Every once in a while, I try to remind some of you the time has come for you to consciously consider alternatives to Microsoft software. Time to wake from the coma. The nightmare you’ve been living.

Macs are far superior and not any more expensive. Ubuntu can do everything you need and is totally Free and free. OpenOffice is more compatible with versions Microsoft Office than Microsoft itself. Internet Explorer is a toy for little kids; grown-ups use adult browsers such as FireFox or Opera. The list goes on.

Recently, I read Paul Graham’s both wise and funny essay. I’d like to share some choice quotes with you.

A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead… No one is even afraid of Microsoft anymore. They still make a lot of money—so does IBM, for that matter. But they’re not dangerous.

I’d guess they were dead by 2005…. What killed them? Four things, I think, all of them occurring simultaneously in the mid 2000s.

The most obvious is Google… what later came to be called “Ajax.” And that was the second cause of Microsoft’s death: everyone can see the desktop is over. It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the web… The third cause of Microsoft’s death was broadband Internet…. The last nail in the coffin came, of all places, from Apple. Thanks to OS X, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare in technology. Their victory is so complete that I’m now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows.

Windows is for grandmas… no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft’s anyway.

I’m glad Microsoft is dead. They were like Nero or Commodus—evil in the way only inherited power can make you. Because remember, the Microsoft monopoly didn’t begin with Microsoft. They got it from IBM.

Microsoft’s biggest weakness is that they still don’t realize how much they suck.

If you use Windows XP, you’re going to keep hearing more things like this. The gauntlet has been thrown down and the writing is on the wall. I tend to agree with the guesstimate that Microsoft died somewhere around 2005. It’s over, folks. Definitely over. A chicken with it’s head cut-off may run around a little bit a lot, but it’s dead all the same.

If you use Windows XP and you’re comfortable paying fair money for a quality computer that makes your experience better, plan on buying a Mac next; they rock something fierce.

If you use Windows XP and need to keep your costs down, then download Ubuntu and install it as a dual-boot so your existing computer can have XP and Ubuntu at the same time in order to let you learn slowly just how easy it is to replace Windows with a quality operating system that’s free.

Wake up and smell the coffee. Or has your senility already set in?

To an outsider, it may seem city government in Bucureşti must hold in high esteem the groundbreaking work of such philosophers as Gheorghe Orweliescu, traditional founder of the Hex:7C0 School of City Planning Theory.

The city is divided into six numbered sectors which read like a remnant of a cold, faceless dictatorship in Star Wars novels.

I am citizen 12503944 assigned to live in Sector 5.

In addition to the city having an elected mayor who oversees various ministries, departments, and assorted underlings and minions, the all-wise and benevolent dictators of eons past saw fit to assign a separate mayor to each sector, whose role is akin to a mafia underboss left to run his territory.

We all know implicitly or explicitly that government officials tend to have the most glorious buildings built to house their important selves. From the kings of yore to the demi-gods of today.

It is critical to public order that massive amounts of human labor must be extracted from the citizens through taxation, so massive structures can be erected as testament to the superiority of our overlords.

It’s the same most anywhere in the world. Often times, the most expensive properties and the fanciest architecture tend to belong to the people who tell us how to run our lives.

If you average out all property values across a given area, you’ll find the rule says the most posh places are always government offices.

Afterall, why not? They didn’t spend their own money.

So, to show you how wealthy my neighborhood is, what could possibly better display the grandeur of my environs other than to show you the the very structure which serves as headquarters for the exaulted  Public Administration wing of the honorable office of Sector 5 mayor in Bucureşti?

Behold!

What’s the point in more photos? You already get the idea. It’s all over the place.

This time it was through a very small kitchen window. A very nice and beautiful young woman was in the kitchen at the time. She was hit by the gunk and our evening was ruined. Things have indeed gotten quite personal, now.

A quick search down the dark twists and turns of the neighborhood turned up nothing. Questioning the various groups who stand around at night doing nothing seems to indicate that the two pranksters are apparently well-known in the neighborhood. While no-one would give a name, it seems the two boys live somewhere nearby on Strada Doina.

It was made very clear to everyone that I’ve very keen on catching them. I trust that message will get back to these twin losers. And I trust they’ll have the ego to try again soon, because I’ve got I had a particular idea in mind.

Let’s hope it ends with tonight’s warning and there are no further updates to this topic.

In the meantime, I’ll have to shift-up the timetables on making adequate defensive changes to the perimeter of my castle in order to forestall any future sieges of this nature.

UPDATE: Found them!

