I got a new laptop, because ... well, because, ummm ... ... ...
Turns out I couldn't explain it to Cyndi either.
The hardware came under the tyrannical yoke of Microsoft and the inevitable vendor bloatware. I pay that much money and they still try to sell me to their "partners".
So I did a Lincoln on the poor enslaved thing and installed Linux on it with disk encryption. I tried to get cute with the encryption and that led me to playing with the init routines and frequently using a "rescue" disk. Then I had an insight: just do it the way Debian wants me to do it.
Worked fine.
And for justice ... well, maybe for vengance ... I re-installed Windows as a virtual machine (KVM). So now the oppressor is the oppressed. And that actually works very well.
I decided to name the laptop "14". You know, 14th Amendment.
By the way, if you do happen to like Microsoft and want to improve your experience, I suggest always re-imaging the machine with the iso downloaded from Microsoft. You get to avoid the equipment manufacturer's intrusion into your life and have to suffer only Cortana. Which I muted upon the first opportunity.
Oh, and to change the subject
I just noticed how irritating the header image was on my blog landing page. So I changed it to something nicer. Thank you for not complaining about the old image, but I kind of wish you had.