Tag Archives: computers

“Likes”

28 Aug

I guess I’ll take the “Likes” system off the blog, to prevent jamming up the system.

Either nobody likes the stuff, which is discouraging news, or the idea of clicking a button to tell me that you like my stuff just hasn’t caught on.

Definitely don’t want to waste speed and network resources on a useless feature.

Puppy Linux

6 Feb

Puppy Linux

So, my laptop is kinda old. It was originally issued with one of those ancient Windows operating systems like Windows 2000 Pro, or something similar. The System Restore program was on the hard drive, so when the drive went kaplooie, I installed Ubuntu and was quite joyous about reclaiming a fine computer from the trashbin of the world.

However.

Ubuntu has a regretful capability to update itself, and I thought it was a good thing to allow it to do so. Turns out that’s not a good idea, as the newer versions are, to say the least, much slower and resource intensive than the older versions.

Enter Puppy Linux.

What a beautiful little operating system. Runs from a CD, or even from a thumb drive, assuming I ever find mine, loads quickly, and speeds this little “puppy” up tremendously.

Big thanks to the guy what developed it and gave it away. Ubuntu is still on here for the serious stuff, but Puppy makes life useful again.

Now I just need to get it on the hard drive instead of booting from the CD, and it will be really clean.

DSL and Video

30 Sep

So our new DSL connection is twice as fast as our old WildBlue satellite connection, plus a little bit.

Marvelous.

Except.

YouTube and other video services, Joost, etc., actually load slower.  It was possible to stream a YouTube video without interruption on satellite, but DSL, even at 1.3Mbps (that’s a TESTED speed, not just an advertised one…), can only provide about three to four seconds of video before it halts for buffering.

Other sites really are much faster.  Uploads are quick, and we don’t have the infernal FAP to worry about.

But something ain’t right…

Selfish Sadness

24 Jul

My Thinkpad T30 is dying.

Yes, it’s old.

It MAY just have had a virus.  It DID have a virus, but I don’t know if that’s the real problem or if the HD is just tired.

I cannot depend on it.  Karma’s Gateway has become the church video projection computer.  (Mine failed in the middle of VBS twice this week…)  Virus testing reveals about 36 infections that AVG claims to have fixed.  But I’m afraid there’s a boot sector problem that may require a new hard drive.  I’m longing for one of these, but even that is beyond us right now :(

I hate computers.  I once preferred desktops, but I LOVE using a laptop now.  That’s bad.  Especially since mine is dying…