So true, so true...

Birthday card seen at Barnes & Noble:

"Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what happened."

You wonder why that old guy is such a grouch? Well, it's not the old guy who is grouchy, it's the young guy who is trapped in an old body who is, understandably, ticked off at life for playing this cruel trick. That young guy in there is angry, and who wouldn't be, because now, after he has finally started to learn the rules of the game, he is suddenly too old to stay in the game. He's about to be sent to the showers, and he ain't ready yet.

So, the next time some old codger grumbles at you, just smile and say, quietly, "I understand, and I think it sucks also." It does help.

The house on the corner

He tore down Mrs. Elder's house a couple weeks ago. "He" is the guy who lives behind my mother, and who is a (shudder) developer. My parents moved into their house slightly over 42 years ago. My father had a vision of himself as a country gentleman (on weekends) puttering around his estate, mowing the field and generally being the country squire. Unfortunately, he only got to enjoy his dream for three years before dying in an automobile accident. My mother, on the other hand, has been living there from the day they moved in. She remarried, and my step father lived there for about 17 years before dying himself in 1988. I lived on the property for the first five years of our ownership until I moved off to follow my own star. However, through all these years, the house on the corner has stood there, a welcome landmark telling us that home was only a few seconds away.

I call it "Mrs. Elder's house" even though she has been dead for decades. Mrs. Elder owned the house when we moved in next house down the road. She raised Springer Spaniels who sort of took over the property as she got older. The house itself was the oldest house in the immediate area. It was the original farmhouse for a huge swath of land. However, over the years (century plus) the succession of owners had sold off parcels until, when we moved in, Mrs. Elder was down to about 9 acres, and she could not spin off any more land since the zoning was then fixed at 10 acres. So, Mrs. Elder raised, and sold, Springer Spaniels. As she got older, and the walk to the kennels became more difficult, the dogs started living in the house. By the time her residency ended (I forget if she died or she was moved to a nursing home) the place was pretty rank.

However, maybe that was a blessing for the Rista's, the family who purchased the place and moved in about 30 years ago. When Mr. Rista bought the place, he must have been near 60. His kids we grown, although one daughter still lived at home. He and his wife were nice people who worked at cleaning the place up and making it livable. At least they did for the first 10 years or so. Then Mrs. Rista died. I don't think Mr. Rista ever really got over that. When his wife died, he sort of stopped taking care of the place. Of course, he was getting older too, and, I suppose, money was an issue. Anyhow, over the next 10 years, the place began to decay. The kennels started to sag, the barn leaned a little more to the right and nothing was painted...ever.

We would see Mr. Rista, a thin, small man taking his daily hike down the dirt road they lived on at least a couple times a week. We would wave at him, and he would wave back. And the house was still there, although it did look a tiny bit shabbier. Then about five or six years ago, we suddenly noticed that we hadn't seen Mr. Rista for a while. Inquiries were made, and it turned out that he had been moved to a nursing home. His son, who lives someplace in Arizona and his daughter, who now lives a couple miles away, were now in charge of the house. Well, she, for very good reasons, and he, for not so good reasons, did not much more than pay the quarterly taxes on the place. The deterioration of the house became more pronounced and began to accelerate. Gutters started to come loose, the porch sagged, then one corner gave up the fight and collapsed. Windows were broken and filled with plywood. The roof leaked. We all watched, and clucked our tongues, but there was nothing any of my family could do as none of us had a spare couple of million dollars hanging around.

Finally, this past spring, the daughter finally gave in and sold the place. But she sold it to the developer. Now, the house was in critical shape. In fact, it is possible that it was beyond saving, but I don't know that for certain. I do know that it was a Victorian farmhouse, which means it was close to 150 years old, and that the historic society should have been called in to do a survey. They weren't. The developer closed on the property, and within a week the bulldozers were on site. As far as I know, they didn't even attempt to salvage anything from any of the buildings. One day I went up to my Mom's for something, and the house was there are always, although there were all these large yellow machines parked in the field behind the barn. The next day, when I went back up to meet with some workmen at Mom's, the house was gone. The barn was still standing, but the house and kennels were gone. We thought the barn might survive, but even that hope was in vain. Now only a flat expanse of graded dirt covered by loose hay marks the corner. I know that within the next few months (or maybe next spring, but I wouldn't bet on him waiting that long) the foundations will go in and a new huge mansion, a paean to conspicuous consumption, will begin to rise on the site.

I will miss that old house.

