What I’m Reading: September

You may remember the ungodly stack of books I’d stashed in the “To Read” pile.  Well, I’m happy to report that I finished *three* books since my last post!    Hooray!

Now then.  I would prefer that you not send me e-mails telling me that reading three books is no big feat, especially when they were three children’s books, okay?  How’s a girl to read things so quickly when they have teeny sized fonts and hundreds and hundreds of pages?  Hmm?  It would be unimpressive to post about finishing 462 pages of War and Peace, now wouldn’t it?  (Actually, that might be impressive.  I’m going to have to ponder that one for a bit…)

At the very least, though, my stack of books is getting smaller!  Hoooraaaayyy!

Here are the books I finished:

the first two books in the Dark Is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper, which were very clearly intended for a preteen audience.  The whole way through I kept thinking things like Gosh those kids figured that out quickly, and Geez, that wasn’t a very difficult quest, was it now? Other than that, I’m totally digging the slightly antiquated language (if you can call a book written in the 70s antiquated), and Gummerry is quite possibly the coolest man alive.

If you’re interested in a very black-and-white good-vs-evil kind of a series, you’ll probably enjoy these books.  I prefer a bit of gray, myself, but that’s what I get for reading outside of my …erm… time zone…

The books in the sequence are:

Over Sea, Under Stone

The Dark is Rising

Greenwitch

Silver on the Tree

The Grey King

Apparently someone made the second book into a movie some time in the 80s, but my sister said it was stupid, and she’s generally right about things like that.  (Thanks, Chibi!)

Anyway, the other book I finished was Alice in Wonderland, but I read it on my iphone Kindle, so unless you want me to take a picture of my phone… hmm… actually, hang on a minute…

Uhh, okay, well.  This, coupled with the fact that just now I have Zoltar doing the following: running Linux (Ubuntu), running Windows in a Virtual Box (seamless), and running Google Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer all at the same time, pretty much means my nerdery is now official.  *ahem*  Computers are good!  Have them!

The book stack now looks like this:

The push is on to get that stack good and read, because… it’s official!  We’re moving (for real and true this time) to a deluxe apartment in the sky (AKA a 10th floor 2BR 2BA much closer to Husband’s work) in November, and I’m pretty sure this lovely stack will be lost in the move for some time afterward. })i({

To see more of my favorite (and least favorite) books, check out my GoodReads!

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Zoltar the Wise

Zoltar is my Asus laptop.  He is good.  He is wise.  He is often unpredictable, and occasionally does zany things that not even my computer nerd husband can figure out.  Last month Zoltar was (although possibly a bit grudgingly) running Windows Vista like a good lappy should.  Then I got a cute little prompt to update my beloved Zoltar by installing service pack 2.  Worst.  Idea.  Ever.  Luckily my husbandy man, smarty that he is, warned me to back everything up before I did the install (which, for once, I actually did).  Zoltar got very, very sick, and the only thing that could save him was a complete wipe & operating system reinstall.  On a lark (and because Vista is possibly the most inane OS ever) I had my husband install Ubuntu and decided to learn Linux.

By now you probably realize that my computer ability rivals the Pittsburgh Pirates’ ability to win a game.  This probably has something to do with the fact that the computer class I took in college was on Tuesday nights, which just happened to also be student discount night at the movie theatre.  So, after using my new-and-improved Linuxy Zoltar for exactly 18 days now, here are some *really important* things I have learned:

1. A computer that runs Linux is referred to as a “box”.  Because Zoltar will never be *just* a “box” to me, I refuse to let my husband call him that.  I am, as you might guess, mocked for this.

2. Chicks that run Linux, even if they have no actual idea what they’re doing, are SOOOOOOO much cooler than plain old girls running plain old Windows (at least, my husband thinks so).

3. There is, apparently, a difference between Linux and Ubuntu, though so far my husband (and the interwebs) appears to use the terms interchangeably.  I’m thinking it must be along the lines of a square vs. rectangle thing, but I waited too long to ask, and now it would be like asking a co-worker what his wife’s name is again even though this is the third time you’ve had dinner together.

4. There are no friendly pop-ups to warn you when you’re about to do something really, really stupid (for example, two days ago I clicked something that I thought would make an icon disappear and now Zoltar can’t find my camera).  I almost *almost* miss the old Zoltar, who constantly wanted to know if I was sure.  A little “Are you SURE you want to hide your digital camera so Zoltar can’t see it anymore?” pop-up might have been nice.

5. There is such a thing as “close enough” in computer land (apparently Ubuntu does not support the driver I need for my printer, so I have to download a driver for an entirely different printer, which is, apparently “close enough”.  Weird).

6. Ubuntu runs all the same programs as Windows, it just calls them something much more high-tech, so you feel cooler while you’re using them (now I use an “Image Manipulation Program” instead of a “Photo Editor”).  See?  SO much cooler.

7. Billy likes soda.

8. Miss Lippy’s car is green.

So, there you have it.  I’ll be updating periodically with more Linuxy goodness, so stay tuned!  })i({