computer geeks aren't human?

so far, whenever I return home from a foreign country I find my computer in a state of inaccessibility. this time it just up and fried, and though my parents succeeded in reconstituting the machine and its hardware, I came home to found it running back and forth from the login screen to a message about registering windows. nobody could tell me where this copy of XP came from or how I was supposed to get my hands on the right product key. useless.

in such cases I call my genius brother and he fixes everything. this weekend he helped me install ubuntu 8.10--a version of linux for human beings. (really, that's what it says on the little disks that they send you.)

I tried a linux system once before--something fedora, when I got back from England. but I think ubuntu will be a bit more friendly.
that, and open source has come a long way in five years.
so have I, really.

it's a pretty cool feeling, have a brand new start. right now my whole hard drive is cleared out, just waiting for me to populate it with whatever I feel like. and I have a lot to learn. lots of lovely documentation to read, if I feel so inclined. new image-editing software, new instant messaging software... new everything. it's exciting.

the first thing I did, once the installation was complete and the machine freshly rebooted, was pull up the robots game. I've missed this game ever since I gave up on that old fedora system so long ago. last night I changed the theme to one with a little alien and evil UFOs, played til midnight, accrued a high score of 2160, and went to bed quite content.