Lately I’ve been finding myself perusing the MMO Market. Maybe it’s just a listlessness because for the most part all MMO’s are starting to feel the same, just with a different lore behind it. I’m trying to be as patient as possible but the more information that is released about Guild Wars 2 the harder time I’m having being happy with my current MMO choices. I have been quite happily playing Lord of the Rings online. Just being in Middle Earth more than makes up for the games quirks. Since I already have one max level character I haven’t really been playing so much.

Recently I read a review over at Massively about a little game that is both quite new to

So I installed Kubuntu 10.10 only to find it’s now using pulseaudio. In all honesty it seems to work fine with one exception. Kmix the system tray volume manager & mixer only showed pulseaudio channels instead of my standard alsa channels. I could access them fine by going to command prompt and typing alsamixer, but in kmix it was a no go. So I went on the hunt to see what I could figure out.

After a bit of googling I found the following steps could restore kmix to it’s former alsamixer glory:

• Close Kmix by right-clicking on it in the system tray & clicking quit
• in konsole run the following command

kquitapp kmix && KMIX_PULSEAUDIO_DISABLE=1 kmix

• You should now be able to access your normal alsa channels via kmix

To make it run on on startup I did the following:

• open kate or your favorite bash editor
• add the following code to the document

#!/bin/bash kquitapp kmix && KMIX_PULSEAUDIO_DISABLE=1 kmix

• save the document to ~/.kde/Autostart
• make the document executable

chmod 755 ~/.kde/Autostart/kmixfix

• Log out and back in and you should now have your normal alsa channels back in kmix upon login

This is just a simple fix and I’m sure there are much cleaner ways to get it to run on startup. But it works for me and I now have all my mixer channels back in kmix where they belong.

This semester in school Kenzie classes are as follows

• English I: Literature & Composition
• Physical Education I
• Latin I
• Geometry
• Biology
• Digital Video Editing & Production
• Skills for Health II

Outside of school we are also exploring a few other topics history, philosophy, and astronomy are all areas where Kenzie has shown an interest.

Currently we are exploring a few philosophy books, the philosophy of the Matrix and the philosophy of Star Wars. We recently watched a documentary on the dark ages as well as a documentary about evolution. Astronomy will be covered by having Kenzie keep an astrological journal. Each night he’ll be going outside and keeping track of how many stars he can see (not the number but a general idea either a lot, a little or medium) as well as what phase the moon is in and which constellations he can see. We are also going to explore planetary sciences.

I’m very much looking forward to this year.

Today I was shocked to discover that My 16 yr old was never made to memorize the Preamble to the Constitution. In fact when I rattled of the first line he couldn’t even tell me what it was from. I find that to be very sad. The constitution is a very important part of our history and the preamble is a very powerful statement as to why this country was founded. How can our children, essentially our future hope to better our society if they can’t look too and learn from the lessons of the past? I’m proud to say that my child will be memorizing the preamble and analyzing it.

Well I haven’t had a cigarette since yesterday, though I won’t deny that the I haven’t thought about it. When I do though I just pick

Well Lord of the rings online is going free to play on the 10th of September. Some of us over at the Ubuntu forums were wondering if pylotro would be updated. So I email the developer and asked him and he has since posted over at the forums that he indeed plans on updating pylotro for the change. So good news for all you linux loving lotro players, including me!

Well I ordered and electronic cigarette, it’s called the Joye ego. I ordered it on August 11th and received it today on August 16th. It’s definitely different from smoking a regular cigarette. At first there was a slight taste of metal, but cleaned the atomizers in 99% isopropyl alcohol and dried them by hanging them on the front of my desktop fan, and that seemed to make the metal taste go away. I definitely think I’ll be trying different flavors as the ones the starter kit came with just don’t have the “right” taste for me. But everyone is different. The folks over at E-Cigarette Forum have given me quite a lot of good advice. I’ve been advised to try getting some empty cartridges and filling it with juice myself, and to also try to different flavors, so I will.

There is a real difference in the feel between dragging on a cigarette and an e-cig but it has already helped me cut way down on smoking just this first day. Hopefully my experience will get even better with different flavors. I’ll update more later on the subject.

