Welcome Linux MINT
I’ve been a long-time user of Ubuntu for my desktops, laptops and netbook, but those days are over. I got fed up with the Unity interface and the kludge of packing GNOME on top of it to make that work semi-properly. I’ve been using Ubuntu since 6.04 (11.10 is the latest) and that’s quite a few years.
Now, I’m a dedicated Linux MINT fan after only two days of using it. It took me only a few hours to backup $HOME, install MINT, restore $HOME and configure/polish/tweak things to where I wanted them. That’s not too bad.
I’ve only done this on my work laptop thus far, but I plan on dropping MINT on my desktop (probably over the weekend) and once I’m done with that, I’ll go with MINT on my netbook as well.
My server (the one hosting this site) will remain Ubuntu server because I don’t have to put up with any GUI garbage on servers. 
So Busy
Sorry for the severe lack of posting here. I’ve been hammered by tons of stuff lately. Let’s go through the list:
- Work
- Daddy duties
- Role playing and/or gaming most Saturdays
- Running my writer’s group
- Looking for an agent for my first book
- Working on the second book
- Finishing my masters degree in information assurance***
- Reading
Yeah. That about sums it up.
*** I am pseudo-officially done with my MS in IA!!! I received word a few days ago that things are completed on the paperwork side of things and I have all of the signatures that I need for the thesis. I’m just waiting for graduation day to arrive (no, not walking across the stage,) so I can get my diploma and mount it on the wall alongside the rest of my educational accolades!
I Love the Internet!
On the drive into work this morning, I thought about a book that I read back around 6th or 7th grade. The book was “The Man in the Maze.” I could remember the title and the basic storyline, but not the author, publisher, ISBN, publication date or many of the other critical elements necessary to find the book. I plugged in the title into Google and added “novel” to the end of it. The first link was to the Evil Overlords, Amazon, so I followed it. The synopsis of the story matched what I had thought the story to be, so I snagged the ISBN from the summary data and ran over to half.com and searched for it. Sure enough, there were plenty of copies for purchase, but many of them were priced well over $70. That was a stupid amount of money for a book that’s not even leather-bound or signed. At the bottom of the page, I noticed a section marked “Other Editions,” so I followed the link to the first printing, just to see how much more stupid the prices could get. Much to my surprise and pleasure, there were several copies marked as “Like New” for $0.75.
To make a long story a little longer, I snagged a copy for the seventy-five cents (plus almost four dollars in shipping) and it’s already on its way to me!
If you know me well, then you know I have a huge backlog of books to read. Yep. This one will go in the pile, but it’ll probably go in the “keep forever” shelf since I’ve been thinking about this fantastic science fiction book for about ten years now.
I Love Google!
A co-worker was telling me of a movie, but could not remember the lead actor’s name nor the movie title. It did sound interesting enough that I wanted to see it with a beer or two in me. The premise of the movie went something like this:
The protagonist is imprisoned for a crime and frozen for 1,000 years. During that time all of the smart people decided to stop having kids because of the expense, hassle or whatever. However, the idiots of the world kept having kids “like rabbits.” When the protagonist wakes up from his incarceration, his formerly average intelligence is now nearly superhuman as compared to the rest of the world.
He was unable to find the movie in his head or on IMDB (no actor and no title makes it rough.) I turned to Google and entered, “movie future people get dumber” and the first link was this one. Idiocracy was the name of the movie.
It’s for this reason that I love Google. It makes finding rare, obscure and seemingly irrelevant facts easy to find.
Thank you, Google!
Light Email Day
Today’s one of those odd days where I haven’t gotten much in the way of email: personally or professionally. It’s given me some free time to clean up some stuff, get started on a few projects, do a little more reading than I normally would have done at lunch, and simply relax a bit. It’s a good start to a busy weekend.
Theme Playground
I’ve been playing around with new themes. If the site looks different from what you’ve been seeing, that’s why. I think I’ve settled on one, but not sure. If you see a star field at the top, then that’s the current one that I’m working with.
Hope you like it as much as I do.
Long Time, No Post
This site has largely been ignored lately. I’ve just been too busy with my writing, school, work, kid and trying to have a social life. I also have nothing interesting to say. It’s not even interesting to me, so I don’t figure you’ll care about what’s going on in my life either.
Maybe something exciting will happen soon and I can post about it…. Dunno…
Kindle? No Thanks.
