months go by

Much has happened. I'm now working less in the fixing-computers business and more in Academic Research at UC Berkeley. One thing that is relevant to both is that I'm now learning Python to help with experimental design and further my understanding of computers. Plus I'm working on the innards of Excel 2007 (which a customer graciously bought for me) to analyze bird egg bacteria data. That's right, bacteria in bird eggs. That's the biology lab. The other lab is cognition and action. Fun.

1 for 2 with ubuntu

Ok, so Ubuntu works on my laptop Dell. Great. Now, I try installing it on my shiny blue desktop PC. It kept showing IDE errors but it still loaded from the CD and I was able to install it. Maybe it didn't like the motherboard, maybe it didn't like my 3 internal hard drives and 1 external hard drive. I don't really know becuase I don't know too much about linux or ubuntu.

The end result was that I got a dead stop when I rebooted the machine. Grub loaded but then it showed "Error 22". Whatever that means is irrelevant... I am now doing a repair install of Windows XP Home to see if it will work again... Good thing I have backups...

so it is ok

to transfer my windows xp home from my now defunct e-machine PC to my new "blue test pc" as per this stipulation in the windows xp home EULA:
SOFTWARE TRANSFER. Internal. You may move the Software to a different Workstation Computer. After the transfer, you must completely remove the Software from the former Workstation Computer. Transfer to Third Party. The initial user of the Software may make a one-time permanent transfer of this EULA and Software to another end user, provided the initial user retains no copies of the Software. This transfer must include all of the Software (including all component parts, the media and printed materials, any upgrades, this EULA, and, if applicable, the Certificate of Authenticity). The transfer may not be an indirect transfer, such as a consignment. Prior to the transfer, the end user receiving the Software must agree to all the EULA terms.

starcraft 2!

i guess the FPS of "starcraft: ghost" never came about
so I guess a return to the RTS world for starcraft 2 is cool
I haven't played starcraft in a long time (or an RTS for that matter) but I may just have to regress and play the original for fun

here's a link to the new official starcraft 2 website:
StarCraft II

scribus and open office base

So I'm trying to create a meeting schedule in scribus. I decided that it would be prudent to try and create a database first given that I have plenty of time to do it right now (the number of computer services calls i'm getting averaging about 2 a week)

Unfortunately, scribus and open office base seem to have high learning curves. my aptitude for windows programs does me nothing for these programs given that they seem to require a good understanding of the underlying code. what was really bugging me was that after I created a table for the meetings with fields such as "time", "location", "day of week", etc.; I found that going back and trying to modify the fields was impossible. so after re-creating the table 3x, I got frustrated and gave up.

i'm thinking of just going back to microsoft access even though it's proprietary. it also makes me think that the programming community that works on these programs might benefit from more closely copying the interfaces and commands of the corresponding windows programs. afterall, if windows copies all of their stuff from apple, why can't the open-source community copy all their stuff from windows?

once a year cleaning

my computer performance has improved dramatically after a quick format of the hard drive and a reinstallation of Windows XP; Dell was nice enough to just send the OS (and I'm not being sarastic here) so I don't have all those extra programs that just take up space

Will now make a partition for Ubuntu edgy eft (6.10) and install that

the linux adventure!!!

I like this story about the adventures of installing linux. IMHO, very well written.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/review-linux-for-windows-users.htm