05.15.06

Life in the State of Wildfires & Alligator Attacks

Posted in Unusual, Miscellany at 3:08 pm by LeftBrainFemale

Just a quick note or two - have been busy and rather a lot on mind lately living in the state of Wildfires and Alligator attacks!

The big fire that hit the airwaves across the country Sunday a week ago was about 7 miles from us (as the crow flies) and still has the interstate closest to us closed for about a 10 mile stretch. On Friday before, we had a 1200 acre brushfire which started only a mile from us - but thankfully for us the winds were blowing away from us and we had no smoke or ash coming out way from either of the fires. At any rate, we’re praying for rain here for sure -
it’s just so dry!

I’ve been picking wild blackberries the past week - we’re getting more than usual, but the vines are quickly turning brown from lack of rain. Trying my hand at making blackberry wine for the first time - not sure how it’ll turn out, but it seemed like a good use for some of the berries!

Got up this morning to hear that two more women were apparently attacked by alligators and killed - this makes three in the past week - in disparate parts of the state. Speculation is that the dry, hot weather along with mating season has got the gators a bit more active than usual. And my response to my girls this morning (who wanted to go to a local park situated on the banks of a well known alligator infested lake) was NOPE! I’ve always been a bit leary of walking some of the trails at this park as I’m a bit afraid of running into a gator - so the current news makes me not want to walk through the woods at all.

At any rate, politics and stuff has been kinda pushed to the back of my mind the past few weeks - but I’ll be hosting the Carnival of Liberty again on May 23 (next Tuesday) .

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04.30.06

101st Fighting Keyboardists!

Posted in Unusual, Miscellany, Silly Stuff at 2:58 pm by LeftBrainFemale

Just for fun, I’m joining the 101st Fighting Keyboardists and adding them to my blogroll! Cool logo, and fun to rub elbows with some of the big Dawgs! Check out Ed Morrissey, Frank J, and Freedom Dogs.

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03.14.06

Linux Adventure, Part II - Technique

Posted in Essays, Unusual, Miscellany at 8:26 am by LeftBrainFemale

So, I promised Eric, encourager of all things Linux (grin) that I’d go into a bit more detail about my Linux installation and setup - so here goes. Maybe in my *small* way I can help to encourage someone else to try it out!

I went through quite a few ups and downs and reading on several Linux forums, just trying to figure out which direction to go. Finally, thoroughly confused, (and after determining I couldn’t download the simplest of live distros over my 56K dialup connection) I turned to that great purveyor of all things technical (where I can shop from home and my leisure) eBay. I found a seller who offered the top 10 Linux distros on CDs or DVDs for the princely sum of $18. I haven’t yet figured out how he can make a profit at this - he must do it from a love of helping to spread the the Linux joy, hehehe. At any rate, what arrived in my mailbox a few days later were the following distros: Fedora Core 4, Simply Mepis, Debian Sarge, Slackware 10.2, Gentoo 2005.1, Knoppix, Ubuntu Breezy Badger, Mandriva, Damn Small Linux, and SUSE 10.0. As a side note, this seller had a sense of humor that I found charming - the Damn Small Linux was presented on a credit card sized CD - and he also included the subtitled DVD “Star Wreck”. Gave me a chuckle at any rate.

So, now here I was with all these goodies - where to start? I first put in the Knoppix live CD - but decided almost immediately it wasn’t the one for me. Next, I put in the SUSE 10.0 thinking that I’d just view it as I’d taken an online quiz which led me to believe that SUSE might just be what I was looking for. It took just a second to realize that this was not a live CD - so I didn’t check it out immediately - I did a little more reading of the Start Up and Reference guides that were included on the DVD. I was pretty much sold after reading through them as I realized that this distribution included an auto partitioner for my hd which *should* take into account my current Windows partition and leave it alone. So, armed with a *little* knowledge and a backup of my computer in case the unthinkable happened, I decided to just do it!

