Category: FWIW

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Deliverance!

Some few of y’all may recall the saga of our “bad neighbors”–multiple calls to the police/sheriff’s department for rowdyism, driving over our lawn with their trucks, dogs running loose, late night-early morning loud, drunken parties on their front lawn, racing down the street, etc.

They’re finally gone. A new couple has moved in. Don’t really know him past “Howdy” but she’s a teller at the local bank and has been for about eight years. Stable, nice folks. Greeted me by name when I took a couple of small baskets of cherry tomatoes over to see who’d moved in (even if they’d not liked tomatoes–they do–it was a good excuse to drop by, ya know?). They moved in while I was having a busy schedule over the past week out and about, so I didn’t get to carry any furniture, as some of our neighbors did when we moved in 15 years ago. Bummer. So a few cherry tomatoes were the least I could drop by, eh? Yeh, yeh, I shoulda baked bread or muffins or something, but when I took a cherry pie to the gals at the bank (yes, even the manager’s a woman) I didn’t bake it myself. Baking’s not my gig.

*whew!* Hail and farewell.

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It’s the Little Things…

Interesting week. Little things, mostly compy-related.

My dad–aged 85–called up with a boot issue. Pretty smart guy sbout this stuff, especially for someone who spent better than 70 years before ever even being exposed to using one of the things. Followed directions well and we traced the problem very quickly to a dead CMOS battery. Sent him pictures, a diagram and instructions and he was cool with the whole thing, *heh* Gives him a reason to play with his grounding strap.

On the other end of the spectrum, the guy that was on the other end of the line when my dad first called is clueless about computers. I picked his up the next day. His WinXP install was well and truly trashed, and the only real fixes were to either hope a repair install fixed things or a complete reinstall. Since he didn’t have the original WinXP install CD, I dug a lil further. Yep. Was not going to shell out one of MY licenses to reinstall Windows (his “license” was… apparently a lil hinky). When the repair install failed, I eschewed attempting a reinstallation using the product key it’d been installed with and just installed Puppy Linux for him, since he insisted all he used the thing for was surfing and email–and there was NOTHING in any email store for any email client, so he meant all webmail.

[Edit: his response when I got it back to him and set up: “It’s never been this fast!” Of course not, it was dragging one of the Queen Elizabeth’s anchors (WinXP) behind it all the way… Even his online java gaming was faster. But, a caveat for folks who do need java/java plugins. Installing/enabling java/java plugins is not all that straightforward in Puppy Linux and involves a LOT of typing at the command line, although some of that can be relieved by some creative mousing–something I was reduced to because of my typo-laden command line “skills” *heh* Still, dragging a plugin or executable to create a hard link where one is needed is easier than typing a long string into the command line and avoids easily-created errors, so I’m not ashamed to admit doing it. 🙂 Configuring browsers to use java after all the background installation and links to plugins has been done is a trivial task, though.]

Puppy’s ideal for him anyway, since the computer is a 700Mhz box with only 256MB of RAM and a 10GB hard drive almost full of programs he never used because they were “inaccessible” to the WinXP that’d been installed over Win98. I don’t imagine he’s got any complaint with running Puppy instead of WinXP, since WinXP had been installed over what was there when he got it from a dump.

Oh, finally got my first opportunity of 2009 to help my Wonder Woman down at one of her libraries, yesterday afternoon. She wanted to move her office computer to the other side of the room from her desk, but keep her monitor, keyboard and mouse on her desk. Easy-peasy. A looooong monitor cable extension (about 2+X the diameter of her original monitor cable, with a humongous amount of shielding, etc.) routed around the wall took care of the monitor issue. Since her office computer’s a Gateway (a very nice, very capable P4 that is several orders of magnitude better than the Dells the school system bought for student use in the libraries), I found her a nice Gateway RF wireless mouse/keyboard combo. Took more time moving and re-routing cables, bundling things up in wire loom, etc., than you might think, but at the end, actualized the mouse/keyboard and she was away to the races.

