Daycare Update; and One of the Many Reasons I Hate Microsoft

October 15, 2009

Carver,

You've successfully completed your third day of full-time daycare and it seems to be going quite well. You still totally freak when I leave in the morning, but they tell me you calm down quickly. You also have become more comfortable in the brief period I hang out there with you: the first day you clung to me, seemed scared, and took a long time to finally start exploring a little; today you sat on my lap for a minute, but quickly started roaming around and having a good time.

Also, Arlinda, your afternoon teacher, basically told me you were a genius (OK, she just said "very smart" but she said it in an awestruck, I-can't-believe-he's-so-brilliant sort of way that suggested she meant more). She asked me, with great interest and all sincerity, what we "do with you" that has made you so very smart. I wasn't sure how to answer this question, mostly because the real answer is probably something like: "Well, we just kind of let him do whatever he wants, including all sorts of things most people would find frighteningly dangerous. And maybe read him a book or two every now and then." Also, I wasn't sure what she'd think of me if I said the first thing that came to my mind, which was something like: "Well, his mother and I are both, like, wicked smart, so it's only natural that he's awesome."

Arlinda also said that you are a shining example for your peers and that you help them and seem to try to teach them things. So overall I think you're rocking the daycare thing.

Microsoft, O’ How Do I Loathe Thee

Anne has a ThinkPad that runs Windows Vista. She got it not long after Vista came out, so the Vista bombing that seems to be so prevalent hadn’t gotten up to speed, or at least we hadn’t heard much of it. When she ordered it she asked me to look at what she spec’d out and I paused briefly at the operating system selection and thought about suggesting that she go with XP because I had heard a few of the early grumblings about Vista. I am extremely guilty about not voicing my concern at the time because now she has a slow, obnoxious, incredibly annoying $1800 “internet surfing machine” (what she calls it because of the following problem).

Her optical drive has not worked for several months, which means she can’t rip CDs to iTunes, can’t install the copy of MS Office that she’s had sitting here for months, et cetera. Not only has it not worked, Vista no longer recognized the drive. She’s tried a few times to fix it but got frustrated and gave up. So I gave it a shot and—hours later—I got it working again.

In my effort to find and fix the problem, this is what I deduced: (1) the problem most likely occurred one of the trillion times Windows updated itself, something about filters and such; (2) Microsoft blames 3^rd party DVD/CD ripping software for the problem, in some places the finger is pointed directly at iTunes; (3) Microsoft knows what the problem is and will fix it for you, but they’ll only do it if you click on the tool using MS Explorer because the tool doesn’t “recognize” Firefox or any other browser; and (4) the fix they provide for the problem they know about does not work. So, to recap, you’ve lost your optical drive because of Microsoft’s heinous operating system but they blame Apple. They’ll fix it, but only if you use their piece of shit browser. And the fix actually doesn’t fix anything.

I eventually found a thread on an online forum and modified the registry myself. Presto fix-o.