Ok, here are the guidelines I’ll be following for this experiment:
- The only OS my desktop will boot into is Ubuntu until midnight on August 1st. After that, I’m free to go back to XP.
- I can still use Windows, but only in limited capacities. I can’t get around it at my internship, I’ll be setting up a new computer with XP Pro, and if I have to fix anything with my mom or dad’s laptop (or anyone else’s for that matter), I pretty much have to use Windows there. My general guide here is that when I’m home, unless I’m on a Windows computer for the sole purpose of making that computer perform it’s intended task, I have to use Ubuntu.
- VMs are also off limits. I can’t run XP inside of Ubuntu as a loophole.
I think that just about covers everything. As I said, this is mainly just a personal experiment to see if I can use Linux as my sole OS, and it also serves, to an extent, as a way for me to learn more about Linux beyond just basic desktop use. 110 minutes left of XP; after that, I’m entering the unknown.
Personal - Dallas
Even though I didn’t get one (and after the first 24 hours or so after the announcement, I’ve never felt the urge to go out and pay $500-600 for one), today was the day the iPhone finally got released. If you were on the internet at all, it would have been near impossible to avoid reading at least one thing about it. Yes, it looks cool, and yes, it would be awesome to have one. For the price and what it does, however, I think I’ll pass.
That’s not to say that I didn’t spend money today though. The better part is that it wasn’t my money I even spent! My dad signed off (literally) on my spec list for building a HTPC, so I bought enough of the parts tonight to get the system up and running. The remainder of the parts (primarily accessories) will get ordered in probably about a month for credit card statement purposes. Hopefully the build won’t be too hard and everything will go smoothly. Yep, hopefully…
Oh yeah, today is Friday, isn’t it? Guess that means I must reveal the big secret project. My project is… *drumroll* For the month of July (12:00 AM, July 1 to at least 11:59 PM, July 31), I will be using Ubuntu as my only OS on my desktop. Everyone keeps saying how “Linux is ready for the desktop”, so I figured that I’d test the waters myself and figure out just how true that really is. I’ll post the “rules” tomorrow before it actually starts, but my preliminary setup indicates that it may not be as big of a problem as it might seem at first glance.
Personal - Dallas
I’m probably not as far as I should be in my preparations for my project, but the DVD of Bridge to Terabithia distracted by for an hour and a half tonight. I’ll probably do some before I go to sleep tonight and finish everything up Friday night and Saturday. It’s not so much that there are a lot of “things” that need to be done but instead that what is left could take a really, really long time.
With all the “media” I’ve been putting on our file server, I was starting to become slightly concerned about the available space left on the drive. I finally did a Google search to figure out the command to check the available space, and I’m just barely using over half of the total storage I have. I definitely think I’m good there for the time being.
Personal - Dallas
StarFox Command, you’re officially off my “in progress” list and can go in the finished closet. It’s a lot like SF64 in the fact that you have multiple branching paths you can take, but if I actually played through all of those, I’d just be wasting time that could be spent playing other games. Now, I may pick it back up every once in a while because of the fact that it is such a quick game to play (I’d say 4-6 hours, shorter once you get really good at it), but for now, I’m moving onto newer and (unfortunately) longer games. I can’t burn all my quick ones at the start, or I’ll have nothing left to distract me from my epic RPGs. :)
I’ll be revealing my secret project on Friday, make my “final preparations” post on Saturday, and then Sunday will be the first feedback day. I still don’t predict that any of you all will find it in the least bit interesting, but this is my blog and I’ll write what I want in it! *cough* Ah yes, Saturday will also be a movie review day (most likely Shrek the Third), but I’ll still have Ocean’s Thirteen, Evan Almighty, and Ratatoullie as of this Friday. They’ll all get seen sooner or later, and you can expect a review about each one of them. (Unless I forget, in which case I may remember to make a post when/if I get the DVD, but if I don’t then either, I guess I’ll never write a review…)
Personal - Dallas
I wrote quite a bit tonight on here, but it’s not in this post. It’s in a journal. An experiment journal. A secret experiment journal. A secret experiment journal that you won’t be able to see for another 5 days. Oh yes, I have your interest now, don’t I?
