It's official I guess, I am hopeless.
Got the cd set up, can't get the machine to boot off it.
Went to the ubuntu on thumb drive, it looked like the set up part worked, but I get an old dos-looking error message that says stick the windows disc in (up yours Bill!) and all you can do is hit enter, then it gives you a screen that asks you to choose to start windows 8 or ubuntu, I choose ubuntu and it craps itself and kicks me back to that demonic dos message.
I guess I just suffer the scourge of the win8 swipemonster and learn to like it.