Adventures with my boot sector and the government.

Hi everyone, Right now I'm back from my little adventure into the land of boot-sector erasing. The "Create usb startup" tool that comes with ubuntu unfortunately doesn't recognise my usb hard disk. Even more unfortunately, when I used the installer on the CD to install onto my usb hard drive, it erased the boot sector on my internal hard drive to make sure my computer would start up from the usb one. I was fortunately able to fix it without reinstalling the whole system (which would wipe my wireless card driver and prevent my computer from connecting to the internet and therefore downloading a new one, which wouldn't be that bad anyway since I'm going back to my parents' tonight).
Anyway, this whole adventure is in fact so that I can work on my programming projects at my parents' house without filling my father's hard drive with stuff that I need and he doesn't. The reason I'm going back to my parents' house after less than a day is that the real reason I came here was to pick up my mail, I'm staying with them until Studylink stops demanding I change their nappies every day and starts paying me. In other words, I'm staying with them until I can leave without starving.
It turns out that WINZ is actually the cause of my Studylink problem. Back in October I went to a compulsory meeting with them. I gave my name to the receptionist on arrival, gave them a heap of information, and I wrote my name on another register before I left. Apparently this is called non-attendance. I'm having a meeting with another office on Tuesday to sort it all out.
My next blog entry, should you choose to read it, will contain my predictions for what this year will hold. Anyone who reads that post is welcome to laugh at me next year about all the points where I was wrong.