Posts

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air traffic control for dummies?

atc4dummiesNorthern Virginia Community College offers Air Traffic Control for Dummies. It is best not to think about it too much, especially when you live  in the landing path to National Airport.

More on clouds. Mint. With some fear I started using Mint a few months ago. Being more than a little squeamish about giving access to all my financial accounts to a cloud. But, I figured they have lots of other people’s account info and if they get hacked – I am betting that I can rush out and change the passwords on all my stuff before the evil ones get to me.

Funny thing about Mint. If doesn’t process my Schwab holdings correctly and I says that I am worth  $65,816,262. Note to family NOT EVEN CLOSE. Not even a power of 10. No need to throw granny under a bus.

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it must be butterfly season

caught a butterfly with the fx01
caught a butterfly with the fx01

I seem to be doing lots of “wild life” photography lately.

I am trying to chill out about health care reform. And not watch old people making fools of themselves yelling about “socialized medicine”. I haven’t seen any of them buring their medicare cards. OOPS, I am getting un-chilled.

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partly cloudy

Bee and Butterfly - fx01 - from the daily commute
Bee and Butterfly - fx01 - from the daily commute

Partly Cloudy. No not the weather – which is hot and sunny – but the Internet. Or at least my Internet.

Who knows if cloud computing is going to be around in 2 years. Or if it will take over computer based apps. I have tried some. Rejected some. And embraced others.

Big tropical thunder clouds:

  1. Most favorite cloud application is Gmail. For a year or so, I didn’t quite trust it and downloaded my email using Thunderbird. Then, I started only downloading my “important” email. Now – Gmail collects and takes care of all my email accounts. I even let it delete mail from my mail servers. I not longer have any computer based email programs.
  2. A cloud app that “just works” and that I completely forget about is DropBox. It keeps my passwords all sync-ed up between my two computers, each with a Ubuntu and XP partition. DropBox will do more and I may start using it for “offsite” backup.
  3. Foxmarks – now called Xmarks, I think. It keeps my browser bookmarks in sync. DropBox would do that too – but, I have been using Foxmarks since it was a beta.

Little fluffy cloud toys:

  1. Google Docs – I just use it for a few files.
  2. Remember the Milk – I am not that busy. But, if Alzheimer’s kicks in big time – I might need it.
  3. Google Voice – Don’t have very many friends – so I don’t get very  many phone calls from real people.
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hot today

Summer finally arrived today. It is just plain hot. I am sure I should be annoyed by something. But, it is just too hot to get heated up.

Well, actually, I can get heated up about all this heat and fire over health care. This senior  has no problem with euthanasia and  strongly supports assisted suicide.

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remind me again…

Slug
Slug or why I don't love windows

Yesterday I decided that I should fire up my little computer and be sure every thing still worked. In less than 10 minutes the Ubuntu partition was all updated and good to go. So, I booted up the XP partition.  An hour and several reboots later, I turned it off. Fired it back up this morning and it is still frantically downloading patches and updates to its private parts.

As for the slug, I found it walking home from volunteering on friday – fx01.

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Things that I am surprisingly pleased with…

don't you love junk mail?
don't you love junk mail?

(Technology) Things that I am surprisingly pleased with:

  1. The vintage $199 Dell Computer. It is really slow. But I am not in any rush.
  2. Ubuntu. I started out being grateful that it saved my sorry ass in Hawaii. But, I really like and it is my go-to OS. Thinking about getting a MacBook Air and running a dual boot with Ubuntu. Not feeling any Windows love these days.
  3. Word Press. It is easy. It works. And anytime I feel wild and crazy I can toss on a funky theme until I return to my senses.
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consider the lilies of the yard

Lily from a rainy walk to volunteer job, old FX01
Lily from a rainy walk to volunteer job, old FX01

Just a picture today. Nothing to complain about – except complete lack of adult beverages. But, I have no one to blame but myself for that.

It has been over a month since I started converting my life to “less paper”. Not completely paperless – just less. I  have almost finished revisiting my filing box. Anything in it that I think needs saving I am scanning to PDFs. And I have sort of replicated my paper filing system of folders in my computer. New stuff like “important” receipts are scanned and saved for no apparent reason – like the receipt for my new Oly lens. Minor receipts – like from the grocery – I scan them and saved by month. I used to save minor receipts in little sandwich bags – one bag per month and would save them for a year or two. Also for no apparent reason.

And other things like articles to read or recipes to try – they too can be scanned to PDF or printed to PDF’s from the internet. I have a folder called The Fridge and use it for that sort of things.

I am sure there is special software to do this – but I just use stuff that comes with Ubuntu.

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tweet-gito ergo sum?

fuzzy peggy - 04aug09
fuzzy peggy - 04aug09

Now that I have a twitter account  – now what? Do old ladies tweet? do they tweet about depends? Or my very favorite “keep government out of healthcare” from people on Medicare?

I checked on my goth  granddaughter. Her choice of twitter background is the same as mine. one of us should be very worried.

Went and tweaked  my tweet page a little. Don’t want to have the same background as goth girl child.

Feel free to tweet at me – just don’t expect me to tweet back!

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forgive me, father, for i have tweeted

Well, I opened a twitter account. When I found out that United had cheaper plane fares available to tweeters. The older I get the harder it is to stay in the technology fast lane. Who am I kidding, I long ago left the fast lane. Heck, I am just trying to stay out of technology Depends.

And not two days after I update my Word Press software – it starts nagging me to upgrade again. Sigh.