It was a cold November morning, leaves covered the now yellowed grass, the dog's water stood frozen, two little winter birds fluffed their feathers while sitting on a low tree branch outside my kitchen window and the smell of coffee began to fill my nostrils telling me that it's time to quell my yawns. The cold stillness of that serenity broke when I heard a blood-curdling scream from the depths of one of the caves at the other end of the house. A sound so irritating that it burned through my head like a laser beam. It was the cry of an Ubuntu Spelunker, a cave dweller, whose frustrations had left him on the brink of performing a river dance (clogs and all) upon the laptop that kindled his anger.
"What?" I asked in caffeine-deprived disgust, "What is it now?"
I heard an array of expletives and thrashing about that would make Seth Rogen blush (or at least give him dialog for his next film).
I'll paraphrase his rant to save you the burning sensation of his hell-bound diatribe. This laptop doesn't work! It won't print, these programs aren't compatible with my school and our project website doesn't work right with FireFox. Can you please fix it?
I looked at the little freckle-faced, red-headed four year-old with tears in his eyes and squeaked out a belabored, "Sure, I'll fix it." I had to say yes because that cute little face was looking at me from a panting, six-foot-one inch, 200 pound, 13 year-old frame that looked like something from "The Attack of the Giant Gingers." What else could I say?
I did suggest that we try upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10 to see if that would work better for him and his cave-dwelling sibling but the answer was a gentle and sweet, "No thank you."
I spent the next two hours reimaging, patching, rebooting, restoring and regurgitating at my actions. I returned the laptop to him with a ready-to-break Windows XP complete with Microsoft Office 2003. For his (and mine) own sake, I also decorated it with Avast antivirus and Spybot Search & Destroy anti-spyware software.
That was two weeks ago. I haven't heard so much as a "darn it" from either cave dweller since I performed that twisted and shameful act. Forgive me for I have sinned a great sin.
