Well, I've put over 4200 Miles on the Bandit since putting her on the road. The problem is that she now has balding tires. They may have a run or two to work left in them, but they didn't do so well on the last one, so I've garaged her for now. I've been debating on whether to buy Michelin's Pilot Road 2s or Shinko's 009 Ravens. I can get the Ravens for 185.48 (front and rear), but the Michelin's will cost about 290.00. Thats over a 100 dollars more for the Michelins. Now, reports from BanditAlley.net, and other places have given the Ravens good marks, people getting 8 to 9 thousand miles from them. The Pilot Road 2s are showing up at around 10K.
Showing posts with label Laptop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Laptop. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
(K)Ubuntu 7.04 upgrade
Wow. I like it. How's that for a start? :-D Well, I took the plunge on my Linux Mint running Dell Inspiron E1705 first. Things went smoothly for the most part. I had to keep running the package manager, and refreshing the views to keep getting the things I needed, which was a pain. The Update manager Ubuntu uses has NEVER completed an upgrade for me for some reason. However, its easy enough to fire up Adept, or Synaptic (my favorite) and keep hitting reload and apply until all your updates are downloaded.
Once all the updates were downloaded, and whatever you do don't reboot until they are downloaded and installed, I rebooted and viola, an upgraded system. EVERYTHING worked, except for the Nvidia drivers, which I expected. If you are running an Nvidia card you'll need to download envy 9.2 or later. Do a Google search for "envy nvidia drivers" and you should see the page. The page you want to go to is Alberto Milone's Home page. You'll find the latest updated envy package there.
Once you have downloaded the package uninstall the older version (via adept, dpkg, or synaptic) any older version you may have, and install the new one. Then run the envy command (with either the -t for text based console screen or -g for a xwindows gui) and uninstall the older nvidia driver and then install the latest version. The sound is still bad in some games, and doesn't work for voip (which bites). But, its not bad.
I updated the toshiba, which finally started running again (Thanks to the Lord, who is the ONLY one I can think of that could have gotten in running and so well). I have also updated my main PC with the printer attached. All is well. Feisty actually has turned out to be a nice upgrade. I especially like the newer version of Bibletime (1.62) that is included.
I also installed in on the work IBM Thinkpad to get some things done, and its doing well there too. Except the Airo wireless card still doesn't support WPA or LEAP in Linux.
Some other things I've noticed:
1. The icon feed back on app start up is different. The icon kind of flashes in KDE when you click or double click to start the app. cool.
2. The Guidance Power manager is MUCH better, and has MORE options. Liking that a lot.
3. The Kernel is 2.6.20 which evidently has better support for hardware. The Toshiba can now (actually in reality) hibernate.
4. OpenOffice.org is at the 2.2 version.
5. KDE is at 3.5.6 (which could also be installed on Edgy, but is default in Feisty)
6. On the IBM the screen resolution tool actually worked. Not sure it every really did in Edgy.
Lots of other updates, and updated apps i'm sure. However, the stuff I need and use everyday is what I noticed.
Now to try Beryl or Compiz which ever is better for KDE.
Once all the updates were downloaded, and whatever you do don't reboot until they are downloaded and installed, I rebooted and viola, an upgraded system. EVERYTHING worked, except for the Nvidia drivers, which I expected. If you are running an Nvidia card you'll need to download envy 9.2 or later. Do a Google search for "envy nvidia drivers" and you should see the page. The page you want to go to is Alberto Milone's Home page. You'll find the latest updated envy package there.
Once you have downloaded the package uninstall the older version (via adept, dpkg, or synaptic) any older version you may have, and install the new one. Then run the envy command (with either the -t for text based console screen or -g for a xwindows gui) and uninstall the older nvidia driver and then install the latest version. The sound is still bad in some games, and doesn't work for voip (which bites). But, its not bad.
I updated the toshiba, which finally started running again (Thanks to the Lord, who is the ONLY one I can think of that could have gotten in running and so well). I have also updated my main PC with the printer attached. All is well. Feisty actually has turned out to be a nice upgrade. I especially like the newer version of Bibletime (1.62) that is included.
I also installed in on the work IBM Thinkpad to get some things done, and its doing well there too. Except the Airo wireless card still doesn't support WPA or LEAP in Linux.
Some other things I've noticed:
1. The icon feed back on app start up is different. The icon kind of flashes in KDE when you click or double click to start the app. cool.
2. The Guidance Power manager is MUCH better, and has MORE options. Liking that a lot.
3. The Kernel is 2.6.20 which evidently has better support for hardware. The Toshiba can now (actually in reality) hibernate.
