I don’t know how many years ago now. Possibly even five years ago. I bought a Dell Inspiron 2600 laptop and it weighs about 20 pounds. Basically the biggest waste of money. I will be much smarter the next time I think about a laptop. It really would make a good anchor. Well since I don’t currently have a boat the anchor is going to wait. But here’s what has happened with it over the last couple of days.

Since the Ubuntu snafu with my desktop, I wanted to put it on my laptop, for a couple of reasons. Basically, when I bought it, it was still too slow to really run XP. I thought hey, I will install Ubuntu on the laptop and then it will run smoother and I can get used to the new OS… on all those occasions that I need to use my laptop…

So, after that night, having setup the dual boot on my computer and then re-reformatting it to just be on XP, I took the Ubuntu disk and stuck it in the laptop. It didn’t boot off the disk. Had to go into the BIOS to change the boot order. No problem. Done this a million times. It’s easy. No computer assembled by a large corporation is every easy. Ever.

Usually, in the BIOS, you just switch the boot order. In my BIOS on my laptop you actually have to disable the drive. DISABLE IT! Well, I thought, that’s weird, but okay. I disable the HD. I should also mention that there is the HD Menu and then my specific brand HD in a sub-menu below it. Well, at this point, something weird happened. Nothing would boot. It wouldn’t boot. It would load the disk and I would hit install, but it would just sit dead in the water, so to speak. So, I had had enough that night and gave up. Left it for two weeks. F Dell.

And that brings up to speed until this week. I want to bring my laptop this weekend for South Country Fair, in case I need to make tweaks to my poems, etc. I think, okay, Ubuntu doesn’t work. I will try putting XP back on for the sake of usage. I get through the first stage of the install. It reboots. And re-installs itself. Reboots. Re-installs itself. WTF?!? I am thinking. I format it, in DOS. Nothing. I check the memory and reset booting stuff. I mess around far past my capability as a nerd. Finally, I had a brilliant idea. I will go and set the BIOS back to default setting. Nothing happened. Everything is booting as before. Why isn’t this working?

I am fishing around the Ubuntu site and see Xubuntu. It’s an version for slower, older computers—like my anchor. I download, burn and pop it into my laptop. Xubuntu installs. Success! Minor, sub-story: I had to install Xubuntu three times because I kept taking the CD out at the wrong time. Ha! I was tired. End minor, sub-story. I turn off the laptop, take the CD out and restart. No operating system found. I hate you Dell! I hope you go to hell. Hehe rhyming.

Remember I mentioned that whole disabling the HD in the BIOS. But, I reset it. Remember? Remember how I reset it? Well it turns out that it didn’t reset the sub-menu and so my BIOS, all that time (including while trying to re-install XP), wasn’t booting my HD, thus not being able to an operating system. I enabled the HD. Everything works fine. I am now running Xubuntu and everything is smooth. So far.

UPDATE #1: It seems I have had quite a few people find my site because they are having the exact same problem. I am by no means an expert at this. I am more of jerry-rigger. I can just tell you what I did. No clue if it’s right.

To answer theUg’s question. Actually, I don’t know if it’s answer, but here we go. I also could not get the Ubuntu (live) disk to run. It would boot the initial junk but then it would say something like Please wait… and the screen went black and the CD and HD would spin for about 30 seconds and then nothing. Black screen of death.

However, for reasons unbeknown to me, when I put the Xubuntu disk it gave me the live desktop and I could install. It didn’t hang up. I think Ug, perhaps, you should attempt to install XP or a Windows OS. Previous to getting the Xubuntu to work I had installed XP which included an NFTS format. I really don’t know that this should matter. Two things: (1) If you can’t get XP to install maybe there is something else going on and (2) perhaps the Windows disk does something to make (X)Ubuntu to work.

After installing Xubuntu. I tried one more time to re-install Ubuntu, but it would get stuck at the same spot. So instead I talked to a friend who suggested using this in the terminal to install Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

I haven’t worked out all the kinks with this yet. There is more information here. Not sure that I even did it right. I am a n00b when it comes to Ubuntu.

This is always a great way to start a story, says Thomas King. I just finished reading The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative which is from the 2003 CBC Massey Lectures. I had heard most of them on the radio in 2003, but I always wanted to read the whole thing. There is just something about Thomas King that always gets me going. Green Grass, Running Water changed the way I thought about stories and literature in general. Who knew magic realism existed? I didn’t. I love post modernism.

Well the Massey lectures aren’t any different. They really got me thinking. A couple of things actually. Including a semi frantic email to Tracy wondering why she never told me that I am not a poet. One of the things that really got me thinking was this:

The truth about stories is that that’s all we are… So here are our choices: a world in which creation is a solitary, individual act or a world in which creation is a shared activity; a world that begins in harmony and slides towards chaos or a wolrd that begins in chaos and moves towards harmony; a world marked by competition or a world determined by co-operation…

So am I such an ass to disregard this good advice and suggest that the stories contained within the matrix of Christianity and the complex of nationalism are responsible for the social, political, and economic problems we face?…Am I suggesting that, if we hope to create a truly civil society, we must first burn all the flags and kill all the gods, because in such a world we could no longer tolerate such weapons of mass destruction?

