Are there any Linux users around on my flist? I'm looking for advise and opinions...

Alright, so I've been sick of Windows for a while now. It's slow (specifically on my netbook), they ask money for everything and anything, except when they install stuff on your computer that you neither want nor need, but have no bloody choice over. Wait, scratch that, even then they're bound to ask you money for it. Also, you can't de-install quite some of the stuff one might want to de-install (*coughinternetexplorercough*).

When I first came into contact with computers I was about 9, the computers ran DOS and I actually got pretty good at figuring it all out pretty quickly. Back when we first got our own computer at home (some 2 or 3 years later), we had a computer than ran Windows 3.11 and I must admit I was master and dictator of the system. My mom couldn't use it, my sister wasn't interested, my brother screwed it up whenever he touched anything but preinstalled stuff (and even then...) so I made the system settings into what I wanted them to be (which admittedly led to a lot of crashes and my neighbour coming over to fix it again) but also allowed me to learn and change whatever I wanted or needed. Windows these days is a complete different matter. With each new (and more 'user friendly' *rolls eyes*) version of Windows, you could change less, and these days they make it so hard to change even the simplest options that I often end up wanting to kick it.

Anyway, my housemate and me were talking about installing Linux yesterday. This would solve a lot for me, including the fact that I'm running windows 7 on a windows XP machine and it's bloody slow, but I CAN'T DEINSTALL IT because I don't have a bloody external CD drive (or, in fact, money). Open-source stuff would fix all that very nicely indeed.

So we come to my question; Which Linux distribution? What interface? Stuff like that. It's a whole new wide world, with a whole new vocabulary that I'm not fluent in, and too many options to count. I've been hearing from a lot of people that, as a starting linux user, Ubuntu is the way to go because it's quick, easy and pretty comparable. The way I see it though, that makes it exactly the same as windows; It comes with a shitload of things pre-installed (which... Oh, right, is one of the boons I have with windows) only this time you get firefox rather than internet explorer... Which is, of course, an improvement, but still.

My housemate was talking about Arch, which is about as basic as they can make it, I think, and I rather like the sound of that, but everyone warns me away from it because you have to do everything yourself and apparently if you're not a nerd extraordinaire that is really hard? I don't know, I never tried... And am kind of scared that once I install Arch, I can't go back to windows. I know Ubuntu can be ran side by side with windows, does anyone know if Arch does the same? Supposedly there's a very specific guide on installing it and getting everything you need, and since I do have two laptops, I should be able to have that up while actually doing the installing.

Any other systems that I should know about? And does anyone have any tips, tricks, whatever for an about-to-begin linux user? Anything you want to gush about because you love it so much? :P

In other words, yesterday I had the presentation from my master thesis and the evaluation of my internship. Presentation went far from good but that's no less than I'd expected but I have a 7,5 out of 10 for my stage, and got a lot of compliments. I can be very proud at what I did at my internship these last 7 months (The story of my climb three years ago can be found here btw :) )

My mom has taken up doing crisis fostercare a while back (basically means they call you to ask if you have the space and time to have another fosterkid and somewhere between an hour and a couple of days later there's the kid standing on your doorstep. They usually stay between 3 and 6 months, although officially they aren't supposed to stay for more than 3 months while stuff gets sorted out and either they return home, or move on to a permanent fosterfamily. Hardly ever happens in time, sadly.)

Right now, she has two brothers of 8 and 10, who'll move back home after summer. They are genuinely sweet boys, but have very obviously grown up in the lowest social class of society. It's very interesting to see them adapt to our family which is, while not upper class, higher middle class at least.

A while back, we were all watching the news and there was an item about the legalisation of gay-marriage in New York. I reacted happily and my mom nodded her approval. One of them asked why it was necessary to let retards or idiots marry. Turns out they only knew it as a insult. Obviously, I explained it to them and we got to talk about how it's really pretty normal for a boy to fall in love with a boy and a girl to fall in love with a girl, and that it would be really mean not to let them marry, since they loved each other. I think they did get the gist of it.

