later that same day.....

Well. all is quiet again, the rain has stopped, the gloom and doom have been set aside. Samba works but I still need to understand it, then tweak it. In any event I am sharing a network folder between Ubuntu and XP on separate machines. If the docs weren't in geekonese, perhaps it would be easier to cipher. Boy, I had forgotten how awkward XP really is. I always wondered why the file explorer, the most useful tool, is so buried in the menus. My Computer is such a psyche. Just show me my file tree. No need to harp, just use it. What MS thinks are improvements amount to marketing joe-whooie. Eventually we all will have to accept Vista as OK, else wait several years for more of the same to be ready. I am deciding on an agenda, a lot depends on the direction a new job takes me. At our Linux class we were given a demo of OpenOffice.org's Draw. It is a very impressive vector graphic program sort of like Adobe Illustrator. Vector graphics have the unique talent of being able to be resized, scaled without losing proportions. These drawings are right at home in any of the OpenOffice.org programs, Write, Calc, and Impress. In the demo, one of the guys showed us how to make beer labels (for homemade brewski) and prepare them to print out on Avery type stickybacks. The ease of using Draw was eye opening. I got it for free with my Ubuntu installation. I got another application that does the same type of drawing. It is called Xara Xtreme. This started out as an application on the MS Windows platform. I also snagged a video from YouTube on its' features. It is way cool. The problem I am having is that I just don't have the time to spend to get deep into the applications. If there is anything that Linux is lacking today it is stories of users actually using the applications. This includes blogs, video how-tos and user support tips and tweaks. I am guilty of this myself and will have to slow down, get a little closer to the practical Linux. It's not as exciting as a whirling cube with moving video but eminently more useful. Maybe I will explore one of these applications by doing some project and present a demo to the Linux class myself. Better get on it, see ya later.....