... by which I mean, I'm currently running Puppy Linux 4.0 from a boot cd over my ancient Red Hat install, which means I can still access all my old files, but I can do stuff like watch youtube videos! get files off my camera! put mp3s on my mp3 player! edit things in googledocs! Use my Wacom tablet!

I'm even kinda confident that I'll get xsane to do stuff before too much longer! Go me. Go puppy!

(Puppy is a tiny version of linux that is designed to be booted off of a CD and then run entirely in RAM, so you can use it without having to do anything to your current computer setup - use it as your primary OS, since it can save session files on an HD partition without interfering with your installed OS at all, in any way.

...and OMG, it is *so painless* compared to my old linux install. It's like magic!

Not that it's *entirely* painless, given I spent all day trying to get it running right and working with my hardware and files. One could also argue whether it was worth spending the time messing with Puppy as opposed to just backing up and installing a whole new OS. But the benefit of doing it this way is that a) I knew that whatever happened, I'd still have at least one mostly-working computer, and b) I now have a working Puppy boot disk that I can use in any computer that reads CDs. I'm tempted to burn another one to put in my in-case-of-apocalypse go-bag...)

Now I have a headache and am entirely sick of messing with computer and don't feel like catching up on all the computer stuff I couldn't do before. I go to sit in bed with eyes closed for awhile.