Beschissenes Wochenende

So, it's now Tuesday. Thankfully things seem to be going back to normal.

It was a pretty crappy weekend. My dekstop PC broke, my car broke, and my Mp3 player broke all in one weekend and on top of that I have to re take a class in college. Ach du Scheiße! is all I have to say to that.

Anyway, I had Windows XP on my desktop and I used it primarily for gaming. It got the sasser worm somehow which disables the lsass.exe file which is used to load you into windows when you turn it on. It also chomps up system files. I tried repairing the installation but the files were too damaged for the repair to even recognize it as Windows. However, I keep my files on an external drive so LUCKILY I lost nothing but the operating system. That does make it sound not so bad, but the thing is when I tried installing Windows XP again, it would not connect to the internet. Everything I tried and knew from a class on Networking did not work. I even got my friend Kevin to install his copy of XP which also did not work. I tried installing Linux Ubuntu 9.04 on my 120 GB hard drive, not wanting to touch the 40 GB with the messed up XP installation, but apparently that hard drive that a friend gave me is messed up. When I gave in and whiped the other hard drive and installed Linux on it, it worked just fine.

I must say, Linux Ubuntu is awesome. For those who don't know, Linux is a type of operating system which has various versions (Ubuntu, SuSE, Fedora, among many others) which is completely free and everything for it is free. On the downside, if you are a former Windows or Macintosh user, there is a big chance your software will not work. There is a program called Wine you can get which lets you run some Windows applications and you can also set up a virtual computer using VirtualBox but either way it's not the same as having a real copy of Windows.

Anyway, even though i'd prefer to have a functioning copy of Windows again, this is great. There are so many free applications for it and they are easy to find. Almost all of the applications you will need can be found under the Applications tab in the Add/Remove programs. Only a few things i've wanted or needed are not there, one of them being Songbird, the new media player from Mozilla (the creators of Firefox) but it will likely be there eventually. Linux does have many games for it however, and they are all free. Free shit rocks. Who doesn't like free stuff? And suprisingly, even though Windows is DEFINITELY more practical for gamers, Ubuntu is very stable, fast, and easy to use for the most part (except for occasions when something needs to be done in the Terminal which is akin to the DOS Command Prompt for Windows, but that is not something often needed) and if it were not for the gaming crippledness of Linux I would deem it the best operating system ever. However, aside from that if there is a payware application for Windows, you can bet there is a free one for Linux (which may in some cases also be on Windows too).


There are literally hundreds of free applications for Linux.
You can go to the Linux Ubuntu Website and download your free copy of Linux. Just burn it to a CD and you can try it without even installing it. If you have an old computer that is running slow with Windows and only use it for e-mail and internet Linux might give it a new life because Ubuntu's system requirements are only a 700 MHz processor and about 512 MB of RAM.


Anyway, enough about that, my Mp3 player is under warranty so I should get it fixed or get a new one. It's actually an older model so Creative (who makes the BEST Mp3 players --- seriously get one of those instead of Apple iPod or Microsoft Windows, Creative players are cheap, packed with features, and have great quality because Creative specializes in Audio, they are the ones who make sound cards for computers and high quality earphones) might give me a newer model. That would be awesome. And if not, i'll just be happy to have it fixed.

My car also was fixed. The radiator was broken and costed over 300 dollars to fix, but at least I can drive again.

I don't have much else to say, other than I recommend seeing the movie Stigmata. It's very good, and is loosely inspired by the Gospel of St. Thomas. For those who keep up with my blog, you should know what I'm talking about and if not go read the article on the DaVinci code which talks about these lost gospels and how there are different types (Gnostic, Jewish Christian, etc).