Shibboleet syndrome

A very short time after both my brother and I migrated to Linux, we began experiencing the frustration of seeing the reality of the computer world: lazy technicians that charge to destroy your data, incompetent tech support staff who think that Linux is an anti-virus, unscrupulous companies that avoid their responsibilities and blame their helpless users by chanting their eternal mantra: "Your computer must be infected"...

Particularly, dealing with tech support became so unproductive that, once you abandon the rosy all-computers-have-the-same-applications mirage, it is a lot more effective to learn to solve problems yourself unless, of course, you luckily find an individual who really knows about computers. I guess this comic strip summarizes it all.

It's xkcd #806, "Tech Support":









































When I read it back then, I found it amusing because I could identify with the character having the problem with the modem. However, it was until yesterday that I could grasp the full impact of the comic strip; I had a dream that made me experience the level of frustration of the character.

In my dream, after running some updates for my Linux box, I was greeted by the most advanced desktop concept ever designed. Lean and mean, its jaw-dropping effects and futuristic features made me rub my eyes in disbelief: multiple workspaces with activities combined into "pages" of something called "Book", natural voice text synthesis, voice command input in multiple languages, an ultra-cute Foxkeh agent plasmoid retrieving Web pages....and the computer had bullet speed! As I was witnessing the system's amazing responsiveness, all that crossed my mind was "KDE really did it this time. I gotta show this to my brother!"

And there was this swirling, flashy 3D button in the middle of the desktop. When I clicked it, an alarm went off and a song started to play. Impressed, I thought, "Whoa! Cool! It's the same song I selected for the alarm I configured to wake u..."

No!!!!! I woke up. My palm went to my forehead: I was frustrated beyond words...

Shibboleet syndrome.