Apparently, having an iPod plugged in and charging to my Mom’s Dell Inspiron 600m while rebooting causes it to lock on the BIOS check. It’s a minor inconvenience and was easy enough to troubleshoot — unplug everything, then try rebooting again. I’m guessing the BIOS is trying to tell if it can boot from the iPod, since I have it set to boot from external devices, then the optical drive, then the hard drive.

Comic moment supplied by my father, who said, in a slightly accusative tone, “She was using her programs!” Translation: “She was using Ubuntu!” 😀