Ubuntu almost gave me a heart attack

[Transient]

I've been fiddling with Ubuntu a lot to get it looking and working just the way I want it. Apparently half an hour ago I pushed it just a little too far and caused my PC to crash, and when it rebooted, I got an error and had to run fsck manually. A bunch of problems existed which were fixed after hitting Y about 20 times when prompted, and eventually I got everything back to normal (or so it would seem). Needless to say, I gave up with the tweak I was playing around with. I guess I should know better.

Anyway, my question is this: is there a way to back up onto a CD all of the settings and customizations that I've made to date along with Ubuntu itself? I know the OS is robust, so is it possible to be able to boot off of, say, a thumb drive and have absolutely everything working identical to my desktop if I took the drive to a friend's laptop? Obviously things like hardware drivers wouldn't work since it isn't the same machine, but I would at least have a partial backup to work with if I ever do FUBAR my installation. :/

If not, is there anything out there that could do something similar? I don't even know where to start Googling my first question, but after a while I'm sure I could figure out the last one myself. Any help is appreciated, regardless.

[+JuggerNaut+]

i'll tell you after you tell me this "tweak"

[Transient]

Trying to get my Hauppauge TV tuner's IR remote to work. I fucked up in terminal apparently.

[+JuggerNaut+]

that's not much of a tweak. ok, well i don't have an answer for you anyway, sorry.

gl.

[^misantropia^]

Backup /etc and the .* files/directories in your home dir regularly (daily, say) and there is little you could do that would irreversibly wreck your system.