I refuse to post in the newbie forum, despite my being new to Linux. I've been destroying and fixing technology since the first home computers became available. I can no more remember the manuals I've read than the meals I've eaten, but last October was a real learning experience, to say the least. I had stubbornly sworn off working on any family member's computer, seeing from experience that they would most likely complain much and pay little. There was one exception made, for my computer illiterate little sister, and that was the beginning of it all.
Like Ahab chasing the great white whale, I skillfully applied all my years of Windows mastery to making sure her computer was 100% free of all malicious software...and to my complete disbelief, I had failed! For the very first time in my long and awesomely flawless career of Windows virus hunting and smashing? Was the seasoned old MS master now somehow the student? How were the file sizes so small and their responses so fast? How could these extremely complicated, brilliantly elegant software structures boot from an old HP's dingy Dos environment?
Well, my new digital friends, it wasn't our good old Gates after all. It was a mind-bending, fearful dream, complete with threats of death and oaths of loyalty, but...Mark my words, not a total nightmare. Definitely not some pointless prank or senseless game. It was truly an honor and a gift.
Today I must shamefully admit, that after months of think-thinkery, I am still not fully awake. My monomaniacal mind still sleeps in the deeps...stirring. Some have hastily cried wolf, and prefer a more modern submarine metaphor. But as for me, in this brave new world of virtual software unreality, I remain a fan of the wickedly wise old Ahab...
"All visible objects,
man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him
outrageous strength..."