I had a very techy weekend it feels like.

1) I installed Ubuntu running on VirtualBox on my new work laptop running Vista. Now that my primary home machine is also my primary work machine, I wanted a separate environment just for myself. And I’m a geek. I originally tried it with Virtual PC 2007, but ran into a few snags and serious performance issues. I got about 50% of the way through the Ubuntu install before I tossed it. I was able to download VirtualBox and install Ubuntu with no hassle in half the time. I’m extremely impressed with Ubuntu so far, as well as VirtualBox. Fortunately the “guest additions” feature for VirtualBox fixed my resolution problems on Ubuntu, which was driving me insane. Probably not a coincidence that’s what drove me away from desktop Linux the last time!

2) Printing across the network in Vista is apparently the most resource intensive thing in the history of computing. Fortunately I don’t do it very often. And I definately won’t be trying to print from Ubuntu through the VM through Vista.

3) Our network at home has sucked of late. General web surfing would just stop dead. But long running transactions (like ssh sessions) were fine. I think the problem was crappy cox DNS servers. I switched our router to use OpenDNS. Not only has the problem seemed to have disappeared, but web surfing in general is noticeably and substantially faster. Big thumbs up for OpenDNS.

4) I finally got my Mii into a jpg. I’m either missing something painfully obvious, or Nintendo really is making it that hard to get the damn thing off the Wii. If I am missing it, so is google and millions of other people. :) But it was worth it, because my wife made me a damn good Mii.