Working on a large VMWare install this week. This popped up today while configuring the iSCSI subsystem.

Most Awsome Error Ever!

I mean, I knew it was all magic to begin with, but to blow an “invocation” like that I must have rolled a “1”!

On her 14th Birftay!

Super Chicken Theme Song

When you find youself in danger, 
When you’re threatened by a stranger, 
When it looks like you will take a lickin’, (puk, puk, puk) 
There is someone waiting, 
Who will hurry up and rescue you, 
Just Call for Super Chicken! (puk, ack!) 

Fred, if you’re afraid you’ll have to overlook it, 
Besides you knew the job was dangerous when you took it (puk, ack!) 

He will drink his super sauce 
And throw the bad guys for a loss 
And he will bring them in alive and kickin’ (puk, puk, puk) 
There is one thing you should learn 
When there is no one else to turn to 
Call for Super Chicken! (puk, puk, puk) 
Call for Super Chicken! (puk, ack!)

Woke up this morning to find about an inch of snow, some ice and the wind blowing like crazy. Schools are all closed and the County offices are all shut down. It is lovely out and I will post some pics here in a bit.

Yay for snow days!!!

I really enjoyed futzing with the netbook this weekend.

The hardware is really solid and the keyboard, though small, is manageable. The trackpad is easy to use and the screen is very bright and I really appreciate the matt-screen finish. All-in-all, the form-factor is very nice and easy to use. Probably the easiest hard drive and memory upgrade I have ever done on a laptop. 

I followed some really good instructions for loading Ubuntu 8.10 onto the system using a USB stick.  The install went very quickly and I was up and running in less than 30 minutes. After the initial install many of the features that folks struggled with months ago such as the Broadcom wireless driver and the trackpad worked just fine. I ran the software update and found 247 packages that needed updating. That also went very quickly. The only issues I experienced in Ubuntu were around the Gnome Power Manager, and a simple fix [HERE] and then un-ticking “Reduce backlight brightness” and “Dim display when idle” fixed a problem with the screen brightness fading while idle and not coming back.

Minor stuff! Now the weekend was also spent trying to get XP Pro to install from a USB stick.. what a pain! I looked all over the web and tried tons of instructions and tools, I finally gave up and went to play with the dogs. 

Maybe I’ll try again later in the week.

Just to see this thing work would be amazing! Details in the paper discuss using ‘ultraviolet argon ion lasers’ to create fusion. The lasers are powered by setting off high explosives around a core of solid argon… Way cool!

The Lenovo S10 arrived yesterday. Last night I played around for a while with the installed XP (Home Edition). It was snappy and worked very well, but I wanted so much more!

So, I removed the 5400 80G drive and  installed a 2 Gig stick of RAM and a 7200 RPM 160G hard drive.

Great ideas for that [Here]. 

This weekend will be spent (Between chores Honey, I promise!) installing the OS:

– Ubuntu 8.1x

-Microsoft XP Pro

-OpenSuse

Weeeeeee!

I should have used this at my last job!  

I responded to a post  yesterday on Slashdot. The entry was requesting information on technology recommendations for their school in the UK. You can read my response here. 

Would love any comments!

Been using several blogging tools over the years but just found this plug-in for Firefox called “Scribefire“

Am going to give it a whirl and see how it works. Creating this post using it in Firefox on Ubuntu 8.10

I ordered a Lenovo S10 Netbook (Black) directly from the company yesterday. They had the best overall price and I splurged and go the 6 cell battery as well. 

I am planning to upgrade the system with a new HD and additional memory as noted HERE.

Total cost to the system is $460.00 including the upgrade. I can buy six of them for what I pay for a single Dell Laptop at work… We will see if the value is there. 

I wan to be able to dual boot the system between Ubuntu and XP Pro in order to make it a demo system for Open Source code at work. I am also hoping that the size and portability will allow me to drag the laptop from meeting to meeting and take notes at work. 

I normally work with a 15″ Mac Intel Powerbook running OSX and VMWare Fusion for my work apps ( We are a Windows shop at the County…) 

Anyway, that’s the plan and I will report back on what I find with the upgrade, install and operation!