--- The husband and I

--- The husband and I are weird. We name our computers. Mine, aptly enough, is called Wee Bastard.
The history behind this name is not hard to figure out: the damn thing
was a bastard for about the first year it was mine to work with.
Instead of being compensated for his work in cold hard cash, the
husband sometimes receives computers. We have three in the office:
we’ve paid for one. Wee Bastard is an Compaq Armada E500 that was
originally purchased in Kuwait, and when it became readily apparent the
husband had been screwed over by his Kuwaiti business partners, he kept
the laptop and found a new job. Wee Bastard was originally installed
with the Arabic Enabled version of Windows 98. Not only did it have
English characters on the keyboard, it also had Arabic characters on
the keyboard. As a result, it should have been admitted into a mental
hospital. One minute I’d be typing away in Word and then the next…presto chango!…the
cursor would abruptly be going right to left and there would be a page
or so worth of Arabic characters. Ugh. Then it would crash. As soon as
you’d have it up and running again, it would, inexplicably, crash
again. So, you might be able to see how the laptop acquired its
nickname. However, ever since the husband installed XP Pro on the
beast, it’s worked just fine. No more ctrl-alt-del ten times a day.
No more lost data. It seemed, the minute the Arabic was wiped from the
system, it worked just fine. That was two years ago, and with the
exception of a two crashes, one dead keyboard and one battery
replacement, it’s been fine. That is, until the past few days. It’s
hot. Damn hot! How hot is it, Kathy? you ask? Hot
enough that I can feel the heat on my legs through the pillow that acts
as a workspace when I’m on the couch. It’s also loud. The fan runs
all the time, and as a result, it slows down the processor and it takes
twenty or thirty seconds before words appear on the screen as a result.
Not good. So, currently the husband has Wee Bastard disassembled on the
dining room table and is cleaning the sucker out. I’m on his
computer---Gandalf---the one with the funky keyboard that makes me
commit unforced typos, and keep your fingers crossed, maybe his
machinations will work. --- Well, at least they found a technicality to
get her off.

Doesn’t really matter, I guess, that the reason she got off was that the original ruling
"is not consonant with the laws of Katsina state because the police did
not arrest the suspects when they committed the offence." She got
off, that’s what’s important. Although, I wish they’d have let
her off because stoning someone for adultery is wrong, and not because
of a technicality. It got Amina off the hook, and for that I’m glad,
but it’s like when you get a math problem correct, but not because
you did the math correctly. I wish they would have come to the correct
answer in the correct way. But, then again, I’m asserting my western,
imperialist pig standards where they shouldn’t be asserted.
--- When is this guy going to shut his damn mouth?

Oh, come and invest in Italy because we have the most beautiful secretaries in the world?

Puhleeze.

--- Here’s your Chuckle for the Day.

Talk about some serious faith, eh?