4. OpenOffice.org is at the 2.2 version.
5. KDE is at 3.5.6 (which could also be installed on Edgy, but is default in Feisty)
6. On the IBM the screen resolution tool actually worked. Not sure it every really did in Edgy.
Lots of other updates, and updated apps i'm sure. However, the stuff I need and use everyday is what I noticed.
Now to try Beryl or Compiz which ever is better for KDE.
Monday, February 26, 2007
New Dell Laptop a winner
Unlike the HP AMD 64 bit laptop, everything is now working in the new DELL. I got a E1705 with the Intel Core 2 Duo T7400, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD, 17"WUXGA screen, and Intel 3945 Pro Wireless card. I had to completely wipe the hard drive, but thanks to Dell's foresight in packaging a real Windows install DVD, and driver CD or DVD, I was able to install Vista on a 30 GB partition, and allocate the rest to Kubuntu Edgy (Linux distro I use most now). The only issue that remains is that with the Nvidia Video drivers loaded I get a lot of popping and crackling in the sound when I play a video intensive game. I can play DVD's with no ill affect, which makes me wonder what's going on.
I figured out how to get the Intel Wireless card to be up and running by login time. I put two lines in my rc.local file as follows:
Sound works, Video works, and to beat all hibernation works! (well for the most part, last night it never completely shut down for some reason). I'm really enjoying this thing, and I'm looking forward to Feisty going public, as long as I can still print to my brother printer. Brother's Linux support is horrible because its half hearted. They have a full blown CUPS driver for the Mac, but for some reason they are unwilling to put out a CUPS driver for Linux. What gives there?
My next attempt to make Linux really look good will be to install Beryl or Compiz and get the full 3D desktop I've been hearing so much about. I can't remember which works with KDE better at the moment, but I'll update the Blog here when I get that done.
Anyway, the son is enjoying his toy, and Dad is enjoying his, and the house is happy.
I figured out how to get the Intel Wireless card to be up and running by login time. I put two lines in my rc.local file as follows:
ifdown eth1and now things work pretty good. I'd like to be able to take this out, but its working, so its not urgent. What I found surprising is that the drivers for the wireless card worked right off the bat in the live cd boot up! I didn't even have to wait for the full install.
ifup eth1
Sound works, Video works, and to beat all hibernation works! (well for the most part, last night it never completely shut down for some reason). I'm really enjoying this thing, and I'm looking forward to Feisty going public, as long as I can still print to my brother printer. Brother's Linux support is horrible because its half hearted. They have a full blown CUPS driver for the Mac, but for some reason they are unwilling to put out a CUPS driver for Linux. What gives there?
My next attempt to make Linux really look good will be to install Beryl or Compiz and get the full 3D desktop I've been hearing so much about. I can't remember which works with KDE better at the moment, but I'll update the Blog here when I get that done.
Anyway, the son is enjoying his toy, and Dad is enjoying his, and the house is happy.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
No Church, Waiting on Laptop, and Drums
I hate sundays with no Church. Due to the snow and icy road conditions this morning, left over from last night, we canceled Church. I hate doing that, but I know the people well enough to know what that'll do to the crowd. I know what you may be thinking, but I don't want folks feeling less than "spiritual" because they can't get out on the snow or ice, its not their fault. I also don't want some to try, and wind up wrecking their car hitting some odd patch of ice. I have found myself much more cautious about the snow since I've learned what it means to care about others. You think you know when your single, or living in Mom or Dad's house, but you don't really. Its not until someone is completely dependent on the decisions you make that you realize how important it is to consider what you do, and its affect on them, before you do it. Anyway, I remember in my younger days I would have plowed ahead and had Church anyway, and praise God there are those who can do that now, but now, I'm more reserved. I guess the two kids, and wife have made me a softy.
On another note, I sent back the HP, and as I said they were aggravating, but they finally returned my money. So, I've returned the HP and ordered a DELL, E1705, with the Intel T7400, 17" WUXGA (some outrageous resolution), and 4 years of accidental coverage, instead of 2 and its cheaper than the HP anyway. I would have liked the hp Intel version, don't get me wrong. I liked the 2 hard drive idea. I also have NO problem with HP in general. I really think they have the best server line with IBM coming in VERY close to 2nd. However, I like Dell's Laptops and Desktops. I Like IBM's midrange hardware better than anyone's, and I don't know of a second best there that's close. AIX on RS/6000 boxes just can't be beat for midrange power. All that said, I think its fair to say I'm not really attached to any particular vendor,however, there's one I can't stand, and they generally produce an OS that you can look out of, but if you open their glass panes you'll let the bugs in if you know what I mean. So, I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival, it'll probably get here sometime around the first of next month. Some reviews site its not very pretty and the speakers in it aren't very exceptional, but that's ok. I can add speakers, or headphones for sound, and looks aren't involved in my purchase plans. (I did price an Alienware laptop, because they look cool, but they couldn't come close to the price point of Dell.
