Last night, after at least two years of not doing it, I finally upgraded my computer from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to 14.04 LTS. In doing so, the goddamned thing crashed and the upgrade failed.
Look, I have a good computer, and I do love my Linux, but there's a lot of shit Ubuntu has done over the last several years that I really don't like, and every time I update/upgrade my OS I have to dick around with it for a good two or three hours afterwards to get all of my settings back to where they were. If I can, anyway. An upgrade from an old OS to a newer version generally disables about half of the customizations I've made over the years, as well as a good chunk of the special programs I've installed and modified (such as for gaming and for storage). This also includes the user interface, which I have to change/disable every single time I do anything. Ubuntu's default GUI is a terrible, tablet-like interface called Unity, which is difficult to navigate through, doesn't have a taskbar, and everything is done in panels. Ugh. I much prefer the GNOME 2 interface, which is the classic Linux desktop experience and the GUI that I used on every version of Linux I've ever had on my machines:
To use that classic desktop, you have to go in and specially/manually add it after every system upgrade (if it's available for your specific system, of course, which it usually is). Otherwise you're stuck using Unity. The screenshot above is a good representation of what it looks like, though that photo is a much older version of what I'm currently running.
Anyway.
I was able to download and initialize the upgrade fine, and it installed correctly, but then at the end it told me "the upgrade has been performed successfully, but there were errors." Okay, what the fuck does that mean?
At the end of any system upgrade, of course, you're prompted to restart to finish the upgrade. At least on Linux, anyhow; I don't know how it works on Mac or Windows machines, since I haven't used either one in almost ten years now. So I restarted. It brought me, as always, to the login screen. I typed in my password as always, and hit enter. Nothing happened.
Well, something happened, and that something was that the screen would go to the blank 12.04 splash screen (remember, I had just upgraded to 14.04, so that 12.04 splash screen should've been gone) ...and then it would just sit there. I could move the mouse around, but there was nothing to click on. It just sat there. I restarted several times, tried to login as a guest, tried to login under a different GUI, and nothing. Sometimes when I changed things, it would just lock up and freeze, others it would basically reset and take me back to the login screen, as if it didn't want me to do anything at all.
Okay, so whatever those errors were, they'd locked me out of my own computer.
I got out my laptop and booted it up, convinced that I'd have to download and burn a fresh image of the OS itself to install it manually, which would wipe my desktop's entire HD. This I did not want to do, obviously, as even though I'd backed up all of my data, all of my custom settings would be wiped and I'd have to go back out and get every program all over again, set them up, and reconfigure them. This was not something I wanted to do, as that takes hours and hours of tedious work.
At about this time, Daisy came home from a night out with her best friend, right at the time where I was at my most stressed and frazzled about the damn computer not wanting to just work. I very calmly and lovingly told her that I'd be out in a while, and that I needed some time/concentration to fix the damned thing, and she understood, gave me a kiss, and let me work in the dark of our computer room like some sort of mad scientist.
I downloaded the installation image and made a bootable flash drive with it, and burned an extra copy onto a blank DVD as backup -- which was a task in itself because it took me nearly an hour to find my spindle of blank DVDs after the move.
When I booted it (with the flash drive first), it gave me the option to reinstall my installation, which basically translates to repairing all of the broken bits and letting it completely redo itself. Which is what I did. An hour later I had a perfectly functioning desktop computer again, with the upgrade leaving most of my configurations and the like alone. This is a very good thing. I installed the GNOME 2 interface again, and my computer is back to normal -- faster, prettier, and completely up-to-date. There were, of course, some programs I had to re-add or re-install (Skype, Google Chrome, Dropbox, etc), but eh, it wasn't bad.
So, that's done. That was part one of my plans for "stuff I need to do around the house but haven't gotten to yet." And then Daisy and I went to bed.
Daisy, as an aside, is on a strange schedule right now. Yesterday morning, really early, she went to help Mama renew her visa. As I mentioned here in the past, Daisy's mother is a Canadian citizen, but a permanent resident here in the states (as she's been living here for longer than I've been alive, and is married to an American). Because of that, Daisy and both of her sisters have full dual citizenship in both countries (and two of their combined six children do as well). However, since Mama isn't an American citizen, she periodically has to go to immigration and renew everything...despite the fact that yes, she has been living here forever and she is married to an American. It's a very stressful -- and according to Mama, somewhat degrading/dehumanizing -- experience, so Daisy accompanied her. It went well, apparently.
However, and here's the part I alluded to at the beginning of the post, when I got up this afternoon I had a message waiting for me from Daisy that said I had missed a call on my cell phone. This in itself is slightly amusing, because most of the time at our place, the phone gets zero reception whatsoever. It'll show me the little receiver symbol with a line through it, will say "searching" because it can't find a network that's even somewhat compatible with my phone, and it'll search and search until it drains the battery and it dies. So really, I was surprised it received a call at all.
I looked at the number and it was a local number, and I knew from the prefix that it was from Daisy's company. Aha. Finally.
I checked my email and found that one of the HR people had sent me a message asking if I was still interested in the position I'd applied/interviewed for, and if so to give her a call. Note that this was a completely different HR person than the one I'd been calling/emailing (I later found out that this one was an intern), so I logged into Google Talk and called back -- which led to me being officially offered the position and given a start date for training: August 18.
I have a job. Well, technically, anyway.
The training period lasts two weeks, Monday through Friday each week, usually from 8AM-5PM. It'll start on the 18th and then my real start date, provided I start the full position immediately after the training ends, will be on Tuesday, September 2. The position pays quite well -- it's the same job Daisy had before she formally got her promotion (so I know the salary) and it's full time.
I gave the lady on the phone my birthdate and SSN for background check info (which, of course, will turn up completely clean) and she gave me the location I need to be at on the morning of the 18th -- it's the building in which I originally interviewed. Daisy later told me that's where they do all the processing of forms (like payroll and tax forms) and then they give you another address to go to for the actual training most of the time. I would imagine that I'll more than likely train in Daisy's building, as that's where I'll be working, but I'm not sure -- so don't hold me to that. The company has numerous locations all around the city, and at least six or seven different buildings at those locations. I'm fine either way, obviously; you give me a job and I'll go do what you tell me to do wherever you tell me to do it.
Now, some of you may be thinking something along the lines of why did you accept it immediately instead of waiting to hear about the university position? Well, my answer to that is fairly simple: I knew I had a much better shot at this than at the university gig, this is full-time and stable with a yearly salary that I already know, and aside from knowing several of the people I'll eventually work with, I also know that it's very close to my home and that it's a job that I'll be able to do within an office and with no travel involved. Why wait for a job like the one at the university that may be fun, but isn't stable and involves a lot of things that I'm not necessarily the right person for?
I hung up the phone and breathed a big sigh of relief. The long, desperate hunt for a job was finally over, and not only was it over, but I still had almost a month of vacation-like time where I could decompress, relax, and finally enjoy my downtime without being constantly stressed about money and survival issues. A little less than a month before I start is fine; we'll survive and pay all of the bills and rent with what we have now with no issue.
More details will become available as I get them, of course; I got another email a while later from the HR lady asking one last quick question of who'd referred me -- I told her, of course, that was my wife. When an employee referral comes into question, the employee who did the referring gets a bonus for the reference.
"Yeah," Daisy said, "...after you have worked there for six months."
"I have to work there for six months before you get your bonus?"
"Yep."
"Well, shit."
I don't think that will be a problem, however. We'll need the money. It's also not until after that six-month point before I'll be able to become eligible for a promotion or position change within the company, so even if I don't like the job I'm doing, I'm still locked into it for at least that long.
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