Still Here…

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.

One Day at a time….

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.

Damn Economy

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.

Guild Wars Browser

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!

Ramblings..

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..

Visiting My New Doctor

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

New Hardware!

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!

Windows Bit Me!

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!!!

Online High School For My Son

Currently My son is in 8th grade. When we first moved to our current home, we had 2 choices on the middle school we could send him too. One which is in our district and a second which is outside of our district. We choose the out of district school, due to it basically being a better school. They provide school bus transportation and all has been well for the past 2 years.

Next year he’ll be in high school, and due too limited space we we’re unable to get him into the high school of the same district. So I began looking for alternatives, as the district we live in (well just happen to fall just shy of the wrong side of the district border), isn’t the greatest school. What I discovered was the Insight School of Washington. It’s online public high school, and there is no tuition for us to pay. They also provide each student with a laptop and printer. The school has a HUGE course catalogue, and allow my husband and I to be very involved in his education, something I really like. He’ll have a learning team which consists of His teachers, counselor and an imentor. An imentor is a person that both parents and student can go to with questions, suggestions and basically works with the entire family. He will attend classroom sessions online but he’ll also have other assignments which he’ll do on his own time. The school set’s up field trips and gatherings for the students and they also have student clubs, as well as dances (so yes there is a prom), and a graduation ceremony. Students are still eligible for extra-curricular activities in the home school district, so my boy can still do football and wrestling.

I think the biggest question most people have about an online school is “what about the social aspect of going to school??” well in my opinion, traditional school is great for younger children. Younger children definitely need to experience the kind of environment that traditional school provides socially. My Son has plenty of friends with whom he already doesn’t go to the same school with. Some he met here in our apartment complex, others he’s met in places like the mall, or skating rink(a favorite Friday night hangout). I believe at this point in his life it would be a good time to begin focusing on teaching him some self-reliance and self-motivating skills. He is 15, and next year he’ll be old enough to get a job, I’m sure he’ll make more friends that way as well. But as I said there are plenty of ways for him to be social with his schoolmates they provide Lot’s of opportunity for student interaction.

He’s very excited about attending his new high school, heck I’m excited for him. I wish they would have had this kind of program when I was in school, chances are if they had I would have graduated.

If anyone is interested you can see an overview of how the classes work, by going HERE

Day Dreams

A raging darkness creeping up on me, Pushing back I can barely fight, grasping upwards pulling at the light. The movement I can feel, is it my imagination or is it just not real. Take away this anger make it a small part me, take away the pain I feel let me not be blinded by what it is.
The deafening sound of silence blasting in at me, unable to express the pain that bleeds forth. I want to feel the grass between my toes the sunshine on my face, and feel the warmth of your laughter in it’s grace.
Dancing in the grove the light’s sparkle shimmering from the sky. The stars in the sky the moon in it’s wonder lends a certain solace to the night air. This is where my happiness in all it’s wonder lies. Does this place exist or is it something that only is a fleeting image in my mind.
I want to dance in the moonlight to feel the innocence that it is. Why can’t that simplicity be mine?