It's alive, it's alive

The house was dark and the storm outside only made it worse. Rain was blowing sideways, wind howling and I thought I had heard the worst of it until lightning struck the house. Night became day for an instant, I thought I heard movement in the other room. I peaked in, the computer that sat on the shelf booted itself and began to have a life of its' own. Dag man, I said, if your going to choose a life, why you choose XP? Well I have a couple. First I do have XP as a virtual machine, which works fine but, sharing resources is a bit of a problem if you don't have enough memory. I installed Solid Edge, a 2d/3d drafting package. It worked but demanded more memory so there was the performance hit. So, until I get some more memory for my Linux box, I resurrected a MS machine to handle the drafting programs. Hey, you ask, doesn't Linux have drafting software? Yes it does but, they are not the popular choice in use among draftsman and engineers in business. I do have one Linux package called Qcad which I am exploring. Qcad's development has been slow probably due to the lack of interest for engineering graphics on the Linux desktop. It's the chicken and the egg thing all over again. Which comes first, the product or the user base. I don't know why I coupled XP's resurrection with a lightning strike, the metaphor doesn't match the slow process to get it installed. This is a practical thing to get at engineering software that only runs on MS, so don't get puffy. I think you folks in Linuxville will understand and forgive my indulgence. Anyway, I get to try out Samba and remote desktop and other things that lets Linux computer peak into MS Windows computers. Ya see, every monster is another opportunity to discover more of Linux.