mechanical relationships

My friend asked me to fix his wife's computer.  I asked a few questions like, What's wrong with it?  What operating system does it have?  What does it do?  All I got was, I don't know.  It shows a blue screen and won't start.  All I know about her computer use is she's a gamer and her computer was built for gaming.  "Keep it as long as you like and put in what it needs," she said.  Ok then. 

First thing was opening the thing up and taking a leaf blower to it to get rid of the cobwebs and dust bunnies.  I hooked it up, pushed the button and it just sat there.  Good thing they don't need it right away, I thought.  I checked the bios and this thing was built in 2010.  Big gamer for it's day but sub-par for the stuff out there now. 

Long story short, I got a new hard drive for it and managed to get win 7 installed.  I couldn't get it to recognize any Linux ISO I introduced.  I was stuck trying to resurrect a windows machine with a clean install of win7.  I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this again.  I've been fighting with windows since win95 and thought I'd shake that bitch for good back in 2015 when I got into Linux.  I was starting to feel a bit scummy half way through the hour install and left the room at every opportunity to shower. 

I did all that was necessary like installing Firefox browser and Duckduckgo for the search engine and got an ad blocker.  The last thing I installed was Microsoft Essentials as the virus and adware extractor.  It's free and the only reason that is is because microsoft Internet Explorer is an adware/virus/malware magnet and designed that way so microsoft can sell you the solution to your virus problems.  It was microsoft's lawyers who suggested they give the program away for free to avoid lawsuits.

Linux doesn't have these problems.  Microsoft does and that's why you need firewalls and McAfee to surf.

Anyway... I had to set this computer next to my daily driver to use the monitor and internet while I was fixing it.  I got done and set the other computer on the floor and fired up my computer.  Only it didn't fire up.  It went only so far and shut down.  I tried for a half hour and she refused to fire up.  Time after time it would start and quit, start and quit.  I left the room.

When I came back I had a glass of vodka.  I sat down and had a talk with my computer.  "Don't think about that other computer.  I was just trying to fix it for a friend.  You're the one.  You're the only one.  That other machine is totally sub-par compared to you.  She'll be out of this house this weekend.  She's an ugly win7 basket case and can't compare to your freshly installed Linux Mint 9.1.  Come on, baby.  Start for me."

I hit the start button and she fired right up.  Remembered all my tabs and ran ten times faster than the previous comp on line.

It seems I have a better relationship with machines than I do with people.