After some deliberation I have decided to teach myself common lisp. In order to get going with Lisp on ubuntu (and to do it in the traditional way) I had to install emacs along with some other tools like slime (the canonical lisp development environment). Using aptitude for this entire process is possible, but not optimal -- one will end up with an outdated version of slime and Debian will not be packaging lisp tools in the future. The best way to get started with a Lisp system on Ubuntu is to use cbuild.

My birthday!
Yes, today is my birthday.
My lovely family bought me this beautifal ubuntu messenger bag - http://shop.canonical.com/product_info.php?products_id=123&osCsid=e039c5...
and some awesome 20 watt bluetooth speakers!
Heh, I also received some ubuntu thinking putty, so it was a bit of an ubuntu themed birthday.

Ubuntu has come a long way hasn't it? This review is mostly my opinion as I have tried it out and have nothing ill to say about it in general, these are just my nuances.
A few things Canonical should do:
Include Flash and Video Drivers