Today I have my very first all Linux Box! This system came without an OS and windows has never touched it. First Some Specs:

• Systemax AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2.30GHz
• 3GB DDR2 800 (PC2-6400)
• 250GB Hard Drive
• 9-in-1 Media Reader
• Realtek ALC883 High Definition Integrated Audio
• DVD±R/RW
• Integrated NVIDIA GeForce 6100
•  I have added a NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS 512 mb card

We paid $249.97 for it from tiger direct.

The other PC works fine, we purchased this with the intent on taking the other computer to the living room and hooking the T.V. up to it. We are planning to cancel our cable to save more money in the long run.

After getting the box setup in it’s proper location, I proceeded to turn it on. It of course informed me that there was no OS and I should pick something to boot from. I inserted the Ubuntu 9.04 disk & within 20 minutes had a fully functioning Ubuntu Desktop.

The System runs great I also finally have a working microphone, as my other p.c. had some sort of bug which refused to allow the microphone to work in Linux.

I’m totally stoked about having a new rig which runs Ubuntu so wonderfully.

You may remember that my Son is going to be attending High School online. Well today he received his Laptop & Printer, He was quite happy to have it as his computer went down a while ago, with a bad processor. They are Both from Dell. The Laptop (I can’t recall which make it is offhand) Has Windows Xp Professional On it which he’ll need for school as it has programs installed on it which he’ll use. The Printer also came with a stock of Ink. I Set up the wireless internet connection for him and Now he can access his Myspace and Youtube (A Must have in the world of a 15 yr old…lol). He’s really excited about starting school, I’m excited for him. He has an orientation on the 29th classes start the following week.

With our Rent paid for 2 months and most of the bills finally caught up we had a bit of reprieve financially. We have begun to look at ways to save money in long run. One idea we came up with is this: My current computer has a t.v. tuner and runs vista fine, so we thought what if we canceled our cable for now, since you can watch most t.v. shows online anyway. After looking around I found THIS COMPUTER, so we decided that we would get it and take my computer out to the living room and connect it to the t.v. For watching movies, and t.v. shows online.

The Systemax is a pretty good deal in my opinion and should run Ubuntu quite well. I’m sure in the future I’ll be updating the video card, maybe add a bit of storage. But it should be perfect for my uses. The only game I play is Guild Wars, and I know that will run fine on it.

Anyway this plan will save us about $100 a month so that should help out some.

It’s been crazy few weeks, my hubby is still looking for a job of course nothing yet. It sucks having to cut expenses but we’re doing th best we can. The one that I can still enjoy is Playing with My Ubuntu. So that’s what I’ve been doing.

I installed KDE 4.3, and I must say kde is really shaping up though I still think kde is much better when installed along side gnome in ubuntu. I hear there are much better kde distro’s than kubuntu but I’m not in the mood to go looking right now. I do have my Desktop looking rather sharp right now and I’m quite satisfied with it. The one thing I had trouble with is that I can’t install Quanta for some reason. Some of dependencies seem to have gone haywire in the kde upgrade.

Who knows… Anyway here’s my desktop.

Well, The hubby filed for unemployment, I applied for a bit of medical assistance from the state, for me and the kids. He put in a few applications but nothing yet, this job market really sucks. We hear there is program where you can get a grant for school while on unemployment, the hubby may look into that. By trade he is a CNC Machinist but he would like to get into electrical engineering maybe. I wish I could get a job myself and help out, I hate feeling so, well helpless. I started working when I was 16 years old and worked very hard up until I became sick. I’m a high school drop out so I always worked in the food industry, Waitressing, or some such, but still it’s money in your pocket, and not being able to do it and help us out really sucks. The hubby keeps telling me that things we’ll be ok, and to be fair things do seem to work out for us, but it doesn’t make it any less scary or frustrating. It’s very stressful when you have children, to be in a situation like this.

Anyway Enough of that, I have decided that I like KDE but on ubuntu I only like it installed as a second option with gnome. Kubuntu seems to me to only be half done, and it seems more time has been spent on making it look nice, than making it usable. I installed Kubuntu and was very disappointed to find there isn’t even a gui method comparable to Gnome’s system->preferences-startup applications. One thing I really missed in Dolphin was scripts, I have grown very addicted to nautilus scripts, they are quite handy. But the KDE menu is quite nice imho.

Well my hubby finally fell victim to our bad economy and got laid off last Friday along with a bunch of others. It was damn sneaky of his work to nobody saw it coming. They were all getting overtime and everything. Seems they just wanted to get caught up so they could get rid of people. At this point we have unemployment, but I don’t know what were going to do. It’s been a hard weekend trying to cope with the news. Him being a CNC Machinist you would figure it wouldn’t be too hard to find work, but who knows with the way things are right now. I’ve been going back forth sometimes crying sometimes not. I guess I’ll apply for some assistance and see if I can at least get medical help. So that my health doesn’t suffer as well.

