RIP- Steve Jobs

Today, a man who's vision and ideas impacted millions of people around the world died. Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple, the man who was turned to again later to revive a struggling brand lost his battle with pancreatic cancer.

Jobs, as many brilliant and powerful people are was often a polarizing figure. If you have even a passing interest in computers you've probably run into a moronic Mac v. PC argument on a forum.

I grew up using Apples. My family had an Apple IIe around 1988 or 89 and I used Apples and Macs almost exclusively until the early 90s.

While I haven't cared for Apple's ad campaigns or their turn to pushing consumer products people are supposed to replace on a yearly basis, the impact of the brand, and their CEO and founder, Jobs, can't be overstated in the American market.

All cancer is horrible, and sadly pancreatic cancer is worse than most, being unbelievably difficult to treat and defeat. Mr. Jobs fought hard and survived much longer than many who battle the disease, perhaps a testament to the will inside a man who took a company from a garage, to the top of the industry, and years later returned to bring it from the brink of collapse to one of the most powerful corporations in the world.

RIP Steve Jobs

Adventures in Computing

My wife's older laptop, a Dell Inspiron 1100, has been running slow for ages. Doing some internet research I learned those computers were notorious for overheating which lead to running slow.

To remedy this I replaced the conducting grease and bought a cooling pad. These helped keep it from overheating and shutting down, but it still ran slow.

I upgraded the ram from 640mb (yes, 640) to 1gb. This too helped some.

I stripped the computer of all but its essentials. Windows XP, plus maybe 3 gigs of other stuff was sucking up 13 gigs of HD space.

So, after copying an ubuntu liveCD and testing it, I decided that was the route to go.

Well, if only it had been that simple. I had forgotten that I experimented with ubuntu, and I installed Xubuntu. Very similar. In fact, from what I understand, the guts are the same, its just the GUI that is different with Ubuntu using GNOME and Xubuntu using XFCE.

Long story short, XFCE isn't playing well with this laptop. I wondered why a stupid Facebook game was sucking up so much memory (330mb? For farmville????) and processor power.

Well, it turns out, the GPU isn't doing anything. The CPU is running both the graphics AND the rest of the system. So, now I'm going to be on my 3rd (well, 5th if you count the times I reinstalled Xubuntu Karmic Koala) OS install in a week. BUT, this should speed up the silly games. I hope.

I'm just glad she's so patient with me.

Edit: Well, turns out the GPU IS doings its job, its just a grappy old Intel 845 chipset which essentially does nothing. I don't know why facebook makes their stupid little Farmville game so graphics intensive, but they do. So, pretty much, this computer won't go any faster for it. Looks like its time to start saving up for that netbook now!

The one good thing is, we do still have a stable laptop computer and its still handy for things like email and the like. Its a little wonky on startup, but it works. I suppose sometimes that's all you can ask.

Mad Skillz

Or not. So, while my job's in a bit of limbo and the dealership is probably getting sold, I'm still working! YAY!

Everyone around here is rushing to do inventory, etc. and working off lots of old messed up invoices.

So, today, I got to show off my mad Paint skillz (yes, with a Z) and clean an invoice up. It was kind of fun. I scanned in the invoice, erased the lines that needed erased. Changed the total, and then erased the pen markings all over the place.

I'm not going to be asked to contribute to any amazing photoshop work anytime soon, but it looked much better than it did.

I was pretty proud of myself. I have a few computer skills left at least

Microsoft OS

Ok, I'm not a techie geek anymore. I was only ever a borderline one and even that title went out years ago. So, keep that in mind.

Microsoft and their ever-present "Mojave" commercials (i could get lots out of Vista too with a killer machine being used by someone who knows all the ins and outs) with-standing, Vista isn't really something people are raving about. Especially in the corporate world.

Why? Well, most people don't need an uber-powerful operating system. Vista apparently can do amazing things, if you care enough to do them. What I, and most users, notice, is that it sucks up tons of system resources just being on my computer. (I'm discounting the early Vista basic editions which were broken for all intents and purposes.)

What Microsoft isn't realizing, or maybe will with Windows 7, is that the average computer user just wants a stable machine. They want it to load fast, run fast, run the programs they buy, have drivers for the hardware they use, and just plain work. Yes, I realize this is a lot to ask, and there will always be glitches, bugs and hiccups. That's ok.

Don't give us a super-powerful, new, amazing, confusing and unecessary massive hunk of software. Really, most of us don't need it.

Make it two tiered: A home edition which is all the NECESSARY basics to just run your computer. A Pro edition which is all that PLUS a bunch of web-integrated stuff or whatever.

I run an old Pentium 4 that has Ubuntu on it. I barely know how to use linux. But it works. Every time, it works. I can get on the web, I can do word processing, photo editing, etc. Oh, I'm not proselytizing Linux, its not for everyone, but what I am saying is that it works for me. That's all I need. It doesn't suck up all my system resources, it only has a gig of ram. But it works.

Like I said, this isn't a big concern of mine, but Microsoft never seems to learn that upgrading and completely changing don't have to go hand in hand.