More of the Daily Paranormal

I do not set out expecting (or wanting) weird things to happen: they just do.

There are approximately fourteen people at work expecting babies, at least four of them twins.  The call has gone out: DO NOT DRINK THE WATER.

It is too late in my department: we have one set of twins and one boy, both under two weeks old.  The weather must really have been interesting nine months ago…

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Ever work with one of those people? You know - the kind of girl or guy who sees her coworker get a computer gadget and immediately requires one, whether she needs it or not?  The one with whom I work saw two people taking Family Leave and immediately required a heart bypass.  The jury is still out as to which one of the three will be out longer.  My money’s on Bypass.

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We got a few desktop machines in with quad-core AMD processors.  Dell allows corporate customers to order machines with FreeDOS, Vista, or Vista with upgrade to XP.  Since a lot of us like linux, why pay the Microsoft Tax<tm>?  FreeDOS it was.

The fellow across the aisle got Kubuntu 9.04 up and running in no time.  He cautioned me to manually load the video driver, as it pooped out on the auto-install.

A few seats down, another guy had VMware ESXi server up and running in a flash on one of the quad-core boxes.  He was most impressed.

The guy at the next desk was seriously considering ESXi server too.  He explained that he could have three machines running at the same time.  “More to blow up,”  I said.  He agreed.  Never mind that he could run VMplayer with no serious penalty.

I’m reasonably certain that ESX is a modification of Red Hat linux, not that it matters.

With lots of ex-pregnant fathers out and one Bypass in the Waiting, I figured I’d at least boot up my machine and try to get Xubuntu installed between phone calls from people asking me how to spell “THE” and what is their password because they forgot even though the asked me to change it yesterday too.

I decided on Xubuntu 64 bit, downloaded the ISO and burned it to a cd.  Booted up the new machine, told it to install, and it told me it was having trouble reading the disk - REBOOT.  Very funny.  I rebooted, told it to install again and it told me to REBOOT again.  Only this time I swear I could hear it snickering at me.

Ok, new machine, two drives, let me try the other drive.

Nope - no good.

Burned another cd.  Failed to boot twice more.

For sports fans keeping score, that’s two freshly burned cd’s in two different drives in the same new machine twice.  Still no install.

I downloaded the 32 bit Xubuntu, burned it, and this time I distinctly heard the computer guffaw and try to cover it up by ejecting the disc.

At this point I’m starting to become distracting to my coworkers due to the screaming.

I borrow my buddy’s Kubuntu, since it installed for him.

It booted, which is a great sign.  It was a bit slow to start the install process but it started.  And ran!  And ran… right up to the error message, which said it was having trouble doing `something’.  Unfortunately I did not have a Need to Know what the `something’ was so I told it to try again with predictable results.  It refused to go any further but it appeared quite happy to let me go back.  Since that wasn’t going to help I threw a monkey wrench in the computer’s plan (and almost AT the computer) and rebooted.

I started again with the Kubuntu install, figuring I could always install the XFCE desktop later.  This time it went past where the error occurred last time and appeared to have installed.  Since I had to keep juggling chainsaws, I didn’t get to watch it or check to see if it would reboot.

Tomorrow I genuinely fear what I will find.

Since the install appeared to have completed, I’ll reboot, only to find that it boots up perfectly.

Into Windows.