The other interesting goody to come into the house is my son's drum set. We bought him a low end DDrum D2 drum set for about 380 at a music store in Bellevue, TN. My son just started jumping up and down Saturday when he came home and found it in his room. Again, I'd like to have a Digital camera to show it to ya' but alas, that's low on the purchase priority list. They're nice enough for starting, and they came about right with all the used drum sets I found that were worth having. Not only that, but I have a 2 year warranty (1 year from the store doubled by the Ccard I used). I think he'll take to it fairly well, if he can ever get me off of it. It reminded me of how much I enjoyed playing when I was in High School. Its amazing what you can remember, BTW, when you sit down behind one. My daughter wasn't so happy, 'cause now he has one more thing to irritate her with, and because she doesn't have a real Piano. (not to mention the fact that her casio keyboard cost about that much when we bought it a few years ago, and that she's been able to play sports, take Piano lessons, and everything else he hasn't for quite some time, but that's another story). Well, generally speaking everyone's happy here now, and life is good. God is great folks, and why He's so nice to me I'll never understand. He's given me a good family, a great wife, and two good (well, for the most part anyway) kids, and a great job doing what I love (on both sides, the Church and Ardent).
That's all for now. God bless.
On another note, I sent back the HP, and as I said they were aggravating, but they finally returned my money. So, I've returned the HP and ordered a DELL, E1705, with the Intel T7400, 17" WUXGA (some outrageous resolution), and 4 years of accidental coverage, instead of 2 and its cheaper than the HP anyway. I would have liked the hp Intel version, don't get me wrong. I liked the 2 hard drive idea. I also have NO problem with HP in general. I really think they have the best server line with IBM coming in VERY close to 2nd. However, I like Dell's Laptops and Desktops. I Like IBM's midrange hardware better than anyone's, and I don't know of a second best there that's close. AIX on RS/6000 boxes just can't be beat for midrange power. All that said, I think its fair to say I'm not really attached to any particular vendor,however, there's one I can't stand, and they generally produce an OS that you can look out of, but if you open their glass panes you'll let the bugs in if you know what I mean. So, I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival, it'll probably get here sometime around the first of next month. Some reviews site its not very pretty and the speakers in it aren't very exceptional, but that's ok. I can add speakers, or headphones for sound, and looks aren't involved in my purchase plans. (I did price an Alienware laptop, because they look cool, but they couldn't come close to the price point of Dell.
The other interesting goody to come into the house is my son's drum set. We bought him a low end DDrum D2 drum set for about 380 at a music store in Bellevue, TN. My son just started jumping up and down Saturday when he came home and found it in his room. Again, I'd like to have a Digital camera to show it to ya' but alas, that's low on the purchase priority list. They're nice enough for starting, and they came about right with all the used drum sets I found that were worth having. Not only that, but I have a 2 year warranty (1 year from the store doubled by the Ccard I used). I think he'll take to it fairly well, if he can ever get me off of it. It reminded me of how much I enjoyed playing when I was in High School. Its amazing what you can remember, BTW, when you sit down behind one. My daughter wasn't so happy, 'cause now he has one more thing to irritate her with, and because she doesn't have a real Piano. (not to mention the fact that her casio keyboard cost about that much when we bought it a few years ago, and that she's been able to play sports, take Piano lessons, and everything else he hasn't for quite some time, but that's another story). Well, generally speaking everyone's happy here now, and life is good. God is great folks, and why He's so nice to me I'll never understand. He's given me a good family, a great wife, and two good (well, for the most part anyway) kids, and a great job doing what I love (on both sides, the Church and Ardent).
That's all for now. God bless.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
YEEHAW turned to NO WAY
Well, so much for my excitement. I'm back on the crapshiba now. I guess I should be nice to it, it at least, runs Linux. I thought I had everything working until it just started locking up again. I couldn't for the life of me figure it out. I went back to base code, I even compiled my own kernel in Debian, and it made no difference. I worked with that thing to the wee hours of mornings (yes more than one) trying to make it fly, and all I got were crashes.
