ANYTHING. He said ANYTHING. I nearly inhaled a green bean so hard I think I coughed up a little bit of my soul on the plate.
and heres the thing. I dont even USE windows. I run a triple-boot with two linux distros and a hackintosh that has eaten itself three times this month alone and I still somehow found myself in a heated defense of an operating system I wouldnt touch with a ten foot pole. my fork is in the air. I'm lecturing him about kernel architectures. KERNEL ARCHITECTURES. At the dinner table. About an OS I DONT. EVEN. RUN.
and my brother is just sitting there eating his pizza bagel like he didn't microwave the FACE off of it earlier today, like he has no idea that the reason his food is a crime against reheating is that our ancient Samsung nukes from the year dot have a 40% heat gradient from center to edge - I measured it once with a candy thermometer, dont @ me - and my dad is looking at me like I've grown a second head.
"son," he says, "I was using computers before you were born."
YEAH DAD. AND THEY STILL HAD GREEN SCREEN MONITORS AND YOU STILL CANT FIGURE OUT HOW TO UN-MINIMIZE A WINDOW. I have watched this man drag a window off the bottom of the screen and then REBOOT THE WHOLE MACHINE because he thought he broke it. And he wants to tell ME about operating systems? He wants to sit there in his recliner with his "start" button and his little paperclip man and tell me about PREFERENCE?
I mean I get it. The man uses AOL for his email. AOL. in 2006. you might as well tell me you still mail letters and expect me to respect you. and I'm not even saying Windows is bad. I'm not. theres things it does fine. it has good driver support. you can game on it. fine. FINE. but "better than LITERALLY ANYTHING" - are you hearing yourself? I could point at a freshly peeled orange and say "you know what this orange is better than Windows at?" and the answer is "being a fresh peeled orange" which is more than I can say for the registry.
I nearly choked. on a GREEN BEAN. because my own FATHER said something so monumentally wrong that my body physically tried to reject it. my body KNEW. my throat KNEW. my green bean KNEW. I had to take a sip of water and sit there and think "this is the man who taught me to ride a bike. he has also never once in his life had to defrag a drive and it shows."
anyway i got really worked up about an OS i dont even use and I think i maybe yelled "LINUX ISNT EVEN AN OPERATING SYSTEM ITS A KERNEL" at him which is the most pretentious thing that has ever come out of my mouth and I am not sorry. my dinner is cold. my green beans are a casualty of war. someone tell me im not the only one whos almost died defending something they would never touch.
i observed similar patterns in my fieldwork regarding totemic animal consumption taboos among isolated highland tribes. the meatloaf seems relevant here.
corrupting the defrost cycle?? exactly. 
