The Screaming Viking

I’m very impressed with this version of Ubuntu, it has breathed new life into this t21.  I wrote on here before how I was using this box as basically a terminal to RDP into a windows VM for my activities.  With this version of Ubuntu it has become a satisfactory stand alone laptop.  Web browsing is so much quicker and more enjoyable, the response from the machine is more snappy, the wireless is giving me no problems at all…and the power management is working (so far).  With 9.04 off a clean install, when I closed the lid it was about a 90% chance that I would have to reboot the machine next time I wanted to use it.  It didn’t lock per se, it was more of a problem bringing up anything on the display.  I could still see the HD chuggin away, but I’d get no login screen.  So far, I haven’t seen that problem at all.  Hopefully it keeps working.

If it wasn’t for quicken, I could blow away that windows vm.

A few months ago I got it in my head that I would pick up 3 tickets to a taylor swift concert through ticketmaster and we would take the kid down for her birthday.  I prepped ahead of time, put a reminder on my BB for when they went on sale, I reserved a room (as I thought a room would be harder to get than tickets) I was ready to rock.  I logged in the Friday before hand and to my surprise, they had already been on sale and were sold out.  Either I looked at the date wrong or they changed it…either way my only option was stubhub.  I ended up playing x2 would the tix would have cost me straight from ticket master, the kid had a good time…I was satisfied with the value, but I was still burned that I had to go to a scalper to get tix for my kid. Read the rest of this entry »

Unless you live in Illinois, where there are still 9!

I don’t have a subscription to read the whole article, but in a nut shell Illinois has rejected the IAU’s demotion of Pluto and at the legislative level have decided it’s a planet.  What kills me is how there was “outrage among the members that grew up with 9 planets”.  I wonder if such things happened every time they discovered a new planet?  Far worse happened when it was said aloud that the earth wasn’t flat…wasn’t the center of the universe.

Good to know we can always depend on old people to hold on to “what they know” as opposed to what new science tells us.

Installed it on my t21 tonight.  It’s quicker and installed the drivers for everything smoothly.  When I installed 9.04 it took a bit of work to get the PCMCIA wireless card installed and I never did get the sound working.  It didn’t work right out of the box so ta hell with it…I don’t much care about sound anyhow.  This time it dropped the drivers for everything right in.  I was impressed.  Scrolling in firefox used to be choppy, and it’s considerably smoother now.  I don’t know if that’s a factor of firefox being better or ubuntu…or both.  Either way, it’s worth installing.