Made the mistake of typing in linuxquestions.COM. That web site immediately seized control of my computer (I'm still using XP)and tried to download a bunch of crap. Even when I punched "no" the downloads tried to continue. Closing the browser made no difference. Finally had to lock my firewall and dispose of the items one at a time. Beware. I have since bookmarked linuxquestions.ORG. Warn new linux users. Fear, fire, foes.

Almost there. Distro in hand, modem on the desk ready to be installed. Only need to back-up existing data. Arrrrg. New hard drive to go in external box won't format. It says it's formatting, it takes all the time it needs, then says, sorry, didn't format. A RAW disk is not much good for back-ups. Will have to get another drive. This is getting irritating. Should have stuck with known quantities (Maxtor, WD) instead of trying a new bird (Samsung). That will teach me. Never try anything...

Found out a couple of the distro disks had a "run from disk" option. Plugged in the Ubuntu disk and booted up. Nice. One of my big beefs with Red Hat was how primative the GUI was compared to Windows. Doesn't seem to be a problem any more. Didn't have high expectations, and therefore was not disappointed. Had tried Linspire previously on "boot from disk" and knew the potential problems.

It didn't find my printer so had to configure that manually. No big...

The distros are here. I'm psyched. Only two tasks to go before Linux day. Back-up all existing data (something I FAIL to do on a regular basis) and installing a Linux friendly modem. Dial-up is a bitch, but it is all I have. I once had a processor-based modem in my Red Hat days. Lightening surge did it in, fortunately after I had given up on Red Hat and its Windowesque daily "security" updates. Three kernals a month took up about all my time with dial-up. Still, I do know people...

I am not much of a gamer. I have a few favorites that I play every once in a while, first among them being Halo. I was disappointed when Microsoft refused to even consider making a PC version of Halo2, but I understood the company's obsessive need to sell their over-priced Xbox 360 gaming system, so I accepted the fact that Red vs. Blue would probably be the closest I would come to Halo2. Microsoft's announcement of Halo3 and Halo Wars rubbed salt in the open wound, but almost made getting an...