[Previous entry: "Serenity pre-screening"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Left-wing utopian coercive hellholes"]

12/19/2004 Archived Entry: "Windows Solitaire -- Death, destruction, and doom (or good news, depending)"

MY LINUX COMPUTER IS IN THE SHOP for what may be a motherboard problem. In the meantime, I'm doing all my work on a borrowed Windows 98 laptop -- a Dell Latitude, which is really a very nice machine, despite having only a Pentium II chip and ... well, I already said it, W-----s.

I'm grateful to have this machine, not only as a backup, but as my only access to the Internet. The local network here at the Desert Hermitage is W-----s based and therefore (O, Bill Gates!) refuses to acknowledge the existence of computers using any other operating system.

So, it's been no big deal that my Linux machine is in the shop. W-----s 98 was one of the best of the W-----ses, IMHO, and has a minimum of built-in spyware. I'm using the Mozilla Firefox browser and Mozilla Thunderbird mail program (great browser; mediocre mail handler without even the most primitive encryption interface; probably a good application in some future incarnation) instead of Bill's standard virusware.

Happy, happy, happy. Except. Well, I'm suffering from FreeCell withdrawl because

the game on this system is glitched out. I've been playing Bill's regular solitaire as a substitute. Which is fine. Except. Every time I actually win a game and stack all the other cards atop the aces, an error window pops up and says, "This program has performed an illegal operation." Then the game slams shut.

Now, you might find that merely annoying. But I'm finding it rather cosmic in a way that makes me crave desperately in those moments to have Linus and Company back by my side.

Think about it. You win. And it's an illegal operation. Win. It's illegal. Lose all you want, fine. The program will go on playing. Win -- death.

This is getting to be a little too much like life in the Government Zone. Is it a warning? Or a phophesy? Does that cryptic and ominous missive mean the gummint will always make it illegal for freedom to win and therefore defeat us? Or does it mean that Outlaws will ultimately arise in large enough numbers to find the way to win -- illegally?

Ah ... Deep.

Then again, it may mean only that W-----s 98, first release, is not as sweet as I fondly remembered it. You decide.

Posted by Claire @ 12:38 PM CST
Link