He sort of gets this gleam in his eye and then starts Linuxbabbling.

Whoooosh, right over my head.

Then he looks so distressed that I don't immediately understand the LinuxGlee

Much easier to just ask a sane person 'what means, please?'

I figure with the huge amounts of posters, a couple of sane ones will help me out

Then I'll whip out *my* N800 and show him my pretty background pictures.