Naming the Laptop

After all, the laptop is for writing. That is its essential purpose. Not browsing; not movie-watching. A few days of testing and it seems to suit admirably well. So it is time to get comfortable together and settle down to some real work...to start with, writing, anything at all, regularly.

So. The getting comfortable part. Computer and I must feel like a team. I had a long-term relationship with my last laptop, which has been succeeded by no other for several years. In the interests of making the pursuit of my writing a possibility, this one has come as a present. It meets my sole specifications. It has all I need in a laptop. But we require finalization in some gesture---we need a name to make us comfortable.

What is in a name?? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet...and I won't engage upon Anne-esque commentary on that subject, but I always feel there is a great deal in an aptly chosen name... let's see. Data won't do. Nor just, "Computer." Like "Cat" in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Darlene sounds like a personal secretary who eats too many donuts. Hm.

I think Cornelius is right. Cornelius, the half-dwarf, wizard-tutor of Lewis' Prince Caspian. Cornelius, the faithful believer precariously positioned as tutor in the royal household drawn up along the sketchy lines of Hamlet and his usurping uncle. Cornelius, who encounters endless prejudice on both counts of faith and race, doing the best he can to honor truth in faithless times and preserve a memory of history, even when history is denied; reason, when reason is gainsaid by an empty tradition of lawless lawmakers; literacy, when literacy is dangerous because of what you read and what you learn from it...what ideas you might be prompted to consider.

Yes. Cornelius is a fitting compatriot in these hapless times.

12 am Rant

So. This is Times New Roman. That is, the Times New Roman spin-off. The off-brand. The second-rate because of lack of name. That tag you wear (or in this case, don't wear) that says, “look at me. I have arrived.” But, it is in all qualities, alike. In no way inferior. Not missing a single serif. But nameless. And therefore, people don’t use Linux. Why not??

Prestige? Laziness? Fear of the unknown?? Or fear of responsibility for one's computer life: the million unintended agreements and consequences that are entailed by pre-packaged OS's.  Fear of the responsibilities of freedom.

What kind of nonsense do you write at twelve in the morning to test a new laptop for its typewriting qualities?

Gah. There actually WAS an annoying note. An auto-correct. A phantom of the Nazis, telling me, ME, how to spell. Words like antiquarian and proletariat, thou and thee and the other. Grammar suggestions from geeks. But the wrong SORT of geeks. The ones that do not KNOW how to pronounce homogenous. That are unaware that two words co-exist and that one, more greatly used, is now seen as a synonymous variation of the other... which is nonetheless no argument for spelling "homogenous" (as in milk) and saying homo-genius. People who understand the most primitive logic required to code a computer, those that indefatigably gabble garble with the screen in tiny minutiae at 3 o clock in the morning accompanied by half an old sandwich and a liter of mountain dew (and admittedly, without whom my resources in life would be greatly reduced). 

Telling Me how to spell. I must interject an old-fashioned, disgusted, “Well, really.”

And I mean it, too.