Today was a good day
Nov. 23rd, 2006 22:02![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillI got a lot done today, and I'm still going.
I haven't really paused to compile a list of things I'm thankful for... that's mostly because I tend to do that about once every week or two all year. I tend to be very aware of just how lucky I am in what I have, including the friends around me. I very narrowly avoided being in a completely different, and much worse, place than I am now, and I'm reminded of that almost daily.
So I spent my time instead doing stuff that needed to be done. I hauled the earthquake supply bins (4 of 5) out back, with 4 gallons of water; more water will arrive shortly, and I'll get another bin to complete the clothing stash. Then the remainder goes out.
I rodent-proofed the cellar again. The little buggers (rats) had moved from the ruin of a kabocha squash, which I was willing to sacrifice, to the Queensland Blues, which I care about. I wedged a piece of the mesh I used to make the rat cage into the opening they were using and wired it down, then dealt with the damage. I hope that's the end of it.
I baked a pumpkin pie, complete with crust from scratch. Mmmmm butter crust.
I put away the picnic basket and other assorted camping goods that were cluttering up the living room. It's much better, though I still have a bit to go.
I cleared off the dining room table, which had still had papers from last semester on it. Then I helped my dad vacuum the rug, which happens much less often than it should. (One major reason for that is that they don't make upright vacuum cleaners that can handle copious amounts of long hair without binding up the beater, so doing the rugs is always a hassle... I still want to get a canister vac, as I am more confident than my dad that they have gotten much better in the last 20 years.)
I wiped my hard drive (aaaaugh nerve-wracking), halved my Windows partition down to 5G, and installed Ubuntu on the remaining 35G. For all my nerves, it went very smoothly; it helps that Compaq gave me an honest-to-god Windows XP Home SP2 install disc, rather than some "restore disc" that wants to run roughshod over everything. It obediently installed in its 5G, and I spent a bit of time setting it up with drivers, Firefox, Gaim, and PuTTY. Then I booted up Ubuntu "Edgy Eft".
It turns out that I have little enough memory (256M) and a slow enough CD-RW drive that the LiveCD of Ubuntu froze. Since the graphical installer runs off of that, I had to use a text installer... at least it looked familiar, from all the times I've installed Red Hat and Fedora Core and the graphical installer got into a snit over my video card.
Once I switched over to text, though, that went very smoothly as well. I haven't yet rebooted in normal mode -- I should double-check that grub is handling my Windows install okay, for example, and I want to try the suspend and hibernate functions -- but I've used some of the packaging tools to grab my usual applications, and I've changed the desktop enough that it's really starting to feel like my system again. It helps that Gnome isn't that different between distros, so I feel comfortable with the look and feel.
I'm about to unpack my backups and put them away, maybe plug my bookmarks back into Firefox, and generally settle in. I still need to figure out how to get my wireless chipset working, but I'll have a lot more documentation on how to work that out than I had under Fedora, so I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm also curious about why I can't see the Windows network, but again, I'm pretty sure I'll find some docs to address that.
Oh, yeah, and I need to find out what I need to do to get this system to talk to my HP printer. Maybe nothing. :) I like Ubuntu so far; lots of things just seem to work right, no hassle. It feels snappier, too, like it has better memory management... I need to bring up GKrellm to find out for sure.
I've eaten well -- the Williebird was great as always, and the gluten-free stuffing (which is always a gamble) came out very well this time -- and I've had some pie. I'll tweak my laptop a little more, then go out and finally soak in the hot tub, which I've been waiting to do for days. Then I get to enjoy another day off tomorrow. Life is good.
I haven't really paused to compile a list of things I'm thankful for... that's mostly because I tend to do that about once every week or two all year. I tend to be very aware of just how lucky I am in what I have, including the friends around me. I very narrowly avoided being in a completely different, and much worse, place than I am now, and I'm reminded of that almost daily.
So I spent my time instead doing stuff that needed to be done. I hauled the earthquake supply bins (4 of 5) out back, with 4 gallons of water; more water will arrive shortly, and I'll get another bin to complete the clothing stash. Then the remainder goes out.
I rodent-proofed the cellar again. The little buggers (rats) had moved from the ruin of a kabocha squash, which I was willing to sacrifice, to the Queensland Blues, which I care about. I wedged a piece of the mesh I used to make the rat cage into the opening they were using and wired it down, then dealt with the damage. I hope that's the end of it.
I baked a pumpkin pie, complete with crust from scratch. Mmmmm butter crust.
I put away the picnic basket and other assorted camping goods that were cluttering up the living room. It's much better, though I still have a bit to go.
I cleared off the dining room table, which had still had papers from last semester on it. Then I helped my dad vacuum the rug, which happens much less often than it should. (One major reason for that is that they don't make upright vacuum cleaners that can handle copious amounts of long hair without binding up the beater, so doing the rugs is always a hassle... I still want to get a canister vac, as I am more confident than my dad that they have gotten much better in the last 20 years.)
I wiped my hard drive (aaaaugh nerve-wracking), halved my Windows partition down to 5G, and installed Ubuntu on the remaining 35G. For all my nerves, it went very smoothly; it helps that Compaq gave me an honest-to-god Windows XP Home SP2 install disc, rather than some "restore disc" that wants to run roughshod over everything. It obediently installed in its 5G, and I spent a bit of time setting it up with drivers, Firefox, Gaim, and PuTTY. Then I booted up Ubuntu "Edgy Eft".
It turns out that I have little enough memory (256M) and a slow enough CD-RW drive that the LiveCD of Ubuntu froze. Since the graphical installer runs off of that, I had to use a text installer... at least it looked familiar, from all the times I've installed Red Hat and Fedora Core and the graphical installer got into a snit over my video card.
Once I switched over to text, though, that went very smoothly as well. I haven't yet rebooted in normal mode -- I should double-check that grub is handling my Windows install okay, for example, and I want to try the suspend and hibernate functions -- but I've used some of the packaging tools to grab my usual applications, and I've changed the desktop enough that it's really starting to feel like my system again. It helps that Gnome isn't that different between distros, so I feel comfortable with the look and feel.
I'm about to unpack my backups and put them away, maybe plug my bookmarks back into Firefox, and generally settle in. I still need to figure out how to get my wireless chipset working, but I'll have a lot more documentation on how to work that out than I had under Fedora, so I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm also curious about why I can't see the Windows network, but again, I'm pretty sure I'll find some docs to address that.
Oh, yeah, and I need to find out what I need to do to get this system to talk to my HP printer. Maybe nothing. :) I like Ubuntu so far; lots of things just seem to work right, no hassle. It feels snappier, too, like it has better memory management... I need to bring up GKrellm to find out for sure.
I've eaten well -- the Williebird was great as always, and the gluten-free stuffing (which is always a gamble) came out very well this time -- and I've had some pie. I'll tweak my laptop a little more, then go out and finally soak in the hot tub, which I've been waiting to do for days. Then I get to enjoy another day off tomorrow. Life is good.
