Obviously not on board with Macs, ETS wrote me that they require the use of a Windows OS-friendly machine. Since I didn't plan to pollute my Mac with Windows emulator software, I had to turn once again to my Asus Eee PC-- a netbook that started out great when I bought it, but became so rife with viruses that it was almost impossible to use-- this despite the presence of antivirus software. (I suspect the antivirus software slowed the computer's performance down as well.)
So after months of dormancy, my pestilential Asus (did you know that it's supposed to be pronounced "uh-SOOS"-- a Seuss!-- and not "AY-suss"?*) has just undergone The Great Flush: it came with a system software CD-ROM, so I've booted from the CD, vaporized all the data that been locked inside the computer (I did manage to rescue crucial files before the computer clogged up completely), and performed a total system restore.
Once I have a bit of cash, I think I'll have to buy a proper desktop PC devoted almost exclusively to TOEFL essay rating. But that's not something I can think about right now. Right now, I need to go through the training and certification process, which I'll be doing later in the morning (it's 1:46AM on Wednesday as I write this). The training is something like an 8-hour program; the certification process is a three-hour procedure that, once started, must be completed in the allotted time. ETS pays for all this, and if you fail the certification test at the end, they'll even pay you (though not as much) for a single retest.
So I'm about to start work with ETS. About to become a cog in a very, very large corporate machine. On the bright side, I'll be swimming against the current in an economy that's gone to shit, and making enough money both to stay afloat and to start figuring out what happens for the rest of my life. A new chapter begins.
*Wikipedia lists both pronunciations as common, but a recent TV commercial-- the only one in which I've ever heard Asus mentioned-- favors the "a Seuss!" rendering.
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We're all cogs, just not all in the same machine. Best of luck!
ReplyDelete(And I always thought it was pronounced as sort of a hybrid between the two pronunciations you offered--essentially, "Jesus" as a Spanish name, but without the initial "h" sound.)
You might want to try Microsoft Security Essentials. Not only is it free, but Microsoft really has to try their best to stay on top of the computing world any way they can.
ReplyDeleteunsolicited suggestions:
ReplyDeleteIf your Asus notebook had a lot of viruses on it, it's possible that the master boot record (MBR) was infected. This isn't normally overwritten when your reformat and reinstall, which means that your newly installed system will soon be infected again. You'll want to take some steps to make sure this doesn't happen. More info -
http://www.itechs-systems.com/articles/a5.htm
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/44/master_boot_record_mbr_fix_repair/
Also, instead of using an emulator, you can run Windows in a virtual machine on your Mac. The virtual machine is insulated from the host OS and won't affect it, even if it gets horribly infected (at least, this is true for the time being). VirtualBox is free and works pretty well -
http://www.virtualbox.org/
suggestions over!
Thanks, all. I'm looking into Virtual Box for my Mac, but have also installed Microsoft Security Essentials on my Asus PC.
ReplyDeleteKevin