FJ Blog

I'm going back to windows this week. I had reformatted my hard drive a short while back and installed Ubuntu. Ubuntu is nice but it dosn't do everything I need. I need to get some particular things done and Windows is going to do it for me.
People have told me that Ubuntu "just works" No, it dosn't. I don't know what I caused it but I've been locked out of folders I should have access to (like my desktop) and there have been a lot of other oddities.

Services like Apt and the gui for it in Ubuntu are really nice. The fact that Ubuntu allready has a large user base makes it easy to find information on installing things that aren't in apt, like the latest JRE from Sun.

the Gnome desktop runs fine on my 550Mhz PIII with 512MB of RAM, I'm guessing If my video card were a little better I'd be able to have a desktop image instead of a solid color. I really like the Weather Report accessory to the gnome launcher. I wish there was a windows version of it. (WeatherGopher is a Freeware windows program that's pretty good though)

Linux is ready for the causual internet browser. In fact, a customized LiveCD is just what a lot of people need. No hard drive, just boot off the CD (or DVD) if you fowl something up just reboot. Now of course you need something that will save your bookmarks, and other settings, maybe that could be stored online. If you just upload a RAM disk to the server as part of the shutdown/reboot process.... hmm

I'm going to be a little risky this time and not back up anything. I have my adblock filter list and lots of other things allready backed up, All my email is on the server, I havn't used a desktop email client in about a year now. And last time I reformated my hard drive I forgot to backup my iCal files. :'( So I'll have to re-build my callendar anyway.

Vernie and I had a good thanksgiving weekend. I love her more than I know how to describe. I'm looking forward to Christmas, I think she'll like the gifts I'm getting her. I have a box that's in plain sight that's out of her reach in the Kitchen. I'm afraid it's a mild form of torture for her that she now know's it's for her and not just more of my junk. We have a tree in the apartment now so I should start putting presents under it. (I'll post pictures later this week or so). The only thing that I really want for Xmas is for everyone else to be able to have the same feeling I get when I think about the fact that I have Vernie and I feel like I have everything. Of course none of you can actually get me that, so you will just have to make substitutions with fancy shiny things. ;)

Well, I need to get some stuff done. I have dishes to wash, laundry to fold, a shower to take and a hard drive to re-format.

this past week I spent a good ammount of time collecting some open source and other free software... I knew about the "OpenCD" but saw that it was out of date... well guess what. they just updated it. I could have just downloaded the ISO and had over half of what I needed.

For a while I've wanted to create an "Everything Disk" A cd-rom crammed with about every must-have program and utility. Everything must be free, preferably open source.

So far I have the following

Open Office 2.0
PDFCreator
FireFox (I have 1.0.7 but I'm wondering if I shouldn't have put on the 1.5RC3. When the 1.5 comes out in a couple weeks I'll replace it)
Thunderbird 1.0.7 (@#$%@#$^!!!!! I just realized I burned two CDs and forgot to include thunderbird. blah!)
Audacity
TheGimp 2.2.9 (and the GTK+ toolkit it requires)
7-Zip

Other free ware but not open source:
Adobe Acrobat Reader 7
Ad-Aware
AVG Antivirus
MS Office 2003 Word viewer, Excel Viewer and Powerpoint Viewer
Picasa2
Smart Recovery (an excellent program for un-deleting stuff from flash cards)
DeepBurner
DeepRipper
WeatherGopher
Sun JRE
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In my opinion those are the must haves.. in addition I think I'd like to include IE6SP1 (for comptuers pre-XP - For those of you thinking "but they shouldn't use IE they should use FireFox" you're right, but did you know that windows update dosn't run properly without IE6? and it can be a huge download),
SP2 for XP (having a career in information technology it's hard to imagine that many people havn't upgraded to SP2; but it's true),
HijackThis!,
Maybe TweakUI ? A few winXP power toys (like the ALT+TAB enhancement) ?

Am I missing anything?

