Category: The Kitchen Sink

Or, rather, a comment on Ubuntu 8.04 updates.

*sigh*

So, the OS/distro works like a champ… or did until I clicked the “updates are ready to be installed” (or whatever) button about a week ago. (Before that, an update to WINE apparently “broke” it enough that Encore no longer works properly *arrrgggghhh!*) Now, other issues. I had gotten sound configured like I wanted it (conf to use the old SBLive! Platinum card instead of the onboard nVidia sound), but after last week’s update, nothing I have done in the past does diddly to get it wrking that way again. Now, it’s a crapshoot as to what sound “card” will provide sound for any given application.

Yeh, yeh, disable the onboard sound in the BIOS setup utility and force the OS to use the only chipset it can then see, but that’s soooo… brute force.

Other than that and a weird STOP error in WinXPP/VMWare Server (VMWare doesn’t have a problem; it’s something in the VM/WinXPP interaction), everything’s hunky dory. Oh, wait, not. Flash player no longer works after the last OS update, either.

OK, at one point I was all set to (and IIRC actually did) pronounce Ubuntu 8.04 “Aunt Tilly” ready, assuming someone who knows how to find their own posterior with a stick and a mirror installed it for her. Now, if OS updates are going to break commonly used apps/plugins/components/configurations, I’m not so sure. Canonical had better get its @$$ in gear on this.

Oh, and before anyone points out that I can configure sound preferences via the Control Center, NOT! Oh, it says it’s configured corectly and even (sometimes) tests properly from within the sound applet, but it lies. And the Control Center is a palid, weak, poor analog of the configuration tools built into just about any version of Windows. In order to really manage hardware configuration, it’s often necessary to use the command line. Now, I have few problems with doing that, apart from having gotten away from the (DOS) command line, for the most part, for some few years now and haviung minimal experience with tghe Linux command line (I’m getting better, but there are only so many hours in the day).

But.

What’s not all that big a deal for me is just not “Aunt Tilly” friendly. Heck, “Aunt Tilly” can often not even find Control Panel in Windows without “a mirror and a stick” and approach radar and someone who knows a bit talking her down safely, so maintaining an Ubuntu 8.04 Linux box may well be beyond the “Aunt Tillys” of this world.

Sad. It has so much promise, and it’s perfectly fine for me (as long as I have the time to track down where the buggering updates screwed up my configuration files), but if the the “Aunt Tillys” of this world were to jump on the Ubuntu bandwagon, they’d fall right off lickety split.

Oh, well.

Thanks to hth who reminded me via email of The Church of the Red Breast and a most elegant scamming of a Nigerian Scammer. It’s a rather long read, but worth (re)visiting.

The Church of the Red Breast

Enjoy.

As David Drake recalls from Kipling’s “Screw Guns,”

You may hide in the caves,
they’ll be only your graves,
but you can’t get away from the guns!

It’s a thermal imaging video of an AC-130 Gunship in action taking out some bad guys (and taking great pains to NOT hit a nearby mosque) in Afganistan. I don’t know its provenence, but I obtained it from a collection of books-on-CD written/edited by David Drake, and his first-hand experiences with the AC130 tends to lend some color *heh* to it. The view is from the 40mm cannon station.

Trackposted to Nuke’s, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Rosemary’s Thoughts, A Newt One- Congressman Frank Wolf!, McCain Blogs, Woman Honor Thyself, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, The Amboy Times, Democrat=Socialist, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

And delightfully so.

I’ve listened to Beethoven’s symphonies–and his other works–many, many times over the years, even been privileged to be a part of performances of some of his works through the years, but one thing that is a continual surprise is that every time I rehearse (think on that word a bit, would you–sometimes my :listening” is merely reading through a score and discovering new delights in my mid’s ear–Fun!) one of his symphonies it’s fresh, new, full of delights both in things that resound in memory and that strike me brand spaking new.

Try finding that in “Top 40” pap.

Listening to number seven again today, during an extended, well-earned break, I started out feeling exhausted, filled with an almost rag doll lassitude.

First movement wiped that out in a BIG hurry!

I just love this stuff.

🙂

I need some help on some lyrics. A childhood “song” (of course it was a song! What else could it be? Better, in many ways than Top 40 crap nowadays… ) that stuck in my memory–all save two words–and pops up (though only very, very, very rarely out) at the most inappropriate times. *heh*

More below the fold… Continue reading “Lyric help?”

I saw what seems at first to be a really good idea when I was out picking up some groceries the other day. Local school district school bus, folks handing out a “shopping list” that read:

Help Us Stuff the Bus with School Supplies for LOCAL Xxxxx County Children in Need

Most needed items:
Crayons
#2 Pencils
Glue
Glue Sticks… etc.

