UnMotivationalPosters

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, I was a computer nerd. I was a kid then, but I could program my ass off in BASIC (and oh lordy how I wish I could program so I could get rid of it now). My dad was/is a huge computer geek so when I was little, he was teaching me how to do stuff. Right down to what’s on the inside of the box. I took to it, and I became so intense (and he required such fancy efforts) that I would often put my line numbers much farther apart than just 10, 20, etc. Hey it taught me the value of a flowchart and while I don’t use them to this day I feel I would be a lot more productive or something if I did. I learned IF and THEN and my personal favorite GOTO. I was awesome!

Some years passed during which I was not near a computer very often at all. By some I mean around a decade. When I was in contact with computers again it was for school. I needed Word to write something or Excel to make some bogus chart. Sometimes I played Gabriel Knight or Blade Runner or The 7th Guest which I have never finished and won’t even bother touching to this day, damn puzzle games. I was in my mid-twenties before I knew that Linux was not the way the Fronch spell the name of that blanket-boy. When I learned what Linux is, however, it was like magic.

“Wow, this is so pretty! Think of all the things I can do with it! Wow Windows doesn’t have programs like this! I have to try it!” And so off I went, a girl who used Hotmail and Lycos HTML chat, into the wilds of the internets to find some Linux. They might not even have had Google yet at the time. I was new to online. I didn’t know anything. Once at work several years before, I got onto some search engine and searched for “snuff” referring, of course, to chewing tobacco. The results I got kept me away from using search engines for years. I only went to websites with direct links. This is just to show you how unfamiliar I was with online and how to find things.

My job at the time required me to deal with several things using the letters “iso”: Isotonic sport drinks, the ISO standard, and Isolated Somethings which I no longer recall. With this in mind, perhaps you will understand my confusion when I downloaded me some Linux which was recommended by someone and got some .iso files. I tried to run them, I tried to extract them, I tried everything and by the time I was done trying I was so frustrated! By chance I found myself on Freenode IRC and someone there told me “Oh they can help you in the Linux chat room.” Linux chat room? Wow a chat room just for Linux? Right ON!

No.

Welcome to #Debian, you pathetic MS whore

When all was said and done, when I closed IRC with a red face and a burning feeling inside that said I was clearly a moron I reflected on the words of the last person to speak to me, which were basically that if I was so stupid I couldn’t figure out something easy like how to mount an .iso or how to use it then I should just stick with Windows. Believe me I totally did.

Fortunately, in the end I learned about search engines, and how to find things (especially instructions and explanations). Three of my currently operating computers run Windows, but one dual-boots into Linux Mint and another runs it in a vm. On still another machine Windows won’t run at all. I have to command-line it with Linux to make any use of it. And Debian? Still never used it. How’d I learn? A kind person helped me out without making me feel smaller than an elitist’s junk and I managed to learn a good deal on my own afterward.

Moral of the story? You can’t trust the system. The other moral is stop being such an elitist motherfucker who can’t believe that sometimes what comes so easily to you might be confusing or intimidating to someone who’s new at it. You were a noob once too. And don’t give me that shit how you did it all yourself. Boo-wah. Some of you did but a good deal of you had some sort of human assistance. Remember that.