Well, ubuntu wanted to update itself & I let it rip & then rebooted.
Seems like it broke itself--I just get a flashing cursor on a pure black screen when I try to start it back up.
Guess I'm going back to windows for a bit..
Alright--if I go into 'ubuntu advanced options' in grub I can log into recovery mode on the current kernel (I think it's a kernel?) and can log into the non-recovery version of the previous kernel.
Tempted to just change grub so that I don't use the new kernel. Not really sure how tho.
gotta update grub to change default kernel to boot
Boot previous kernel version β Ubuntu 16.04 - Technical Admin Blog
http://techadminblog.com/boot-previous-kernel-version-ubuntu-16-04/
@rpardee
yeah, ya gotta count, but if you just want the kernel before the current kernel, it's always "1>3"