Paperless update and a new hobby

Hey,
The paperless system is working excellently! This month I think I've looked at the budget 3 or 4 times, and that's when we've got a lot of unexpected bills to pay. Also, the cash system is really great. I've made one modification: In the original plan I was going to split the leftover cash 50/50 between Alex and I. This provides us with an inconsistent amount each week in our bank accounts. This goes against the theory of self-disciplining, because you can't really get used to a consistent amount and will tend to spend more during weeks that are slimmer than others. So what I've done is created a $50 each per week payment from the joint to our personal checkings. That way we get used to the exact same amount every week, and can create predictable habits. It also helps us save by adding whatever trim there is after the bills and this payment to the buffer. When the buffer gets too big, we can trim it back to $500 and save the rest.

NEW HOBBY!!!
Now that I have so much free time from not having to pay bills, I've picked up a new hobby: Learning LINUX. Jeff and I found a computer on the street yesterday, which made me remember that I've got about 8 unused hard drives (some as big as 40gig) sitting in the basement, along with another pretty boss PC I built in '04. Since I don't have any legal copies of windows, and they made it such a bitch to copy now, I thought I'd really stick it to whoever-is-bill-gates'-replacement and fire up Ubuntu.
I really don't know the first thing about linux, unix, ubuntu, or redhat. I do have a decent amount of programming experience though, and I'm pretty familiar with what goes on in the background of an operating system (remember the apple IIe that you had to boot from 5" floppies?) So I downloaded a copy of Ubuntu and ran it on my work computer today.
Ubuntu is really great! I'm going to try to keep my unsubstantiated or opinionated rants (that apple-commie kristie is so familiar with) to a minimum, but the fact that it costs a grand total of free dollars gives it some major points: 189, to be exact. For windows users, the interface is very intuitive: +5 points. It can run off of CD, so you don't actually need to have a working hard drive to run it: +8 points.
I'm going to try and keep it super simple as the free-and-legal project progresses, so if anyone wants to find an old piece of crap computer and follow along you can. I'll even give you a copy of Ubuntu on CD so you can try it out (without changing a single thing on your computer!) on one condition: you post to my blog. My blog sometimes gets lonely.