Fun. (Oh, I bought a second set for me, so I can slide back a few feet, put my feet up on my keyboard drawer and–with a lil “mousing table” nearby–set Opera to 200% and laze through an eBook. *heh* Places the monitor 6′ or better away from my eyes, but really easy easy to read that way.

*heh* I just love freebies. Someone asked me to evaluate using a DirectTV R15 receiver for an offlist purpose. It didn’t work out and I let ’em know why. Emailed me back: “Keep the thing.” Now I have a spare 160GB hard drive, pulled from it. Nice. And I know just where I’ll put it–as slave to an 80GB drive in an old 900Mhz system with 512MB memory. I’ll partition the things into 40GB partitions, I think so I can dual boot Puppy Linux and Windows 98. Maybe. I read an interesting article about virtualization with Puppy, so I might give that a shot. 512MB of memory is pretty slim to do virtualization with, IMO, but between the parsimony Puppy treats memory with and the relatively low memory needs of Win98, I might be able to do it.

Didn’t get to the P.O. until after 4:30 yesterday. I wonder what the package is that was too big for our box?

I’m running about 3-1 this week on answering machine messages on my POTS line as opposed to voicemail on my VOIP phone. Hmmm… If I dropped my POTS line, do you think more people would call my VOIP phone? I like having my messages emailed to me, since I’m almost always at a computer–either mine or someone else’s. I hate cell phone voicemail, and I keep my cell phone turned off ALL the time, unless I’m making calls, so my VOIP phone is “my” phone. Heck, I make more local calls on it than I do on our POTS line.

Oh, BTW, back at the Puppy Linux thing: installing Puppy Linux to a hard drive from the live CD is now a trivial operation. A little wizard just copies over the image from the live CD… though minus one critical element that must be “installed” separately, so booting that installation is something else. The GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader) installation wizard isn’t quite as straighforward, definitely not “Aunt Tilly” ready, IMO. After a couple of tries using it, I just looked up the GRUB boot config file it had created and did a little editing to make the thing work. Notaproblem, really, but I don’t expect the “Aunt Tillies” of the world to go for that. Close, but no cigar.

OTOH, for someone who just surfs the web and does email, booting a live CD Puppy Linux session could be all the computer they need, and Aunt Tilly could handle that (once Nerdy Nephew ran the easy-peasy network wizard that does work well and shows her where to CLICK to install PET packaged software, in case she needs more than is in the standard installation).

Today: day of R&R and bumaround chores. First thing: pick up that package at the P.O. Then, grocery shopping, library and little things like that. Easy day. Maybe get an afternoon nap. I hope.

If I keep myself focused on the ordinary things of life, maybe I’ll not brood over the little things like The One being the very first newly-inaugurated president to skip out on the Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball since it was begun 56 years ago… (h.t. MoreWhat) Whatabum.

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Winterlude #1

Cold where you are? Maybe this’ll warm things up a tad:

Hey! At least it beats the “I love me” party Obama’s throwing in D.C. for entertainment value, and you don’t have to stand in line at a porta potty to enjoy it. And after the inauguration, partying and all, is passed, even then will there be enough disposal routes for all the B.S.?

(Nothing more from me today, cos in addition to my official–and essential–“to do” list, I have some mods to make to my primary computer. I may hose my system, but at least I’ll have fun doing it. :-))

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A Few of My Favorite Things… (3)

Well, although I’ve still not had updates utterly fail, as some Win2K and WinXP updates have done, when I came to this computer this a.m., I didcovered 291 updates waiting. Not all that unexpected, really, after an upgrade, but…

No, the updates didn’t fail, but some needed interaction with me and… popped the request for my input UNDER the update window, so it looked as if the updates were stalled but I had no information as to why… until I alt-tabbed to see what else might be going on. Come on, folks! Pop the message up ON TOP of the upgrade window! It’s a small and very simple thing, but one that I believe would be more than a little helpful. (Off to the Ubuntu forums to air this gripe… )

In the long run, I believe it will be the little things that will make or break Ubuntu, and not just for me but for the millions of folks Mark Shuttleworth wants to impact with this distro.

