David Kellam

Well I got roped into computer fixing by Liz. The promise of free food in exchange sold me. I really should get a placard with ‘will fix computer problems for food’ :p.

More seriously, I thought an evening of food, wine and merriment was in order and it was nice to do it in a civilised fashion. We began with champagne on Ariel’s balcony (he is our Geneva contact/organiser), added a little bit of computer diagnosis, and proceeded downstairs to the Brasserie where Alan (one of their friends) and I shared a wonderful kangaroo meal - photos shall accompany this post at a later date (when I get net access proper) - which we cooked ourselves on hot coals. Very, very cool and extremely nice meat. Imported from Australia of course :p

After an elongated dinner with the most clueless waiter in history (at one point, he placed the raw kangaroo meat on Jacob’s chair while he shifted things around on the table!!!), I had to get back to work. Well, the spyware beat me (at least 12 active processes as well as IE and dns injections, corrupt anti-virus and norton internet security and a general propensity to crash). So a reinstall will be required. That will likely take considerable time of course. I am becoming more and more of the opinion that Windows is a minefield and should not be run for anything but a minute subset of computing applications. You have to know what you are doing to a geek level to stay on the safe side, and even then things can, and do, slip under your radar. If only linux were more suitable. I guess such things are a tradeoff (but needlessly so imho).

I like my current approach to computing with my laptop. It runs OS X, next to no local apps and contains no data. Basically everything is done through a remote terminal, web app, or in CVS-enabled eclipse. There will be serious movement in this direction in the next 12-24 months. OS X thin client anyone?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2005 at 6:55 am and is filed under Europe 2005. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.