For the second time this week, I’m stuck on my laptop because my main computer is refusing to boot. So that means that not only am I stuck on a much slower machine, I’m stuck using Windows XP instead of Linux.

Windows is making me insane! It has brought up “Automatics Updates” 10 times so far this morning asking if I would like to reboot my computer. In fact, it just did it again! Why yes, Windows, let me stop everything I’m doing so you can randomly do a bunch of updates. Sure, shut down all my programs. I wasn’t doing anything. In fact, why don’t I just step away from the computer and you can use it to bring up ads and restart every few minutes?

Windows also refuses to play a surprising number of Mp3s and other files that work fine on Linux. I am not 4 years old, so I don’t want little cartoon dogs and paperclips flashing every time I use a program. Somehow AOL got installed, which is making everything worse, since it repeatedly brings up an AOL window asking if it should be my default browser. I’m pretty convinced there is a ton of spyware on here now because it is taking 500 years to load, and because, duh, AOL, but Search and Destroy and AdAware say otherwise.

Yes, I know I can spend two hours looking through all my programs to figure out how to turn all this off, uninstall AOL, etc. But–oh look the Automatic Update came up again!–I just want my computer to work. I want programs to open when I say and I don’t want to be constantly interrupted by stupid updates. I want me to be the boss of the machine, not the other way around. Why anyone would use Windows XP when there are other options out there is a mystery to me.

By the way, Leona has pictures of last Friday night’s Karaoke. I’m the one with the mouth that opens really wide.