I was seriously thinking about asking for a Kindle as a gift for Christmas. They’re a little steep, but I would love to be able to buy and read books without lugging around the weight of the books. That was until I read these two stories.
It seems that Amazon is selling e-books for their wildly popular Kindle and then stealing them back from the consumer (with a refund) by deleting them from their customers’ Kindles with a remote kill switch. Imagine if you bought a book from a brick and mortar store, then woke up one night to find the sales clerk or manager digging through your book shelves to reclaim the latest Stephen King book you brought home a few weeks ago. I imagine someone would get thier sorry ass shot for stealing books back, even if they meant to leave your cash on your shelf in place of the book.
As far as I’m concerned, Amazon is stealing from their faithful customers. What else will they do with the Kindle in the future? I can’t wait to see how else they will screw over their customers. I’m not going to be one of them. That’s for sure.
WordPress Is Up
… and I’ve migrated from Serendipity to WordPress with zero loss of data (other than comments on some old posts, big deal.) It was probably done in record time. I think it took me all of 20 minutes to get the entire process done from the time I downloaded the WordPress tarball to the time I typed this.
I’m hoping to get some plugins installed (a theme is already up) to prevent spam and maybe add some features. We’ll see how it goes. Maybe now that I have a new interface to work with, I’ll start posting a little more often.
Exploding Appendix!
In continuation to the Health section of my most recent post, I’ve decided to let you know what the last week plus a few days has entailed.
As you already know, I came down with constipation last Friday, overdosing on prune juice last Tuesday, diarrhea, gas, and finally feeling more human last Wednesday.
Turns out that I felt wonderful on Wednesday because my appendix ruptured sometime Tuesday night, and this relieved the pressure that I was feeling in my gut. Shortly after my post last Wednesday, I ended up taking a turn for the worst. I hopped in the bathtub, and soaked in a luke-warm bath that I was trying to make hot for about 30 minutes. Then I went to bed, and I’m pretty sure I moaned my way through the rest of the night.
For some horribly stupid reason, I went to work Thursday morning. I was feeling about as bad as I’ve felt since my last case of food poisoning, but I wasn’t throwing up. I really should have hit the ER Thursday morning. I managed to suffer through Thursday, and when I got home, I had some after-hours work to do. I expected to start it around 8 PM, and finish it long before 9 PM. 11:45 PM rolled around before I was done and shutting down my computer. I emailed my boss and told him that I was going to my doctor or the ER, whichever could get me in first thing in the morning.
The ER won that contest hands down, and I’m glad they did since they had all of the appropriate equipment to take care of me here at the hospital. I got to the ER around 10:45, got triaged right away, got into an exam room within 25 minutes, and started getting checked out. After some blood work, urinalysis, and questions by the doctor, I was headed to radiology.
Something on the films in radiology, and the fact that my white blood cell count was very high made the doctor have me sent for a CT scan of my belly. However, I had to drink this contrast stuff and wait 2 hours. I downed the contrast stuff as quickly as I could, and I was done with it by 13:18.
About 15:40, I was taken for the CT, where that went well enough, and then back to my room. From there, I was hopped up on some pretty good pain meds, but I still managed to call Kiara a few times to let her know that I was still kicking, but had no diagnosis just yet.
I was woken up some time later by Dr. Tracy (her first name, not her last. I never got her last name, but I do remember vivid green eyes that were very soothing to look into) who told me that I had appendicitis!
Well, now I knew what the problem was, and what the treatment was going to be. A specialist was called in, and it took him a while to show up, but he got there. He started arranging for an OR, and staff and such like that. I called Kim to let her know what was going on, what I wanted from the house, and then started calling family to let them know.
At 19:51, I was rolled into an OR, and was out fairly quickly after getting settled on to the operating table. I was told that the surgery took about 45 minutes (as was expected), and that the appendix had burst, and turned gangrenous. Uck. That means that it had burst several days before which the doctor and I figured out after comparing notes later on.
I’ve been on IV antibiotics since the surgery, and things are progressing well. The pain is getting less and less every few hours, and I’m able to move around a little more. Just a few hours ago, I managed to get my first shower in since Tuesday night, and that made all the difference in the world!
I was hoping to go home today, but that didn’t happen. I’ve been told that the goal is for tomorrow, so we’ll have to see how that goes.
I’ll try to keep you updated as things progress. I better wrap this up since my early dinner just arrived, and my digestive medicine has finally had a chance to kick in.
Maybe I’ll post tomorrow, but no promises.
