Brian's World

Presidental Parentals

Grrr, I just got off the phone with my parents. They spent the weekend in Vermont, leaving Kevin and I home alone. That was very nice that mom was finally able to trust us. We didn’t burn the house down, ate food, and acted responsible. Mom should be proud but won’t.

They called this morning checking the usual status of things. What time did we go to bed, what did we eat, etc etc. She asked what my plans were for the day, I responded the usual “I dunno, hangout” which is probably true. Its a weekend in summer, I won’t be “working” or doing anything important. She responded “well, plan on being home for supper” which is aka for we’re having a family meal. I hate it when she “kicks” Katie out, she has no reason to… she’s done nothing wrong at all… mom is just wierd like that.

Dad isn’t much better. When they got home they immediately started grilling me on how much money I spend a week, I said I have no clue.. really, I don’t. I haven’t kept reciepts or anything of that sort. Its my money, I should be able to do what I want with my savings. I know that it’s already been taken and locked into accounts I have no control over, and even when I do have some control things continue to fall apart.

I am a reciepient of RPI’s “Presidental Award”. My reward for recieving the award is a free laptop package RPI value’s at $2000.. I put it closer to $1700. This raises a fairly large problem as I purchased a laptop not to long ago, (7/13) for the pricetag of $1600, saving my parents $400 from the amount I was allowed to spend on one. Dad said I had $2000 to spend on whatever laptop I wanted, I didn’t freakout and go crazy.. I stayed within the limit hoping maybe I could get the difference. I spent the past 2 weeks working on configuring it to meet rpi’s standards as well as mine. It took about a week to get a tri-boot system with XP, Vista, and Linux running… nevermind the time to find drivers for everything. I installed applications from RPI as well as my “personal” collection… I installed and activated software, such as Macromedia Suite 8 that I cannot move to another machine, as well as Visual Studio .net 2003 Professional which I won in a programming contest.. it alone is worth close to $500.

You can guess what my parents thought, lets return the dell, take the freebie. Your past 2 weeks of work have been a waste, that software doesn’t really matter at all.. its just software.. we can call them or something… having two laptops is stupid… how many kida will have more than one computer with them… $1600 is a lot….. I’ll call dell…

Ugh, I have buying cloning farm computers, I know what they do to them… that’s my job.. the faster you can clone the better… RPI is giving me a cloned computer for free, with minimal options to customize it. I cannot reinstall my operating system, I get 0 cd’s, all I get is access to a cloning farm if it dies. They like the term “commonality”… I think of commonality from a security standpoint… all systems are the same.. that means one virus or malignant code can shutdown a majority of the campus… imagine a entire town of people having the same deficiency in their immune system.. one sick person can close down the town…

Grrr… can’t I take it as a prize, a “bonus”, a gift… not a replacement. I know the $1600, like the $400 will never appear to me. I will never actually be able to spend it on anything I want, I’ll be forced to spend it on Parent-approved items.. such as.. i dunno.. NOTHING.

By the way… my mom thinks this award is a gimmick to give away extra laptops… no congradulations from her…

Update…. dad just attacked… He, recognizing I was upset.. offered that I could take my desktop pc as well as the laptop I won… I’m still not a huge fan of the idea of having a huge box.. but its a start… please..dell.. if ur reading this… you don’t want my laptop… it has software you don’t like… like matlab and maple.. eww…

Ugh