It's News to Me

In what felt a bit like an unexpected call in the middle of the night, back in October, the 21st to be specific, I received an email from a former client of mine with whom I have consulted off and on since around 1988 asking whether I'd be willing to consider «an assignment for a year or so in New Mexico.» Having already retired and, I'll admit, having begun to resign myself to the inevitable decline that leads to the end of life, I was surprised and invigorated by his suggestion so I followed up with him just to learn what the possibilities were. That conversation and subsequent events have now led to a new opportunity for me, a new role. And just this last week, I received a formal offer to become the Call Center Manager for the Vertex Outsourcing call center in Las Vegas, NM -- not Nevada mind you, but New Mexico.

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This morning Justin left a comment on the previous post in which he requested that I post the results of issuing the lspci command on my current computer on the theory that perhaps something about the IDE controller might be causing my system not to see the Windows XP installation.  So now that I know to add the all_generic_ide switch to the boot command on the Live CD (thanks to Tomcat--TC) and I can get into Gutsy without my previous problems, I booted up under that this afternoon and took a screen shot of the results of issuing that command.  Though I don't know if this will give Justin what he thought it would, I'm going to post that screen shot below for his and anyone else's scrutiny.

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On October 21st I posted here about the fact that I couldn't boot from the recently released Live CD version 7.10 of Ubuntu, the so-called Gutsy Gibbon.  That post attracted more comment than any other ever has on this blog as others reported that they too had encountered the same problem.  One of those who responded was Tomcat--TC since he too was having the problem.  Earlier today, Tomcat--TC reported back that he had found a solution that worked for him, and as the screen shot at the right demonstrates, I have just proven to myself that it works for me too.  For the first time, I was able to boot from the Gutsy Gibbon Live CD on this, my Sony machine.

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If you are viewing this entry in an RSS reader, come on over to my blog and take a look at the new theme I installed today.  It is called 1BlogTheme and it was created by Javier Garcia.  It has a rich feature set that can be configured from the admin panel in the WordPress installation without having to delve into the mysteries of PHP.  Explore any of those new features that may interest you by clicking on some of the links that surround the post.  You won't hurt anything by doing so.  If you find you have displayed something (for instance, the list of Bookmark Services) and you can't get rid of it, just click on the link to Home above and everything will be restored to normal.  If anything seems to be broken for you as you surf around the site, let me know in the comments. 

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Happy Birthday Dad

Originally uploaded by Dr Reelgood & Co..

On November 7th, Mike and Cheryl and their kids helped me celebrate my 66th birthday with a dinner at their home. Mike captured this official portrait of me posed before an assortment of cheeses and fruit that he had purchased for the occasion. It was a delicious and enjoyable way to celebrate my birthday. He suggested that the caption for the picture should be Dad cuts the cheese on his birthday, but in the end, he labeled it a bit more soberly.

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On October 18, 2007, the newest distribution of Ubuntu (Version 7.10, code named «Gutsy Gibbon») was released, and I downloaded the ubuntu-7.10-desktop-i386.iso image and, after checking the MD5 checksum, burned it to CD.  I was able to use this Live CD to boot into the new version and install it on the Dell 4100 system I have here at home.  Because the checksum of the downloaded image verified and the Live CD works on my Dell system, I know there is nothing wrong with the CD itself.  I took the screen shot at the right showing the desktop with the included program, Tomboy, on the screen.  (If you click on the image above, a larger version will open and you can read the two open windows to learn what a neat little utility Tomboy is.) 

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This time Professor Wesch calls it Information R/evolution.

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The phrase «television worth watching» is almost an oxymoron nowadays, but this week PBS is airing «The War,» a documentary about World War II co-produced by the team of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.  Last night, I saw the first of the seven installments and that was enough to convince me that it is worth my time to watch this documentary.  If you'll visit this link you can click on «PBS Previews: The War» to see a 26:49 minute overview of the series, giving a glimpse of its goals and some insights about the making of the documentary, and if you bother to watch that 26+ minutes worth of introduction, I'm confident you too will be inspired to watch the series.  The next installment is presented here in the Eastern Daylight Saving Time Zone tonight at 8 PM on the local Public Broadcasting Station.  For more information about the series, you can check this PBS web site.

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I've already given this idea to the on-duty manager of the grocery store where I shop but she probably filed it under looney ideas gleaned from talkative old men in the checkout line and did little or nothing else with it, so I'm offering it to any of my programmer friends who might want to make a name for themselves and in the process create a useful tool for crazies like me who look for innovative ways to use our Internet connection.  I, like most everybody else and maybe even you, dutifully hand the cashier my «value card» as he or she is about to ring up my purchases so that I can get the discounts that accrue from having given them my name and address and having allowed them to tag me with a unique Customer ID.  They use it, among other things, to print out a listing of the items I have purchased that day, neatly categorized into sections like Produce, Package Meat, Grocery, Frozen Food, Dairy, Candy/Gum, etc., and at the conclusion of that listing they announce that Your Savings Today was $7.48 on my most recent (9/16/07) expenditure of $56.66.  I walk away, informed and satisfied that it could have been at least $7.48 worse.

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