testing my patience

Over the past weekish, my patience has been tested. I like to think I'm a pretty patient guy, but I grow tired.

Problem: bought a new computer and have this habit of hating Microsoft. I'm installing Ubuntu on it, making it a server, then installing some sort of linux on my laptop (that I use everyday).

The CD-burner in my laptop is pretty old and decaying (2001) and the CD-ROM function in the new machine doesn't seem to want any part of it. Blah blah blah, to no avail. Several different brands of CD, several different versions, different types of installations, hell, my girlfriend even had her "Ubuntu guru" friend burn a CD from an ISO that she downloaded. No love for the Chad.

I have a 500gb external usb drive that I've just been reading about how to load from that, but I haven't figured out how to boot from it. But in the midst of that, I stumbled upon a windows/network/yaddahyaddah/ftp/intel/PXE install. That one finally worked. However, it was focused on an old version and as I was in the middle of an upgrade, something happened. It asked me to restart. It wasn't required, but it still asked me. Uhm, yeah.... WTF?!?!?!?!?! So, alright, I can do that. But I'm a bit surprised. Restart... and Ubuntu commits Harry Carry. hmmmmm.... right..... I do a hard reboot and the same thing happens.

I've always loved working on computers, but this is a bit frustrating. One thing that I've noticed, I'm not stressing nearly as much as when I was working on Windoze. I think I've also figured out why: sleep. When I used to do this kind of work, I would do it to all hours of the night/day/night. Yes, I once used a computer for something like 30 hours and change! Now, if I get tired or frustrated/pissed, I just say hey, it'll be there when I come back and I wander off to the couch for a nap. Being rested really seems to help my patience and resilience. It really seems to me that this world is so focused on killing that rest time that it's no wonder that we are all so stressed out, impatient, tired, cranky, inconsiderate, non-confident bags of worthlessness.

I was talking to one of my regulars a little while ago about Europe. She said that they are so proud of the fact that they have coffee for "you Americans." However, there are rarely ever 'to-go' cups. This requires a person to actually sit down and enjoy the cup of java for a little while. "Novel idea!" my regular said. I agree.

Oh, and if anyone can vouch for Ubuntu, Debian, or any other Linux distro, please toss me a line. Thanks! derchad@gmail.com