A Curious Little Blog

Some years ago -- nearly 10 by now, I think -- I had a Sony Vaio laptop. It was the thinnest, lightest laptop I had ever seen, and everyone who saw it stopped to gawk. It had one major drawback, which was that it didn't have a cd-rom drive (and we didn't buy the external one), which made it hard to install software. Oh, one other drawback: it broke several times, and eventually BestBuy replaced it with a new one of a different kind. I always liked that laptop, and now I have one much like it: the Asus EeePC 1000. The 1000 has a 10" screen, which means it is quite a bit bigger than earlier versions of the EeePC. I chose this size not for the screen, however, but for the keyboard: I wanted a computer that I could type at with ease, and those smaller versions just didn't work for me. Although the keyboard on the 1000 is still not 100% the size of a regular keyboard, it is close enough that I can type easily with few mistakes. The screen came as a bit of a shock t...

My work computer refused to boot one day, complaining of a corrupt dll. I replaced the dll from two different sources, but it still wouldn't boot. I had to re-install Windows, which was already a pain, because it meant I'd have to re-install all the programs as well -- that, or figure out a way to save the registry. (This is not normally an issue in Linux, although occasionally problems do get to the point that you need a "clean install.") My boss suggested reformatting the hard drive, so I had to re-install everything. But that brought up a new issue: what about my files? I had quite a few programs that I had been working on. I hadn't checked in the source code into Subversion, and there were other files besides source code. I actually have two hard drives on my computer, so it would be trivial to copy the files off of the c: drive before I reformatted it. It would be trivial, that is, if only I could boot my computer. The Windows install cd gives an op...

I got to install Linux on my wife's laptop through a convoluted set of circumstances. The laptop was having symptoms, such as never shutting down on its own, that irritated Tanya. After tinkering around and googling failed to solve the problem, I figured I could at least fix it by reformatting the hard drive and re-installing Windows. To my surprise, the problem continued -- more on that later. I told Tanya that there was nothing else I could do. Windows still ran, with quirks; but I offered Linux if she was desperate for a fix. Under normal circumstances, she would probably never have agreed to have Linux installed. However, at the time she had a work laptop that she used most of the time, so she happily let me wipe out Windows and install Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron). Tanya is highly dependent on Microsoft Office, especially Excel, which she uses constantly at work, and she isn't interested in giving OpenOffice a try. Fortunately, Wine has progressed to the point that it...