this weekend made more difficult

This weekend was quite literally a gut check. Summarized in spectacular powerpoint fashion…

• Microsoft Vista is quite possibly the worst f*cking software ever written.  Ever. Period. End of Story.
• Weekend-long pounding stress headaches suck.  SUCK SUCK SUCK.
• Building a computer from scratch got a lot more complicated in 8 years.  Building a computer with a pounding stress headache is a fracking awful.
• Hard drives arriving DOA (complete with that sickening head clicking) SUCK.
• And I thought ATI was bad... Nvidia (and ATI) need to get their act together and polish their linux drivers... and make sure your installer works!
• Alberto Milone is a SAINT!!  Wrote a great python script (Envy) that does a video driver installer better than Nvidia or ATI (f*ck nuts)
• Discovering Envy after a day and a half of manual tweaking SUCKS!
• Figuring how to reconnect my home theater system is always much more trouble that it should be.

But now to the accomplishments

• Now have a nice dual screen, dual booting (WinXP & Kubuntu) system.  Kubuntu has the right video driver (although the X-fi isn't supported yet... Oh... Creative sucks too for that, but at least I have sound out the motherboard).  I wasn't able to do virtualization on a raw partition... baby steps, but I'll be able to setup a VM of Windows 2000 to cover basic windows tasks, and I'll only have to move over to WinXP for gaming or final photoshop production -- a step in the right direction.
• Have a brand spanking new 42" LCD HDTV.  Went with Visio from Costco... definitely looks and feels a little on the cheap end, but the picture quality is great (and its 1080p for a little more than $1000).  The HDTV cable box comes on Friday.  I also need to go buy an upcoverting DVD player.
• After cursing out Vista to no end on Sunday, I finally got my PDA (its a fucking Dell windows mobile 5!) to sync for Ann to use (today is her first day... wow that's weird).

To Do Items

• Buy a Weber grill (only allowed charcoal unfortunately), so I can start cooking.
• Buy new DVD player.
• Setup computer software.
• Install bike stand
• Get car washed...
• etc, etc.