So, I fell back to returning the thing to HP. wow, what a sad experience. I was told "if the laptop just doesn't work out for any reason, you have 21 days to return it." I had the thing for 6 days. That's 15 days shy of the cutoff! I was on the phone (off and on between getting hung up on) from 9 pm, to 12:00 am! That's right 3 hours trying to work out a way to just do a swap out. Guess what? HP does not allow exchanges. I told them the AMD was giving me problems, which it was, and that what I was running, or wanting to run, was not tolerant to the AMD 64bit chips, which is true. I went over that at least 3 times. I also explained that I'm trying to get my house refinanced (that's another story) and opening another credit line was not a wise idea at the moment. The reason I say that is because they wanted me to open an account so that they could charge me for the new Intel based version I wanted, until the old AMD version showed up at their shop. I kept saying, "if there's any way to just do an exchange where I ship this one to you and you just charge me the difference, (about 300 dollars) and then ship me the new laptop that would work out better". No dice. Not allowed to. Nada. At one point Customer Service assured me this was possible and that the person, Kacy in Rochester (sp?), would be able to handle the details. When I got to Kacy she had no clue what I was talking about, or why she got this call! Gotta love communication! So, to make a long story short, I wound up just canceling all the swap out and just made it a return. I haven't yet completely decided what I'm gonna do, but I can guarantee it wont be, and that's buy an AMD based Laptop!!
So, I fell back to returning the thing to HP. wow, what a sad experience. I was told "if the laptop just doesn't work out for any reason, you have 21 days to return it." I had the thing for 6 days. That's 15 days shy of the cutoff! I was on the phone (off and on between getting hung up on) from 9 pm, to 12:00 am! That's right 3 hours trying to work out a way to just do a swap out. Guess what? HP does not allow exchanges. I told them the AMD was giving me problems, which it was, and that what I was running, or wanting to run, was not tolerant to the AMD 64bit chips, which is true. I went over that at least 3 times. I also explained that I'm trying to get my house refinanced (that's another story) and opening another credit line was not a wise idea at the moment. The reason I say that is because they wanted me to open an account so that they could charge me for the new Intel based version I wanted, until the old AMD version showed up at their shop. I kept saying, "if there's any way to just do an exchange where I ship this one to you and you just charge me the difference, (about 300 dollars) and then ship me the new laptop that would work out better". No dice. Not allowed to. Nada. At one point Customer Service assured me this was possible and that the person, Kacy in Rochester (sp?), would be able to handle the details. When I got to Kacy she had no clue what I was talking about, or why she got this call! Gotta love communication! So, to make a long story short, I wound up just canceling all the swap out and just made it a return. I haven't yet completely decided what I'm gonna do, but I can guarantee it wont be, and that's buy an AMD based Laptop!!
Thursday, February 8, 2007
NEW Laptop is IN!
YEEEEHAAWWW ! I just had to say it. My new HP DV9000z came in Monday, which is why I haven't put anything on the site. Well, I have EVERYTHING working (well, the wireless works with linxant drivers). I tried every distro in the world, nearly, and some three times, but I finally got Debian testing installed on the thing. I still can't print to my Brother MFC-5840CN printer (if any of anyone who may read this knows how to overcome Brother's crappy Linux drivers I'd love to hear from ya').
Here's generally what I did:
1. I repartitioned the Drives deleting the partition from the second drive and shrinking the XP partition to 30 GB on the first drive. Whatever you do, DO NOT DELETE either the HP Rescue or the XP Embedded Partitions (that's the little hidden Partition at the end of the first drive). It took me 5 1/2 hours to restore everything to get the quickplay back.
2. I installed Debian etch with the Network install CD in text mode using the "noapic iommu=off" kernel switches. This got everything in place. To simplify things I just created an ext3 partition on the first drive filling the empty space for "/" or root, which turned out to be about 32 GB. I then created a 2.4 GB Swap partition (Don't ask about the .4 part I have no idea why I did that) and a /home partition on the second drive.
3. I installed just what the Debian presets were for Desktop, laptop etc. (they were the default selections) and I told it to use a mirror.
4. When all that was done I rebooted into recovery mode, or single user mode, brought up the Wired NIC, and adjusted my sources.list file to upgrade to Sid to get the 2.6.18 kernel (I'll post the link to the guys website who actually pioneered the setup later).
5. Then I did the usuall apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade stuff to get the latest and greatest. Hopefully you have better luck at this than I did initially. Make sure you get the 2.6.18 kernel. Once everything is finished updating, edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst file and remove the "noapic" from the load line for the new kernel, and reboot.
6. You should now get a shiney new Login screen GDM style (right now there's no KDE on it to speak of, you'll have to install that through synaptic).
From here you can do what you want. I installed the Nvidia driver using the installer from Nvidia's website to get the full 1680x1050 experience (AND IT IS SWEET!). Do some Googling for HP DV9000z linux and you should generally find all the same sites I did.
