My Rants and Thoughts

So we finally finished moving - now it's just unpacking. also, there was some work left to finish in our house, so we couldn't use the whole space yet. the basement needed new carpet which just got finished. But at least now we can begin rearranging everything Yay!

So we are almost done moving. It seems like it takes longer and longer. Could it be because I am getting older? Used to be I could do 4 or 5 pickup truckloads a day - even could do 2 after work. Nowadays, in a full day I might get 3, but most likely 2, and on work days - lucky to get one. Anyways, so we had a huge garage sale, and cleared out a ton of stuff so I thought "great - this move won't be too bad." I was wrong. We started Friday (Today is Wednesday) and my goal was to be done by Sunday evening. Well today there is still stuff there!!! Still a couple truckloads. I guess part of the difference is that for most of our other moves I had help. This time I didn't. It's not that I couldn't it's just that usually help=broken stuff. So I decided to do it almost all by myself. Big mistake. I think a couple broken glasses is worth the time and pain saved. I did have help for bigger things, but that was just on Monday, and today I have help to move...

So I found out last night that I was running a slightly outdated version of Fedora. I was running Core 1 and it appears that Core 2 is released to the general public and is stable. I did some research on how to upgrade and got results from "easy as cake" to "a nightmare - don't do it." I thought "what the heck" and tried the in-place upgrade. I downloaded an image that I burned to CD (using the Linux free cd creator of course) so that I could do an FTP upgrade. I figured - what the heck - lets really go for broke. So after a couple false starts (I had the path to the "stage 2" image wrong) I was able to complete a fully GUI upgrade from Fedora core 1 to Fedora core 2 in about 2.5 hours. I didn't even have to do much. Also, it fixed an application I broke when I was experimenting (Evolution started generating errors). FYI - Mozilla for Fedora is not the same as Mozilla for windows. I was trying to import my Outlook PST into Evolution ...

So a few days ago I posted about how I decided to dump windows and go with Linux. Yes after I sobered up the next day I stuck to my decision :) and you know what - so far it's been relatively painless. Before I go on let me give you some background - I have an MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) designation, so I am very familiar with computers. In my spare time I build computers and sell them, so am familiar with both the hardware and software. Up until recently it's only been Windows software though. I'm telling you this because I believe that while I found Linux ok - I do believe that part of that has to do with my background. When comparing myself to, say my brother, who while younger isn't as computer adept as me and then I consider what he would do were he to attempt the same thing (switch to linux) it makes me shudder. It's not that Linux is hard. Far from it. In fact, for the average person it's probably great. Although it's a little tr...

PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column This is what I'm going to do when I get better at Linux - a media/VOIP server - sweet!

So, I made a decision to dump windows (after a few beers) and go with Linux so I thought I'd post my progress so far. I'm not entirely a linux newbie, although I haven't done much with it. I've had it running no Virtual PC, and on its own partition, but all I've ever done with it in the past is install it with various options and keep it up to date. I started with Redhat 8 and then moved on to 9 and now Fedora. I like fedora. My biggest concerns were email, word processing, chatting to friends and family online, and newsgroups. So I found an old 4 gig drive (scavenged out of an old Pentium 133) and decided to install Fedora. At the time I was doing this, my goal was to install a windows emalator (Wine or VMWare) so that I could still run Windows, just on linux. But after installing linux (and having a few of those aforementioned beers) I started to think, and I said to myself "Do I really need windows?" I decided right there and then that no, I do not n...