The Blog of InfamousEric

I apparently am not the type who can work from home.

Over the last week, I’ve woken up later every day, haven’t done any of the things I planned on doing…

Sure, I can blame it on the fact I haven’t taken a vacation in years, or I haven’t found my “groove” yet, but I don’t think it’s that noble.

Yeah, I’m just being lazy.

Maybe I can focus this week…

I’m using Songbird on my Linux machine to listen to music. The cool feature, IMHO, is the addons.

Anyway, I’ve added “LiveTwitter”, which I have set to post to Twitter, on every song it plays.

I figure this will annoy the someone about 15 songs in or so…

Take that friendwhores…

The personal responsibility to make the choices that are beneficial to yourself and family.

The challenge we face, is not a glut of negative influences, it’s a lack of seeking balance in our lives. It’s more convienient to turn on the TV, than to read a book… (For example)

I’m of the opinion that most entertainment is trash, that appeals to the lowest common denominator of the intended audience.

Why ?… Because it appeals to the intended audience, it wouldn’t be produced, if it didn’t sell.

Many of us use entertainment as a way to kill time until the next responsible act we must perform (sleep, eat, shower, work, etc…), because we’ve grown up believing that this is how life is.

The problem is not the value of the product created, it is the lack of values of the audience the product is created for.

People (as a group) will most always live down to your expectations (rarely up to them), not that people are bad, but that people are influenced by the choices they make, and normally those choices are out of balance, because it’s easier, cheaper, convienient, etc…

Don’t get me wrong, I watch South Park, own porn, play 1st person shooters, and listen to heavy metal, but I also strive to read everyday, listen to self-improvement cd’s, exercise (not doing so good here), eat healthy, etc…

Yes it is freedom, but you need to be personally responsible for the type of freedom you exercise…

So since my kids were little, I would always take them to Six Flags for Halloween. We normally would go the last Friday before Halloween, as the park wouldn’t have much of a crowd during the day, leaving the rides pretty much open. Sure there would be lines on the newer rides, but some of the older rides, there was never a wait.

Well, we had to skip last year. Thing were just not in our favor, so this year we went, but things were changed.

Every year we went before, the mazes at night were included in the entry price, but this year is was $5 more per person to go in the mazes.

I was not very happy about this…

So not only do you have to pay for entry, pay an extra dollar for one time use lockers at the extreme rides (if you didn’t want to lose your keys or cameras, etc…), pay a premium on crappy food, but now you have to pay extra to go in the mazes, that I’ve already seen at least 15 times over the years.

Not good Six Flags…. Not Good…

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been having net connect problems.

The connection speed would dive to less than 1kbps and stay there, than it would jump to near normal than dive again.

A couple days ago I saw a download speed of 246 b/s…

Spoke with the ISP, they know of the issue, but haven’t been able to pinpoint a cause. It’s affecting my whole region.

There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to it. They are replacing hardware trying to fix it, but to no avail yet…

So I’ve now put together a backup/media server for the house.

The intent is to set it up to backup the client machines, configs & docs.

While at the same time serve as a media server, for movies, pictures, music, etc…

I’m using Ubuntu Server 8.04 64bit, the thing is fast and clean.

It’s a Sempron 2800, with 1 gig of ram, and a 1tb drive.

This is getting fun…

So I went ahead and changed to Linuxmint 7, KDE Version.

The wife has been using the Gnome version for a few weeks now, and I figured, I’ve had enough of the Microsoft headaches for awhile.

Of course, Linux is not as polished, or easy to use as Windows, but it also doesn’t have the inherent weaknesses of Windows either.

Since this is my day to day machine, I figure it’ll be OK.

So far the only bad bug I’ve found is, it doesn’t like the nvidia drivers, but I’ve played mp3’s, dvd’s, cd’s, I’m printing, Open Office opens my Excel files, etc…

It’s doing all the good stuff…

So we are rearanging the house.

It seems like everyroom is changing in some manner.

Welp, there goes my 3 day weekend…

Installed Linux Mint 7 on one of my machines at home this last weekend.

Looks like this is the version to have, setup was a breeze, does all the basic stuff I want it to.

It’s clean, fast, and secure…

I used the Gnome version, but I think I like the KDE version better

So I downloaded the RC copy of Win7. I figured I’d try it out before committing to purchasing yet another MS Win version. As I was installing I get an error, stating that Windows cannot find the cd/dvd drivers. Yet it’s read the data off the dvd that I booted to. Why am I not surprised that there would be errors.