I had enough.

I finally had enough. Yesterday I tried to do a trivial sort of a list that is part of a larger LaTeX document. Well, it turned out that I can’t unless I pipe the list (and only the list) to sort, or I fire up a full-blown spreadsheet like Gnumeric or KSpread and re-type the whole list.

This is frustrating, disturbing, and innecessary. How did I got myself into messes such as this one? Well, I had to recognize that most of these annoyances are directly tied to my choice of operating systems; and thus, I made a decision. I had enough.

Tomorrow, as soon as I can find a free slot in my office, I’m going to repartition my hard disk. After a thorough backup, I’ll try Windows XP SP 2 as my only operating system on this machine.

I’m tired of the fiddling. I need something that just works.

And, if you believed one inch of the above, my dear reader, may your innocence be worthy to you! 😀

Today, December 28, is the Feast of the Innocent Saints. In this day the Church calendar remembers the slaughter of a whole generation of children by Herod (Matthew 2:16).

In most Hispanic countries, this day is what April 1 is in English-speaking countries. Now, given that in Spanish “innocence” is synonym with “naiveté” (and even in English, one of the meanings is “lack of worldly experience or sophistication”), people usually play jokes on this day. Pranksters would make all kinds of outrageous announcements, and you’ll be surprised to see how much people fall for them.

One of the most remarkable instances of this joking is the newspapers, who would carry some outrageous stories, with the disclaimer at the very end of the story.

Once you see that the other person is totally believing in what you say, then you laugh heartily and say, “¡que la inocencia te valga!” (lit., I hope your naiveté might be of some use to you!).

So, dear readers, may your innocence be useful to you! But, now seriously, may the Lord be with you in every moment of your lives.

7 Comments

  1. I’d never heard of that particular festive celebration, but I smelled something coming. All the more so since I could have done the job myself without XP and such.

  2. Well now I can pull a fast one on my daughter (who studies Spanish).

  3. Add me to the fool list too. I was shocked in the beginning.

  4. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it was your post – I’m glad that you were just joking 🙂

  5. I’m glad you had some fun with it 🙂 I found a link with more information about Innocent’s Day in Spain which might be informative.

    Brad, and everyone: Nobody’s fool. I would be very reluctant to call any of you as such. This was a joke, and that’s it.

    The worst “Innocents’ Day” joke I played was some time ago. There’s a forum for Paraguayan internet users, run by one of the Paraguayan ISPs. Let’s name this ISP something like “Jupiter Internet”. The forum is very active –and old–, and is the place for online Paraguayans to gather.

    Well, one December 28th I posted a topic. Inside there was a fake press release announcing the supposed buyout of “Jupiter Internet” by AOL (Yes. I can be that bad…). The press release sounded very authentic, and it even included some remarks by Steve Case saying how this purchase would enable AOL to tap the burgeoning Paraguayan market, and so, and so… (At that time, also, AOL had bought a Brazilian ISP and an Argentinian one, so the acquisition had some plausibility.)

    Not only a LOT of people fell for it; but also the NOC sysop of “Jupiter Internet” went ballistic. He said that he wasn’t consulted about this (he was a stakeholder in the company), and he swore that he would NEVER EVER work for a scumbag like AOL… until I asked him the date, and he realized it was a joke.

  6. That’s a good one, Eduardo. And believable too, especially since I’m on hiatus from GNU/Linux at the moment (but I’d never abandon *nix unless I absolutely had to). The only thing that made me suspicious is that you were going to switch to Windows XP of all things. Ack! (And you don’t seem like the type to give up so easily.)

    Hmm… maybe I should try to observe this holiday in the U.S., no one would suspect it!

    Your other prank reminds me of one I did on April Fools day a few years back on CS and the other mailing lists I host. I announced that my company had been acquired in a complex transaction with AOL and Red Hat and that I couldn’t stay on the list due to the fact that Red Hat would own the list (and perhaps shut it down) and that I would be an AOL employee. One person unsubscribed immediately in protest to the buy-out. Even after I pointed out the date, I had one guy trying to e-mail me at an AOL corporate address. 😉

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