Mom informs me that her excellent computer-repair instincts had nothing to do with
her education in biology or her experience in analyzing medical literature.

My model for my suggestion for your computer was starting a baby on
solid food. You start with one food at a time, wait a few days, and then add
another, and then another. That way, if something causes an allergy, you know
what it is. Simple really.

Today at work I was really bored, so I tried downloading and installing
the Dada Engine. This wonderful
software generates random text from a “grammar”, which is just a text file consisting
of rules. There are a number of fun examples of the Dada Engine in action,
including the Postmodernism
Generator and the Random Adolescent
Poetry Generator. I was really looking forward to inventing my own scripts.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t compile the software at work. It requires GNU make,
and at work we use Solaris (duh). I should have known this would happen… I had the
same trouble with the Apache webserver last year. Now,
even a dumb tech writer like me can install gcc and GNU make eventually,
but my knowledge of C is so weak… I’d rather not spend hours and hours trying to graft GNU-stuff
onto Solaris. I managed to do it once before, but it was singularly unpleasant.

Maybe some bright enterprising young person should rewrite the Dada Engine in Java.
Just as an exercise.