TOUGH TRIP DUE TO LIST OF GREEDY BASTARDS

Well that was a real pain....LITERALLY!!

I left the house on my bike to go and BUY something that, like the dumb-arse I am at times, I had not foreseen me needing..

..this was an external DVD-ROM Drive as I had placed another Western Digital Scorpio 160GB HDD, that I did NOT BUY, in the bay where the Optical Drive USED to be.

Now I did this, and very important it will reveal itself to be that I explain this NOW, because I had a little go at installing another Operating System based on the Linux core OS. This is called Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, latter stands for Long Term Support.

Unfortunately Microsoft is run by an idiot I now like to call the Leaping Lizard because he likes to leap about and scream but comes across as scaley, slimey and controlling. His name is Steve Ballmer and being an ex military man for a country who is not very good at military despite the technology they possess he seems to think that businesses should be run the same way and that all other should be crushed, even when they are not even in it for the money or power. Err well are NOT supposed to be.

The Open Source community, or at any rate the reasons it was started in the first instance, makes a lot of sense once you listen to the fundamental principles. Ubuntu is based on Linux which is based on Unix and even the story behind Unix rings similar to that of Microsoft and Windows. Created by two your guys while working for AT&T who then claimed ownership of it and went off to make a great deal of money from it, while if i recall the two guys did not make much at all. There argument was that theses two were employees of AT&T at the time they created it.

That is about all I know and even these details may be a little 'off'. Just one of thousands of stories you hear when you study Computer Science at University.

Still.... later on a man named Linus Torvalds created Linux and made it free, or at least the kernel and in essence it is Unix though probably with much stuff removed, or at least that is how it got started. Different types of OS's then sprung up and forgive me is I do not know the beginnings of one and whether it was originally Unix or not but it is that used by that famous Rotten Apple brand and the MAC-OS! Lion, Panther, Tiger, Ocelot, Serval, Pussycat or whatever version you are running. Ooh OK yes a little bit of a joke there.

Now I highly admired Apple in the early years and wanted a MAC like there was no tomorrow. Unfortunately they turned into the type of brand they hated and fought against for years, err like Microsoft and Intel?! LMAO! Anyhow Linux was in no way near ready for the masses in the early years and only geeks like me ever really had much to do with it. My time was limited because while studying things had to...well WORK really and sodding about mounting and un-mounting drives there simply was not time for, as fun as it might have seemed to the inner geek in us.

Over tie more version appeared by different groups, disagreements came to the fore and splinter cells broke off and formed more groups but still everything was free, as mad as it sounds. My own run in was with Red Hat and I dual booted this with whatever the current Windows was in 1998, hmm that would be Windows 98 then but I think it was Windows NT 4.0 (NT stood for New Technology). Unfortunately neither of these two were good at playing the latest games so having both seemed a waste. I DO believe I ended up dual booting Windows NT4.0 and Windows 98 in the end. My lecturer friends and fellow students were all shocked when i did this during a semester and managed to achieve it without asking lecturers for help. One chap, Alastare Measures and highly popular among students, was so impressed at this and another creation I STILL possess today wanted to go into business with me. He used to work for the Stock Exchange in London and i saw what the stress of a job like that can DO to a human being!

Fast forward a few years and a whole list of catastrophes and setups as well as set upons by various government morons and public office idiots later and I dual booted a later, and turns out a British sourced with a South African head, Linux Operating System called Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

Only Computer Active magazine, supposedly for beginners and NEWBIES, states its real easy and simple to do using something called WUBI. So I install it only to find Windows does not want to play anymore?! Not having used Linux for years I knew not what the commands were or even how the two OS's worked differently so now I was on a crash course with a STEEP LEARNING CURVE OF STRAIGHT UPWARDS!! LMAO!

After several days i could not get Windows back which was annoying for the most part because I had files and edited photos and screen shots that were vital to my BLOGS, mainly this one, and did not know how i could get them back?! Ubuntu would not read the drive and Windows did not want to reinstall without wiping everything. Yes I could work with Ubuntu only but two problems remained, only a dozen documents and a dozen photos and my games as I am disabled and need to force myself to stay in.

Hewlett Packard is the manufacturer behind my laptop and on changing my RAM from the 3GB it came with up to the 8GB it now has I realised it had a SECOND HARD DISK BAY!! This was 6 months ago long before Ubuntu was presented to me. I thought how cool this was and thought about an SSD especially as I had now realised that idiots on the Internet were WRONG to state that I could not play any of the latest games on my laptop when I eventually played the most demanding of all....ELDER SCROLLS V SKYRIM!

I then realised I needed not only a special cable to add a second drive but also a LONGER CABLE?! Imagine my shock when I discover I could pick up a short cable for £8 to £15 but the longer one was £100?!?! I went to Maplin's store and asked someone in there wh knew IMMEDIATELY I had a HP laptop as he had the same problem?! MAD!!

I see a Hard Drive caddy online for £11 that will replace my optical drive allowing me to add a second HARD DISK there! So I think ... ohh I wont need my optical drive I will get one and I had a Western Digital Scorpio HDD lying around so used that.

Now I reformatted everything back to their original factory conditions for the two Hard Disk Drives, a 320GB Toshiba, already replaced once, and the 160GB Western Digital and I install Ubuntu onto the Toshiba first, thinking that will need the extra space while Windows will need the faster drive. Only when it comes to installing Microsoft's Windows 7 it yet again REFUSES POINT BLANK to install and the error message given to me makes no sense other than to say "I'm TOTALLY FECKING BLIND!!!"?!