The egg throwers belong a group of about eight malcontents, estimated between the ages of 14 and 16. Part of the gasca was one of the small groups spoken to earlier. So, they definitely know I’m interested in the particular egg culprit, one of whom appears barely 14 and possibly 13.

I followed them around for a couple hours during their exploits.

They live on an unlit side street named Blejan Florea. Some of them appear to live at Block 14, Scara 1. Others are from nearby scaras.

The group operates in a pack and seem to be completely without any fear of reprisal. They throw rocks and bottles at the windows of a nearby industrial building. They talk about buying eggs and throwing them at people’s homes.

They like to hang out next to a seemingly-abandoned car under a street light on the corner of Spatarul Preda and Strada Doina, until they have a close brush with being caught doing vandalism by some unfortunate motorist passing by at which point they run down to their block entryways for a sense of safety.

I believe they stole this hubcap (pictured below) from the seemingly-abandoned car they lean on during the hours of around 8 or 9pm until some time around 11pm when they seem to have a pattern of going home. I saw them throw this hubcap with a good deal of force at the glass door entry of my apartment building.

There’s some city maintenance which has been going on for a few days. It looks like the installation of new water pipes. Some construction company has been tearing up the street on Blejan Florea and installing subterranean conduits. Some are 10 meters long, others about 2 meters.

These kids like to take the smaller pipes, which are approximately 5 or 6 inches in diameter, and place them onto darkspots in the street. Many motorists, particularly taxis, are travelling fast and not paying close attention. Then comes the big boom as the car jumps over the pipe and gets the undercarriage damaged.

The kids run and laugh. Some people jump out of the car to yell, pick up the pipes, and then move on. A bicyclist was also victimized. I helped pick up some pipes, myself. But the teenagers come back after just a few minutes of hiding out on their doorsteps to come put pipes back in the street.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Apparently, no one living here does anything. The group seems to be known, at least to some people. The little gang doesn’t appear to be deeply concerned about real trouble of any consequence. So, they conduct their petty terrorizing most nights, it would seem.

When they finally talked about heading home, one kid asked another (possibly an older brother), “Are we going to church tomorrow night?” I’ve come to learn a great many Romanians attend midnight mass on the night before Easter morning.

The other kid snorted, “Church? No, we’re not going to church!”

I’m undermanned without friends nearby and don’t speak the language incredibly well.

What would you do?

Since I normally enjoy fresh air except in the very worst of weather, my window was open tonight as it is most days and nights. I hear people walking past most any time I pay attention.

Just now, around 22:00 local time, some young men stopped outside my apartment window. I’m not sure if they were some disaffected readers or just the usual neighborhood welcome wagon. I could hear them talking, but wasn’t really paying attention to what they were saying.

They lingered for a moment, then the chatter got loud and giggly. I glanced up at the window just in time to see some finger tips struggling to push the windows open further, as if the person on the street was on tip-toes or perhaps getting a boost from a friend.

And just then, an egg sailed into my place.

The mess is everywhere. Books, clothes, body parts, speakers, monitor, keyboard, a table, the bed, and all over the wall. I figure the egg must have cracked lightly on one of the window bars which allowed it to spew during the entire arc.

Of course, I immediately yelled in the most booming voice I could summon instinctively. That only made them run faster howling with laughter all the way. I would very much liked to have known exactly who they were.

In fact, I’d like five minutes alone with them.

Update: As promised.

As suspected, the egg clearly hit the bars on the way in and left fragments on the sill and elsewhere.

It lost a considerable amount of fluid over some as yet unpacked boxes I had by the window.

And it dropped more shell pieces on the floor nearby.

Various computer components were sprayed in melee, as evidenced here.

Looks like I got a discount purchasing a leftover public keyboard from an internet porn convention.

A healthy dose of egg innards painted stripes across the ceiling.

Having recently moved in, having my mind on other things, and famously oblivious to such details, I had failed to notice there was apparently a cobweb on the ceiling. The egg seemed to gather up threads and make sure I could not overlook it.

But the main portion managed to splatter across the wall.

And left behind droplets and shell fragments all over the furniture.

Mind you, I’m showing some sample photos here. There were other spots, drops, bits, pieces, and muck all around the areas you’ve just seen.

As we document further, we must be rational in agreeing that one egg would be insufficient for the amount of havoc witnessed. How else could the following, separate damage cluster have happened?

Further down away from the main attack was a curious tear drop.

In the vicinity were more clumps of egg shell bits.

Egg contents spilled onto books and paper.

A buckshot approach was well sloshed across a swath of my wrinkled comforter.

While the main force of the second attack makes it clear I’ll have to repaint this particular wall, if not both walls.