Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Time, life and distributions.

The days cascade into one another and I look up once in a while to discover that another week, few weeks, month, few months have passed. It seems impossible, I was only distracted for a few seconds. Where does the time go? Does it swirl away, in a counter-clockwise spiral, into some mysterious rabbit hole? Am I really so terribly late?

Mom's just gotten re-certified for Hospice care. It's somehow very significant to medical people (I don't waste time trying to fathom that); what it means to us is that a nurses aid comes in three days a week and bathes mom (we love our "bath lady"!), a nurse comes in once a week and takes mom's vital signs and. best of all, a social worker drops by about once a month and listens to our troubles. I don't suppose there's much of anything she could do to help us but she listens, she's sympathetic, she commiserates with us and I always feel better afterwards. Lisa was born Catholic so it's probably not a big deal to her but I think maybe I understand how it feels to have gone to confession and "unloaded". I expect Catholic priests and social workers are far more cognizant than I of just how similar their jobs can be. Carol (the social worker) doesn't cross me or mutter words of absolution but the net effect is probably about the same.

One of the fellows on the SATLUG email list insists that we Linux users should all give thanks to saint iGNUcious. My response is "Ok, but first, what distro is he using?".

A friend was complaining about the fact that there are hundreds of different Linux distros making it very difficult to figure out which one is best suited to your needs. My only comment was "Have you bought a car lately?". Too many choices can be awfully confusing but it's vastly superior to the alternative.