cainmark

Last tax-free weekend we got a computer for my mother-in-law's birthday.

We got her a simple eMachine computer since she doesn't need a dual-core processor for email and searching the web and writing stuff. I wiped off Vista and put Ubuntu 9.10 Jaunty Jackalope on it. With 3g of memory, GNU/Linux flies on this machine.

This 76 year old woman who never used a computer or even a typewriter in her life was able to copy pictures from her camera's sd card and use f-spot to browse through images and print out a picture herself after I showed her how to.

My being patient and her being patient helped in tutoring her in computer usage.

From purchase to working installation was one hour.

To specifically configure it for her was one and a half hours.

To show her everything was 4 hours. Mainly showing her how a mouse worked and keyboard combinations and the menu layout. For those who haven't grown up with this stuff it can be overwhelming.

The most surprising thing to me was that her arthritis made it harder for her to use the mouse and easier to use the keyboard. I really thought it would have been the other way around.

I suggested that now that she has a computer, she needs to get familiar with it on her own. I suggested that she power it on, do 1 to 3 things at most, then stop so she doesn't confuse commands, do something else then come back to it later.

She's really happy with it and my wife and I are glad we could help her with this.

Next task is to get her phone line hooked to the internet. We didn't want to overwhelm her too much.

No electric blackouts here, so I don't know what caused it. My first suspician is a failed PSU since there's no led lights or fan noise. Going to work then Easter visits so won't have time till Monday to check it out. At least I do backups regularly if it's something major.

Bummer.

My 11 workspaces.


Photo set for my desktops and workspaces
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cainmark/sets/72157612171606872/

These are one day behind. I don't know why.

• 21:31 Walked. A couple on the sidewalk ahead of me stepped aside off the walk. I stepped aside across and looked behind me. Nothing. Walked on. #
• 21:34 Young girl with mocha skin and frizzy pigtails yells, "Have you got a life!?" I say "What?" "Have you got a wife?" Showed ring. Walked on. #
• 21:35 Cool. MarsPhoenix says Mars soil can grow asparagus. Other environmental conditions to rough for that, though. #

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• 21:42 Wife and I watched Superbad, good movie, and The Great Debators, great movie last Sunday.
  Currently reading book: Do It Wrong Quickly. Neat. #

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• 07:56 Before 8am and I feel like I got up at 9am. Oxygen and proper airflow during sleep seems to be a pretty good thing. #

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Heh heh heh.

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/06/09/funny-pictures-has-house-full-of-old-ladies/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Valerius_Martialis

These are one day behind. I don't know why.

• 21:39 Digitizing my CDs received as gifts using Soundjuicer on Ubuntu Hardy Heron. Works pretty darn well. Cassetes and Vinyl in the future. #

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• 07:49 Wow. 7:48 in the morning and I don't want to go back to bed and am ready to go to work. That cpap machine really helps with my sleep apnea. #

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• 16:52 Testing again for sleep apnea Thursday. Normal respitatory intteruptions are 3-5 times a night. Mine were 86 so likely I'll need cpap. #
• 16:53 Hardy Heron works great with the "new" old BMW case computer I got yesterday. Figured it out and it was cheaper to buy that than build it. #

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• 14:20 Sleep clinic followup Wednesday. Forgot about it and had to call work to tell them I'd be late. Laundry done. Dishes next. Whee. #
• 16:53 @Team_Edwards Sorry about your cat. Always hard to say goodbye to a friend. #

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• 19:45 Only 16 miles instead of the 20 I planned pleasure biking today. Just ran out of time and had to get home from a later start than planned. #

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These are one day behind. I don't know why.

• 21:36 Lake Eufala was beautiful this time, with the rains only hard for about 4 hours instead of the all day ones we're used to at our family's. #

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• 13:09 New books received at work: Followship, Followship, Hello Kitty. #
• 15:09 @Team_Edwards The History of Sanrio, the company behind Hello Kitty. Thought it was funny after seeing 2 "Followship" titles. Cults R US! #
• 17:46 Yeah! Habeus corpus restored. Let's get America back from the fear-mongers. tinyurl.com/5jdxon #

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These are one day behind. I don't know why.

• 15:30 READ:Chris Anderson, Jared Diamond, John Forester, Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Hart, Naomi Klein, Steven Levitt, Bill Moyers, Eric S. Raymond. #
• 21:46 @Ohmu, all non-fiction authors I believe everyone should read works by. Hope Thai Garden food was as yummy as ours was! #

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http://cainmark.tumblr.com/rss

I'm still playing around with all these Web 2.0 sites.

The 3 (make that 4) that have made the best and most lasting differences for me so far are Netvibes, pbwiki and Twitter (Along with LoudTwitter).


Most of that is due to RSS feeds finally becoming much simpler and easier to use, so the learning curve is nowhere near as steep as it was in 2004 when I was first trying to understand them.

But I keep coming back to LJ for the best social interaction. The other sites are more useful for other things. Twitter for random thoughts or heat of the moment stuff, pbwiki for my online life conolidation, netvibes for RSS aggregation.

Input.
Consolidation.
Output.

Amazing how much of my life can be sorted so easily into those 3 overarching containers.

Here's the paradox. I want centralization for me. Just not anyone else to centralize me too much (Google's a little _too_ good at that for my taste).

I want my own portal, without being limited to using only one portal.

Server down on one, I hop to the next. Ideally.

Probably not going to happen.

/Random ramblings off.

These are one day behind. I don't know why.

• 08:23 Prince Caspian was a pretty good adaptation.
  
  Off to pay the utility bill. Whee! #
• 18:56 Shifting lots of books. Woo hoo. #
• 23:47 Playing with Star Trek LCARS customizations on my GNU/Linux Ubuntu Hardy Heron desktop just because I like the interface. And playing. #

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• 08:52 Today (May 15th,2008) is Bike-to-Work Day. If you have a bike and can manage it, try it. #
• 12:02 Reading about corrupt politics in Alabama. Most of it commited by Karl Rove and his horrible prosecutors. #

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These are one day behind. I don't know why.

• 11:52 Working on moving stuff around at work. Whee. #
• 12:02 @fingerhead signed up for twitter to reserve the name.He's gone.I'm going to miss that man. Still foolishly hoping it's a Tom Sawyer trick. #

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• 17:57 Have to go to sleep clinic June 5th. GP referred me to a sleep doctor because I get sleepy, not so much tired, when exercising hard. #
• 18:06 Really wish I could use vlc or mplayer on our local news video streams. Windows media player bites. #

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