Online auctions

I am in the throes of an online auction for an HP laptop. The auction site is UBid.com. And I have learned a life lesson with this auction: don't participate in an auction where the auctioneer also holds a fiduciary interest in what is being auctioned. This auction was supposed to end 45 minutes ago, but Ubid keeps "extending" the time limit. Fucking assholes! I thought I was competing with other bidders, but, no, it seems that one of the active players is the auctioneer itself. This sucks so big time that I am almost speechless...almost, but not quite.

**Arrrggghhh** Unfortunately, the auction is now closed, and I seem to have purchased a laptop. Damn! Well, it is what I promised my son for his birthday, last month, so it is good that I finally got something for him that works. The Compaq I got on eBay turned out to not have a battery and the shell had some very strange ridges swirled around. (Possibly somebody thought this was a cool design: we all thought that something bad had happened to the machine. I sent it back and Jose has credited back to my credit card.) This machine is supposed to be factory refurbished so it should be in pretty good shape...and the description says that battery and a/c charger are included. So, it should be what my son and granddaughter need at this time.

OK, so, after the fact, I go and read the fine print. It turns out that they automatically extend the auction time if there is a bid made within the last three minutes. They keep extending the time until such time as there are no new bids within a three minute span. At which time the auction winds down, I guess. I think that policy sucks. It's like the stock exchange saying they will extend the trading day if there are any new bids or offers within 3 minutes of closing. That kind of bullshit totally changes the dynamics of the auction. Fixed goalposts at the end of the field define the game of football. The same should be true about an auction site. As it is, I will never...let me repeat that; never...go to uBid again. In fact, I will now go see if eBay has an equally egregious rule, and, if it does, I will drop my membership there as well.

'Nuff said...

Linux continued

I've been up in the North woods for the past five days, and while we do have cell phone service, that is the only utility we have at the cabin. The cabin was built in 1880, and it is surrounded by New York's Adirondack State Park. Consequently, the only way to get in is by boat or by hiking (which becomes difficult when you're bringing in a case of wine and 60 pounds of ice for the ice box.) There is no electricity, no plumbing, no...well, you get the idea. We get drinking water from a spring; we get washing water from the lake; we have an outhouse (use lots of lime) for that necessary; we have a wood stove in the kitchen and a charcoal grill outside. Light is via a bunch of Coleman lanterns and there is a big fireplace if it gets chilly. I do bring the laptop with me, but I use it basically as a notebook, and I keep it charged using Xantrex Technology's Powerpack 600hd. All of which is an explanation for why I haven't gotten much further with my Linux adventure.

My major concern with Linux is with the download/installation of software. I have been able to get a couple of packages loaded, but most of them end up languishing on my desktop because 1) I have no clue as to where they really should be placed (Linux has all these stock directories which are supposed to handle just about everything...and would if I could get past my Windows expectations.) Anyhow, while I can d/l and unzip applications in Windows without even thinking, in Linux doing this has become a problem. Like right now I want to install Flash v9 as a Firefox plugin and, although it runs and says that it is done, the newest version of Flash does not appear as a plugin. And now I have a Flickr downloader that I want to put in service, but I can't get it to work. And I am getting frustrated. And that is not good.

Linux redux 2

I've finally figured out how to install software in Linux. Well, let me immediately qualify that statement. I can now insall software that is available to the Synaptic package manager. Package manages in Linux find and download software and all the associated software tha program needs to work. Package managers are great for loading compiled packages; they are not so great for downloading stuff that is not compiled for Linux.

I also got a copy of Ubuntu 8.04 on a cd from Linux Magazine and did a full re-install. I wiped the Linux partition and started from scratch. However, I did save all my user files by uplading them to my Yahoo Briefcase. Once they were safe, I cleaned out the Kubuntu installation and did a full, clean install. The benefits were immediate. I find that I like the Gnome desktop, and that installing the KDE desktop just did not give me anything so compelling as to make me want to switch from Gnome. About the only thing I miss is the Amarok music player (which, although optimized for use with the KDE desktop, can be used with Gnome). I am still having trouble with the hibernate settings, but that is a minor, minor inconvenience.

The major benefit of the re-install has been the resurrection of my wireless card. For whatever reason, the native drive included in either the most recent itteration of the kernel (2.6.24.19) or Ubuntu (Hardy Heron:8.04) is working perfectly. I get reasonable connection speed and it connects to whichever network happens to be available whether that is my home network or someplace like where I am now: at the Subaru dealership waiting for my car to go through a scheduled service.

