Today’s report is not really OS specific, rather an examination of a question presented to me by my girlfriend the other day. Much like any other day, I was boring her to tears with a tale of my latest desktop tweak and she had apparently had enough because she stopped me.

In a very kind tone, she questioned my interest in tweaking a system that is already working perfectly well. My answer to her was in true geek fashion: I told her that I tweak because I like to see what will happen.

Obviously this is not a male/female thing per se. Nor is this even a habit that is shared with everyone who has at one point worked in the IT industry. Nevertheless, we are the few, the proud, the “desktop tweakers.”

So what brought this all on? Well, the fact that I managed to nuke the video settings for both my Windows box in addition to having a video driver upgrade go bad on my Linux box as well. With the XP box, I am seriously considering calling a clean reinstall, but with my Ubuntu box I may simply opt for a test install of the new Ubuntu Edgy RC1.

The beauty of my lack of judgement involving these recent upgrades, is that my notebook has since become my primary system. Well that and if I had hosed that system as well, I can always fall back on a recent disk image of that same Ubuntu install with everything just the way I like it. I have it saved onto an external hard drive.

Thanks to a little know how and SystemRescueCD’s inclusion of Partition Image, I can completely toast a system with total confidence.

For those interested in destroying their XP installs (oh come on, it’s fun). I have been pretty happy with Acronis True Image for restoring one’s sense of self. It’s point and click goodness with a UI that even a newbie can love!

Well, that’s it for me. I will see everyone (virtually) once again come Monday. Until then…