From 3 to 5

As I was moving in to my laptop, I went to download Thunderbird, and was surprised that Thunderbird 5 is already out. Wasn’t it only 3.1 last week. On my OpenSUSE install, 3.1 comes with the distro… Oh, well, the next I log into the tower, I’ll have something else to upgrade.

Last night, I thought about taking XP completely off the tower, but have come to the conclusion that it’s not worth the trouble. My BIOS enables to pick which hard drive to boot off of when I turn the computer on (like having 2+ computers in one tower). And since I have 2 drives in the tower (and I’ve spent the past two nights copying all my key files onto my laptop), I could probably afford to keep windows on it….

BTW, Firefox 5 came out about a week ago. Little is said about it, but keeping your primary browser current is also essential for keeping your computer/network secure.

I’m now running anti-virus on all my computers. With the laptop, it was a no-brainer. If I’m going to take it out of the house, and log on to other wireless networks which I’m not sure are properly firewalled, then should use some sort of anti—virus (usually, I’d just go with a AFDB, but that’s an entirely different entry). On my tower, the only other computer in the apartment is a iMac (and Mac OS X and Windows XP software isn’t exactly compatible with each other). And since I know the router has a firewall in it, I never really paid much attention to AV. For those of you who are wondering, I’m now using Microsoft Security Essentials (who knew that I’d go for a security solution offered by The Anti-Christ?). I used to say go with AVG, but of late they’re appearing to become almost spyware-ish, and I find that annoying….

Anyway, I should be off to bed. Goodnight, Gentles….

Fun with the new laptop…

It took way too long (4+ hours) to copy my music over to the new laptop from my my tower. And it took the same time to copy my photos over. But it’s probably because I did it the hard way. I simply set a LAN, and am just copying and pasting the files over. I know Windows 7 has windows easy transfer, but thought that copying and pasting would be quicker and more painless. At least this way, I now have an archive of all my stuff on a different computer (in case both hard drives in the tower go to the Beer Volcano and the Stripper Factory).

I’ve given serious thought to taking Windows XP completely off my tower. I can do everything in Linux on it, that I can do in windows. And if I really need windows (or i just want to use windows live writer), that’s why I have a laptop. It has enough of a hard drive to hold everything (320 gb’s, and I’m only using 266 on my tower’s 1 tb…). I think the only software that I have that won’t eventually make it to the laptop is my copy of FSX. There needs to be some serious hardware upgrades in my tower before I can get a decent framerate. When I’m finished moving in, probably I’ll also do my phone stuff (installing new ROM’s, cooking ROM’s for my currently Android powered HD2) will be done from my laptop, just because of it’s portability. And the built-in card reader doesn’t hurt much, either….

Nothing to see here, move along….

Just got the new laptop from Worst Buy. And I’m impressed overall with it. I got an HP factory refurbished model to save a few dollars on the price. My mother had an HP laptop and it completely died on her, so she gave it to me (it was the subject of a couple of postings to this blog, but I couldn’t get it to work. Eventually I just recycled it. I’ve bouncing back an forth between Linux and Windows for the big tower, but my main stumbling block was blogging software. Windows has Windows Live Writer, by far the best blogging software. Ever. (and that says much given my opinion of The Anti-Christ). But I think I’ve found my solution. Forget blogging from my Linux machine, and just use the laptop. It even came with Windows Live Writer preinstalled…

BTW, Hello World.

A solution to my Linux blogging problem.

It's called Scribefire. I used to use it before Windows Live Writer. I'd rather use blogilo, but Google can't pull their heads out of there asses. I really don't give a flying fuck about their new 'features'. If it breaks what's already working, then you're not doing it right...

A definite no go…

Ok, for some reason, I cant Blogilo (the KDE blogging client) to connect with this blog. That’s a definite no-go for me. If I’m going to Linux, then I’m going to blog from it. I’ve tried everything. I even tried the 2-step verification that Google is touting. Nothing works. On a previous install, I got everything to work (this was right before I started having issues with heat build-up).

I’ll try again tommorow, I guess…

BTW, I orded a new laptop. It should be here next week…

Going mobile....

Ok, Google recently published mobile templates, so you can view my blog on a mobile device. I've tried out on my Android device, and it looks better. Though, Dolphin HD has Flash support and it does a pretty well job of rendering the grown up web pages, it is much painless to have a mobile version, too. Now if I can only get blogilo to work....

Hello World, part deux....

OK I can't get the KDE blogging program to work in Linux. But let's give the Gnome blogging program a try....

But, I have Linux installed on my computer.....

Hooray!

It just took a little thermal paste. And learning how to properly seat a heatsink…

But the computer is back to normal. So I can probably put Linux back on it, since the issues I was having were more hardware than software….

On the bright side....

Even though I just possibly hosed my computer, I still have my phone. I can't play MechWarrior or Flight Stimulator, but I can still Facebook, and email (in fact, nearly all of my emails are written from the stock Android mail client...), and even do a little bit if web surfing, but all that gets in the way of what Android smartphones are supposed to be doing: playing Angry Birds....

Well this just sucks!