So, I am now almost 100% settled in to Linux. And that means that I am about to leave the "absoute beginner category and move up one rung on the user ladder. When I get to the rung above this one, when I become an "informed user", I will delete Vista from it's place on the Hard Drive and become a fully Linux user at least on this machine.

On Duty, Honor and Patriotism

My fellow New Jerseyite over at Last Chance Gas comments that there is some "irony" that a "flaming liberal" like our governor, Mr. Corzine, can give a speech about "duty, honor and patriotism". For the most part, I sorta enjoy reading the Proprietor's blog. However, every now and then he pisses me off, and this is one of those times.

For the record, there is nothing in the liberal dogma which precludes also being patriotic, dutiful and honorable. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the liberals amongst us are more genuine in their honor , duty and patriotism than are the self-absorbed conservatives who use those noble ideals to cloak their pursuit of venal self aggrandizement. There, I think that covers it...

Linux update...

Well, there is good news and not-so-good news to report. I switched from Ubuntu to Kubuntu as my Linux flavor of the week. Actually, the only difference between them is that Kubuntu uses the KDE desktop manager, and, so far I think it rocks...I have to say that I like it better than Gnome, although I thought Gnome did a good job. However, KDE comes with Amarok (audio manager) as part of its tool chest. Amarok has Shoutcast streams and Radio Paradise is a shoutcast entity, so I now have music on the laptop.

The disappointing news is that I still haven't gotten my wireless working yet. I know that it is possible to get this thing working, and, that once I do have it going, it will work well. It is just frustrating not to have wireless. *sigh*

On other fronts, I have reorganized my office, bringing the movable computer desk over next to me rather than sitting in the far corner of the room. One of the nice things about this is that I can now sit in my chair and have three or four (if I ever fire up the old Micron) computers at my fingertips. I currently have the laptop working off this desk since it has a hub I can plug into so at least this machine (ok, I'm writing this on the Gateway 'cause it is a new toy and I want to play with it...also I find it easy to type on this keyboard even though it is not ergonomic. But that is not what I wanted to talk about.

What I want to talk about is that my dear wife hasn't said a word about the laptop. She stood at my shoulder as I loaded Kubuntu on to it a few minutes ago, and she didn't say a word. I'm hoping that she is considering this my Father's Day present...and my birthday present...and maybe a Christmas present, and is going to let it go at that. Works for me...

Moving to LInux Update 1

I am still having trouble with my wireless connection. The culprit seems to be the Realtek RTL8187 USB wireless NIC and associated drivers. From reading the posts in the Launchpad and Ubuntu forums, there seems to be a work around available using NDISwrapper (he said, cluelessly), but I have to wait for tech support (ie. my son-in-law) to walk me through the installation process.

Other than the wireless problem (right now I'm hard wired into the router, and that works just fine) I really like the Ubuntu flavor of Linux. Boot times are about a minute which compares very favorably to the interminable boot sequence in Windoze. The more I learn about Linux, the happier I am. However, a note to the masses: You need to have a modicum of computer smarts (read skills) to successfully move to a Linux O/S. Either that or you need to be in an environment where you have a network admin person who can deal with things which need to be dealt with using the command line. Ah, the command line; makes one think back on the days of DOS. Now, don't get me wrong, you can do most everything you need to do in Linux without having to refer to the command line...unless you want to install new hardware or new software, and even there a great majority of the time you wouldn't need to access the command line. However, there are going to be times with Linux when the command line becomes a necessity. So, if typing arcane commands into a computer worries you, then you might want to hold off on leaping to Linux. In that case you will be condemned to the Windows dungeon, and you have my sympathy.

Moving to Linux

Yesterday I loaded Ubuntu Linux on my stealth notebook. (It is called “stealth” because my darling wife doesn't know about it...yet. I have to pick a propitious time to inform her of its existence.) Anyhow, it came loaded with Windows Vista, and I am one of those who is of the opinion that Vista sucks. So, after years of threatening to jump ship for Linux, I have finally made the leap, and as Delmar (I think) from the movie “Brother Where Are You” (check on this) said, “Come on in, boys, the water's fine!” My game plan is to run Linux for about a month, and, if it proves to be stable and I can learn its foibles well enough, I will then repartition the hard drive to dump Vista into the trash heap of history. If things keep going like they have been for the last two days, I would give that possibility about a 99% degree of certainty. My only concern right now is how Ubuntu is connecting to the wireless router; it seems to be sort of unstable in that sometimes it works great and other times it doesn't seem to be connecting. When I get that straightened out, I think I will be well on the way to conversion to a Linux geek.

