Just Stuff

Just a quick post to let everyone know I'm still around, I've been extremely busy lately, with little to no time to blog. We're preparing to leave for Maine Thursday, May 22, to attend our younger daughter's college commencement (which will happen Sunday, May 25, 2008 at 10:00 a.m. EDT, BTW). Between working to get my clients' needs taken care of and preparing for the trip, it seems as if the days pass very quickly. Then, of course, it is the end of the school year at TIS, and Judy is also overwhelmed by the necessary tasks attached to this time of year. Should things go as I hope, I'll make at least one post from the great state of Maine once we are there. Meanwhile, I wish all a safe and sane Memorial Day holiday weekend, and after our return, perhaps I can again add to the discourse found here. I understand Tracy has found himself in a similar boat as to time, and if he happens to stumble across this, remember, Tracy, there is something other than work; it just doesn't seem like it sometimes. Speaking of the commencement, the younger is receiving as a gift a laptop; now, Mom and Dad being frugal, it is a refurbished Dell, which is a very nice basic laptop. I've installed Linux Mint 4.0 thereon, to dual boot with XP SP3 (which I d/l after getting the laptop), which is a very nice OS for those of you who might want to try it out. It comes on a "Live CD" which lets one use it to see how it handles the hardware of an existing machine w/o making any changes, etc. The idea I had for putting it on the laptop was our younger's affection for music, etc., which Mint handles well "out of the box". The only thing I needed to do, interestingly enough, to get it up and running, was to install it, and the system took care of the rest. That likely was due to the Dell not having a nVidia graphics card (nor an ATI, for that matter); the wireless is a Broadcom, but Mint picked it up and installed the appropriate driver to "make it work" with no effort on my part (unlike installing the appropriate Atheros driver under Hardy (Ubuntu 8.04) on the office laptop, and installing the appropriate nVidia driver on the same. Anyway, for those of you who might like to take a look at a Linux distro, Mint is one to consider.