New Ubuntu almost kills 1, so far.

As the resident linux guy in the lab, I have to deal with a few problems. However, today when i piloted the new Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex update on one of the machines, I was a little lost. Only for a bit, but it was annoying enough.

After a flawless install, I restarted. Then nothing. The machine hung after running a few boot scripts. After a couple reboots, I got it into a terminal and found out that the new install messed up my X configuration. Simple but annoying. After a few tweaks, up and running. It's very nice.

I got home and upgraded. No problem here. No annoying X misconfiguration or hanging boot. But I'd give it a couple months if you're uncomfortable with making changes to xorg.conf.

Testing out Ubuntu Blog Widget

Ubuntu Kung Fu has some great tips on configuring and tweaking your Ubuntu desktop. This is one of them, the Blog Widget that allows you to post to your blog without actually navigating to it. More tips are available here.

First Fail!

Yesterday from 11am to 9pm, I was in a partial outage. Obviously no internet, no Skype. But the thing that really pissed me off was "average time" of an outage. I called Comcast around 11:30 and was told partial outages typically last 2-3 hours. I said ok and went about my business.

Seven hours later, it was still out. I called again and was told that these outages last around 4-6 hours. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?! They're just making it up. I'd rather they say I don't know. At least, they'd be telling the truth.

First Week

I have stopped taking my phone to work and I realized something...no one calls me...at all. That's fine, because I will be saving some money after November. The first week hasn't been bad. The only thing that's been annoying me is running upstairs to answer calls. Other than that, I haven't noticed any problems. Maybe, I'll get a VOIP phone. Maybe not.

Skype at Work!

I got Skype configured at work. I had some issues with the sound card (it's ancient) and ALSA but got them figured out. I just need to test the sound levels to make sure I am not annoying anyone with a particularly high microphone level.

I started leaving my cell phone at home to wean myself from using it. If you need to call me try my SkypeIN number. If I don't answer you can try the cell, but I probably won't be near it.

Switching to Skype

I decided that I am tired of paying so much to communicate with people. And I'm not sure that I need to be connected to everyone at all times. A cell phone was always too much for me. I was phoneless is Austin for quite a while and I never noticed that it was a problem.

I am phasing out my cell phone and replacing it with Skype. I am using SkypeOUT and SkypeIN. I will be semi-connected since I can use Skype on any computer and SkypeIN allows people to call me using a normal phone number. We'll see how far this little experiment goes.