I am writing this little note on the OpenOffice.org word processor, which behaves almost exactly like Microsoft's Word or Corel's WordPerfect.

}As an aside, I always thought that it was a sin that programs like WordPerfect, Lotus, and a raft of others were buried by Microsoft's less than perfect software. And I have to admit that I was one of the people who enthusiastically climbed on board with the whole Office suite concept way back when Windows 3.1 finally made its appearance. Of course, I was an old AppleWorks user who had (with the rest of the business world) migrated to the PC and was eager for an integrated software solution. If I had only known then what I know now...{

OpenOffice.org has a nice little suite of applications, or packages as they are known in the Linux community (actually, I'm not 100% sure about that: could be that you install packages but you use apps or software or whatever...I'll have to work on my jargon.), which does everything Microsoft's Office does and the major files can be read by either.

So, I'm running Ubuntu Linux which uses Firefox as its web browser (and I can get Opera for Linux if I desire), Pidgen for my IM/chat software and I am working on the rest of the software I use regularly (like a streaming music player and a graphics editor for my pictures. I can see that I'm going to need to get a portable USB hard drive so that I can put my music and my photos on that and easily move them between Windows and Linux machines. Actually, what I really need to do is set up a home network that has both Linux and Windows clients. I foresee upgrading one of my old boxes enough to refurbish it as a Linux network server. Then I get my Dell tower and my wife's Dell notebook to run whatever they need to connect to the Linux server. Of course, all this is predicated on the my ability to integrate my NetGear router into the picture. However, I figure that, if I can learn the skill set necessary to do this by the end of the summer, I can get Paladin Business Services up and running. Because having that skill set will actually make me a Linux guru, and it would be nice to be back near the cutting edge for a couple more years...

The other thing I want to comment about is this Gateway notebook I'm using. Gateway has had a terrible rep over the last ten years or more (now that I think about it, my brother was complaining bitterly about his Gateway desktop way back in the mid-nineties), but this little machine seems to be doing just fine. Admittedly, I have only had it for a little over a week, but it is a nicely designed and set up machine. Ooops, here is another little bump in the road to Linux; the touchpad scroll function is a little too sensitive. Hmmm, lemme see...Actually, I'm not sure its the touchpad's fault. Seems Ubuntu has two desktops that you can move between. On this desktop I could have my word processor and a couple other windows open, and then I could have porn running on the other desktop. Should somebody wander into the room, I could then switch between desktops and keep the porn out of sight. OK, so actually its Mahjongg, but the former makes me...I dunno...more dangerous.

And now to brave the Linux file system and store this in the correct directory...

Its all about fear

Fear is playing a big role in my life right now. I am confronting fear on a number of different levels, and I am finding that it is sapping my energy. On the macro level, I have all the big fears, both legitimate and manufactured, that are confronting all of us; Global Warming, general environmental decay, overpopulation, the world economy, the national economy and the upcoming election. The manufactured fears created by the Bush administration which revolve around terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have to be addressed even though they are totally the product of our current occupant of the White House. On a more personal level, I am dealing with my fear of change in my personal life (I really, really have to move on from my current job in retail). And then there is my fear of fucking up my new computer when I install Linux.

Ah, Linux. On the one hand it is so far superior to Windoze as an operating system that the choice of intalling it should be a no brainer. On the other hand, there is that damned command line interface, and the need to be able to communicate with your computer on a more basic level than the GUI. All of that, plus the fact that I am about to do this installation on a laptop, which is the most difficult environment to install Linux into, leads me to approach this with trepidation. In other words, I am very worried that I am going to do something that will fuck up this machine irrevocably. (Well, irrevocably enough to require me to flat out reformat the HD and then reinstall the hated Vista.)

OK, I've already reapportioned the HD so there is a partition on it that is totally empty and ready to be reformated and loaded with Linux. What I really want to do is create a dual-boot machine so that I have a fall back available should something go south with the Linux installation. So, maybe I should read a little more just to be on the safe side...(dither, dither). Eh, there will be more to come on this. However, Redmond should be very afraid also because if this old man can dump Windows and move on to Linux, then a majority of the Windows users out there could do the same thing. And that should make the Evil Empire quake in its boots.