Windows, definitions 1 and 2

Last week has somehow ended up focused on two kinds of windows--the kind that let me see the outside world from inside my house and the kind that provides the operating system to my computers at school.

It was discovered a couple of months ago that one of our windows, one in my home office to be specific, was rotting out. Shortly after that I discovered one of our bedroom windows was rotting out. It looked like someone had just painted over existing wood rot instead of replacing the sills, leading the the entire thing rotting. Because both culprits are in bays, we were looking at least 6 windows needing replacement.

So we called the local Anderson windows dealer, who discovered two more heavily rotting windows. These are windows that we never look out of since they just look into our neighbors windows and we can't easily see from the ground, but even we could see (when the blinds were drawn) that they looked like they belonged in a haunted mansion.

Hello custom, rot-proof windows. Goodbye nice vacation.

At school/work, IT is going crazy about replacing XP computers with Windows 7 computers. Yes, they are replacing the incredibly out of date operating system with a slightly less out of date operating system.

For most people, this is good news. Faster computers. New monitors, etc.

This is horrible for any sort of researcher. Custom software. Very expensive proprietary software that only allows one installation and is necessary to run a very expensive piece of equipment. Data that you don't want to run even the slightest chance of losing because that there's 4 years worth of work. For a theoretician, everything applies except the equipment.

Needless to say, most of us were trying hard to hide our computers and ignoring emails and personal inspections by the department IT guy.

I finally had to give in because the XP computers were going to be cut off from internet, and the program I depend on to produce graphs requires an internet connection, the stupid thing. But I'm keeping my old one, off network, lest I lose anything.

I was really excited to have two monitors at last. If only the new one actually worked.

Oh well, maybe I can get graphs in less than 2 hours computation time now.