Recently I discovered Pidgin, which is the messenger program I use on my netbook, doesn't belief AIM exists any more. Since I was awake annoyingly early this morning I thought I'd get up and see if anyone was in any of the RPG related chats. Which they weren't, but I discovered that Trillian in your browser doesn't do chat. After lots of searching on the forums I uninstalled Pidgin then reinstalled it. At which point it refused to open. But I did discover why it refused to open links in Firefox and just did nothing. In the end I installed Kopete, which I've decided I like far more than Pidgin anyway, but not as much as Astra.

Just because it seems to be that sort of weekend, the netbook keeps randomly disconnecting from the network (it just seems to be a common bug with it, which is unhelpful, but at least I know how to get it back on without restarting). And I watched a DVD using my computer as a DVD player and the wireless keyboard as a remote and twice the computer decided that every keystroke was actually me right clicking and wouldn't acknowledge me left clicking. Why it decided it didn't like the wireless keyboard today when it's been fine up till now, I don't know.

On the plus side, since Azureus kept disconnecting my computer from the internet (which also seems to be a common problem with Vista) and there's something clearly not right with it, I thought I'd install μTorrent, which seems to work perfectly and looks pretty much the same.

So that was my weekend of trials and tribulations. Next week I have an MRI, a flu jab and a trip to the dentist and the week after is a trip to the balance clinic. So it'll all be a bit medical.

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I spent last weekend updating all my Firefoxes to 3.5. My laptop and Firefox Portable were on v3 already, so it was just a case of clicking the button and updating a couple of my add-ons manually. The netbook was a different story...

The trouble with it is that Acer made some programs dependent on Firefox 2 and disabled the check for updates button, so I hadn't bothered updating. It was faster than my old computer, but it had got to the stage where it was really slow, specially in Gmail where my typing was ahead of what was appearing on the screen. So I found some instructions on the internet about how to install Firefox 3 alongside v2. So I copied Firefox files on the netbook so I could make sure to get back to the old version and followed the instructions.

I briefly had both versions open before I restarted, which made all my old Firefox menus and icons open v3. Which, because it wasn't installed over the top of the old version meant that it didn't have my profile. The instructions said that it was easy to get the old version back, but didn't say how. After spending ages searching the internet and trying things I gave up and set up the new version of Firefox.

Which was all fine except that whenever I opened it it opened up four tabs, which wasn't what I wanted. I assumed this was a problem with Tab Mix Plus restoring things. A week later I found this was because I'd accidentally set my home page to be all four tabs, which it didn't even occur to me to do...

It's worked out ok in the end because 3.5 is much faster, nothing seems to be broken, and I have the Penguin Racing game that's on the Asus Eee on my netbook. Not that I can play it because it moves, but it'll be there for future usage...

I've also watched lots of new things on TV that all seems to be American. But how exciting is Friday evenings going to look with SJA, HIGFNY and Armstrong and Miller?

Flash Forward: I should have taken the fact that it's on Channel 5 and my PVR randomly not taping it as a sign not to bother. It sounded interesting, despite the TV guide claiming it could be the new Lost (I didn't like Lost). It wasn't that exciting, but the main trouble was that they were incapable of keeping the camera still. The worst bit was when they spent several minutes going round and round. I didn't get to the end of the first episode and it made me so dizzy I still felt crap the next day. Funnily enough I didn't bother with the second episode...

Dollhouse: I quite liked the sound of it and it turns out it's really interesting. I'm five episodes in and am amazed that I've liked them all so far. Even the continuing storyline, which I wasn't too sure about at the start.

True Blood: It looked quite interesting when I found out early on in the episode that it involved vampires living openly among humans. Sadly, though, it also looked like at least two of the main characters have a variety of American Southern accent that I just can't take seriously or listen to for long periods of time. I reached the point where I just couldn't listen to it any more that night, never mind for three months. I do have less tolerance for American series at the moment, I think because I'm not that short of things to watch.

Stargate Universe: Will be henceforth known as Universe, using the same pattern as Atlantis. I wasn't sure about it at first, but I really liked next Tusday's episode. I think watching Access All Areas helped because it introduced me to the main characters, most of whom I hadn't managed to work out. Robert Carlyle's character is definitely interesting because you just can't tell what side he's on. I can definitely see the series as a whole changing a lot as it goes on.

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At some point I am going to get some work done - but there are too many distractions! Linux turns out to have Freeciv, and I need to go and find what sounds I want for it. I'm quite glad I printed out the stories I wanted to edit because I've been sitting in a nice comfy chair to do that. But tomorrow we're off to Narnia, Tuesday we're going to my grandmother's (not sure why though) and Wednesday I'm doing my Christmas shopping. I really want to spend a day (or more) getting my head round LJ language to do Melli's layout, but at the moment that's really not going to be happening before Thursday.

If only I didn't have to go back to work...

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Because of my back I decided it would be a good idea to get the bus to work (15mins walk away) on Friday as I had my suitcase and computer with me. Sadly, this did rather rely on the bus actually turning up. Suffice to say that my back's been really bad today.

Ibuprofen, though, is really good stuff. When it kicks in it makes such an improvement. I have also nicked mum's chair, which is much more comfortable than an ordinary dining room chair, and I have a footrest (little step things I remember we used to use when we were little to reach sinks and things). Hopefully, it'll be a bit better tomorrow.

I had entirely forgotten that we were going to put Linex on my computer, so we spent the whole afternoon doing that. It's on there now, although the sound is too quiet on my computer to hear it on the Virtual Machine, and it can't currently see the network to be able to share files between it and Linex, but those can wait for another day. I found a very cool screensaver showing little coloured dots orbiting round a bigger dot in the middle.

We've also just watched Thursday's Avengers - I was most excited when Mrs Peel rescued Steed, for a change. I am suffering (well, not suffering really) from Doctor Who overload. I remembered last night there was a new one on BBC7 on Saturday, so I listened to that, and just finished in time to see David Tennant on Jonathan Ross. Then I listened to tonight's episode live, on the TV. And there's less than 24 hours to go to the new one tomorrow!

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Just a quick post to say how much I love Linux. Tomorrow (or Sunday) I'll post more when I can actually writem rather than type, specially as I can't quite get used to this keyboard.

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