alas I never found an original Storm Shadow. But I was able to order a Cobra infantryman.

I don’t think Vista comes with Storm Shadow. Vista came with my computer, though, and that’s what disappeared as quick as a ninja when I hit the lappy’s power button. Can you believe that? I hit the power button after very gingerly unpacking the box and looking at all the parts. Not much smells better than a new gadget out of the box.

The computer churns. It’s hard drive buzzes. The screen says it can’t install Windows properly and politely asks me to try again. What?

I try again.

Again.

Nothing.

Shit.

I have to say that Dell’s tech support saved the day. Liza_145026 from India was super helpful, although I don’t think the few jokes I cracked helped matters much. I’d give you some of the conversation, but it won’t cut an paste into the text editor very easily. But here’s a little that I remember,

Liza_145026: Please tell me what trouble shooting attempts you have done, Bos.

Bos: Ummm, I tried going into safe mode. Then I stuck the Vista os dvd into the drive. That didn’t work.

Liza_145026: Alright

(Liza typed Alright a lot. She must have it set as a short cut.)

Liza_145026: James, here’s what we are going to do. We are going to have to reinstall Windows.

Bos: Oh Goody!

So that’s what I did. I got to reinstall Vista on our first date.

That’s all said and done now. I’m watching the laptop, though, like a dog that’s bitten me. I wonder why I had go through all that trouble. Vista should have been there out of the box. A newbie must have inspected my refurbished model and not noticed that the damn thing wouldn’t boot up.

I did call Dell today to ask for some compensation ($$) for all my trouble. The gal I talked to offered me a printer, which I think is the equivalent of a bank offering you a toaster, but I said no, thanks. I had them refund me the cost of shipping.

I should have asked for a wireless router, or an MP3 player, or better yet. I should have asked for a Ubuntu disc.