Diary of a Wolfeman

Speaking of upgrading computers, I thought I had blurbed about this but I guess not. On a whim the other day I downloaded and installed the Windows 7 Beta.

I went with the 64-bit version, and I have to say that so far I am impressed. It responds rather snappily, and the only problem I have had with it so far is that the Activesync replacement for Vista and Windows 7 isn’t as good as the original. It doesn’t always sync up to the phone. Considering I do all of my real syncing over the air, not a big deal.

Bonus points: The default setting for the User Access Control (UAC) that normally bugs the fuck out of you is a little tamer in 7. Programs still trip it, but they trained it to ignore when a user clicks to change something like a network setting.

Oh, for those that did not know this, the Windows Live Mail client sucks just as bad as Outlook Express does. You’ve been warned, use Thunderbird instead.

All in all, at this point Windows 7 looks like what Vista should have. Yes, it still swallows more of your resources than XP, and yes it still has the Vista interface, but aside from that you can live with it.

That’s right, kids! I have survived a whole two weeks now without smoking. Well, not quite – I cheated on Monday of last week. I got called just as I was getting out of the shower to go deal with a kerplooied server, and rushed out of the house without grabbing a patch. By the time I got home, I was pretty frazzled, but didn’t want to waste a patch for just a few hours, so I had a smoke instead. Then I had another before bed to quiet down the monkey.

The good news part of that is that smoking tasted bad.

This is strange for me, because smoking hasn’t tasted bad to me in all these years. Maybe it was because I grew up in a smoker household, or maybe it was because that pack had been out and open in the garage for over a week and nearly frozen a couple of times… I don’t know. The point is, it was good for it to taste bad. I now have a memory of smoking being a bad thing.

There is still, however, the psychological addiction to break. It’s time to change the subject, because writing about it is making me want one.

I got bored the other day and decided to do a full version upgrade on my laptop from Kubuntu Hardy to Intrepid Ibex. The process was simple enough, and didn’t take too long. The results, however, were mildly annoying and just not what I wanted.

Now, not all of the problems I experienced were the result of Kubuntu alone, some of it stems from KDE 4.1 – but then again, the Kubuntu team didn’t bother to implement the modifications that other distros have made to KDE.

When the upgrade was finished, Read the rest of this entry »

…and still kickin’.

Thanks to all of the folks who have expressed their support for me in this endeavor of mine to kick the habit, your wrods have been very much appreciated. And you’re right, Beth, I am a tough old S.O.B. – just don’t tell my mother I said that about her, she’ll kick my ass :)

To Tolerant, I apologise for my driving. Hopefully I’ll calm down a bit before I scare you completely out of my car.

To the dark-haired waitress at My Father’s Place this morning: that’s right, I tipped you a measly $2 this morning. When you take 30 minutes to even get us menus and take our order, and then don’t bother to deliver my coffee until the food gets there (20 minutes later) and can’t manage to find our orange juice until we are done eating… yeah. Get your ass in gear woman. I realize the Place is a dive bar, but c’mon. I’ve never had service that bad there. Honestly, the guy who came in ten minutes after us and sat down at the table next door had his food delivered before you could bother to take our order. Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot?

To the cooks: I’m guessing you were having a bad day, but here’s a critique: the Hollandaise sauce was too thick, the eggs were poached too long and the hash browns were almost burned. Since the hash browns usually come almost raw, this may actually have been an improvement. How ’bout we find a happy medium?

Okay, that’s enough bitching for now. The next post will have some more upbeat content, I promise.