I have several websites that I reference regularly while playing Guild War. Firefox is a great browser and I love it to death, but being on Linux, and loving to customize stuff I decided to install Epiphany and now I have it set up as my Guild wars browser. It works great as it’s light weight and doesn’t add much extra pull to the system while running my game. I made the home page the Official Guild Wars Wiki, as I use it constantly. and the only bookmarks (Outside of google) are several other Guild Wars websites which I placed as bookmarks on my toolbar. I just love customization!

My Mother in law was visiting from out of town last week, so I haven’t really been online much but now the visit is over and things are back to normal around here…

So it’s 7:00 A.M and I’m sitting going over my news feeds and such. You know I really like this time of morning during the week. My Kids are still sleeping the hubby is off at work, and the quite is very nice. It’s nice to get an hour or so alone to myself. So here’s some of my random thoughts…

Google…
I personally am kinda of excited at the news of a Google Distro, I mean it can only mean good things for Linux with a powerhouse such as them behind Linux. It will be interesting to see what Kind of effect they have on the OS market that’s for sure.

Websites…
Well after much time and thought I have decided that the only website (this doesn’t include the UN) I will continue to run is My Personal blog. Most of them have been offline for a while now, and with my personal life growing so busy I really don’t have much time to continue to throw at such a hobby. Also this will help $$$ wise as I will no longer need to pay for such a big hosting plan.

Kubutnu…
Really isn’t that bad once you figure out how to customize it. Though I still prefer Evolution over Kmail. Evolution seems to have a cleaner interface to me. I have always used a few of the KDE apps anyway evenwhen using gnome such as Kmymoney and a few of the Kgames. The font’s in Kubuntu leave something to be desired in my humble opinion I had to fiddle with them to get them in what I consider a decent looking state.

Woman On Linux…
I’m so tired of seeing threads pop up on the Ubuntu Forums about whether woman exist in Ubuntu/Linux. Of course we exist but why advertise it I mean it’s bad enough we have to fend off “Pick Up Artists” in real life do we really want to have to do the same thing online? Besides the last time I checked the Ubuntu Forums were support forums and since when is gender relative to using a computer???

Windows…
Well when they announced the new pricing schemes for windows I wasn’t surpised. Even after trying windows 7 I see nothing to make me want to run out and spend $300 on an OS when I can get a perfectly good one for free.

Kids..
I guess kids go through phases as right now my teen has been driving us crazy with his procrastination and lack of wanting to do anything around the house. We had to ground him for coming home 3 hours late which is sooo unlike him, normally he’s pretty good about being home on time But I guess that’s why they call them Kids….lol.

Well these are my ramblings..

So I went to my appointment with my new Doctor, and it was great. It’s so nice just to be listened to and feel like I’m not being treated like a number or something. She gave me so new herbal supplements to take as well as drawing my blood to test my TSH levels. She also gave me some light exercises to help with my back pain. She believes the back pain is caused by a bulging disk in my back, funny thing is that’s what my mother has said several times. The Doctor was glad I had come off my other medicines because it meant not having to wait for them to come out of my system before starting the new treatment.

The Supplements I’m on are as follows:

• Dr. Heron’s Thyronix Formula
  

  Posted On June 26, 2009 1:35 AM  by: Angel Tags: doctor, Miscellaneous ·	No Comments

Well My monitor started going south, It started getting these lines on it at the top of the screen. I figured out it was the monitor and not my video card when I took a screenshot and they didn’t appear in it. It was an old CRT a 17 inch gateway evo700. Well yesterday the hubby says he’s going to walmart to buy the new underworld movie, but instead comes back with a brand new 20 inch acer LCD widescreen! This is my first experience with an LCD screen up until now all my monitors had been CRT, because well they seemed to last a good long while and so we would buy computers but no monitors, because we already had them. I’m totally blown away by the difference between the CRT and the LCD it’s amazing! It’s kinda strange getting used to a widescreen, but I’m loving it!

So I have a pretty nice Computer I love it, it’s a Gateway GM5478, the one problem I have had with this powerful system is apparently something a lot of people have had. A while after purchase the system will randomly kick the fan on really loud then reboot. At first it only did it once or twice, then yesterday it begun to do it like clockwork, every hour on the hour.

After much frustration and reading I discovered that the only way to fix this issue was to flash my BIOS. Ok fine no problem I can do that, but I have a problem. The program to flash the BIOS is a windows program and I have linux installed. Well I could have went the round about way of trying to dualboot windows after I already had Ubuntu installed, but that seems more of pain then just reinstalling windows.

I keep backups of all my goodies, so backing up the changed files wasn’t a problem. I spent two hours re-installing windows just so I could update the BIOS and then wipe it out and re-install Ubuntu. What I pain in the ass! But on the bright side, my system no longer reboots.

Damn Windows, bit me again!!!