My MAJOR disappointments are that there are still NO 64bit versions of many apps. Adobe's Flash is still not available in a 64bit version. Google's toolbar will not install because of Debian's stupid renaming of Firefox to Iceweasel. Ndiswrapper doesn't work because only the 32bit windows driver is installed, if anyone knows how to get ndiswrapper working on this 64bit box, I'd be very happy to hear it, however the linuxant drivers work fairly well.
I'm not sure I'll leave Debian on there now that I know what it takes to install it on the machine. I'd really like to have Kubuntu running on the thing so that it matches all my other boxes, so I'll probably download the 64bit Edgy Alternate install CD, as the 32bit Live CD wouldn't even boot!
One thing I can say, this thing is Fast! So, anyway, I have 30 days on the Linuxant driver, so I'll have to do something quick. I'll keep this site posted.
Here's generally what I did:
1. I repartitioned the Drives deleting the partition from the second drive and shrinking the XP partition to 30 GB on the first drive. Whatever you do, DO NOT DELETE either the HP Rescue or the XP Embedded Partitions (that's the little hidden Partition at the end of the first drive). It took me 5 1/2 hours to restore everything to get the quickplay back.
2. I installed Debian etch with the Network install CD in text mode using the "noapic iommu=off" kernel switches. This got everything in place. To simplify things I just created an ext3 partition on the first drive filling the empty space for "/" or root, which turned out to be about 32 GB. I then created a 2.4 GB Swap partition (Don't ask about the .4 part I have no idea why I did that) and a /home partition on the second drive.
3. I installed just what the Debian presets were for Desktop, laptop etc. (they were the default selections) and I told it to use a mirror.
4. When all that was done I rebooted into recovery mode, or single user mode, brought up the Wired NIC, and adjusted my sources.list file to upgrade to Sid to get the 2.6.18 kernel (I'll post the link to the guys website who actually pioneered the setup later).
5. Then I did the usuall apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade stuff to get the latest and greatest. Hopefully you have better luck at this than I did initially. Make sure you get the 2.6.18 kernel. Once everything is finished updating, edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst file and remove the "noapic" from the load line for the new kernel, and reboot.
6. You should now get a shiney new Login screen GDM style (right now there's no KDE on it to speak of, you'll have to install that through synaptic).
From here you can do what you want. I installed the Nvidia driver using the installer from Nvidia's website to get the full 1680x1050 experience (AND IT IS SWEET!). Do some Googling for HP DV9000z linux and you should generally find all the same sites I did.
My MAJOR disappointments are that there are still NO 64bit versions of many apps. Adobe's Flash is still not available in a 64bit version. Google's toolbar will not install because of Debian's stupid renaming of Firefox to Iceweasel. Ndiswrapper doesn't work because only the 32bit windows driver is installed, if anyone knows how to get ndiswrapper working on this 64bit box, I'd be very happy to hear it, however the linuxant drivers work fairly well.
I'm not sure I'll leave Debian on there now that I know what it takes to install it on the machine. I'd really like to have Kubuntu running on the thing so that it matches all my other boxes, so I'll probably download the 64bit Edgy Alternate install CD, as the 32bit Live CD wouldn't even boot!
One thing I can say, this thing is Fast! So, anyway, I have 30 days on the Linuxant driver, so I'll have to do something quick. I'll keep this site posted.
Friday, February 2, 2007
SNOW! Yes
Hey, this is just to commemorate our fist (howbeit half decent) real snow. It wasn't much, maybe an inch of real powdery snow. We tried making a snowman, and throwing snowballs, but the snow just wasn't slushy enough. Oh well, Christine and I had fun anyway, we made snow angels, and did our best with the snow balls. I wish I had a digital camera so I could post images of it, but, alas that's yet to come.
Michael, my son, is sick with a stomach Virus of some kind, and can't go out. So, it wasn't as much fun thinking of him stuck in the bed. I'm working from home today so I could enjoy this as much as possible, its not like Snow comes very often around here any more. What's up with that anyway?
Oh, I got word that the new Laptop is in route! YEA! So it should be here sometime after the 7th or 8th. I got the free shipping, if you know what I mean. Well, enjoy the weather and may God bless you and yours.
Michael, my son, is sick with a stomach Virus of some kind, and can't go out. So, it wasn't as much fun thinking of him stuck in the bed. I'm working from home today so I could enjoy this as much as possible, its not like Snow comes very often around here any more. What's up with that anyway?
Oh, I got word that the new Laptop is in route! YEA! So it should be here sometime after the 7th or 8th. I got the free shipping, if you know what I mean. Well, enjoy the weather and may God bless you and yours.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
New Ramblings Laptops and Taxes
Wow, that title says alot. Well I have quite a bit I haven't said anything about lately.
