Thanksgiving 2012

“We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. ” — Martin Luther King

Fighting For Our Rights: Contrary to the sad misrepresentation of my motives, I received no gifts in exchange for my vote.  Instead, I simply witnessed a pattern of one party trying desperately to win by limiting my fellow citizens from exercising their right to vote.  In 2008, the same hostile environment did not exist so I did not feel compelled to vote for either my candidate or my party. I celebrated the Presidential victory but was disappointed to witness the total lack of respect for the office and the election of congressional candidates that guaranteed a difficult four years for our President.  So, as the November election drew closer, I did my part by contributing when possible and doing everything to prepare for the election.  My vote was cast during early voting. I am grateful for the decisive election results and remain hopeful that the obstructionist congressional candidates will be run out of office in upcoming elections.

OMG! Ubuntu 12.10: My wife’s computer did not survive a fall and the hard drive was shot. In an effort to keep our recovery costs low, we paid for a new hard drive but not the installation of Windows XP (which would have doubled the cost).  I already had Ubuntu 12.04 (a free Linux distribution) installed on my computer so I decided to go with the latest version released in October. Installing 12.10 on her Dell Inspiron 1525 went surprisingly smooth. I had her up and running in no time with only one glitch to report.  Facebook continues to not play nice with Ubuntu and does not allow video chat to work.

Excited to enjoy the latest version of Ubuntu, I tried to install it on my Dell Latitude D600 and was disappointed to discover it did not like my outdated video card.  So, I had to reinstall 12.04 using my notes and back-up of documents and files.  As part of my fresh install process, I looked for ways to improve the operations and noted that my CPU monitor was taxed by the default MyUnity desktop of 12.04.  After some research, I found that the MATE desktop worked better for my particular computer.  As a long-time nerd, I am happy to report that I have optimized my home computing experience.