Sometimes I forget how incredibly lucky I am to have grown up in the family I grew up with. Had I been born into, say, the family those two boys come from, I wouldn't have been half the woman I am now. Oftentimes when judging people for the way they act and think, we forget that we are shaped by our past. It's not those kids' fault that they're so ignorant, but if I'd caught either of them using 'homo' as an insult, he'd get a very stern talking to in the very least. If he was 10 years older than he's now and I'd caught him using it as an insult, I'd have looked down on him, judged him or gotten pretty damn angry. But how the hell is he to know that it's wrong if no one explains to him why it's perfectly normal for people to be homosexual and that there's nothing insulting about being 'homo'?

I am finishing my masters degree on university level.

I have ADHD and dyslexia, I am ill more often than almost anyone my age I know, for years and years people have been telling me it would be too hard and I wouldn't be able to make it and yet I am finishing a fucking mastersdegree on university level. I must we one smart cookie and a bloody hard worker. So anyone who doubts me (not in the least me) can go and take a walk, because against all odds I am finishing this thing. Because I rock.

There.

And now to remember that.

 I wrote my first poem in... Quite possibly over a year?

Going on twenty-three

Am twenty-two, going on twenty-three,
Come take a look at my life and see;
I'm growing up, I'm settling down,
In the adult ways upon which I used to frown.

Am twenty-two, going on thirty-three,
Take my own responsibility.
Cook my food, pay my bills,
No pizza or fries because it kills.

Am twenty-two, going on forty-three,
My days no longer free.
I go to work from nine to five,
Earn my very own way through life.

Am twenty-two, going on fifty-three,
Have to look respectable now, you see?
Will never wear clothes in black and grey,
Well, that's what I used to say.

Am twenty-two, going on twenty-three,
But tonight I am age-free.
Bring out the sexy dresses, bring out booze,
Sometimes even pretend-adults have to let loose.

 Am sitting on my balcony in my PJ's enjoying the morning (alright almost midday) sun and not being cold... Gods I love spring. <3

Spring, lazy Saturday mornings, sun, chocolate, tea, a balcony facing south and friends... Life doesn't get much better form here.

So what are you doing this fine Saturday morning?

I should be in the library reading articles for my thesis all day. So far today I have...

- Folded old laundry
- Sorted out new laundry and put in the machine
- polished my nails with so-called caring nailpolish
- Cleaned up room to a level of neatness it hasn't been since I moved in
- Sorted out paperwork and put it in order of importance
- Cleaned up my bags (what was my D4 dice doing in my backpack? :S)
- Sorted my bookcases in attempt to make them adapt to books beyond their capacity
- Finished book I'd been lying around with the last couple of pages unread for over a month
- Gathered stuff to back my weekend back
- Emailed friends+housemates with a proposition about dinner tonight
- Hung out on facebook
- Put away trash
- Filled bucket with water for cleaning my room (off to do that now!)

Hey, most of this stuff did need to get done and has been in need of getting done for ages! Seems not wanting to do something else is the best way to get there?

(Not half as much as the work on my masterthesis but one can't have anything).

It's monday morning, 8 o'clock, I'm at the station waiting for the train to get to my internship and I am absolutely content.

Had a wonderful quiet weekend staying over at my friends' place. We did nothing but watch Glee, House and the movie Evita, play games, dance a bit and just relax. I needed a weekend to recharge and I did.

My mom went to Germany for a long weekend with my siblings and it's been ages since I saw her as refreshed as when she came home yesterday. Since she's been borderline burned out for over a year now that was about as energizing as the whole rest of the weekend put together.

Btw, happy valentines to those of you who celebrate!

Ok, gonna stop typing now; my hands are freezing!

You're in the train with two huge mirrors in your lap. What do you do?

Oh, right, make weird faces at yourself and spy at the people sitting behind you. ^^;

I have my driverslicense!

I can still barely believe it but... Oh my god I HAVE it! It's done! After over a year of seemingly endless lessons, dispairing if I'd ever learn, lesson after lesson after lesson after lesson, a horrid examiner for my first test... I passed my drivers test today!

I got it on my second try, which is no more than average, really. I can pick it up at city hall Wednesday next week and then... Then I can borrow my mom's car (lovingly christened 'the cooky jar' by my housemates) and drive... on my own... for real!

It's still unbelievable.