I found a donor for a new Laptop! The US Govt., well the IRS to be precise. I don't know about you, but I like tax time. Always have. I struggle through the year, and pay a little bit too much, so that I get a nice refund each spring. I know, I know, you should set your taxes up so you don't have to pay, or get paid so the Govt. doesn't use the interest for free. Well, I have a theory on that. I believe that there's nothing wrong with letting the Government use my money for free for a year! Sorry about all you greedy, bitter people who are more worried about Government waste than you are your own waist. (Both are expanding! HA!) Anyway, I don't mind them getting to use what little extra I pay in a years time, for the ability to have a nice bonus to start each year off with, do you? I've discovered through looking at various interest rates that money would have earned me, and I found out that I have lost no more than 2 dollars a year. That's right, the MOST, I could be giving up is 2 dollars. BIG WHOOPEE! So, for 2 dollars the Govt. holds my money, and processes my paper work, and gives me a nice Check each year. Not a bad deal I don't think. Anyway, I'm getting enough back, along with what I've saved here, there and yonder, to buy a nice laptop. Now if HP would just ship it. :-D. I'll tell ya' about it when it gets here.
The nice thing about the modern age is HTML and XML, and SSL, and all the other L's that make doing your taxes online possible. I tried Turbo tax, and I tried TaxCut. Taxcut will let you run in Linux, if you setup the browser ID to fake being in Windoze. Turbo Tax will allow you to try to get in, but evidently they do something that's very Windows specific this year. Taxcut was very much a pain, very many things changed since last year, and I could never convince it to allow me to remove them. It was trying to get me to file a Schedule C and all that business stuff. However, we never made any money off of any of the business stuff (and didn't spend any in 2006 to make it worth fooling with on taxes) so I just shut the stuff down. Well, Taxcut never asked me if those things were still valid, never asked me how much I made off of them, or anything. However, considering they were in last years TurboTax file, it was determined to error out on it.
So, I go to Turbotax.com (after booting into Windoze YUK) and it works perfectly neting me an extra 500.00 dollars! It allowed me to clear out all the stuff from last year that I didn't want to repeat this year. Needless to say, as soon as the IRS will let me, I'll be e-filing my return and awaiting a direct deposited refund! Gotta love it.
Now, after ordering the New Laptop from HP ( a very nice one at that with [hint] the AMD Dual core TL-60 64 bit proc) I have the misfortune of having to wait. I know, boo hoo. I can hear you now, "you poor slob", "I'm reaching for ya' I just can't get there.", or "I feel your pain". However, I'm not alone in my misery (it does love company you know) my wife is waiting for the hand-me-down crapshiba I'm using now. She's still got full reign over the AMD 3000+ Desktop, with a 19" flat monitor, but now she'll also have this laptop. I don't know how much of a blessing that will be, but if she avoids using firefox 2.0 on Edgy Kubuntu she'll be fine.
By-The-Way: I found out that Firefox 2 is responsible for all the lockups I've had since converting to Edgy and FF2. I've been running Seamonkey for sometime now, and its running without a hitch. (SeaMonkey is Mozilla's latest Browser suite that replaced "Mozilla" proper, and Netscape). The problem is you can't get the Google toolbar to work, or the Forecastfox add-on to work. I really liked both of them. There is some suggestion on the Kubuntu user list that Forecastfox is actually to blame for the lockups which are caused by run away processes. I don't know, 'cause my browser / KDE session would lockup so fast I could never diag the problem. Another problem was that it would lockup so fast that it would never right any error info to any of my logs. That makes it difficult to figure out. Well, everything is fine now. I may try removing forecastfox to see if that helps any. I think forecastfox is a victim of Firefox's poor add-on handling.
Well, anyway that's most of the rambling. I have also found a fairly cool website for IMing in a web browser: Meebo the IM client. Check it out. Its like GAIM for Linux only in a browser.
I found a donor for a new Laptop! The US Govt., well the IRS to be precise. I don't know about you, but I like tax time. Always have. I struggle through the year, and pay a little bit too much, so that I get a nice refund each spring. I know, I know, you should set your taxes up so you don't have to pay, or get paid so the Govt. doesn't use the interest for free. Well, I have a theory on that. I believe that there's nothing wrong with letting the Government use my money for free for a year! Sorry about all you greedy, bitter people who are more worried about Government waste than you are your own waist. (Both are expanding! HA!) Anyway, I don't mind them getting to use what little extra I pay in a years time, for the ability to have a nice bonus to start each year off with, do you? I've discovered through looking at various interest rates that money would have earned me, and I found out that I have lost no more than 2 dollars a year. That's right, the MOST, I could be giving up is 2 dollars. BIG WHOOPEE! So, for 2 dollars the Govt. holds my money, and processes my paper work, and gives me a nice Check each year. Not a bad deal I don't think. Anyway, I'm getting enough back, along with what I've saved here, there and yonder, to buy a nice laptop. Now if HP would just ship it. :-D. I'll tell ya' about it when it gets here.
