Weekend Forecast: Full Geek Mode

Thanks to a man with a dream, we have a long weekend coming up here in the states. I decided it was time to make some of my dreams come true, and get caught up on some hardware/software maintenance as well.

To prep for this, I have renewed my AVG licenses ( to be installed this weekend- easy peasy)
ordered new hard drives for 2 different laptops, ordered a video card and memory from two different vendors ( one batch from Dell/one batch from eMachines for an old computer we have here) and will hopefully be picking up some very old laptop SDRAM from a friend.
I need to rollback a windows bases flash only terminal box we have sitting around from an old project, as it will make a great web browsing/reference "terminal".
I need to fix an auto disc mapping issue with the shared media drive on two computers.
There should be at least 3 Ubuntu installs in the mix.
If it all goes well and nothing explodes I will end the weekend with at least 4 additional computers functional in the household. This is probably some sort of horrible sin, since it will put us at more computers than humans in the family-- but it feels worse to me having hardware just sitting around gathering dust. We frequently have folks over who borrow computer time, so this will ease some of the crunch that way.

One of them is the "terminal", one a very old but wonderfully thin and portable M300 that will have Ubuntu and be perfect for ultra portable writing anywhere. I am claiming this one as my writer's brain. It gets no games, no second life, none of the silly experimental stuff. If all the installs go well, I may even track down a USB wireless connector so that I can do the write and post thing from almost anywhere. It is a master of portability, and at 3lbs, easy to take on trips and to coffee shops to help me get significantly more writing productivity.

With 4+ kids and Ogre on a mission to get significant progress done on the office storage cupboards, this should be a geek adventure indeed. I will tag all the posts on the ups, downs and progress as I go under "admin".