I wanted to share how I have gotten both Lord of the Rings Online & Dungeons & Dragons Online Eberron Unlimited working on my Kubuntu 10.04 install

My Methods will require you to either have a copy of windows running in virtualbox or a dualboot with a working LOTRO install.
First I downloaded pylotro Though the program is called pylotro it is a launcher for both LOTRO & DDO. I also download and installed wine. My current working version is 1.2-rc1

1. I used the regular download manager from turbine in Virtualbox and downloaded both LOTRO & DDO . You should make sure to do full download of all game files, be forewarned it could take a while.
2. I created a folder called Turbine in
   /home/angel/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/
3. Using grsync I copied everything from
   C:\Program Files\Turbine\
   to
   /home/angel/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Turbine
4. Using winetricksI installed
   • win2k
   • gecko
   • vcrun2003
   • vcrun2005
   • vcrun2005sp1
5. I then installed pylotro in wine
6. Once I ran pylotro I had to go into the settings and point it to my LOTRO and DDO installs. While I wasn’t able to patch DDO I can play it just fine. With LOTRO I was able to patch and everything runs just fine.
7. Note You’ll have 2 folders(1 if you only play LOTRO or only play DDO) in your /home directory called
   Dungeons and Dragons Online
   and
   The Lord of the Rings Online
   These would generally be the folders that would appear in your Documents
   folder in windows.This folder will normally hold your
   UserPreferences.ini file along with your lotro.keymap file. For reference HERE is a copy my UserPreferences.ini file

I haven’t had any sound issues and my game seems to run fine. Of course I
don’t use pulseaudio being on kubuntu instead of Ubuntu. One thing I
did notice is that settings aren’t saved to the ini file so if you say
adjust your sound one session then log and come back later your need to
readjust them. I worked around this but just editing the volume settings
in the actual UserPreferences.ini file instead of using the in game
options.

My Darlings who are so far away, I miss and think of you everyday. Your little hands I used to hold your precious laughs take away the cold. Yesterday may be gone and time can move so fast, understand though that for you my love will always last.

Just yesterday it seems since I held your hands, but life doesn’t always follow the plans. Your happiness is all I wish to see and in the end when all is said and done I hope you know I did what sometimes painfully must be done……

The more news articles I read about about incidents in public schools, The happier I become that my son is no longer attending a regular public school. Anymore it just seems like it’s the faculty against the kids. The thing that really gets me is how schools seem to think the practically own the kids. I recently read an article about some kids who were suspended from school for pictures they put on myspace. I don’t know about any one else but as a parent I would have been fuming had my childs school tried to pull this.

Granted everyone should have an education, but I really don’t think that regular school is the way to go for everyone, and as long as the system continues to go downhill, and be at war with our kids less of them are going to be happy and/or succeed at school. As a parent I never really liked the idea of sending my kids off to complete strangers for 8 hours a day, having them become lost in the in crowd of the ever increasing size of classrooms. How can one teacher manage to help each student on any kind of personal level with they have a new set of 30-40 kids every hour to deal with? How is it that some kids excel at school while others stumble the whole time and it’s always just a bit late whenever somebody takes notice and tries to do anything, at that point the child is already lost.

Having no other option for the longest time, my son did attend public school. Always it seemed like the same cycle every year; he would start the year great, then half way through his grades would collapse. My son is now a student at an online public high school. He takes his classes on the internet, a few times a week he has “Live Sessions” where the students and teachers interact through whiteboard. The rest of the time he takes his classes through the schools website. Working on assignments/projects at his own pace. If he’s really into science, he doesn’t have to just stop working because the bell rang, so he can move on the next class. He just keeps on working on it, until he’s done. He’s teachers call him (yes on the phone) and discuss his grades or a current assignment, or even just to see how he’s doing. His counselor calls on a regular basis to give encouragement and to make sure he’s happy in his classes. He can still play sports through his local school, and this school regularly organizes pizza parties, outings and school events. He will have a prom, as well as a regular graduation just like all the other students in public school.

As a parent the upsides to his attending this school for me have been, the ability pin point struggling points early on, so that we can face them together. The fact that both myself and my husband can be very involved in his learning experience. If he’s reading about economics, we can have a discussion about it, and know what he’s being taught. If he’s really into art class, we can decided well let’s take the day off today and head to a museum. He can then write up a report on the trip and that counts towards his grade. The biggest concern most people seem to have when they find out about his schooling has been “well what about His social Life” and to be honest he has a great social life. Most of his friends already attended different schools then him anyway, and if I remember correctly school isn’t supposed to be about having a social life. The last time my son attended public school, I clearly remember the handbook stating kids can not hold hands, kiss or even hug for that matter. Kenzie doesn’t have any less of a social life then any of his other friends who do attend regular school. He still goes to the mall, the movies, the skating rink and other places just like other kids. The only difference is that I know he’s actually learning something and getting an education that is sticking with him. His first semester just ended and we asked him if he wanted to stay in this school or return to regular school, without so much as a pause he quickly replied “I want to stay in this school”, and when we asked him why he said “because here it seems like the teachers actually care”.