Um... Hm.

I had such a nice long post yesterday, I don't really know how I'll live up to it now. Maybe it'll help if I pause my audiobook. Ok, well... my desktop Ubuntu partition works properly now, now that I've reloaded the whole OS. At least nothing happened to Windows when I was making big changes. It's not that my stuff isn't backed up -- well, I'd lost a few weeks of work on Minecraft, but I suppose I'd get over that. Better than losing a story -- it's just that loading Windows takes FOR-EV-ER, and all in all I'd rather not have to do that again. First the OS itself. Then the drivers for every little thing. Plus all my applications and wallpapers and stuff again. Plus removing all the junkware that riddles those drivers and the OS. At least Ubuntu isn't quite so bad. I have a few apps to download, but pretty much everything I want is available from a single spot --  the Ubuntu Software Center, since I'm such a n00b.

Anyway, I feel I should spend some time on the specific torture of loading an OS. We'll skip the sinking feeling of finding out your computer is basically dead and needs to be wiped and re-installed with everything, the futile attempts to save your data, and move on the resignation and defeat as you put in that boot CD. You've probably put it in before for some attempts at system repair, but to no avail. So you go and boot from this CD, and with a tear perhaps finding its way down your cheek, you press the key telling it to format the drive and install Windows.

First you get to decide the partitioning of the drive. If you're like most people, you just let it take all the space it wants. You don't care much right now. It partitions and wipes the drive, and then moves on to asking you information about time zone and naming the computer and whatnot. Then it installs some stuff. Then another question will pop up, and it won't go anywhere until you answer it. Then it goes some more... and then more options to decide upon, so on and so forth, each of these steps taking somewhere from 10 to 45 minutes, but you can never remember which are quick and which aren't, so you have to stay by the computer, checking on it, ALL DAY until the dang thing is finally installed.

Then you look at your fresh new desktop wallpaper, and you promptly get assaulted by the update screen, particularly if we're talking about Windows. Ok, it's got a lot of updates to install, of course. Whatever. Security and whatnot first.

Speaking of... best to get rid of IE as fast as possible. You nearly retch as you open it, but only to download Firefox or Google Chrome or something else that's faster and more secure. After that's done you start downloading your favorite utilities and programs and whatnot, sure that you're never going to remember all of them. You need to download your anti-virus software again, hoping IE didn't already kill you without it. Drivers start going into drives, and you end up restarting the computer multiple times that day. If you managed to keep your files backed up, those have to go back on too.

All in all, it takes all stinking day to get a computer to at least a semblance of what it was before you wiped it. For weeks -- months even --  you'll be trying to find files and programs that you forgot to put back on there. For some reason your browser bookmarks never transfer over right, whatever you do. It's like moving into an almost-new house that looks exactly like your old one, except the paint's different. You paint the walls, get your lights back on. A few light switches got moved around, and when you're unpacking all of your stuff you'll never get it quite in the same place as before. You'll be looking for things for months until you finally get used to where things are again. By that time, you may have to move to another almost-new, empty house.

Computers fail. I love 'em.