The nice thing about the modern age is HTML and XML, and SSL, and all the other L's that make doing your taxes online possible. I tried Turbo tax, and I tried TaxCut. Taxcut will let you run in Linux, if you setup the browser ID to fake being in Windoze. Turbo Tax will allow you to try to get in, but evidently they do something that's very Windows specific this year. Taxcut was very much a pain, very many things changed since last year, and I could never convince it to allow me to remove them. It was trying to get me to file a Schedule C and all that business stuff. However, we never made any money off of any of the business stuff (and didn't spend any in 2006 to make it worth fooling with on taxes) so I just shut the stuff down. Well, Taxcut never asked me if those things were still valid, never asked me how much I made off of them, or anything. However, considering they were in last years TurboTax file, it was determined to error out on it.
So, I go to Turbotax.com (after booting into Windoze YUK) and it works perfectly neting me an extra 500.00 dollars! It allowed me to clear out all the stuff from last year that I didn't want to repeat this year. Needless to say, as soon as the IRS will let me, I'll be e-filing my return and awaiting a direct deposited refund! Gotta love it.
Now, after ordering the New Laptop from HP ( a very nice one at that with [hint] the AMD Dual core TL-60 64 bit proc) I have the misfortune of having to wait. I know, boo hoo. I can hear you now, "you poor slob", "I'm reaching for ya' I just can't get there.", or "I feel your pain". However, I'm not alone in my misery (it does love company you know) my wife is waiting for the hand-me-down crapshiba I'm using now. She's still got full reign over the AMD 3000+ Desktop, with a 19" flat monitor, but now she'll also have this laptop. I don't know how much of a blessing that will be, but if she avoids using firefox 2.0 on Edgy Kubuntu she'll be fine.
By-The-Way: I found out that Firefox 2 is responsible for all the lockups I've had since converting to Edgy and FF2. I've been running Seamonkey for sometime now, and its running without a hitch. (SeaMonkey is Mozilla's latest Browser suite that replaced "Mozilla" proper, and Netscape). The problem is you can't get the Google toolbar to work, or the Forecastfox add-on to work. I really liked both of them. There is some suggestion on the Kubuntu user list that Forecastfox is actually to blame for the lockups which are caused by run away processes. I don't know, 'cause my browser / KDE session would lockup so fast I could never diag the problem. Another problem was that it would lockup so fast that it would never right any error info to any of my logs. That makes it difficult to figure out. Well, everything is fine now. I may try removing forecastfox to see if that helps any. I think forecastfox is a victim of Firefox's poor add-on handling.
Well, anyway that's most of the rambling. I have also found a fairly cool website for IMing in a web browser: Meebo the IM client. Check it out. Its like GAIM for Linux only in a browser.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Debian Printing
Now I remember why I left debian in the first place. Printing. I can't get my Brother printer to print now that I've switched to Debian. I'd like to rant all over both Brother (and their crappy support for CUPS printing) and Debian (for their non-standard way of doing things). However, neither is going to help me figure out what to do next. I'm thinking that going back to Kubuntu Edgy would be a really good idea, at least my printing worked there. I switched up my partition scheme to what it should have been for a long time. I partitioned off / from /home so that I can completely change out distros and keep my home dir intact. It'll be a sweet day when Linux can live up to the hype of some, and overcome the hurdles others create.
Well, I'm not sure what to do next, I've removed and reinstalled the drivers from Brother to no avail. My printer lights up like its going to print, and then nothing happens. (Kinda like Curly's "I'm trying to think and nothing happens!). Well, I gotta finish getting ready for tonight, despite being more discouraged for some reason than I've been in a long time.
Well, I'm not sure what to do next, I've removed and reinstalled the drivers from Brother to no avail. My printer lights up like its going to print, and then nothing happens. (Kinda like Curly's "I'm trying to think and nothing happens!). Well, I gotta finish getting ready for tonight, despite being more discouraged for some reason than I've been in a long time.
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Kubuntu Breakdown
Well, it appears that my work was in vain, or worse. It seems that now, whenever I come out of hibernation my PC just forgets how to access the hard drive. It will slowly begin to lock up, and then eventually get to the point of being so hosed, that I have to power it off! The problem is that now, I don't even have to come out of hibernation, as it could do it any time. I got so frustrated just before new years because I had just finished balancing my checkbook in KMymoney, and the whole system seized up when I clicked the "save" button. ARGGGHH! I had to go through the whole process again later. I never had this problem with the ReiserFS, but now it seems to be very regular with ext3. What gives?