My previous post about the graphics driver crashing linux may not have been all that correct. While I was in XP tonight, it suddenly shut down on me. I know it's not a software crash (xp by default reboots), so it must be a hardware issue. Not a Good Thing. So, I boot into the BIOS, and notice the CPU's temperature was close to the boiling point of water (twice what the motherboard was...). Pulling the side of the tower off, I noticed the heatsink was caked with dust, and it was pretty well insulated from the cooling fan. So I tried to pull the fan off to get the dust off the heatsink, and I end up taking the heatsink off. I dusted it, and now it's not securely fixed to the processor.

So now I've a computer that won't even boot into Bios. Payday is up tomorrow, maybe I can swing by Worst Buy and get some thermal compound. Or barring that, I can start sucking up for a new computer...

Lesson of the Day is:

Video issues are a pain in the arse no matter what your operating system. I noticed this yesterday when I was trying to surf Wookiepedia and watch game 7 (btw, nice way to choke it, Vancouver…). And my system all of the sudden just turned off on me. So I power it back up and it happened again. So I spent the rest of my night in windows. This afternoon, I boot into Linux, and almost the same thing happens. Rebooting, I try to open the Catalyst software to see if there’s a graphic setting to change and it happens again. Ok, I don’t have the expertise yet to troubleshoot a balky linux video issue, so I just wiped the whole lot. I’ll stick with Windows for now. At least I think I can pretend I know what I’m doing….

Hello World!

Installed SuSE. Configured Hardware (that was a nightmare, but I figured it out). Configured Firefox and Thunderbird (for the most part, I'll just install the extensions as I need them).

The one last thing was to check the online repository for a blogging client. And they have one. So, Hello World. This is coming to you from a Linux computer. If I wanted to, I could never go back to windows again. Though that'll seem unlikely, since I'm not advanced to run MechWarrior or Flight Simulator under wine..

Giving a penguin/lizard another try....

It has taken multiple attempts, but I think I've finally figured out OpenSuSE and its installation. Yes I'm trying linux again. On my previous attempt this spring, my main concern was my tv tuner. As in it worked fine in Windows, but Linux wouldn't even recognize that I even had one. My solution was to pull my old tuner from my other computer and put it in. Windows initially recognized both cards, but to avoid a resource conflict, I disabled the second tuner in windows. A three-way splitter insures a signal to all the tuners from my cable box.

Ok, so if you want to install OpenSuSE Linux on my computer, experience has taught me a few insights:

1. Make sure you have enough space partitioned for your root partition. You'll use up a lot of space if you do a pack-rat installation like im prone to do.

2. Do your initial install off the DVD only. Inevitably, you're going to hose it within the first five minutes, and this'll at least save you some bandwidth (Comcast does meter service....).

3. Once you install, before you do anything else, configure the tv tuner. And then make sure you save the configuration. Then you add the online repository (I prefer http://ftp.osuosl.org). Normally, instinct tells me to instal the video driver first, but for some reason, the tuner won't work any other way.

4. Note you can install the Catalyst driver. Unlike windows, this'll take a few restarts to fully configure, and even then, one has manually edit the xorg.conf file. But that is a whole other post.

But in the end, after all the trouble, I'll have my system with a full dual display, a working tv tuner, and a printer. And it'll do anything that I could do in windows.

And one last thing: to reboot into windows, you have to turn the computer off, then unplug the network cable, then turn the power strip off and on, then reconnect the network cable, and power it on. This because of a known issue with my network card. And since I've an integrated lan adapter in my motherboard, I'd basically need to buy another computer to fix it, and I don't have enough money (my brother was actually the one who put up the money to buy it)...

Do try this at home....

Angry Birds Live.

Edit: ok, so there was supposed to be a link there. I'll fix it later, I'm on my phone right now. Apparently, blogger for android can let you do links, but I can't get out to work, and I have to get too early tomorrow to care. Later, gentles.

It’s not all that difficult….

To migrate from WinXP to Win7. I just did it tonight. My former district manager bought his wife a new laptop with Windows 7 and yours truly was tasked with moving her in to it. Which is kind of easy once you figure out that you don’t need to use the WinXP files and settings transfer wizard (oh, and the fact that both there laptops are now wi-fi connected and networked helped….).  He usually pays in kind (dinner and a beer). Tonight, it was Red Robin, where they have Guinness on tap. Yes, I’m in my 30’s, and I just had my first real pint… He also gave me his old windows 98 box. I should probably fire it up. I have a few old games that XP won’t play well with….

Its been about two weeks...

Since I had the MyTouch 4G. The only real course when I realized it may have a defective chip in out read to return it (I was still will within my 'cold' feet period, and I was able top restore it back to stock condition, so that wasn't too difficult). Now I've done my research (which I should've done beforehand), and my options are thus:

1. Just but another mytouch, but get the insurance plan with it. It'll even cover it if and when I root the phone...

2. Wait for the HTC Sensation. I'm really impressed with it's potential, but not the signed/locked system. However HTC has announced that they will no longer be locking bootloaders...

3. Wait for the MyTouch 4G slide. At the very least, when this comes out they should drop the price on the MyTouch 4g....

Decisions, decisions....

Isn't it a little ironic....

That Jack Kevorkian died. From natural causes....