My Old Blog

This is the second time I’ve installed Linux. The first time, about 4 years ago, I admit it was too much for me. I knew just about enough to install it, get confused and uninstall it without screwing up my MBR or my Windows partitions.

I tried Red Hat 8 this time. In fact, I am posting from linux for the first time ever. I’ll include a screenshot of my KDE desktop.

This is all pretty amazing considering. I have access to my Windows partitions, can connect to the internet, know how to take and edit a screen shot, uploaded a file by ftp to my web host and have managed not to destroy anything…yet. I find permissions very frustrating. And I can’t figure why you have to unmount your vfat directories to get the file system to update. I’ve had problems with disappearing files when I boot to Windows.

I don’t think I’ll ever be very good with linux. I hate the command line. I realize it can be more “robust”, but it can also cause you to spend time remembering a garble of syntax when you could be doing something useful, like basically anything else.

I’ve heard a lot about the linux community and was excited to participate. I’ve found the folks in the #linuxhelp IRC channels to be complete jackasses. They join the channel, talk arcane computer jargon with their buddies and flame all newcomers that ask questions.

I don’t have a problem with computer snobbery. I am a travel snob (though I hide it much better than they do). But if you’re gonna hang out in the #linuxhelp chatroom…be willing to help, or get out. Isn’t there a #linuxsnobs channel or something?

I don’t wait in the #traveladvice channel for college students planning spring break to ask about hash bars in Amsterdam and topless beaches on the Riviera.

Their idea of help is telling me to go find out for myself. Apparently I will never learn anything if they keep telling me how to do stuff. Well shit, there goes the whole concept of school.

You want to know the real reason Linux isn’t accepted as a desktop replacement for Windows? Not because of its user-friendliness, lack of common GUI, office productivity suites, or anything bordering on that. It is because their user community is a bunch of non-supportive, computer-elitest fucks that never got laid in high school and were excluded from every functioning social group. Now they have their own group and are determined not to let anyone in. I guess they feel its payback time for all those wedgies in gym class.

I realize my questions are stupid, but asking them does not make me lazy. It simply means I have more interesting things to do with my time than reinvent the wheel.

All that being said, I hope my opinion improves, because I really like learning new things. If you know something about linux are are willing to endure my questions, please contact me: kelliottdykes@yahoo.com.

I almost broke my shoulder the other day. Was (accidentally) pushed into a concrete wall going full speed. Couldn’t lift my arm the next day and got a nice bruise on the back of my head. They thought I was knocked out.

I have over twenty chigger bites. They are huge red welts the size of quarters that congregate around your joints. Apparently they are near invisible and lay eggs that hatch under your skin. That is completely gross, but they are livable, better than mosquito bites…they just look worse.

I pulled a muscle in my leg learning to play soccer. My legs usually don’t move in those directions, but I promised a British dude that if he learned to play basketball, I would learn to play soccer. He says I have talent. I say my leg hurts and I have to play in the staff soccer game on Sunday at 7am. Yippie.

I have poison ivy all up my left leg from the cabin campout the other night. We thought it would be a good idea to raid the other cabins up on the mountain. My kids loved it, but now I itch and have trouble telling the difference between the poison ivy, mosquito bites and chiggers. I don’t know which I can itch.

I have tendonitis in my right arm from throwing football the first week of camp. It never goes away. It is the least annoying of my injuries and easy to forget about considering I have plenty of other pains to focus on.

This is besides and in addition to the chronic back and ankle pains I have had for years.

I live up on a hill. At the beginning of the summer I remember thinking how it would get easier to make the hike as the summer progressed and I got in better shape. I had to stop and take a break the other day.

Despite all this I haven’t felt better physically in years.

I have been doing taxes. That is why there have been no updates.

I could say many things about the art of preparing taxes. I have learned a lot of debatably useful information. But its really sort of immaterial.

The most interesting part is the people. The people I work with are nice, but pretty boring. The people that get their taxes done at H&R Block are changing my opinion of “the masses”.

I never realized how many people are getting by on 10 to 15 thousand dollars a year. And these people have kids. How do you support a family, pay rent, go to the doctor, eat, and keep a car running on 10k a year? I haven’t done a financial analysis, but it would seem almost impossible. And yet they do it.

There are even a large number with incomes in the 4 to 8 thousand dollar range. That is absurd. There are a lot of poor people out there. I had a guy come in the other day that worked 6 jobs during the year. Not at a temp agency….6 separate jobs. How do you get jobs so fast? Wouldn’t an employer wonder if you never stayed at a job over a few months?

I never realized how many single mothers there are. I’d say 70% of the single girls that come in have kids….and they aren’t making any money.

I fear for the future. There is not enough to go around. These people don’t have enough going on in their head to get ahead. They have no concept of money. The fees they pay to H&R Block are outrageous and they all get the Rapid Refund thing, which is really just a short term loan with interest rates bordering on predatory. I tell people all the time to take their W-2s and leave…go to the library, get a 1040EZ and fill out their taxes themselves….but I realize they can’t.

I understand and I don’t understand. I understand that poverty begets poverty and small lives lead to small hopes…but I’m missing something. They watch the same TV I do, listen to the same music….they go to the same public schools. They may not get a college education, but my basic ideas, world view and hopes for the future were already shaped before I left high school. And they were not all shaped by my family. I think TV, movies and a high school education were a large part.

They may be learning the same reading, writing and arithmetic as me, but they’re missing some other, more important part. They have low expectations for life, a general lack of dignity and an inability to realize that present actions affect future outcomes. Those are extremely serious problems.

So taxes have been passing the time for me. I went on a job interview the other day. I sang karaoke at a bar the other night. I go to the gym a few nights a week. Thats about it.

I am still jobless and uncertain when that might change. I am very restless.