I found a decent story on the history of copyright over at arstechnica, it’s quite an interesting read. Seems big money has always been afraid of new tech..

I decided to switch to wordpress from joomla, as it seems more productive and not as clunky for a blog. Joomla has it’s merits, but for a blog I don’t think it’s the best way to go.

Communicate with your children, I don’t mean wait until they are twelve or thirteen years old to start having conversations with them. Communication starts early & children will appreciate this. My oldest is going on sixteen and I have always been open with him on various subjects.

When he was six or seven years old he asked me how babies we’re made. I told him the basic facts of sex. Nothing extreme and I didn’t mention that some people have sex simply for pleasure. I told him the cold hard biological facts. This was fine, it quashed his curiosity for a few more years and answered his question. It also let him know that He could talk to me about anything.

Fast forward a few years to when he’s fourteen years old. At fourteen my son was(and still is) very much into girls. But I knew their we’re things about sex he didn’t understand. I remember all too well what it was like at fourteen, all your friends are talking about it, and some of them are even doing it. I as parent who wants her child to be aware, decided it was time to have a talk again.

I sat down with him and we discussed things such as the consequences of having a sexual relationship, the good the bad and the ugly. Everything was laid out on the table from sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy to oral sex and masturbation.

Some parent’s might ask

After having installed KDE 4.3 on my Ubuntu installation and really enjoying using it, I decided I wanted the full Ubuntu/KDE experience. So I decided to wipe my Ubuntu installation and install Kubuntu 9.04. It turns out the switch wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. There we’re definitely a few stumbling blocks along the way.

First I couldn’t get tomboy notes to work. I’m aware that KDE offers Basket Notepad but I really prefer Tomboy. I love the wiki style and simplicity of it. I could install it fine but attempting to launch gave me errors. I never did quite figure out what the issues was but I knew it was very important for me to get it working as all my installation notes we’re in tomboy which I sync to dropbox so I can have them available to me anywhere (this is really handy as tomboy also has a windows version so I can run them back and forth). Well after much googleing I discovered it’s some kind of issue that won’t let tomboy run with out gnome. Well I thought, at the very least I can install ubuntu in virtualbox and access my notes this way. So that’s what I proceeded to do. Well I decided to have a look at the article on how to forge entitled The Perfect Desktop – Kubuntu 9.04 This article is very thorough and allowed me to get everything I needed on kubuntu without the primary use of my notes.

After following the guide and picking the software I wanted (I didn’t install all the software mentioned as I use alternatives to some of them) I then went to google to search for a way to test my browser plugins. This is when I noticed I had no sound in my browser. Flash, totem and mplayer remained silent. So off to google again. Many hours and much googleing later I discovered the reason for my sound issues was that Kubuntu does not install pulseaudio by default. So I needed to install it. So I followed the instructions found in this post. But for some reason I still had no sound. This drove me completely insane, at this point I was highly frustrated. Well somewhere in the mirad of google pages I came across a post and the reply to that post was that this person had discovered that their PCM volume was turned down and when they turned it up they had sound. So I checked my PCM volume using the mixer option available when clicking on the volume in the system tray and sure enough it was turned all the way down. Now I had sound in my browser. Flash, Mplayer totem they all worked!

Supposedly they are working on these sound issues and most of them should be fixed with the release of Karmic Koala in October. I really hope so as this is a bit complicated for anyone to fix.

I updated my KDE to 4.3 which is far supieror to the KDE that ships with Kubuntu Jaunty. The widgets are great and I love using them, also I noticed that the networking widget, which refused to work under kde installed on top of ubuntu, now worked perfectly under Kubuntu. Also I no longer have annoying sounds when using gtk applications under kde this was the most annoying thing about using kde ontop of ubuntu.

I almost forgot to mention that after following the Perfect Desktop article, my tomboy notes began working. So I have it installed now and running as well. From the error I was receiving when attempting to launch it through the terminal, I know it was some kind of Mono error, though I can’t be sure what as I don’t know anything about programming.

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.

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..