coming to terms at last

My second machine has been acting strange ever since the hard drive bellied up. The new drive, a Maxtor 10 gig, is fussy, but then so are the two CD Rom drives that have to cipher disks. Older PCs are much like older cars, reliable when they run, but wear and tear show at odd times.

Xubuntu didn't do so good. So I whipped out my copy of #!Crunchbang. It sliced through my hardware like a clean knife and is a fast install as I ever seen. Crunchbang is Ubuntu based but has Openbox window manager. It is lean and mean with a stark black screen and white letters. You have to tweak it to make the colors come out but you don't want to spoil it. As my second machine I don't need it to do heavy lifting so I'm using it for doc storage and to play back video tutorials.

Oh yeah, Conky is on deck with this distro with it's on screen system monitor and a listing of keyboard shortcuts to make learning them a breeze. All it need now is Synergy to share keyboard and mouse.
I sense a GNU-vana moment approaching. It's an endless cycle upgrade, then learn new stuff, then make it better again, then fix when it brakes, then............If I had new stuff I would be bored, Linux just works, gives me nothing to do, so I tinker.

The candy shop and deep dabble

Man, I've been to the candy shop. It's called "DC Parts". It is wonderful though not as when I first went there years ago. Oh yeah, it's a computer parts store. It was like the old 5 and 10 with every nut and screw and clip and cable you ever saw. It is still a great place but today their inventory is trimmed a little. They got used PCs and laptops. I went today and got a 40 gig hard drive, some powered speakers, a USB cable and an audio cable. I had to leave quick, my wallet was empty and my eyes getting bigger. Man, that was a blast.

Well, the hard drive was a bust, so I went back a few times and three drives later got one that my bios could see. With used equipment, milage may vary. Good thing they exchanged it for nothing. Today I am so pleased, it works and I installed Xubuntu 9.10 on it. The PC has a second drive with XP on it.

 I guess I can call my computer desks a lab. I am always trying to move things into a more workable arrangement. My LCD monitor bombed out. The lower half had a yellow haze, the screen image was wavy like water, then the picture would go black after a few minutes, but I still had power. I set it aside, then opened it thinking the capacitors had burnt. I took the whole thing apart, put it back together. World of wonders, it works OK now. I really didn't do anything but it now works! How long? I think when I am not sitting in front of it I might turn it off, just to be cautious.

So this all works out fine. My main PC has the big CRT which is fine as the higher resolution is great for graphics. My second PC has the LCD display which is very clear. And I now have powered speakers for both PCs. One little thing I did, since my second PC has no front USB ports, I bought an extension cable. It is very awkward to reach under the desk and around the back of the PC to access a USB port. The extension cable puts the port on my desktop.

I am thinking of re-installing Synergy so that I only need one keyboard and mouse to use both PCs. Two keyboards and two mice on one limited desk surface is near impossible. I've typed stuff on the wrong keyboard into the wrong PC, funny but not fun.

Perhaps I need a server, that way I can store stuff in one location and not worry on which PC it's hiding on. You see this is what's so great about Linux and Open Source. You can move things around, change stuff and not fuss with activations and authentications and putting your paid for copy on more than one machine reprisals.

I am not a guru and not a noobe, yet through deep dabbling I have achieved Gnu-vana.