I think maybe I am beginning to understand Windows users, at least a little bit. A dumb little anecdote about the past 2 minutes follows.

If the monitor is my Window to the world, the keyboard is my steering wheel, and headphones plugged into my soundcard allow me to recive music, speech, and other mind-altering things, then I want the controls to be as intuitive as possible.

How do controls become intuitive? By using them. I'll try to explain what I'm thinking.

When I want to adjust the volume on my soundcard, there are 2 "intuitive" ways for me to do it. One is Ctrl-Shift-Arrow Keys for quick little adjustments, or the other (when I want slightly) more precise control over different audio sources) is to grab an xterm (Ctrl-T) and type "rexima". These methods are intuitive. Instantanious. They require no conscious thought on my part.

What does this have to do with Windows users? They act just like I do. I've been told there are newer, better software mixers that allow control of all sorts of fancy ALSA features that are also nice and "easy to use" in a GUI sense, but I've barely even looked at them. What I have works, even if it is inferior.

I don't even "use" Linux, really. Hand me a machine with a fresh default install of Red Hat, Debian, or just about any distro, and I'd find it almost as clumsy as I find a Windows desktop. Even if you gave me the same window manager, I'd still have to spend a ton of time before it could become intuitive. During that time, I would either be tweaking the settings to match my habits, or forming new habits, which can be a slow process initially.

Like learning Dvorak.

I don't want to spend time unlearning my old habits, or figuring out new ways to do things when I don't need to. Like my dad sometimes says, I just want the damn thing to work. By "work", I mean I want it to conform as closely as possible to my established habitual way of doing things.

And even if someone else came out and wrote a clone of rexima with all the exact same features plus new improvements, I might still use rexima, simply because I'm so accustomed to typing the word "rexima" at the command line.

In this regard, I am also very much like the IE users who adamently refuse to use Mozilla, even if somebody else installs it for them and gives them uncontrovertable evidence of Mozilla/Firefox's superiority. They just want to click on the same pretty little icon to browse the web that they used yesterday.

Fellow Linux advocates, I am sad to announce that there is no way to win this debate. Unless you can think of something else that I missed. It's entirely possible.

Now, back to my loafing. Would you believe that even with all this work to do, I have not gotten a single gaddamn thing done all morning? Eventually, however, it may happen. I suspect that if I linger and do nothing for too long, my cell phone will start ringing again, and Scott, in his friendly, casual voice, will ask me, "What's up?"

And if I answer the phone at all, I'll say, "Um... Yeah."

So anyway... That seems to be habit too. Blah. Fuck it. I'm going to drink some more water. My lips are chapped. As somebody back at the camp said, it's easy to get dehydrated around here. Gulp, gulp.