Thursday, October 21, 2010

How I made a mess...

I still had Ubuntu installed on this computer and in my effort to uninstall it, I wiped everything off the hard drive, Windows XP and Ubuntu. That's when you get too smart for yourself and start messing around in systems where you have no business being. When you only half understand what you are doing.

I switched the computer off and started it up again and got the message that I had to reboot by inserting the device and pressing any key. Well, the only device I had was the Ubuntu installation CD, so I inserted that and installed the program. Since it was so old, it had to download over 600 new packages of software to update it. So I very patiently did that. All went well, no hitches.

Then I noticed that I could update to the latest 10.04 edition and did I want to do that? I thought, sure, why not. While I'm doing this, I may as well do it right. I had to download 1,604 packages of software and it was going to take a little over an hour. I did that, waited patiently, drank some coffee, smoked some cigarettes, and yes, it did everything it was supposed to do.

Next, it had to install everything and clean up the system. That took another hour or so, but everything went very smoothly. I couldn't believe my luck. I entered my user name and password and could get started. I started up Firefox and opened up all the tab pages that I was going to need with all the websites on them.

Having done that, I opened up the email program and added all the relevant information to start receiving and sending emails. That almost went perfectly from the beginning. I made an error, but knew how to fix it, and everything was fine after that. I do still have to enter everyone's email address and that's going to be a lot of work. I'm not looking forward to that.

So, there really was no hitch, you see? Except that now Ubuntu is my only running program and that Windows XP has disappeared.  When I shut the computer off for the first time, I was afraid to turn it back on again and get some sort of awful message that I would have to reboot the system all over again, but apparently updating it has worked beautifully.

I took a sleeping pill and went to bed and slept until 2 pm and Tyke ate my cigarettes and lighter that I had forgotten to put away, so that's my own fault. He would do something like that when tempted. He didn't actually eat them, but rip them apart into small pieces that I found on my bed and the floor beside it. I never hear a thing, sound asleep as I am.

It was a slightly hypo manic night, I think you could say that. I'm feeling fairly normal now, but I don't know how the rest of the day will go. Now that I have Ubuntu again, I will be drawn to the computer even more than I usually am because of curiosity. I'm not going to do anything really out of the ordinary with it, but I did download Foxsaver for the pretty photos. I don't have any images yet in my folder of images, so I must do something about that. Therefor these posts will go without pretty pictures for a while.

I must get the show on the road now and be a good dog owner and apartment dweller. I can't sit here all afternoon, much as I'd like to. There are some jobs waiting for me that must be done before I can enter the email addresses into that program.

Have a good rest of the day and try to stay away from your hard drive or whatever in the world it is called. I get those terms mixed up and I have no one to ask.

Ciao,
Nora

2 comments:

Bernie said...

Hope all is well now, I hate having computer problems. I recently bought a new laptop and I have taken my old laptop in to be cleaned and they take it back to when I first got it. I will have one upstairs and down, I also have a 11 year old desk top which should be disposed of but my router goes through it and I am afraid to change it. Computers...errrr
I hope you had a wonderful day Nora, and Tyke didn't get into your things. He is a busy little dog for sure.
......:-) Hugs

Wisewebwoman said...

oh you are braver than I am, I am so glad I have a computer magician who bales me out!
XO
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