Just Stuff

Well, I finally got my laptop, no thanks to DHL. In fact, it seemed as though they didn't want me to get my computer. I called them Thursday morning to find out what to do so that I could get my laptop, after one or two failed attempts at delivery. According to DHL's website, it had already been delivered. I knew better. I tried to find out what I would have to do to get it. I asked if it could be delivered after 4:30 since that was when I typically got home from work. I was told that they couldn't make appointments for deliveries. I was told "We can't make appointments for deliveries. If we made an appointment to deliver something at 4:30 then we wouldn't be able to make a pickup we had scheduled for 4:30." Apparently it's possible to schedule (or make an appointment) a pickup, but not a delivery. And I didn't want a 4:30 appointment, I only wanted a delivery made after 4:30.

Anyway, on Thursday afternoon, I rushed home, and got there about 5 minutes before DHL showed up. Amazing. But when the driver when to get my laptop out of the van, he couldn't find it. He actually looked at me and said "I delivered it to someone else." I couldn't fucking believe it! I guess their website was right, it had been delivered Tuesday, but not to me! Incredible. Then he asked me if I would be at home for a while. I told him I'd be there until he came back with my laptop. He said it would take about 10 minutes, and he took off. He showed up about 10 minutes later, with my laptop. I had expected that the box would be opened, but it wasn't. I have no idea where my package had spent the past two days. It had to be signed for, and I would expect that the people signing for it would realize that they hadn't ordered a laptop. And if they did sign for it, why didn't they open it? Who knows what the fuck was going on? I can only say that if I ever order anything again, I will pay extra to make sure that DHL is not the carrier. They appear to be a bunch of fucktards.

So I finally had my computer. When I first powered it on, it seemed to take quite a while to boot up. Apparently, since it's a Dell, it goes through some "gyrations" on the initial power-up. The first screen you're presented with is an EULA that you have to agree to in order to go any further. Naturally, I agreed. I didn't mind, since I had ordered the system with Ubuntu.

After this, I had to set up a user account. Ubuntu comes with no root account set up, so in order to do anything with it, you have to set up a user account. Once this was done, I was able to log on normally. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Ubuntu comes with Gnome as the window manager. When I used this in the past, I didn't really care for it. I preferred KDE. It seems to be more configurable, and I like other things about it. I think it's mostly an aesthetic thing, I can't explain it any better, but that's the way I feel about it. Anyway, I decided to give Gnome a chance.

Since I was used to the KDE menu layout, and had been using MEPIS instead of Ubuntu, it took a little time to get used to the not-so-subtle differences. Also, it seems that the MEPIS distro came with more apps installed. One of the things I've noticed about Ubuntu, based on the live CD's I've tried, is that it seems to come with fewer apps than some distros. One of the first things I had to do was to start installing the software that I was used to using. Synaptic (which is what I had been using on my old laptop) was included in Ubuntu, so I started out by installing things that I normally use. Since I tended to use KDE, a lot of the applications tended to be KDE apps.

Still, I plan on trying Gnome, and giving it a fair chance. But to be honest, old habits die hard.