owlectomy

Oh, operating systems!

For a long time I have defaulted to Windows merely because it can do Netflix and Steam. But tonight it finally was stymied by trying to install the Scrivener beta -- which Ubuntu managed just fine. Productivity, or watching TV while knitting lace? Productivity, or watching TV while knitting lace? (Yeah, it only takes a minute to reboot, but I like having nine billion tabs open!)

There are advantages to both, obviously, but the experience reminded me just how much I prefer Ubuntu's user interface.

Ah -- apparently Netflix is going to switch to something a little more Linux-friendly than Silverlight? That would make me a happy person indeed.

I was all set to endorse Last Year's Model until I realize that, cheap and featureless as my phone is, it's not only new, but the third phone I bought within a twelve month period.

(In Oct. 2008 I dropped my phone on the floor at the hospital and cracked it, in May 2009 I left my phone in a taxi after WisCon, and in July 2009 I left my phone in a taxi after surgery. I'll give myself a pass on the first one because it was a terrible old phone and I had a fracture. I'll give myself a pass on the last one because general anesthesia can do a number on a person).

I feel like Windows/Linux may be the best of both worlds. It's cheaper than buying a Mac, I get iTunes, I get games, I can do all the stuff that gets ported late to Mac like Netflix streaming, and I still get to have an OS I like and feel at home in for everything else. Plus, if I can't find a application to do something, or can't figure out how to do something, I can always try with the other OS.

Except Windows did *something* to GRUB (the thing that lets you choose which operating system to boot into) and I had to reinstall Linux to get *any* OS back. And therefore I now have Ubuntu, Ubuntu Netbook Edition, and Windows all installed in separate partitions on my computer. Hopefully this will not be a continuing issue.

At any rate, I am very happy right now with the New! and Shiny! and probably need to go back to writing.

I think I should include some background information because in that context what I did kind of sort of makes sense.

For a while, I've had a weird text input bug on Firefox, and an entirely different weird text input bug on Chrome. I suspect that it may be a problem related to insufficient memory, but I can't say for sure.

So, I thought, "If I'm going to be using my netbook as my main computer, I really need to do something about that text input bug, because it's really annoying."

So I decided to upgrade my version of Ubuntu.

My last upgrade went so smoothly that I didn't stop to think, "Do I have a bootable USB drive I can use if something goes wrong?" -- and though things had gone wrong before, I'd always had a backup computer to rely on.

At some point during the installation (I was asleep) something went wrong. I couldn't get it to boot up again, and I couldn't get it to boot up again in recovery mode.

I decided to do laundry.

I put 45 minutes of time on the dryer and went away. I came back and realized that my clothes weren't actually dry.

I tried another dryer, which also turned out not to be producing any heat.

I tried a third dryer, which finally started drying my clothes.

I went to a reception for a young writers contest at BPL. I dropped my plate on the floor while talking to a big-name writer.

I went to my sister's house. She put on home improvement shows while I worked on making a bootable USB drive.

Eventually everything turned out okay.

I think.

(I'm not sure whether I've managed to fix the problem with the wireless firmware. Right now I'm fairly tired and don't really care.)

I wonder whether I still have that text input bug.