Right now though, I’m ready for sleep. It’s been a very long day, and while tomorrow is Wednesday, that’s still not quite close enough to Friday for me. Weekend, where art thou?
Personal - Dallas
It’s been over a month, and my only vlog post has been the one I made on the actual anniversary day. I said a couple of weeks ago that I hadn’t forgotten about it, and that future vlog posts would be forthcoming. Well, that’s going to be delayed a little bit more. On the order of a month, actually.
My HD arrived today and with it the preparing for my project can begin.The preparing will actually take place this week, and my month-long project starts next Sunday. It’s under wraps until then (a couple people already know), but my guess is that you’ll be underwhelmed and honestly not care all that much. In reality, I don’t care all that much — it’s just an experiment, and it gave me a good reason to order another HD. Due to some technical incompatibilities it’s going to put the vlog on pause, but I don’t see that having much of an impact on anyone for the exact reason I mentioned above (I’ve only ever made 1 vlog post!).
Personal - Dallas
In addition to PoP:TT, I also started StarFox Command (their capitalization, not mine) over this weekend. Only problem is that with four games in progress at the game time (those two + WoW and Guild Wars), I can only ever seem to find time during the day to play three of them. Yesterday the odd game out was WoW; today, Prince of Persia. Further analysis of this would reveal that I’m experiencing “new game syndrome” with StarFox Command, and Guild Wars is just doing a good job at holding my attention.
I don’t foresee myself starting any new games while these are in progress, but neither of PoP or SFC are all that epic of games, so I should be able to finish one/both of them relatively soon. That’s always what it comes back to in my life: start game, finish game, start new game…
Personal - Dallas
I’m making this post while playing Guild Wars (ok, well technically it’s during a short break in between playing it) so don’t expect any long, drawn out narrative on how my day went. Lunch, TV, games, dinner, TV, games, and this post sums it up pretty nicely. If only all days really were that simple.
Ah yes, one other thing I did today was create a draft spec for an HTPC to connect to our HDTV and also act as a PVR for recording shows. (Did ya like all those acronyms?) Not being concerned with gaming performance combined with a couple nice guides helped me keep the price lower than a typical build I’d make, but the case itself will probably end up being the most expensive part (it was also the hardest to decide on since sound levels are very important). Since I won’t be the one actually buying it, it has to meet parent approval before anything gets purchased, but seeing as how much my dad loves the fact he can watch live TV on his laptop downstairs, this’ll probably be one of my easier sells.
Personal - Dallas
Fine, you can argue that a week “ends” (and therefore also starts) with a weekend, but look at that title, and tell me that it doesn’t read cool. Anyway, My plans for this weekend are….. I think it’s play games, play games, watch TV, and play games (with maybe a little more watching TV thrown in for good measure). I could be mistaken though, so don’t hold me to that.
Probably no Wii hunting in my immediate future, and I will admit that I’m surprised I don’t have one by now. Completely not complaining since people buying it means that it’ll continue to get game support, but I want to get in on the fun before too much longer. I may have to resort to ordering one online in a bundle package, but as long as the bundle includes stuff that I want, that’s not a huge issue.
Personal - Dallas
I guess the possibility existed that I could have played a really short game today (or one I was close to beating) and be able to blow everyone’s mind (mine included), but I didn’t. That said, however, I did start Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones earlier tonight. I think my big thing with not being into console games recently were that all the ones I was in the middle of were very story intensive RPGs, and that’s just not the game mood I’m in right now. Shorter, more action oriented games that don’t have long cutscenes or complex plots are easier to pick up and play for shorter amounts of time, and if I’m going to start splitting my time between console and PC games, those are the type I need.
A slight footnote to the hard drive story: when I went back to Fry’s yesterday, the price of the drive had gone up to $170. I still went ahead and bought it (no games though!!), and when I got home, I discovered through conversing with Andrew that Fry’s website did have a 500 GB SATA drive for $109 (with free shipping even). So, I took back the one I had just bought and will now be awaiting my HD to arrive via DHL sometime next week. Hey, I’m all about saving $60.
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