Windows, I wish I knew how to quit you

This post is all about my temptress, seductress and nemesis. A glossy pearl that brings me so much joy, yet at the same time brings out the Ike Turner in me.

Windows. I am looking at you.

Our story begins with my work. To pay the rent, I pimp myself out as a hired IT gun. Think of me like Tom Cruise from Collateral. Except instead of causing 187s, I diagnose error code 354s.

So today I came into my client site, turned on my laptop like I do each day, and wait for my wireless to connect…and wait…and wait. Nothing. For no good reason, today my computer decides that its going to be a little punk bitch and not let me connect to my client’s guest wireless.

There I sat. For 1.5 hours, with 2 fingers, firmly planted, in my ass. Then all by itself, for no apparent reason at all, Windows connects!

That’s fucked up. I think I am a fairly competent Windows operator, yet I have no idea what to do when faced with these situations. The “Diagnose Connection” option is about as useful as Nintendo Wii is for Stephen Hawking. I wonder if there is anybody in the modern world who has ever clicked on “Diagnose Connection” and actually had it return anything useful?

So then I wonder…

What kind of retard PM in COSD designed this feature? Asking me to run “Diagnose connection” to troubleshoot a network error has the same chance of success as running a Scandisk has to fix a broken mouse.

The calendar says 2011, but I am sure Windows thinks its 1993

I put up with so much shit when it comes to Windows. It’s 2011, the US government just put a 9mm hole through Osama Bin Laden’s left eye after hearing one dude’s name dropped once 4 years go.  Yet Windows still acts like it was 1993 and I was using Netscape 2.2.

Don’t believe me? I have one word for you:

Reboots.

It blows my mind that Apple can re-invent the computing paradigm in 5 years, yet I can’t trust to have my Windows computer running in the morning the way I left it before I went to bed?

That’s fucked up. I understand the technical reasons why a computer needs to reboot due to a Windows Update.  Yet still, 20 years after NT was first introduced, after countless promises to “eliminate reboots”, even now, in Windows 7, the damn thing keeps rebooting on its own.

I just ordered a order of Daal, with 2 naans and 2 samosas, all from my phone, in about 3 clicks.  Yet, I still can’t go to bed with my computer on.

I don’t want to be a Task Manager assassin anymore…

I tell ya, sometimes I feel like I am George W Bush, and Task Manager are the hills of Helmand, Afghanistan. I go through, kill any extraneous process which might be running, and then boom, 5 minutes later, those motherfuckers are back in there: Eating my cpu. Sucking my RAM. Faulting my hard drive.

I hate that in order to keep my computer running at full-speed, I have to keep Task Manager literally pinned to my deskbar. Why does iexplore.exe launch 37 different task instances anytime I want to check my gmail? Why does the SearchIndexer.exe constantly run and take 15-18% of my CPU time?

And so there you have it…

I want to break free. But I can’t. Just like Tina, I always come back.