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Blogeeky Traffic Stuff

Since I dropped TTLB, Technorati, a bunch of “you blogroll me, I’ll blogroll you” and other such links from my template, I have had a precipitous drop in traffic, now standing at 1/10 the traffic that was normal just a year ago.

So? Of course, I also have dropped from 1,000s of spam comments a day to deal with to somewhere in the low hundreds, as well. *heh*

Those who now visit and comment (interestingly, more via email than in the comments form. I wonder why, but I don’t ask. Because I don’t wonder why all that much–and some of the email comments are from RSS feeds, I notice, so that makes some sense) are of a generally higher caliber than at many times in the past (a notable exception on the previous post).

Still, in recent days, I’ve had visitors from all over the U.S. and Canada, and some from Venezuela, Chile, Ghana, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, India, Thailand, Australia, Japan and a whole lotta lumps from places in Europe (very interestingly NOT Russia).

Sadly, fewer easily mocked Moose-limb boyz are finding me nowadays via “Mohammed in a Pink Dress”. Oh, well. How fleeting is fame. *heh* It was fun while it lasted.

I seem to have returned to my blogging roots: simply blogging to mollify the voices in my head. And that’s a Good Thing, IMO.

Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Political Byline, Democrat=Socialist, The World According to Carl, and DragonLady’s World, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Weblog Awards and Other Stuff

I only partake in such as friends or blogs I appreciate are nominated (heck, I’ve even scrubbed technorati and TTLB from twc). Angel’s a participant(go on, y’all, give her some votes, ‘K?), and I’ve tried to faithfully, daily vote for her (sorry for a coupla misses, gal). Another worthy nominee, in the category of Best Comic Strip, is Medium-Large, and here’s one reason why:

2009-start

And here’s another (h.t. Lovely Daughter):

Good stuff, Maynard.

Oh, OK, since I said it, I may as well post the thing. Some of y’all are old enough that this pretty much passed you by, unless your children mentioned it to you (I never saw it when it aired–was too busy working, but it percolated into my set of 80s memes anyway).

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2009 Resolution-Per-Day #7

Add two practice days on my horn. Used to play more instruments, but now only one. Used to play regularly; now only practice some. As it is, not really enough to keep my lip in shape to really play, although I guess I could if I had to. Add two days/week regularly. Lip in good enough shape, I could always serenade the dogs.

OK, that’s enough. A week of resolutions is more than I’ve written down in a decade. I’ll just work on these for a while.

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Now, This Is More Like It

I’ve been wanting to take a small, light car and convert it to an electric plugin/hybrid*, but several factors have made me put off doing so. Now it looks like one roadblock may be falling:

EV batteries demonstrate 180,000-plus mile lifespan

One of the key points critics have leveled at the electric car movement is that any money saved by switching gas stations for the power point will be lost when the battery fades and needs replacing. With battery costs currently still high, this is a valid concern – but how long can a battery pack last? Battery provider Southern California Edison have been testing a lithium-ion battery subpack for two and a half hears now and have demonstrated a life of more than 180,000 miles without significant performance deterioration.

Of course, battery service life is just one of several factors influencing when/if I’ll actually get to such a project, but at least that’s one excuse that may be knocked down. “May be” since the test wasn’t under real life conditions, just a lab simulation.

*”plugin/hybrid”? Yeh, I’d like to be able to tow a generator on trips longer than the battery pack can handle on its own without recharge, and have the gas- or diesel-powered generator feed the batteries/electrical system on demand if necessary. Kinda like this car:

acp_tzero_dsc00467

Although, I do NOT expect to ever do a conversion that can do this:

*heh*

Trackposted to Rosemary’s News and Ideas, , The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, A Newt One/ American Truth Warriors, Political Byline, The World According to Carl, and DragonLady’s World, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.