I’ve updated my ubuntu 9.10 (insert whatever cutesy alliterative here) laptop to 10.4, albeit in a circumambulatory manner; all of my own doing. I took advantage of a nice, phat broadband connection to perform the update manager facilitated upgrade (these usually go smoothly) when the update process took much longer than expected, over 4 hours (the download was fast, the package update was slow. My watching twit.tv surely impacted performance.) So, hoping that the package installation would not be negatively affected by putting the OS to sleep, I did so and continued on with more interesting aspects of my life. I had figured on continuing the install at home. Only I didn’t. I forgot and returned to a computer that lost it’s power and had turned off. The machine booted into… 10.4, but that was a curve ball, as the core system was updated but not the myriad of packages.

So, back to a classic reformat and install, using the system I outline here. This allows me to wipe out and reinstall the OS without hurting my user data directory; which is very convenient. Here’s the screen shot from my install this morning, which will probably serve me in x months, as the screen shot for the prior link did.

Screen shot from my 10.4 Ubuntu installation

I’ve noticed a Quicken Intuit service for business websites on television. The premise of their ad is simple: they make business web sites simple and cheap. Sure; like everyone else before has. Anyhow, in one scene, a “mom and pop” couple “successfully” upload their site — dramatically and succinctly portrayed, of course. Immediately afterwards, we see the same couple “watching” a Google search window, and, voilà! their site magically bumps to the top. Of course it’s that easy.

So, either Quicken Intuit has paid Google handsomely for this “feature,” (making Google look very unethical) or, more likely, given the perceived importance of SEO by initiates, that’s a bit too much fantasy to stomach.

Wow, this was easier than I expected. Here’s roughly what I did: