"This house is clean"

Once in a while, I really enjoy starting with a clean hard drive filled with nothing but zeros, creating the perfect boot floppy, loading the OS, throwing on the apps, and then restoring the media thangs I like: pictures, docs, wallpaper, sounds, internet bookmarks, porn favorites. And then comes the configuring. Get it all just right. It's like a Zen thing, raking water-ripple circles onto the clean, white pebbles, placing larger stones where they think they should go. Or it's like spring cleaning, getting the stale air and dust out of the house. Trading blue screens for clean windows and blue sky. Pausing only for the upload of an occasional sip of beer and the obligatory download. Out with the old, in with the new. (And don't forget to clean up all the garbage files that Windows makes whilst forming itself.) Defrag. 'Tis a thing of beauty. 'Tis a thing of joy.

I've done it in Windows 3.0 through 98 (I refuse to move up to the new versions of Windows that allow Microsoft to check on your configuration and require you enter the registry key every time you fiddle with the devices. Microsoft will wise up about that someday, but only after Macs and/or Linux have thoroughly mopped up their ambivalent market share), hitting on NT along the way occasionally (NT is a total pain in the ass due to security and account management stuff - it's much like dating someone after they've had a messy breakup), reveling in the clean and pretty Macintosh experience, and finally lurching and tripping through Linux. (I did VAX/VMS way back when, but I finally tossed out those doorstop/childbooster manuals about 5 years ago when it was clear only crusty legacy systems and the military still use it). I've seen 'em all. They all hold special places in my memory. Some made me a better man, some were simply lessons on what to avoid in the future. To all the girls I've loved before.

The order in which you load the applications is key, because, much like the politics involved regarding how women run their households (see digression below), you have to load the applications starting with the least important and ending with the big dogs who will run the show, because applications, as they load, associate themselves to the file types they open, so the bosses come last. Determining this order is often as much fun as putting together the guest list for a huge barbeque and beer bash. You gotta get the charmers, the blowhards, the wallflowers and social butterflies balanced just right so the party rocks on until the last person drops or dawn arrives, whichever comes first.

TLD: Ever notice the tension between women who have to share a house or apartment with another woman? My wife and I are of the opinion the woman sets the rhythm and the tone of the household, determines what happens and when, decides where things are placed, so when you get two women in the same house for any length of time, let's say a mom-in-law visits for a week, there is invariably tension as they try to merge their calendars or, more likely, obliquely battle for dominance. Lesser mortals (for those of you in the cheap seats, that would be husbands and children) are wise to just stay the hell out of the way, not take sides, and when summoned for dispute management, respond in non-committal mumbles while furtively edging towards the nearest exit.

After everything's loaded, you have to go through and open each application, because most of them have some last-minute annoyance they spring on you, such as a registration key or some addlepated wizard that's supposed to help your grandma send email (she'll end up calling you for help, instead), and you don't want these things leaping into your path when you think of that perfect opening sentence for your next opus. Then comes the time to configure Word just the way it must be. I always need to add the thesaurus button (hey, Sting uses a rhyming dictionary, I'm gonna use the thes.), throw on buttons for hiding spelling and grammar errors, add the obligatory "paste special" button so I don't have to fight with whatever formatting some programmer thought was worth saving or not, and tell clippy to fuck off for good.

Finally, the moment has arrived for the final reboot wherein one revels in the speed, the lack of error messages, and the playing of the latest startup sound - I'm partial to the THX surround sound filling-rattler, myself. Then close it all down, because it's two A.M., and soon your wife will come hunting for you just to make sure you haven't choked on a pretzel or something.