what we've been up to...

moving
we got the keys to our new apartment on september 15. that morning, janelle and i took a load of things over in the car. for the afternoon and evening, janelle's classmate, angela and her boyfriend, peter help us move most of our furniture and stuff. we were at it until about ten thirty that night but we got way more done than i had expected.

we spent that night in our new apartment, sleeping on our mattress, on the floor. the next day we got our telephone and internet connected and nathan brought over an apartment warming present: some pastries from the queen street bakery. janelle was at school all day so i took her parent's car, which they had loaned to us for the move, and went back to quinpool tower to get more stuff, especially our telephone. but the automobile broke down as i was trying to get out of my parking spot for the return trip. i walked over to janelle's parent's house at spring garden road but they weren't there-they'd gone to truro for the day. it was getting late in the afternoon and janelle and i had made dinner plans to meet the ronalds--missionaries from zambia who were visiting family in halifax--at darwin and karen's house where they were staying.

scott, janelle's parent's coworker was kind enough to let me use the office computer to send janelle an e-mail, so i advised her that i wouldn't be home for a long while and began to walk...

it took me a little over an hour to walk to the new apartment. janelle had gotten my e-mail and was waiting for me and darwin was on his way to pick us up. we had a tremendous meal but afterwards i felt sick, likely from not eating all day and then that long walk and then the heavy meal. so instead of going to meeting i went home and slept.

still no results on the job hunt, so janelle and i spent the balance of the week tidying up our new apartment. and on monday janelle's parents loaned us their second car, a lovely, energetic volkswagen golf from the eighties. our friend, rebecca offered to help and brought her car along and together we packed and moved just about everything else to the new place.

afterwards janelle and rebecca went out for some wine and cheese and i joined donald, keir, and nathan for some 'go fish'.

micro$oft sucks
we finally got janelle's computer all here, so i put it together and went about installing windows all on it. first of all, i couldn't find my windows xp disk. and then i thought i found it, but i had hastily misread the label and was trying to install windows xp from the microsoft office cd. so that wasted a good bit of time. i finally did find the windows xp cd and tried installing windows but couldn't get the computer to boot from the cd even after configuring cmos.

finally it worked and i'm not entirely sure why, but once i had it installed windows wouldn't recognize any of my hardware, not even the ones that are built right into the motherboard. so i tooled around with it for hours, trying to find the disks--most of them i didn't even have and the ones i did have were for the wrong hardware. on the verge of giving up, i opened up the box and looked at the motherboard to get the name and model off it and then i used my laptop to get on the internet and download the drivers. so i burned the drivers onto a cd and installed them. all of a sudden, windows began recognizing my hardware. network connectivity, sound, screen resolution and proper colour all magically appeared.

and then it asked me for my product identification key. the one that came with the cd didn't work. i did some looking around online and discovered that because i had rebuilt my computer, my product identification key was no longer valid. of course, microsoft wants me to buy a new one because it's technically a new computer.

maybe these frustrations seem trivial to you...but i've been working with ubuntu for the past three or four years. i only just discovered how foreign windows is to me now, and i used to be so familiar with it. i'd forgotten how frustrating and complicated working with windows is, all the cds you have to keep track of, all the hardware you have to install and find drivers for, all the additional things you have to download and install from all their own different websites...

of course, this is where i put a plug in for ubuntu. on installationg ubuntu automatically detects your hardware and installs the proper drivers for it. all the software you need, you can find in one place. and you don't need a product key! ubuntu is a free operating system! you just download it and install it and you're good to go.