Whobuntu?

So now that midterms are all, mercifully, over, I turn my attention to what matters most - anything that isn't midterms.

When I was recently in Chicago, I was having a problem with my computer because of something or another and every time I typed, it would skip like every 3rd keystroke. It was the most annoying thing that I could imagine. Actually I can think of hundreds of things more annoying, but that doesn't quite have the same punch, does it? After evaluating all of the possibilities to fix it, I naturally took the most drastic approach - I installed a whole new operating system.

That's right. I've been a non-Microsoft Windows user for a bit over a week now and, my gosh, is it fantastic. What I'm rockin' now is Ubuntu which is a type of Linux. It's something that I've been thinking about for a while and I'm very glad I did. The community-driven principles are something that I wholeheartedly believe in.

The irony is that I have a bit of a history of making fun of Linux users and computer-nerds alike. They are generally ranked just above Republicans and slightly below art-school students in terms of groups that are both easy and gratifying to make fun of. And, like all good Windows-using, Democrat-voting, business-school students, I basked in the itty-bitty perceived moral superiority I had over the "others".

So, when I finally bared my soul to Kathryn and told her that I was going to be switching my digital allegiance from the safe Redmond umbrella of non-geekdom that I have cowered under since I first used a computer to the masses of Open Source geeks, nerds, long-hairs, 1337 h@x0rZ and the like, this was her response:

"So are you going have to make fun of yourself now?"

Well played, m'lady. Well played indeed.