In which this will have to suffice!

I was gonna write about my weekend, but it really needs a particular image to make the post work, but I still can’t send images from my phone to Flickr and I forgot the phone’s USB cable at home so I can’t get the image online until later. Ergo: no real post until tomorrow.

In other news, I just got off the phone with a guy who is running a dual boot XP/Kubuntu box, possibly a laptop. He could connect and surf in XP, but not in Kubuntu. I had him put Google’s IP into the browser and the page didn’t load. I said he wasn’t online. He said he was. I asked him if he knew how to ping. He did not. I told him I’m not trained to support Linux distros, but that I suspected his problem was one of the following: lack of appropriate drivers for the wireless adapter; firewall settings; or conflicts from trying to connect to the same wireless router from two operating systems with the same MAC address. I explained that I couldn’t fix his problem.

He asked me if there was anyone else in tech support who could help him. I said there was not. He asked me if I could ask around. I explained that no one here was trained to support Linux and could do so only from personal experience and that NO ONE HERE RUNS KUBUNTU AT HOME, TRUST ME.

Stymied, he then went into detailed questions about encryption types and the fact that he has a wireless DSL modem with a wireless router behind it. I replied that I had no way of knowing which encryption type he had enabled on his wireless AP and that having two broadcasting wireless routers in his LAN was a personal problem. He then went off on another round of 1D10T questions that were only tangentially related to ANYTHING AT ALL EVER.

I finally said, “Listen! Since you can surf when you’re booted into Windows, we know that your connection works and that your hardware works. Therefore, your PROBLEM is with your LINUX DISTRO and as I’ve said NINE TIMES already I am not required to nor INTERESTED in supporting your issue, and I couldn’t even if I wanted to because YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO PING. So! Go log into Windows, go to kubuntu.org, and surf the forums until you find your answer.”

Moral: if you’re running Linux, (1.) be a geek, and (2.) GET OFF MY PHONE.