Now, this one requires some explanation. The Wikipedia page gives more information than most humans really want to know, but I’ll explain here, too… There’s a huge Japanese image board (like a message board, only based around images) called Futaba Channel, which has spawned a bunch of memes and original characters. XP-tan here is one of them, along with 2K-tan, OS X-tan, Linux-tan and so on… They’re all representations of operating systems. (Although it’s expanded since then…DS-tan is an example.) The “tan” is a corruption of “chan,” which is an affectionate, informal Japanese name suffix. XP-tan here is essentially pretty but useless…

I was thinking about XP-tan because I use Windows XP for my job, since it and Internet Explorer are required for the ETS test rater setup. Thanks to Brian setting up Bootcamp on my system, I can switch back and forth easily, and since I work at home, it helps with the feeling of being done with work for the day… to switch from annoying, ugly XP to my lovely Mac OS is like coming home. (I use the wrong keyboard commands for about an hour, though…) There are various Mac OS-tans, but I couldn’t find one with a design that was as well-recognized as the Windows-based ones, and I didn’t really like the green one that Wikipedia bases its image on…