Refraction

If I’ve learned one thing recently, it’s that I am not cut out for a full-time career in retail.

I am exhausted, which explains why I haven’t been in touch, or replied to emails (I read them and think, I’ll reply to this later.) Well, I’ve been working day shifts lately, and since my dad’s got these few weeks off work, we’ve been going out for dinner and the night market. I liked the Mandarin restaurant, because I didn’t have to say a thing at all! The night market is also much more amusing when you can eat, as opposed to wandering around because your mother is stuffing her face with food that you can’t eat.

See, the thing that really sucks about my job is that I never get to sit down, which means I’m standing (and running, and clambering up ladders) for eight hours. I reviewed the dress code for no particular reason today, which says I’m not allowed to wear ‘overly casual shoes’ since that ‘does not promote merchandise authority.’ I’m not good with flats for two reasons: a) lack of arch support; b) lack of height–heels are the way to go. (Besides which, our flats are ugly. But that’s another story.)

I worked 38.5 hours last week. It’s going to be something like that for this week, too, and I’m working the full 40 the week before I leave. On one hand, I was not expecting to work this much, and this will pad my budget for my trip nicely; on the other hand–grrrsummertourists!nohabloespanol!toomuchtodo!nofoodtoeat!.

Someone actually asked me for winter boots today. What was slightly more disturbing was that she started off the conversation with ¿Hablas español? I need to take a Spanish course at some point in the near future so that I can stay sane. And Korean. I need to learn some kind of basic Korean. “I don’t speak Korean” would be a good start.

Oh, and German, since I told Mrs. French that I’d be fluent by 2010. XP

My days off are jam-packed as well; I still have to buy:

• luggage
• summer clothes; I can survive the summers here, but I think it’s a lot warmer in Québec
• material to make that darn sheer summer poncho
• something I can wear to a ‘formal’ event in the summer

Not to mention that installing a simple game on the Linux box is taking the better part of my patience. I’ve spent about three hours on that, now, and it’s still not working. I’m going to cry.

We now have a Linux box running downstairs. Linux is the operating system that real geeks use :biggrin: For anyone out there with a clue to how this stuff works, it’s a SUSE distro.

To be honest, I’m just poking around at this point.

My first thought on booting up the computer was: Hey, this reminds me a lot of a Mac. The desktop is nearly empty, there’s no taskbar at the bottom, and it’s all very clean-looking. Like the Macs I used to use in elementary school, there’s a bar along the top that screams “Mac” at me: it offers access to programs and a bunch of other things. There’s no dock, though, and I wonder if that might be something to look into installing.

My second thought was: Great, how do I do anything without a mouse? (I have only one PS/2 and/or USB compatible mouse.) It turns out it’s quite similar to coping with a mouseless Windows computer–the numpad can be converted into a crude sort of mouse. Besides, I’ve always been a keyboard shortcuts kind of person, anyway. Unfortunately, the Windows key on the keyboard does nothing.

My third thought was: It’s nice to see they have their priorities in order. By alphabetical luck, the first option under the “Applications” (that’s another Mac word, isn’t it?) is “Games.” Awesome.

My fourth thought was: The games on this thing are so much better than the ones on Windows. Yeah, yeah, XP ships with Solitaire (Spider and Klondike), Minesweeper, Hearts, Pinball, and a few others. This distro has clones of Bubble Bobble (with penguins! :D), Tetris, Super Mario (with penguins! :D), Yahtzee, and Snake. There are at least 15 games on that sucker.

Next: I wonder how it plays with my USB drive. Not too well, it seems. I don’t understand this concept of “mounting,” since I’m never given an option to mount the thing, and when I try to “un-mount” (ie, “remove safely”) I can’t, because I’m not signed in as the root user. Still, with some attention, I can transfer files back and forth.

What kind of files, you ask? It comes with OpenOffice!! AWESOME!! OpenOffice is an open source, freeware alternative to MS Office. I’ve only tried the equivalent to Word so far, but it seems the two programs can read each other okay. Fonts are a bit of a problem, but since I only have a printer hooked up to the Windows computer, I’m not too fussed about this: one can always change the font as necessary on that box, instead. I still need to install Asian font support, though–I hope it exists.

More exploring yields… The GIMP!! Super-awesome! The GIMP is a freeware alternative to Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop. We’re not talking Paint, with its complement of approximately three tools. Full-fledged Photoshop, my friends, with layer editing and a whole lot of other stuff. I have a portable version on my USB drive. 🙂

There are a few multimedia programs, but as I have no speakers, either, I didn’t get a chance to test those out.

Still, this is exciting 🙂