…What if the animals had decided on their own names? What if Adam and Eve had simply been admonished for their foolishness? I love you, God could have said, but I’m not happy with your behaviour. Let’s talk this over. Try to do better next time. What kind of world might we have created with that story? — The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative, Thomas King

This is not an new idea to me. It is a different way of phrasing it. I know that King picks on Christianity a bit in this book. Rightfully so. The Judeo-Christian story sets up a definite hierarchy and we are, to this day, members of that same hierarchy. Believer or not. We are competition based. There is very little cooperation in us—aside from self-serving, which isn’t really cooperation. I am guilty. I am not pointing at you. Sure, I sponsor a kid in Rwanda and give to Amnesty International, but I also put that I sponsor those organizations on my resume.

In Christian terms, I have heard this debate not over the creation story per se, but over the idea of original sin. Different theologians have imagined what the world would look like had we started from original blessing, as opposed to original sin. How many centuries have gone by with the first thing we hear in this world is that we are flawed, guilty and cursed. Worse yet, cursed by knowledge. By the desire and curiosity we are born with. Cursed by a talking snake. So maybe this wasn’t the best story to start with.

The good thing about stories is that you can tell them again and in your own way. I like that idea. It means there is still hope. I want to end this with one more quote—You can have it if you want. John’s story, that is. Do with it what you will. I’d just as soon you forget it, or at least, not mention my name if you tell it to friends. Just don’t say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story. You’ve heard it now.

I have been so wrapped up in both preparing for this weekend and getting the new theme together that I have completely forgot or haven’t been thinking about what to post. I figured I would tell you about this completely insane dream I had the other night. I don’t usually dream like this, but it has been known to happen. Perhaps this is just one of the ways that I am turning into my mother. ZING!

Wait… Did I just burn myself?

My dream went as follows:

I was camping. I believe at Water Fowl Lake Campground in Banff and I had a tent right beside the river. Also, Stormy—my now deceased cat—was with me (she was alive in the dream) and so was Charlie—our family dog who is closer to death than not. I got out of my tent and saw that there was a grizzly bear fishing in the river. I took Stormy up in my arms and tried to keep Charlie close. At this point, it was a bit more of a nightmare, because instead of walking away, slowly, from the bear I walked towards. Apparently, I needed to sneak past it and not away from it. Ridiculous. I didn’t have a leash for Charlie and Stormy was squirming. Charlie went trotting down to the bear and I screamed at him to come back, but he wouldn’t. I decided I had to cut my loses and leave Charlie behind. If he wants to be stupid and fight a grizzly bear it’s not my fault.

It’s around this point that my dream went bananas. The sh*t is B-AN-AN-AS.

As Charlie made a beeline for the bear he turned into Phoenix—our younger, dumber dog. It’s closer to his character really. And as he ran at the bear it morphed into two hippopotamus’. And they just ignored Phoenix and they had a hippo battle. With all those teeth and roaring and stuff. Just like on TV. Then I woke up and told Leah my dream. It was nice too see Stormy, nevertheless.

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Welcome to the new theme. Get acquainted. It will be around for a while. I will be doing more tweaks tomorrow. I hope you enjoy it. I will have more to say tomorrow.

Update:

Alright. Now things are starting to feel a little more comfy and back to normal. This theme is by Brian Gardner and it is called Vertigo Blue—however it is no longer blue. He has come up with a lot of different themes and all of them are very nice, but I liked this one the best. If you go here and look at what it originally looked like you will see that I have changed things quite a bit, superficially at least. Also, there isn’t an Archives page at this time, but you can use the drop-down box in the sidebar or the Sitemap.

Reasons for changing:

I wanted more white space. I was feeling a little claustrophobic with unsleepable. Plus, I have new ideas on how I want to go forward with blogging and so with those ideas I wanted a new look. I also really wanted a 3-column theme. I find this one, though it’s skinnier, easier to read. I hope the new layout isn’t too confusing but I think it’s intuitive.

Feedback:

I would look forward to hearing what you think. What you really think. Obviously, I like/love compliments and I am sure Brian does too, but if you find something a little overbearing or counter-productive please let me know.

Well South Country Fair is this weekend and I am writing some new poems and fixing up the old ones and some are just fine the way they are. I was wondering if I could get some feedback? This is a new one.

Roadside Attraction

My memory is impertinent and refuses to believe
the truth. I pull over, driving between Watson
and Melfort. There is the carcass of an airbase,
sleeping in the canola for the last sixty years. The hangar,
built by a flat-footed foreman and farmer’s
wives, angles slowly towards earth.

I remember flying in 1942, practicing destruction,
when a man with Parkinson’s threatened everything.
Aiming at a concrete battery with hot lead
we culled craters into a small moon rising,
the sun dipped below the prairie shoulder.

Along the concrete wall fists fit in the holes
where we executed whole names into the monolith,
if only my memory was static.

At 25, pointed north on #6, from my seat I stretch
my legs, feet hovering above the gravel I hear
planes roar. and remember how it feels to fly.