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My Aunt from OKC is up for the turkey day weekend. I'm fixing her comptuer. So loaded with spyware, It was unfixable via her lousy dialup and TightVNC, horribly bogged down with WeatherBug and multiple browser hijacker/toolbars. (yes multiple as in more than 2). I cleaned them out, updated her anti-virus, scaned for virueses, Installed FireFox (*Side note. I had not installed firefox because the last time I had physical access to her computer firefox was not stable, and when I origonally built her computer I don't belive I was aware of FireFox (SP4 for win2k had just come out so, it was a long time ago) The reason I've not installed FireFox untill now is because I wanted to be at the computer to monitor the install and make sure everything works correctly*) (I had tried the Foxie plugin a couple months ago hoping that would keep her computer clean, nope. ) Configured FireFox and imported all her bookmarks and cookies and such, then whiped up a VBS script that, every 10 seconds, checked if IEXPLORE.exe was running, and if so kills it. (*side note: I can't take credit for the script, I found it on google groups about a year ago. it's a very simple and strait forward script though, the intention of the script is to kill any program specified. I edited it to kill IE. and before I give it back to her I might make it kill the Weatherbug installer too)

Since she likes weather bug, and likes it well enough to keep installing it (though you could probably sneeze and re-install weatherbug, it's pretty sneaky that way) I found an alternative called WeatherGopher. It's a wonderful program. I also installed the ForcastFox extension for FireFox, I'm not terribly happy with it. the status bar stuff it displays is nice but when you click it, it takes you to a website overloaded with Ads. I spent a good 20 minutes updating the Adblock list to take care of them.

And I think that will do it, take out Weatherbug, and prevent IE from running, I installed MessengerPlus! with the stuffplug plugin so that MSN messenger opens firefox, I installed the flash and shockwave plugins... She's going to get high speed internet at the end of the month so it's a good thing that I'm doing these updates. I put on version 1.0.7 of Firefox I think I'll upgrade her to 1.5 via VNC once it's offically released.

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Tomorrow I'm going to Beemer to have "thanksgiving" with the family. My mom is making "...four different kinds of soup!" and there will be sandwiches. I think that on Sunday Vernie and I are cooking a somewhat traditional Turkey day dinner. she'll be roasting a turkey, I've declared that I'll make mashed potatoes, add a tub of coolwhip and a Pie from Wal-mart and we're good to go.

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So what am I thankful for? I'm thankful for Vernie, the Internet, my weekend job that pays me to do nearly nothing (and the paychecks from that job), I'm thankfull for long weekends. And beer.. I could use a cold one.

Time to update the blog.

This is day two of weekend 3 of my new weekend job. I've finished all the duties that I need to do and now I get paid to post to my blog. It was definately a smart decision to pick up this weekend job. Not only that but I told them I'd prefer the over night shift. another smart move. Once I complete my job duties, I can do what ever I want as long as I'm quiet. I have to get up every half hour to do a room check but I'd be getting up that often anyway. One of my job duties is laundry, but tonight's coworker is on top of that, at most I'll have to help him fold towels or something. There are a couple of things that I also need to do but really should wait untill near the end of my shift. So, to summerize, 8 hour shift, 1st half hour spent reading communication log looking over todo list, next 3.5 hours spent doing other tasks. Now I just have to stay awake for another 3 hours and I have about half an hour more of tasks to complete.

with Getting this job I told myself that I'd get a lot of work done on various projects and websites and soforth. Well, I think I'll try to actually do some of that this morning. Not sure where to start though

with my day job, things are going ok. There was an issue with a particular end user reguarding customer service. It is my "unofficial" opinion that the person involved is a total and complete bitch hell bent on ruining my week, but I did learn a lesson which will greatly help in avoiding situations like that in the future. I like my day job, but there are times.... I think I have about 50 hrs of vacation time saved up, I plan to use some around my b-day next month.

Vernie and I rented "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" The other day. Aparently it's more true to the book than the first movie based on that book. Critics also claimed that it was "darker" than the earlier movie. I diddn't really notcie. One thing I think most people will agree on: Johnny Depp is a creepy willy wonka.

Work has just sucked this weekend. It's week two of my new weekend job. Last night I tried to learn the long and complicated series of tasks that must be done. Vernie is a good teacher, but she can be critical, and tonight she obviously wasn't feeling well and getting through some of this stuff was stressfull. I became frustrated with her and angry durring the course of the shift. I love her but there are some serious disadvantages to having your girlfriend train you at work. The advantage is that I can tell her how I actually feel. had she been some one esle I would have labled her a bitch and left it at that. I suppose if she were just a friend, I wouldn't have labled her a bitch but I wouldn't have approached her either.

I'm really cranky this morning. At least I'm getting paid while I update my blog. mmm money.