Posted by fiddlepogo on Sunday, October 3, 2010
IIRC, that first part's the punch line of some joke about the flu.
Doesn't seem funny, cause I got it. Thursday I thought I was having an allergy attack because I got sneezy and my sinuses were inflamed... it wasn't until the evening that I recognized it as a bug, because most of my flus have started with a sore throat, and this one didn't.
I guess I put off getting my flu shot too long.
Seems like I usually get the flu later in the year.
No gigs, no jams, calling in sick, YUCK!!! Haven't actually played the fiddle in days. No energy. Felt better last night, but worse this morning. I'm thankful that electric guitar is so easy to play, and that I've got a setup now where I can listen on headphones (and not disturb the wife) and still get good tone! Plus when I'm sick, I REALLY feel the Blues!!!
MONDAY EDIT: THE WORST PART IS I BOUGHT A TICKET FOR THE CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS TONIGHT AND AM STILL TOO SICK TO GO!!!!
In other news, someone gave me a laptop, my very first!
Nothing too fancy, a Toshiba Satellite that's about 8 years old, with only 512 Megs of RAM, and a 37 Gig hard drive... but the processor is a tad faster than my desktop computer. The XP install seems to have problems and is the obsolete service pack 2 version. And I think I prolly need to get a new hard drive for it, if I'm going to do any recording with it... that's what I really want to use it for, since my Peavey PV6 mixer has USB... I could just plug the laptop into the Peavey mixer, start recording at the beginning of the performance, and hopefully forget about it, and I think I might get better recordings that way... maybe. It tested out fine and ran well from the Knoppix Live CD. But I haven't been able to get Audacity actually recording in XP yet. If I can't get it working soon, I'll probably install Linux Mint on it.
I had been using Linux Mint 5 (Elyssa) on a dual boot setup with XP on my desktop computer, and liked it pretty well... started doing that when the Fiddle Hangout had those infections a couple of years back since Linux is just so much less vulnerable to infection than Windows. So I downloaded the current version 9 (Isadora) and have been running it from a "Live" (bootable) CD, and I really like it... while different from Windows, the look and feel is a lot slicker and more on par with Windows than version 5 was. Linux Mint, btw, is based on Ubuntu, so it can run programs written for Ubuntu. But it's got an extra layer of bug fixing going on, PLUS the themes are green, which has always been my co-favorite color with blue. One of the first things I do with a new computer is change the background to a blue or green background that's not too bright and glary. There's a reason why gaming tables, pool tables, and banker's desks and lamps have historically been green... it's just easier on the eyes. Also, the Linux development community is very oriented towards user-friendliness... they understand that if Linux is to grow, it has to appeal to non-geeks. I like that, I tried to turn myself into a computer geek in the '90s, and it didn't really work... at some point I get tired of always having to learn new terminology that becomes obsolete in a couple of years. I just want my Linux installation to work, without a huge learning curve and lots of tweaking, and Linux Mint seems to do that well. Their goal is to take popular functional Linux distros like Ubuntu, and now Debian, and put the user-friendly icing on the cake.
For what it's worth, there are two other Linux versions that appeal to me from what I've read about their user-friendliness, and I may try soon.
One is Simply MEPIS... strange name, but the developer (from West Virginia, I think!) seems to get the user-friendly idea. The other is Zorin, which is apparently programmed by a couple of young Irish guys!!
For what it's worth, Linux is the #3 Linux distribution after Ubuntu and Fedora, MEPIS is #14 and Zorin is #45, out of a hundred distros being tracked. Zorin has the appeal in that they've tried really hard to make it feel like Windows, and it apparently has a good setup for running Windows programs. Considering the distro is so new, #45 is probably pretty respectable.
One nice thing about Linux is that there IS a Linux version of Audacity, so I don't have to totally relearn that program.
And, Mike Fontenot, Linux Mint just recently brought out their first Debian-based version of Mint, "LMDE"
1 comment on “in flew Enza... and a laptop! AND MISSING THE 'DROPS!!!”
fyoder Says:
Friday, October 8, 2010 @10:30:15 PM
I did make myself into a geek, and now I think to myself, 'what have I done'. But it can come in handy -- was able to fairly easily recover from an ubuntu kernel upgrade that killed my nvidia driver and nic. Also I don't have a laptop, but I've got a netbook. Typing on it now in a motel room where the wireless wouldn't let me out onto the internet. Found a fix without even calling the front desk. Sometimes it is good to be a geek.
I should give mint a try one these days, esp. if they have an additional bugfix layer. Ubuntu is a bit cruel -- really nice and user friendly when you install, but then update the kernel and PSYCH! Not user friendly at all!
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