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”.

So after having heard, seeing, and experiencing numerous Scares while using windows systems in the past, I thought I would share here a list of things anyone who uses Microsoft Windows Should be aware of.

Protect Yourself

• A website tells you that you have a virus, or spy-ware/malware has been detected.

First don”t panic, second don”t trust the source. Their have been many cases where people have been infected by malware because they clicked on the “FREE VIRUS SCAN NOW” advertisement in their browser from a website claiming that they have malware, It”s a very old trick. I personally was shocked to discover how widespread this practice actually is, but even some very well known sites have been “tricked” into running what they thought were legitimate ads on their websites only to discover they were actively infecting their visitors. Here are a couple of examples of Fake Virus scans:

Fake Vista Scan	Fake xp Scan

• Make sure you run updated anti-virus on your windows system – I  recommend Avast it”s free and updated quite regularly.
• Make sure you run updated anti-spyware on your windows system – I highly recommend the free Spybot S&D Make sure run regular scans of your system.
• If your using firefox there are a few more ways to help you avoid those types of fake scans and javascript/flash based attacks. Two extensions I make sure to install on any firefox installation are Ad Block Plus, and WOT(Web of Trust).
• Be Smart, think about what the website in front of you asking you to do. Legitimate Visus & Malware scanning sites, generally wont just pop up in your face, and beg to scan your sytem.
• Stop handing out your email address – You don”t have to give your actual email address to every website that asks, actually there is a free service that helps stop spam in your inbox by giving you a temporary email address that you can use  to register at that one website you just have to check out. Mailinator.com allows you create any email address at random and then check it just by using the email address you created, there is no actual account and no registration required. Be aware though, all email is deleted after a few hours.

Back up and Maintain!

Remember Computers are like car”s you can just Gas & Go, you have to perform regular maintenance.

• Start a back up schedule – Hardware doesn”t last forever, and losing all those precious photo”s or a huge media collection can really make things difficult for you. The best thing you can do is get some external storage, and start a backup schedule. If you don”t have much to back up you can always get a free Dropbox.com account, and have your important files backed up the web. But in case you need more than 2 gig”s of storage space and don”t want to pay for extra an external drive is really the way to go.  DeltaCopy is a great Open Source program for backing up your file. It offers Incremental backup, Task scheduler, Email notification, &  One-click restore features.
• Back up those bookmarks online – Xmarks (formerly foxmarks) works with Internet explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Google chrome to keep your bookmarks in sync and backed up across computers and browsers.
• Find our more about System Restore – Answers.com provides great insight about how to use the windows System Restore feature, using it you can create restore points to set your computer back to should something go wrong.
• Clean Your registry – Ccleaner is a great way to make sure your Windows Registry stays clean, as well as helping you clean any temporary files from your system.
• Defragment your files –  Windows XP comes with a nice interface for Defragmenting your hard drive, however  in vista your left with a command line only option of Defragmenting your hard drives. Luckily there are 3rd party  alternatives to windows built in interface, which works with both XP & Vista, I recommend Defraggler.

Are you tired yet?

So once your tired of maintaining your system on a regular basis all the while having paid to have your computer tell you what to do during your free time, Keep your windows for games, and Use Ubuntu/Linux for everything else!

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, but I have 2 hard drives in my system, all my music & videos are kept on the second hard drive which I mount to /storage up until last night I hadn’t been able to figure out how get actual links to the folders in my home directory without dolphin file manager opening in a new window. Then last night out of the blue it hit me that I all I had to do was create symbolic links to all the files in the folders in my home directory. So I ran these 2 commands in terminal:
ln -s /storage/Music/* /home/angel/Music
ln -s /storage/Videos/* /home/angel/Videos
the * is a wild card and means that anything in those folders will be linked to. But I knew this and really felt it was a “Duh” moment on my part…..lol

I just discovered that you can go into your myspace account settings and under the option “Sync” you can set it up so updates to your twitter will now also update your myspace status. Which I think is completly great, since there is currently no myspace desktop clients for linux.

When the night is darkest and it has been my longest day, you are the light that helps me find my way. The strength you have shown me and tenderness you give are what makes my life so much easier to live. I wish for you life’s happiness and all the kindness that can be found, for no more is your path a lonely one that walks on solitary ground. My hand I give to you when feel you can not walk on, my heart I give to you when you feel that all is gone. Life has shown us travesty’s and pain no one deserves but in that pain we found a strength that no man can bring undone.

I love you Mark and I hope you have a wonderful birthday and I look forward to spending many many more with you!

~Prologue~

My name is Angela, my family calls my Angie, my husband and friends call me Angel. I”m 34 years old and the words that follow I attest to being my life in so far as I can recall it. I write these words more as way to cleanse my soul then as any act of revenge or rebellion. I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and so my experience”s with certain systems will reflect those institutions. It”s my hope that someone with the proper knowledge and access to proper avenues will read my story and that it will help them to better understand  and maybe even help some other child.

~The End of the Beginning~

I remember well the first day I ever set foot inside a courtroom, though now the exact details of the incident that lead to my arriving there are bit blurry, but I was thirteen years old at the time. The courtroom itself smelled of old wood, the courthouse must have been at least one hundred years old. I remember there was a wooden separator in the room which kept those attending court separate from those that were actually running the courtroom. Rows of chairs lined the room, and lots of people had filled them up.

The judge called my mothers name and another man read the charges. I don’t remember exactly what the charges were but I knew she was being charged for not sending me to school. A charge of course that was ludicrous as she had sent me to school, I simply chose not to go. As such my mother had decided the only way to protect herself was to go to juvenile and charge me with what they call incorrigible charges. She told the judge she had done so and the charges were dropped against her.

The next few months after this are a bit of blur, I seem to have a lot of those, lapses in memory or fuzzy memories in my youth. I do know I was lost, confused, and very angry as a teen. My mom was twenty years old when I was born, Most of my early memories in life are of Family gatherings, or parties, most of those parties included lots of people as I have a very large family, there was also lots of alcohol. I have to admit that most of my memories of life prior to leaving home are not happy ones. I”m the oldest of four girls, the youngest two being twins.

Somewhere around the age of five Somebody, whom I believe to be an uncle, molested me. The problem is I can only remember flashes of this, I don”t remember the face. My reasons for believing it was this certain Uncle were because he was the one who had the opportunity. I only began to remember the event after hearing a speaker tell her story of being molested, at which point I think maybe nobody really believed me, at the age of 15 I was known to tell a few tales. My mom claimed to believe me she says this is why at age five she took me to a counselor, but as far as I know the visit only happened once. I never truly dealt with it, it’s just there.

A few random memory”s of those younger days stick out in my head but I don’t actually recall details of most things. My father, though I’m sure he loves me and always has, was never a big influence in my youth, he was there as my parents are even now still married, but he was never involved very much. My mother ran the roost, and still does.

After those early years my next big memory is the one of which I wrote about already. That first courtroom introduction, was just the beginning of a long road and  many, many, courtroom visits. Most of the time I was charged with