Image by alexis22578 via Flickr

The computer is doing several things right now. Email is up. A file browser is up. A picture, describing these processes is up. An archive is open, awaiting the WordPress 3.0.5 update. Filezilla is up, downloading the most recent copy of this blog. Evolution is up, restored, and checking messages – all mail filters and calendar functions working. Gadmin-Rsync is merging external hard-drive music onto this limited hard-drive.

The joys of our technological age.

I’d show you that picture that’s waiting, but I don’t have the correct write permissions on my wp-content folder. Olivia, I can hear you thinking, “Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah,” in Charlie Brown fashion. Bear with me, this is a tech report.

I don’t even have Zemanta installed to connect with my flickr to by-pass these permissions and give suggestions to older posts where I discuss my computer woes. Alas, the old fashioned way will have to do tonight.

Some time ago, almost a year and a half ago, I got rid of Windows and opted for Ubuntu. I am the tech person in my family. Upgrades are my decision, and I teach others how to cope. I troubleshoot problems, I figure out what’s wrong, I backup data. That is my role because that is my skill. Sure, I know more than enough to be dangerous, but not by much. So, this morning, when I was cleaning out unused programs, I also deleted something that depended on something else. I got rid of a dependency. One I shouldn’t have.

Suddenly, my menues weren’t working, I couldn’t move windows, and the computer was moving even slower than before.

It’s time, I thought. It’s time to do what I did for a friend: Boot it, nuke it, redo.

Image by alexis22578 via Flickr

I was told sometime ago that computers can benefit from that annual purge. I haven’t done it on this, even upgrading from the networked version to a higher Ubuntu version, on the hope that Linux will power over all. The problem, I fear though, with this set up is the inconsistent hardware. Proprietary video cards, old mother boards, and certainly not enough USB ports. But, alas, we’re cheap, and we’re not buying new, so this will have to do.

Almost four hours after Duke was inserted, we had a clean slate. The first try of the install failed because it had nearly-Four-year-old finger smudges. Once those were cleared away, we had a clean install, well mostly – I think some of those hardware errors have reared their ugly head stating some I/O Error on sd0 (the default name, I believe, assigned to our hard-drive). But, it restarted fine, and the rest of the evening in between dinner, bedtime, and laundry folding, has been getting the programs I do use installed, and then the file migration.

Thank you, WordPress for adding to the computer restart day. Once I get that situated, maybe I can show that picture.