poukledden

The best reason to use Ubuntu, work-addled Gregory maintains, is the cool names -- each release has a funky animal name. The recent versions: Feisty Fawn (7.04, April 2007), Gutsy Gibbon (7.10, October 2007), Hardy Heron (8.04, April 2008), and the version I'm currently using, Intrepid Ibex (8.10, October 2008). The next release is taking a jaunt - ha! -- into the mythical, with Jaunty Jackalope, which will be version 9.04 and be released in April (you can probably guess what the version numbers mean). Well, they've just announced the name for the version after that, due in October -- Karmic Koala.

Go on. Tell me you don't want something named Karmic Koala on your computer. Macheads can keep their silly cats, and Windows users can keep their, uh, whatevers. Numbers, I guess.

This is about the quality of my thought, mind you, when I try to blog after 9 and a half hours at work.

So here was my Saturday: 10 1/2 hours at work, legs burning with pain by the end (damn those hard floors). Home to vegetate and relax and...not sleep. I was desperately exhuasted, and couldn't sleep.

So, you know, somewhere around 3 am I gave up and decided to at least do something, in the hopes that if I did something and didn't think about sleep, sleep would sneak up on me. Which is why I ran rsync to backup my home directory on my computer, then grabbed the Intrepid Ibex Ubuntu disk I had burned for myself and got to work. Booted up on the disk, and did a complete reformat and install. The end result is what I had hoped: a small host of niggling little problems I had been having on my computer vanished. All programs recognize both optical drives. I can launch my preferred program for movie watching on DVD insert. I can install and delete themes in the Appearance control panel. All the little things that had been breaking are now unbroke. Apparently a year of playing, installing and uninstalling various things (including KDE at one point), plus two distribution upgrades, had done a bit of damage.

I also reclaimed a ton of disk space, which doesn't suck.

What is amazing is how painless it was, even in a hugely sleep-deprived state. The install was painless, and the rest -- instalilng a number of programs I use that aren't in the standard setup, setting up desktop effects, etc -- was a breeze. I had the computer up and running again in less than an hour, and mostly back to the way I like it later in the day, after i had collapsed on the bed and finally gotten to sleep for a while.

I remember when doing clean installs sucked ass. Especially when I had Windows, and had to install Windows and then all the drivers, one by one. And I didn't have an external harddive, so had all my music and files backed up on CDs. This way is much, much nicer.

And, as I said, it did finally bring me to a point where I could sleep. I was helped in this by Spud, who lay in my lap while I fixed the computer, purring and being warm and generally relaxing. Cats are Good Things.

And yesterday I watched the first episode of Cosmos and then Topper and Topper Returns. This was goodness.

Today was one of those days in which I spent a lot of time doing many things and ended up mostly feeling like the day was completely wasted. I did, however, accomplish the task of updating my computer -- it's now an Intrepid Ibex instead of a Hardy Heron -- which is nice. There is new, minor bling all over the place, and several annoying problems from Hardy are gone, gone, gone. Among the fun little bits is that Totem, the movie player application, now has plugins that let you access BBC content (all their podcasts, streams etc, not the iPlayer thing or whatever) and Youtube videos.  I've encountered a few minor bugs, but nothing major. (in case you're wondering, the next version of Ubuntu will be the Jaunty Jackalope. Which means they're adding imaginary animals to the list of possibilities, which amuses the fantasy lover in me no end).

Here's something amazing and wonderful -- a 109 year old woman, the daughter of a slave, voting for Barack Obama.

I so don't want to go to work tomorrow. But alas, I must. Hopefully I will sleep tonight -- note the time on this entry, it ain't lookin' good. Sleep has been eluding me. My head is on fire or something. Part of it is election anxiety. The last 8 years, this country has been like that friend we all have, you know the one, the one who always has a choice between the Really Amazing Person to date and the physically and emotionally abusive creep, and choses the creep every time. So it's like we know Obama is the man for us, but I have this fear we'll wake up on November 5th to McCain smacking us around and telling us to be a good bitch or else.

Mostly I'm being a moody little twerp today. I'll get over it. Night.