Last week, I installed Ubuntu (a distribution of Linux) on my home machine. A few days later, I installed it on my office machine.

Now, I've been installing and maintaining Linux for a few years now. I'm not a venerable master by any means -- it took me a long time to be convinced to make the effort. But I'm pretty sure that I started with something like RedHat 4 and a 1.2 era kernel, which would have been about twelve years ago. I then moved through a series of RedHat distributions (including the ill-conceived version 7). I switched to Debian when I got back to Canada, partly because it was by far the Linux of choice on campus.

I had been growing tired of configuration problems. I was manually mounting and unmounting USB devices, I couldn't print, and I couldn't scan. I got the sense from Daniel that Ubuntu makes some of these problems go away, and so I decided to give it a shot.

Wow. I'm very impressed. Ubuntu is just like Linux, except stuff works. You don't have to go and fiddle with kernel parameters, install custom software, or edit configuration files (though you can!). I plugged in my external hard drive and it was detected and mounted. Turned on the printer, and bless my soul I printed a document from Linux. The system is almost Macintoshesque in its predictability.

Okay, there were a couple of glitches. Ripping CDs was slow for reasons I won't bother to explain. I had to fix that manually. I still don't have hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, but that's mostly my stubborness in sticking with my (fanless) Matrox card. But I'm very pleased. Perhaps it's just the infatuation talking, but this is the first time I've seen a Linux distribution that I would be comfortable recommending to the non technically savvy. That's probably optimistic, but "hey, you should be using Linux" doesn't seem like such an abstract, idealistic proposition anymore. I could conceivably say it with a straight face, if it were not for the fact that "Ubuntu" is such a cute word. They definitely win for best Linux distribution name.

Yesterday was my own personal Coronation Day. Dentally speaking, that is.

In the morning, I walked the fifty or so metres from home to my dentist so that he could remove the low-quality temporary tooth I had received two weeks ago and install a beautiful new crown. You may recall the saga that has unfolded over the past eighteen months regarding a molar in which resorption had produced a tremendous hole. A simple attempt to fill the hole with amalgam failed, necessitating a root canal. But dead teeth are weak, and a crown is a good, albeit expensive way of keeping a dead tooth in one piece. Apparently, it's much, much better to stick a crown on a stump of tooth material than to pull the tooth and install an implant.

I got a good look at the crown before it went in. The inside is a gold alloy molded to the shape of the stump of tooth the dentist left behind. The outside is shiny porcelain, coloured like my other teeth (the dentist and assistant spent a good ten minutes with a set of tooth colour samples trying to decide which one was the best match; alas, they were out of fluorescent green). The crown as a whole is a very good match to the original tooth, and very strong (more ninja stars, Rusty?).

Let's summarize. I don't know how many appointments this tooth has required. I'll guess about a dozen appointments at the dentist, five or so with the endodontist, and three with the periodontist. A big old sack of money went to them, a lot of it mercifully provided by my insurance company. In theory, the root could still rot and the tooth will have to be pulled. But if all goes well, this will be the last we'll hear from the upper 1-6 molar. One down, twenty-seven to go.

Ever since a more senior colleague set me straight many years ago, I've been a lot better about sharing my ideas for future research. I happily blab to everyone about the projects I intend to work on.

It's possible, but unlikely, that this openness has finally come back to bite me. Over the weekend, a couple of people emailed me to tell me that they had seen one of my research ideas plastered all over the web. These are people to whom I had explained this particular idea in the past. There are press releases saying that my proposed research will be turned into a video game.

The thing is, this research idea is really weird, at least at first. I'm not sure if it's weirder that it should be turned into a video game as opposed to scholarly research, but its absurdity is one reason I put off working on it. After all, this is something I thought of six years ago. I guess if I was really worried about others stumbling upon this idea, I should have bloody well gotten around to it.

I'm left not knowing what to think. I doubt I've been poached. Surely someone out there has had the same idea before. I'm a bit disappointed because I lose a bit of the surprise factor this research would have generated in my field, and I don't want to be seen as following on the heels of this recent announcement. I'm annoyed because I finally did start working on this project last year. I'm flattered, but a bit embarrassed because it's a weird idea after all. And I'm frustrated, because frankly I'm not a great researcher. Good ideas don't come to me all that often, and I need to nurture the ones that do. I suppose that's one to grow on.

I've slept almost exclusively on futons since I moved out of residence fourteen years ago (I lived in a townhouse-style residence after that, but kept a futon mattress on top of the provided mattress). I've never had any problems; my body seems indifferent to the quality of the bed I sleep on, my in-laws' old hide-a-bed being perhaps the best example. My sleep is certainly more affected by factors such as temperature, humidity, drunken neighbours, and most importantly, fullness of bladder.

Nath hasn't fared quite as well. And who can blame her: she walks around most of the day with a squirming twenty-five pound weight attached to her hip. Her back is in a constant state of protest, and our bed is only making it worse.

So we did the sensible adult thing and bought a real bed. A nice coil mattress thing with a pillow top. It was delivered yesterday, and Nath already reports that her sleep with significantly more blissful than previously. Perhaps too much so, for she was reluctant to get out of bed this morning. I don't think the quality of my sleep was any better or worse. The bed feels very comfortable, but that by itself doesn't seem to have made a big difference for me. I'm glad Nath's liking it, though.

When preparing to visit the mattress store, we had steeled ourselves for the worst. We were ready to be given a ridiculous price and negotiate our way down to reality. Neither of us has the stomach for that sort of thing. As it turns out, the initial price was totally reasonable, including the box spring, free delivery, and two free pillows. We signed on the line and the whole experience was totally hassle free. Huzzah!