I'm dying, groaning, suffering, under the weight of a wealth of riches. I'm suffocating under all my wealth.

My computer wealth. My software. My files. I can reach out at a whim all across the world and download information on virtually any subject - so I do it. I can reach out and find software that will do virtually anything I think of - so I do it. I can get things to look at things to listen to things to play with, serious, not so serious, frivolous.... I'm never without something I can get.

I am never stuck alone in a room with nothing, no means of getting anything, isolated, dumb, ignorant, hopeless, powerless, as I so often was as a child, without even the power to get a book to read to take me out of the grey inhospitable world I fancied myself to be in. (Lacking the spark of genius needed to lighten my own darkness with inspiration and more own unique thought).

Now nothing like that can ever happen (failing the temporary interruptions of hard drive crash and power outages, etc...) I always have my trusty computer and the internet connecting me with millions perhaps billions of people. Connecting me with intellectual wealth.

And like a starving peasant I've glutted myself on these riches. Like the world's greatest dilletante I've had a try at everything, anything, that I could find. Looked everywhere, peered at this that and the other.....

And I've been killing myself. I've seen some signs. Like I go to Forums immediately I have a problem with one of my dilletantish interests. I go straight to a forum and ask for help. And a couple of times I've been struck by how self evident the help was, when I finally got it. Like, for instance, 'check the help screen' or 'google that question'.

But I was too slack to show that amount of initiative. I just went asking others for help. Because I've been so rich for so long, so spoiled, so used to downloading riches, that I've lost all gumption, all ability to think for myself, to grit the teeth and get down to it and slog it out to the end, find a solution, find alternatives, think about it, just merely think about it.....

Here's some evidence - I've lived my live with maybe at best 200 books and magazines in my home at any one time. I'd reckon. About that. Considered myself literate and a reader and not a dunce, but I'd never have had more than that laying around. Never.

Now I just checked my computer. I did a directory and file listing. Put it in a file, of course. That file itself is 20 megabytes in size. And it tells me that I have 265,000 files on my C: drive alone.

That's staggering, isn't it? But we're not easily staggered these days. We are accustomed to almost anything. You'll say, for instance, that most of those files are simply little tiny nothing things created by the piece of software they belong to. That dozens of those files may belong to a simple piece of software that does nothing more than perhaps allow you paint simple pictures.

Fair enough. But each piece of software can be considered some sort of equivalent to a book, or magazine, surely? And each piece of software usually resides in its own directory. So a directory count would be much more significant, right?

That file tells me I have over 70,000 directories on my C: drive.

Well, you say, many progs have many directories. Okay. Maybe an average of 10 directories per application? I think that's wildly overestimating but even so, if true, it'd mean I have 7,000 applications or 'things of interest' (i.e. directories created to store, text, pictures, music or whatever, collected, downloaded or created, because it interested me for a while at least).

7,000 ? I need 7000 different things to maintain my mental life?

I looked in my program files to see how many progs I currently was running and there's 320 progs in my 'Program Files'. That's some sort of indication.

What does it all mean?

Ha, ha, ha, hee, hee, hee, lol, fal, whatever.... I'm killing myself laughing, that's what I'm trying to say.

I just googled for print a directory listing and discovered a link to a Microsoft Tech page on how to make a directory listing from WinXP. You know what they said? They said take a screen shot and print the image!!

That's a joke, guys, if you don't realise it then let me tell you. That's a joke. That's the funniest thing. That's ridiculous, that's why it's a joke.

But then it makes you think and it gets even funnier - after all this time, all these incarnations of Windows, all the billions of dollars spent, and you still can't make a directory/file listing and print it out.

and you still can't easily display files of one type in a directory ('folder' for those recently born).

and you can't easily pipe output from one into another.

and you can't readily edit text files, or search them, or anything....

What you can do is go to DOS. Not 'drop to DOS' because XP is no longer sitting ontop of a DOS kernel. Or I don't think it is. But go to DOS because they have included a DOS engine in WinXP.

Go to DOS and there at that crude command line interface you'll find powers and abilities that will leave you gasping. If you've got the ability to find them, use them, understand them.

And you'll find the ability to list and print directories, all the files in a directory and its sub directories, selected types of files, files of a certain age.... on and on.... abilities you haven't even dreamt of.

And they're all twenty years old at least. And still haven't been reached by Windows.

Ha, ha,ha,ha.......