Drinking from a firehose

Yesterday my new computer arrived. jebra installed ubuntu 12.04 on it and got started on migrating my files. I worked on that again this morning and just now had the bright idea to try viewing on my PAL dvds. It works!

This is good news because I'd planned to watch them on my desktop computer at work and it doesn't even notice I've inserted a disk. I've had issues with the CD drive as long as I've had this box, so I'm inclined to blame the hardware rather than ubuntu. My plans to watch PAL dvds on my home desktop computer were also foiled, there because my monitor suddenly ceased working. For viewing anything directly on the machine this is certainly inconvenient, but I spend so little time in my home office I often wonder why I bother to maintain the machine at all. It's main purpose appears to be acting as my personal file server.

In semi-related news, Lewis Collins' voice is entirely different from what I'd imagined from reading fanfic. It's taking some getting used to!