Now, a disclaimer may be in order at this point - YMMV (your mileage may vary) as I had one small thing that I think really helped my installation go smoothly. When I upgraded my computer almost a year ago (this is a home-built box) I put together a 2.93ghz processor on a Gigabyte MB with 512mb RAM and a 160gb hard drive. During installation - for some reason that I can no longer remember, I chose to partition my hard drive into two blocks, and after it was all set up, I realized that those two blocks did not add up to 160gb - which meant I had around 15gb unaccounted for - not partitioned. At the time I was slightly puzzled (remember, I’m just a wannabe, LOL) but as I don’t do much downloading and the most memory intensive stuff I do involves photography, I wasn’t really concerned. But I do think that that “lost” space was found easily by my Linux software and so made the transition super easy.

The SUSE 10.0 installation uses YaST (Yet another Setup Tool) to automatically detect the available hardware on your machine and submits proposals for resizing any existing Windows installation. Once I decided to just get on with it, I had only to follow the screen prompts for Language Selection, license agreement, installation mode (update or new install), time zone, and then desktop selection. You can choose to have your default desktop be either KDE or GNOME. I opted for the GNOME setup which kind of has a MAC look and feel - but it’s very user friendly for this Windoze user. But I digress. After these selections, YaST surveys your drive and if it finds a Windows installation, asks if you wish to delete or resize the Windows partition. Obviously, as it was my goal to have both installations on my computer, I chose to have it resize my Windows partition. YaST then came up with a reasonable partitioning scenario and it was just what I needed - so I held my breath and clicked “accept”. You could, however, alter the sizes of the proposed partitions if you so chose. I was happy as YaST picked up my unaccounted for 15gb and moved a few files from my larger block to what had been my smaller Windows partition and reconfigured so that approximately 80gb are available to Windows, 80gb for SUSE Linux. Seemed equitable to me! At this point, I just walked away for a while (half an hour or so) and let it go. From what I can remember (since this was now a few weeks ago) that’s about it - when I came back and rebooted, I was thrilled to see the Graphical Dual Boot Blue screen come up which allows me to choose whether to boot into Windows or SUSE Linux.

So here I am - it’s quick and easy - defaults to SUSE and now I just have to get myself setup to browse the internet. Unfortunately, I can’t give those details just yet - but I’m working on it. Problem is, we live in an area where there is no Cable, no DSL, and Satellite internet would be cost prohibative. So I’m stuck on dialup. And so far as I can see and read, there are no Winmodems out there that play well with Linux - so I’ve got to either install a new Linux compatible modem or get an external one before I can get the full experience. I’m working on it! I was actually out yesterday afternoon and had a new internal modem in my hand which said it was Linux compatible - but I was exhausted after a busy day, and the WalMart I was in had no self-checkout and about 6 people with full baskets in each lane - so I gave it up for the day. But I’ll be back sometime in the next week or so - hopefully writing from within the Linux environment!

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01.17.06

I’ll be back to blogging soon!

Posted in Unusual, Miscellany at 7:30 am by LeftBrainFemale

Well, it’s just been a very busy couple weeks - but I’ll be back soon. Have a few thoughts on the Chris Penley situation (he’s the 15 yo who was shot by a SWAT officer last week) and more.

Discovered yesterday evening that apparently my Panasonic FZ20 Camera was stolen from our van - not a charge that I make lightly, as I have considered every possible option (including that I somehow kicked it out of the vehicle by accident when I got out - and just didn’t notice it) and as much as I hate to say it, I’m afraid someone saw an opportunity and grabbed it. And, just so that the thief should have no trouble, included in the backpack with the camera was the instruction manual, a 1gb card, two extra batteries, charger, various filters, waterproof cover, etc. So, I’m feeling a little nauseous this morning. I managed to hang onto this camera when I went to NYC, for goodness sake - so I’m really annoyed with myself that we somehow managed to lose it so close to home. And I’m afraid that insurance won’t be much help due to deductibles, so there I am. Frustrated and sick that I’ve lost something that was of value to me. However, to put things honestly in perspective, I know it can be replaced. It may take me a bit of time, but eventually I will replace it.