Anyway, I'm looking at putting another distro on here just because I want to try another one. Actually If I could get someone to donate about 2,000.00 dollars I'd get me a new laptop :-D! Yea, I know, that'll never happen. However, as soon as I can get off this lousy Toshiba Crapillite the better. (Oh, did I tell you I can't stand Toshiba's laptops?).
On another note, I discovered yesterday that my license plate was 3 months out of date!! I've been driving my truck around on expired tags since September! So, I went to the downtown location to get my tags renewed, found out they are still in the 60's and only take cash or check, so I had to go find an ATM. So, now I'm kinda like Kevin in Home Alone, "I"m not afraid any more!"
As you may know I work with Ardent Health here in Nashville. We just got in some shiny new P590's from IBM. We're going to put our AIX systems on those things, running most in HA mode. The problem I have is they want to put TSM on them as well, and I'm not real keen on that idea. Its not that I don't trust the 590s, or whatever, its just that I think it puts too many eggs in that basket. I've always run TSM as isolated from the systems it backs up as possible, maybe having the TSM box in the same rack would be about as close as I've ever gotten to that kind of thing (and I didn't really like that much). I don't know, maybe I'm just a little paranoid, but it just doesn't seem wise to me. Well, I'll go with it if I have to, but what I'm lobbying for is a couple of mid to high end Series X servers with Linux running on them. I think if we could use hardware thats easy to obtain, and an OS thats easy to setup, our DR could start much faster in the field. We have a get together scheduled tomorrow so we can hash out who's going to do what this year. We'll see what we run up against there. I've heard of folks running TSM on Windows servers with it all tied into the same AD tree. How crazy can you get? I mean if a virus gets in and attacks your environment, your TSM server is going up in smoke right along with the rest of your Windoze servers. No, I believe your TSM system, or whatever backup system, should be isolated from the systems its meant to protect. If you need to restore, you don't need the headache. I mean think about it, how will you restore parts of your AD tree if you can't get into TSM because the AD tree is down? Sounds foolish but take a minute, you'll get it. Oh, I'm a Certified Directory Engineer, so I know you can get the AD up enough to do what you need, but why? When you can run TSM on the same x86 hardware with Linux, and cut your DR time in half!
So, anyway that's my rambling for today.
Anyway, I'm looking at putting another distro on here just because I want to try another one. Actually If I could get someone to donate about 2,000.00 dollars I'd get me a new laptop :-D! Yea, I know, that'll never happen. However, as soon as I can get off this lousy Toshiba Crapillite the better. (Oh, did I tell you I can't stand Toshiba's laptops?).
On another note, I discovered yesterday that my license plate was 3 months out of date!! I've been driving my truck around on expired tags since September! So, I went to the downtown location to get my tags renewed, found out they are still in the 60's and only take cash or check, so I had to go find an ATM. So, now I'm kinda like Kevin in Home Alone, "I"m not afraid any more!"
As you may know I work with Ardent Health here in Nashville. We just got in some shiny new P590's from IBM. We're going to put our AIX systems on those things, running most in HA mode. The problem I have is they want to put TSM on them as well, and I'm not real keen on that idea. Its not that I don't trust the 590s, or whatever, its just that I think it puts too many eggs in that basket. I've always run TSM as isolated from the systems it backs up as possible, maybe having the TSM box in the same rack would be about as close as I've ever gotten to that kind of thing (and I didn't really like that much). I don't know, maybe I'm just a little paranoid, but it just doesn't seem wise to me. Well, I'll go with it if I have to, but what I'm lobbying for is a couple of mid to high end Series X servers with Linux running on them. I think if we could use hardware thats easy to obtain, and an OS thats easy to setup, our DR could start much faster in the field. We have a get together scheduled tomorrow so we can hash out who's going to do what this year. We'll see what we run up against there. I've heard of folks running TSM on Windows servers with it all tied into the same AD tree. How crazy can you get? I mean if a virus gets in and attacks your environment, your TSM server is going up in smoke right along with the rest of your Windoze servers. No, I believe your TSM system, or whatever backup system, should be isolated from the systems its meant to protect. If you need to restore, you don't need the headache. I mean think about it, how will you restore parts of your AD tree if you can't get into TSM because the AD tree is down? Sounds foolish but take a minute, you'll get it. Oh, I'm a Certified Directory Engineer, so I know you can get the AD up enough to do what you need, but why? When you can run TSM on the same x86 hardware with Linux, and cut your DR time in half!
So, anyway that's my rambling for today.
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