Now I had been sensing skullduggery on Microsoft's part and came up with a little idea and then though "Hmm I have been filming and photographing everything for my blogs to build up content and make money I should REALLY FILM THIS in case it works and should PAY OFF?!" I did and it DID WORK.

It is not the ONLY big name I have been focusing on either but some things are just best to wait for as the more data I have the more concrete it looks to others. Some may spot this immediately but I DO LIKE everyone to spot it...EVENTUALLY. So sometimes it is just best to work on it and wait until the best time.

So I do this film and make some changes to my laptop and HEY PRESTO I am in business. Windows 7, which I DO like despite it being a bit slow compared to Ubuntu and that Leaping Lizard screwing the company up for the last ten years. But Windows starts being Windows yet again by refusing to see a wifi so no internet. My God I could NOT BELIEVE IT, how did they manage to do THAT yet again after doing THAT with the release of Windows XP?!?! I fixed sooo many computers when Windows XP first came out it was NOT TRUE?!

However I had a bit of luck as I had Ubuntu installed which installed without a damn problem at all, everything just WORKED!! So Ubuntu ended up FIXING the ageing and decrepid Windows and held its hand while it fetched the things it needed like a senile and immobile old man in an Old People's Home?!

Back into Windows and I am now in the Internet and install a few other things but forgot a few. No matter i am now online .... but ooh yeah the updates for Windows?! FECK IT!!! Slow Windows and my NOT SO BROAD BAND CONNECTION I am looking at the screen and want to use my laptop as a frisbee but would rather do this with Steve Ballmer, owner of 3 Mobile and HP in front of me with the laptop edges laced with razor blades so decide not to.

Yesterday and after two weeks of fecking about, the last week of which was laced with a really rotten illness, pains in my knees, feet and groin, dizzy spells making me pass out and being dragged to hospital, painfull drilling on my teeth and a really bad toothache that persists today and last night I finally get everything working to the point where all I have to do now is install my games back on and I am one HAPPY CHAPPY!!

I sit down with the games cases on my lap and I remove Edler Scrolls V Skyrim DVD which is the greatest game ever made and sorely missed these last two weeks and by the same outfit I remove the Fallout New Vegas DVD which runs Edler Scrolls a close second and I go to insert the discs into my Optical Drive and I am...

....OH FOR F#@1$!! SAKE!!!!

YOU BLOODY IDIOT!!!

So I had to go through all that to tell you that I had totally missed the fact that I DID INDEED need the Optical Drive no longer in the bay where the installation of Windows 7 now lives. I cannot even remove it to install it which I could have done had it been on the OTHER DRIVE?!?!

So I left the house on my bike to buy ANOTHER DVD ROM DRIVE to plug into my USB Port so I can re-install my bloody games, LMFAO!!

I decide to go around the cah converters and little store to buy one cheap. I only need them to install a couple of games and I have four bloody items in this house that spin optical discs?!?! I KID YOU NOT!!

I go into Morrisons and there is a little PC repair place ... "How much your DVD Roms, mate?" I inquire before being told they are £40.00 and I am like "Err no I do not think so!!"

I now realize i have an intense pain in my right heel and thanking my lucky stars that I have come out on my bike I then hobble over the car park to enter PC World that sits 100 yards from the Argos that sold me a refurbished Nikon Camera, or TWO?! The pain is getting worse and i am feeling some stinging in my groin to boot, ooh bad pun!

I had intended to either go to my friends store afterwards but I also had TWO harnesses on me for my Barr & Stroud 8x42 Bird Watching Binoculars worth £100 but I got off Amazon for £83?! Also in my Kombat Rucksack in Olive Green also bought from AMAZON is my Olympus Stylus SP-820UZ Camera too and I had planned to go to Lea Valley Park to film and photograph wildlife which would NOT have been good due to the crap weather but want and need more content for my blogs and YouTube accounts?!

In PC World I see, eventually and in teh WRONG PLACE, a Lite-ON top loading DVD ROM and WRITER for £25 (with £5 off). This is about £15 more than i actually want to pay and am using my rent money until Wednesday when I get paid next....IF I GET PAID NEXT?!

As I have done so many times before I end up thinking bugger it I am not going about in pain I will just get this one....only when I buy it I hand over a £50 NOTE only to be handed £20 in change and I say "errr love, you have given me the wrong change?!" and she says no its £29.99 and I say NO it is £24.99 and point towards the SHELF where I got it which is only 6 feet away. She says it must be for a different one and I say oh what you just so happen to have TWO Lite-ON DVDs both with the same features and yet you have the price for the cheaper one and not the DEARER ONE, yeah right! I thna point out that this DVD Rom is indeed £29.99 but that the label states that it is £5.00 OFF and she scans the label after removing it from the shelf and then says ... NO SIR THIS IS A DIFFERENT ONE!

I am a computer scientist in PC World being spoken to by an idiot like I am the IDIOT?!

I puff and whinge and think about how I just stood in pain for ten minutes waiting while only ONE PERSON was on the 8 tills, saw the queue which was now four times longer than when i was on it and said...

..."fine....I will just have to TAKE THIS ONE THEN!"

Now if you will EXCUSE ME, I DO BELIEVE those two games have finished INSTALLING!!! LMFAO!!

Happy Easter!