Anyway, I shall return, hopefully by mid-week!

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01.04.06

We got ICED!

Posted in Unusual, Miscellany, Silly Stuff at 8:39 am by LeftBrainFemale

What fun! On Monday, we visited the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center in Orlando with my sister-in-law and her family to see the final day of the annual ICE! exhibit.

ICE! is a very cool (9 degrees, to be exact) “Florida Fridge” of 2,000,000 lbs of ice which has been shaped and carved by a group of 40 craftsmen from China. It includes clear, colored, and white ice with holiday and Florida themes, and two slides.

Just before entering the exhibit, guests were issued *lovely* blue calf-length parkas (in addition to being advised to wear long pants, close-toed shoes and gloves) as you can see in this photo taken of LBF and #2 daughter at the entrance to the “Toyland” section:

The exhibit was 18,000 square feet (man, I wouldn’t want that power bill!) and the clear ice was maded with purified water so clear it compares to Waterford crystal.

Lots of the carvings had electric lights embedded in them, and the exhibit was illuminated throughout by theater lighting.

LBF’s hubby and #1 daughter:

Despite it’s size, it didn’t take long to go through the exhibit - girls would have enjoyed sliding down the ice slide a few more times, but even in parkas, scarves, hats, gloves, etc. the 9-degree temperature doesn’t encourage loitering. We really enjoyed seeing it, though, as 3 of the 4 of us (I’ll leave you to guess which 3) have never even seen snow, much less experienced cold to that degree!

After the exhibit, we walked around the Gaylord Palms - their atrium itself could take the better part of a day to explore at 4.5 acres. They use a “best of Florida” theme and have devoted different areas of the atrium to famous Florida landmarks from Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine

to Key West.

It’s really quite lovely, and we all enjoyed dinner in Sunset Sam’s Fish Camp - a Key West themed restaurant.

On the way back home we stopped at the HUGE Outdoor World (Bass Pro Shop) a paradise for any outdoorsman - and the highlight of the day for the guys with our group!

We live about 60 miles from this area of Orlando, and we haven’t been to the “attractions” in years, so it was a fun day for us - just thought I’d share a few of the pix!

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09.21.05

Don’t Get Stuck on Stupid Tee

Posted in Unusual, Miscellany, Silly Stuff at 4:15 pm by LBF (Left-Brain Female)

Well, I had this ready to go earlier today and then my computer crashed - inspiring me to take a break, LOL. But now, after signing on to find some gentle prodding in the form of a trackback from the Unrepentant Individual I figured I might as well get with it! So here’s what the layout looks like from my Cafe Press shop. You’ll see several different options for tees, and if there is something else you’d like to see this on, let me know - I take requests!

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09.02.05

The Cavalry Convoy is in NO

Posted in Unusual, Miscellany at 2:31 pm by LBF (Left-Brain Female)

Check out this site for a blow-by-blow, including some pix from NO:

The Interdictor

Don’t forget to make your donations!

Technorati tags: Hurricane Katrina Flood Aid

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08.29.05

Hurricane Katrina . . .

Posted in Unusual, Miscellany at 6:51 am by LBF (Left-Brain Female)

Whoa. I’m heartsick. Hurricane Katrina wasn’t an issue for us (central Florida) at all - and my sister in S. Florida lost a Papaya tree and had a Royal Palm snap in half, but that was the extent of their damage.

But watching and waiting and empathizing with our neighbors over in Louisiana is keeping my heart in my throat. Kinda puts politics into a different perspective when some of our countrymen are in a life and death struggle that could at best wipe out their homes and at worst absolutely decimate their city and take many lives.

I’ll be staying tuned to Hurricane City.

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