The 20-or-so-item list included backpacks and other items as well, of course. (Where was my backpack when I was a kid half a century ago? Nowhere, mon frere. Now, it’s an essential? *feh*)

At first blush, this seemed a good idea. Then I began wondering how many large LCD TVs, how much beer, etc., the parents of these “Children in Need” had spent their “economic incentive” checks on*.

Perhaps it’s just my experiences while living in an “inner city” neighborhood watching neighbors “pay” for steak and lobster with food stamps then drive off in their recent model Caddy while I could only afford macaroni (because I was working). Or perhaps it’s my experience working with a homeless shelter, where half the folks who were there were “homeless” because their children wanted nothing to do with them or because they were on the lam and hiding from the law.

A myriad of other experiences led my mind to the thought, “Sure, I suppose there are some genuinely needy children, but most of this will simply be going toward enabling childish “parents” to avoid providing for their children while they greedily seek to meet their “wants”.

Nope. I didn’t even toss a #2 pencil stub in the hopper. The amount I saw there already would probably provide for the school needs of the genuinely needy kids in the county for the next few years. The rest will go to children of illegals (who should be educated in their own country), lazy bums and those who are simply working the system.

*BTW “economic incentive” moneys here at twc were not put into paying off bills, savings or such, because we made a choice to instead make some capital improvements around here at twc central. After all, this home is our single largest asset, and since it will be entirely ours next year (except for the fact that we actually–as does everyone who thinks they own property outright–simply “lease” it from our local governments who can take it away from us on a whim), keeping it in good shape makes good sense. And, since the “economic incentive” money was really just a “loan” against 2008 taxes (just wait and see), the “use it (for something durable) or lose it” principle applied big time.

Some folks will spend their time doin’ whatever weird thing they can think up. Sometimes, it turns out to be amazing and inspiring nonetheless. This may be one of those times.

h.t. Windows Secrets

Not. *sigh*

After (immediately after) a recent “update” of WINE, the primary reason I have for using WINE at all–running Encore (a Windows music transcription program that utterly and completely blows away any and all native Linux offerings) in Linux–has disappeared. Yep. Encore refuses to even run at all after the update. Loads and dies, that’s it.

*sigh* As soon as I have a few mins to think on this and do some poking around, I may (may) be able to either discover what’s going on… or downgrade to an earlier, working, version of WINE. (Yeh, yeh: bug report at WINHQ–eventually)

Oh. Joy.

Not.

(OTOH, everything else is working fine, after a weekend of ALL sound simply disappearing in Ubuntu–well after the issue with WINE/Encore had cropped up. Finally decided to simply try the ole Windows standby of simply rebooting and sound’s back, which is nice given my new lil [upscale from the ones they now churn out for Dell, but not high end] Altec Lansing speakers. And yeh, I know Altec-Lansing isn’t what it was back in the 70s when some old–even then–A7s introduced me to the company.)

I was a johnnie-come-lately to the internet, back in the day. Sure, by 1993 I had an email account with MCI, online accounts with account with Delphi, Compuserve and another with AOL (where I spent most of my AOL time in the “no minutes charged” MHM forum *heh*), and I’d enjoyed participating in several BBS, notably as a lurker on the Percussion BBS maintained by the Percussive Arts Society (the ACDA didn’t have a BBS as far as I knew in those days or I’d have been “on” it quite a bit as well).

But then 1993 hit and Mosaic and Cello opened up a world beyond internet searches with ARCHIE and VERONICA searches for academic articles, etc. My addiction to the web was born.

Once I was able to ditch my various online services for one ISP, I was in hog heaven.

Fifteen years after that latecomer’s training wheels intro to more than simple article searches using the powerful but now anachronistic Archie and Veronica and the gang, the addiction’s just as powerful if not mre so.

Now, in these days of $4/gallon gasoline, what would I (want to–*heh*) do without VNC (and other solutions for less technically savvy folks) allowing me access to remote clients’ computers? Heck, more basic, what would I do w/o my VOIP phone? My monthly phone bill would climb back into the $500 range again, and I’d have to cut waaay back on beer, books and blondes. (OK, not the blondes. My Wonder Woman’s all the “blondes” I need or can cope with, for that matter. I just needed another “b” for the alliteration. :-))

The internet. God bless us every one. And protect us from politicians. Amen.

It hurts so much ya just have to grin (painfully). Bill Gates touches briefly (in a looooong email) on a few of the reasons why I have mostly avoided using Windows XP much, myself. Heck, I went through things like he details when folks called me up confused, distressed or simply royally ticked off at XP.

And then came Vista, which has managed to make XP look really, really good.

*heh*

Go, read. Bill Gates on his XP experience.

It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so painful.

Come to think of it, since much of the pain was Bill’s, maybe that’s not such a detraction.

😉

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Allie is Wired, McCain Blogs, Adam’s Blog, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Democrat=Socialist, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.