Update:

1. The therapist thing has worked out quite satisfactorily and outlook is looking up. The therapist in question seems to be conversant with Jungian things, so I am hopeful. And the money concern has been worked out. So.

2. After a bizarre few days of watching functionality gradually erode away on Xandros, culminating in my Firefox browser loading up in a 3 inche square window that could not be resized or maximized, I got fed up. I downloaded and installed Ubuntu, another Linux distro that so far has worked beautifully in that it is nearly ghost-like in it's unobtrusiveness and ease of use. Also I was able to get a very interesting program to do one's own wiki, which has simply loads of narcissistic possibilities.

3. Car news: Monday I went to go LOOK at what Honda has to offer these days and two hours later walked out with signed paperwork to buy a Honda Fit. It has everything I wanted on the Yaris and the salesman said he could have it in for me by Wednesday night. Sold! says a wait-weary I. I spent Tuesday rushing around getting ducks in a row (took down payment money to the credit union and applied for the loan, went to see my insurance guy, etc). They had to bring the car I was supposed to get from another dealership here in the area. I get out of work today expecting to have a voice mail saying my car was in. Instead, I get a call saying call the sales guy. I did, to be told that the person who was supposed to bring my car from the other dealership wrecked the car. In the parking lot of the other dealership. Some idjit wrecked my car before I even got to drive it. So the sales guy said he had a regular light-silver Fit on the lot right then if I wanted it, or I could get the dark-silver like I'd ordered and wait two weeks. I said I'd wait the two weeks because damn it, that's what I ordered! But once more I'm waiting. After telling everybody including my mother that I would have a new car today. I went with Honda because I was tired of waiting to get my new car. If I wanted to wait until the middle of June, I'd have stayed with Toyota. So now I have to explain to the credit union ladies what's going on, and my insurance guy... sheesh. All patience does is get you screwed over.

4. As reported on BoingBoing today, some group of nutcases intent on "cleaning up the Internet" is targeting slash writers on LiveJournal. For some idiotic reason these goombas are equating slash with child molestation, pedophilia, and incest. Apparently what these screwballs don't realize that what we write is fiction. While there are a considerable number of stories depicting non-consensual sex and even rape in slash fiction, it is fiction. And at least in Stargate fic usually involves some alien influence, the Goa'uld, the Wraith, the Genii (usually Kolya) or some other alien presence. It's almost always in the context of one of the main characters getting attacked and the recovery afterward with the help of the other main characters. Considering the great majority of slash is written by women, I'd say it reflects a reality that a lot of women have to face. It probably has helped the writers to deal with things happening in their own life. Fiction can do that. You can put your characters in similar situations to what you have to face yourself, and let them find a way out of it. It can put it all at a once-removed distance.

And aside from all that, good slash is just plain hot.

Y'know, it's usually the people who scream the loudest about "obscenity" who have the biggest porn collections.

And, uh... tortured naked man in agony, nailed to a tree. Sadism and bondage much? Next question, noobs.

In pagan circles at least they're honest about all the sexual symbolism.

Well, I have Newton back with a new CD/DVD drive and have restored the Xandros system. Amazingly, was able to get all my bookmarks, e-mail etc. back. Having a little trouble trying to find a desktop theme that works properly, but I will NEVER ever EVER again hit any button that says "Enable 3D Effects". Never.

$159 poorer, but hey, I didn't waste the $80 I spent on Xandros.

• OpenOffice installed.
• Audacity refuses to recognize my headset, so the podcast was done on Copernicus tonight.
• External drives (HD and USB) continue to be a pain to find.
• Acrobat apparently did not download last night as I had thought.
• Found posts on user forums regarding glacial system speeds and how to fix. Used one fix and it seems to help considerably; the other involves editing a config file which may take some finagling.
• Still getting the hang of single-clicking and right-click-open-in-new-tab on Firefox.

Well, I'm switched over to Xandros. So far I've managed to get all my URL bookmarks imported, though Versora didn't seem to import my e-mail address book like I expected. Luckily I printed out my address book a couple days ago, so that's no problem.

I've sent an e-mail, received some spam, gotten onto Wraithbait, and generally made certain that basic functionality is, well, functional. Obviously, if you can see this, it can also handle Blogger.

I'm still struggling with the USB drives thing, since it's not making that easy. But I assume that's me and not the system. There will be an easy way to do this, I just have yet to find it.

I'll let you know how it goes.

In the next few days I will be switching over to the Xandros Desktop Linux operating system due to the complete fubar that Windows will soon become when Vista infects the entire world (see Cory Doctorow's most excellent reading of Peter Gutman's Vista security assessment for an entire world of reasons why this is a good idea).

Xandros seems to be a most excellent GUI system that will do everything I do currently with XP, for about half the price... a price that also includes migration software (Versora) and an entire CD of applications. There is a free version if you are interested in giving it a try. Currently I am awaiting an answer back from Xandros tech support as to what I need to ensure my ITunes library doesn't get lost again. As it's on an external HD I want specific instructions on what to do to make that particular transition as seamless as possible. Xandros has its own music manager, and apparently you can't get ITunes for Linux. I assume Xandros won't have any problem recognizing an external HD, but I have had enough problems with trying to transfer my library. I don't know if I can get CopyPod for Linux systems, or anything similar.

For the moment just going to do Newton with the Xandros. Once I know what I'm doing and I'm certain the loan for Copernicus is paid off (any day now), I might put it on Copernicus too.

I'll let you know how it goes.