Category: FWIW

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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.

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Drive-By Gas Post

I cropped this pic out of a drive-by (literally) snapshot I took yesterday of the place where I usually buy gas. I’d bought gas the day before for a penny less.

01-02-09-gas

I ought to have had my camera out for another drive-by today. Price jumped a dime since yesterday.

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2009 Resolution-Per-Day #3

Simplify, consolodate, update and rationalize my tech.

I’ve already begun his process. By having all my “reference copies” of Windows consolidated into one physical machine via virtual machines hosted in my Ubuntu Linux box, I’ve eased the clutter and made things simpler to some degree. But what else can I do?

1. Install other OSes I use/need to try out on USB flash drives as portable OSes.
2. Rationalize all my bookmarks, password files, etc. from my browsers and sync ’em up to all instances: physical machine, virtual machines and portable OSes, etc.
3. Set up a file server so that all my media, office documents, etc., are available from one central location; set up a secure VPN connection so I can access my files from offsite.
4. Make a rational schedule for my offsite backups (not satisfied with my current solution, such as it is)
5. Eliminate extra audio equipment (especially old turntable/old tape players-recorders) by converting all old LPs and audio cassetes to digital formats. (A turntable, couple of old amps, several cassette recorders, etc.)
6. Cut out DVD player, and other AV equipment via media server/HTPC setup.
7. Finish telco wiring with Cat6 and expand wired ethernet to few remaining rooms not yet wired.
8. Convet all wireless tech to 802.11n and all ethernet to gigabit.
9. Add wireless/internet surveillance cams (needed for when in basement/back room to catch deliveries, etc. Useful for other stuff too, of course)

I’ve considered more home automation beyond the couple of X-10 modules I have (and mostly do not use right now–mainly because I just have the two of them, frankly), but I’m not sure how much that would “simplify or consolodate” my life/household functions, although it would update and might rationalize some things (I ought to put those X-10 modules on the two lamps that are on timers, but... )

“These are a few of my tech to-do things… ” (Sung to “My Favorite Things”)