Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

I have plenty of tapes that have obscure songs on them. Some of them are in the Living In Oblivion collection. One of my long-term projects is to take the cassettes I have and convert them into MP3 files.

( I don't have all these songs, but they would be nice to have in a collection. )

see more crazy cat pics

Two weeks after installing Linux on the "new" laptop (a Dell Latitude CPx J), everything is mostly working, except for the PCMCIA modem and wireless cards. I have posts in Ubuntu Forums, but there haven't been many responses to my questions.

To recap: The hardware finds my modem, but the software doesn't. Supposedly there's a driver I can use, but I don't know how to install it. As for the network card, I get the bluse swirl for about 60 seconds while it tries to join a network, and then it stops.

Shout-outs: Happy birthday to ohiblather and to katyhh!

This morning, it was rainy, and I dozed well after I should have. I came into work later than usual. Somewhere along the way, I pulled a neck/shoulder muscle. Even though I took an Aleve, I'm still feeling the pain.

I think my cat wanted me to stay at home today. I should have listened.

As much as I'd like to go to this filk con -- and I haven't been there since FKO 13 several years ago -- I just can't swing it financially. No passport, no money for a passport, no money for a con, etc. :(

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be able to afford to go to cons again and see people I haven't seen in months or years.

Last month, I was asked to sign -- and signed -- a petition to allow voters to choose to put a casino in the state of Ohio, in Clinton County. The proponents have been on local talk radio, and have also put up a website: myohionow.com.

I probably won't ever go to the place -- I know enough about game theory that the house always wins -- but I'm not gonna stop other people from gambling away their money. Besides, people from Ohio are already going across state lines to Indiana to gamble. Let's keep the money in the state.

Shout-outs: Happy birthday shining_woman!

I'm posting this from the new laptop, on which I installed Ubuntu Linux 7.10. I still haven't figured out how to get the PCMCIA modem to work. But they were throwing out a USRobotics Sportster 33.6 FAxmodem at work. And so I thought about using it for the interim. A little twiddling with wvdial, and editing the configuration file, and I'm online.

Now to go to my favorite wi-fi hangout and test the network card.

This is when March Madness begins. The conference tournaments for men's and women's college basketball. My alma mater is the #12 seed in the MAC tournament; they play #5 Miami. One of my co-workers is a UD (Univ. of Dayton) fan, who just won in overtime against St. Louis. He has his radio tuned in so all of us can hear the game, whether we like it or not.

This is about the only time in the year I pay attention to basketball, either college or professional. I stopped following basketball when John Y. Brown moved the Braves out of Buffalo, brought them to San Diego, and renamed them the Clippers. (They've since moved up the coast to Los Angeles.)

Today's shout-outs: Happy belated birthday almeda! Sorry I missed it earlier.

Some time ago, I mentioned that I had dibs on an old Pentium III laptop at work. Earlier this week, we cleaned out two cubicles in preparation for new employees, and a lot of old and unused computer things were thrown out. One of the "things" was an old Gateway E4000 desktop, which I was using until last year, when the hard drive started to fail on it. I managed to vulch that machine, along with some mice, a power cord, a modem, and some phone and network cables. And Jeanne (our admin assistant) said that I could have the laptop.

And so, I took it home on Thursday night.

While cleaning out the carrying case, I came across a copy of Windows NT Workstation 4.0, Service Pack 5, and some old manuals. But that's not what I'm going to install on the laptop. Once I get a hard drive for it, I'm installing Ubuntu 7.10. I've already ran it from the laptop's CD-ROM, and it appears to work nicely. Especially the games. I'll just need to know how to install new hardware, when it comes time to do so -- floppy drive module, modem, network card, wireless network card, USB devices, etc.

For the Linux geeks out there -- and I really should make a filter -- how easy or difficult would it be to install these devices? I'm not expecting plug-and-play, which is one of Windows' main selling points (ease of use). Are drivers available?

Oh yeah. If you want to be included in my Linux filter, post a reply to this message. I'm already planning to include autographedcat, bikergeek, and urban_terrorist.

It's Friday. I should be happy. But I'm not. I'm feeling rather grumpy.

The winter storm that the weather forecasters warned us about last night came in this morning, just as I was getting ready to leave home. I-675 was a mess; I don't think I did above 40 mph while on it. Someone hit a light pole at the Indian Ripple Rd. exit. But I made it into work.

I got my tax refund today, but I can't transfer any of it to my savings account because my savings account was closed for inactivity yesterday. In an effort to reopen the account, I called the bank's help line, and they told me I need to take care of that at a local branch. (Well, if their interest really was in me, they'd take care of my every little request, and not try to gouge or inconvenience me. Hurm.)

Today, my life is like watching a bad movie, and I want to shut it off and take it back to where I got it. Hopefully this day will go a little better after lunch.