Blog of a crazy man

As many of you know Ubuntu 6.06 was released yesterday. I downloaded it as soon as I woke up in the morning. I got it installed and running after I got back from school. That made me start thinking. It’s been almost two months since I made the switch to using Linux full time. I think it’s time for an update.

The first thing I have to say about switching from Windows to Ubuntu is this: you won’t miss Windows nearly as much as you think you will. I had the benefit of sharing the computer with two other people who are both not very knowledgeable about computers. I would like to think that I know enough about computers to not have trouble using any operating system, but the other two people who use this computer aren’t quite as knowledgeable. It was interesting to see them make the switch.

My brother took one look at it, asked me what it was, and then had me explain how to do the basics and change the appearance. He’s mostly figured everything else out on his own. I didn’t expect him to have any trouble switching over.

My mom, on the other hand, is not very good with computers. I knew she would have trouble changing. But much to my surprise, she has adjusted quite nicely. She needed some help initially to get the hang of using it, but once she got the basics down, she had no more trouble using Ubuntu than she had using Windows, which isn’t to say that she didn’t have trouble, just not any more trouble.

Personally, I’ve had no trouble adjusting to Linux. I’ve played with various distributions in the past, and I found Ubuntu to be the easiest and cleanest version out there. The one peeve I have about Ubuntu is the lack of built in support for music and video formats like MP3, WMV, etc. Of course, this is only a legal issue instead of a technical one. You can get them working with a visit to the wiki and a little work, but it is still very annoying.

In short, switching to Ubuntu is very easy. If you are interested in using Linux or just sick of Windows, I would definitely recommend using Ubuntu.

Here’s a shot of my desktop, just so you know what it looks like.

The other day I was feeling down. Life was piling on circumstances that I started to feel were too much. I spent the day moping around the house just trying to feel better, but it didn’t work. That night I opened my devotion book and read the devotion for the day. It was the first part of Psalm 89. It helped me. I couldn’t help but feel happy after I read it. I literally started laughing with joy. The following is the part that particularly helped me. I hope it can do the same for you.

Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them. Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain; thou hast scattered thine enemies with thy strong arm. The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world and the fullness thereof, thou hast founded them. The north and the south thou hast created them: Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name. Thou hast a mighty arm: strong is thy hand, and high is thy right hand. Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face. Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, O Lord, in the light of thy countenance. In thy name shall they rejoice all the day: and in thy righteousness shall they be exalted. For thou art the glory of their strength: and in thy favor our horn shall be exalted. For the Lord is our defense; and the Holy One of Israel is our king.

No matter what life threw at me, God was always there. He can be my strength when I have none left to fight with. That thought gave me great happiness. I’m sharing it with you in hopes that it can do the same for you. Here is a link to the entire psalm.

I deleted my Windows partition. Windows failed to boot. I tried to reinstall. The setup program wouldn’t recognize the CD. I said, “Good Bye.”

Ubuntu Linux now claims all the space on my hard disks. I love it. The transition was relatively painless. Even my mom had no trouble getting used to using Ubuntu. The unfortunate side effect is that when I formated my hard disks to get rid of Windows, I destroyed my entire music collection. Oh well, it was worth it to be rid of that evil OS.

I think China hates me. I’m not joking either. They must really hate me.

Why?

Try searching for me on Yahoo! China. I’m not there. This website doesn’t show up. My old blog locations don’t show up. Even profiles I have on other sites under the name “jmweirick” don’t show up. The only thing that shows up is Jerome’s Keywords because I left a comment on the plugin page.

Search for me on Yahoo! America and you find 983 results. I used both “jmweirick” and “jmweirick.weblogs.us” as my search terms. Each time, I showed up several times on Yahoo! America, but nothing on Yahoo! China.

So I find my self asking, am I that political to warrant censorship?

Welcome to 2006!

I could give a list of resolutions, but let’s face it, everybody does that. I could give a mushy review of last year, but let’s face it, everybody does that too. When I started Blog of a crazy man, I decided that I wouldn’t be like other blogs. I would focus on doing things and making posts that were about things that you couldn’t just hop on over to any other blog and get. I haven’t been completely true to that, but I try.

That said. For my New Year’s Day post, I say simply:

I’ve been off from school since Wednesday. Usually I try to make a couple of posts when I don’t have school, but I’ve been sick for about three weeks. I thought I was getting better but then on Thursday it got really bad again. I’m pretty sure now, however, that I’m almost in the clear, probably only a few days until it is completely gone. I apologize for not posting frequently, but I should be blogging more frequently soon.

In other news, Weblogs.us turned on HTTP compression for all blogs. The practical upshot of which is that my blog should load within a few seconds on dial-up and almost instantaneously on broadband connections! OK, technically speaking it was almost instantaneous on broadband connections without compression, but now it’s even more instantaneous!

Here’s a randomly chosen paragraph that I wrote for my Advanced Composition class. Enjoy!

Paragraph 5

Wind power is better than coal power. Although coal power is more widely used than wind power, coal is far worse for the environment. A coal power plant produces several tons of carbon dioxide, which is believed to be the cause of global warming. Coal power also releases large amounts of smoke that makes the air look, taste and smell dirty. Wind power, on the other hand, adds nothing to the air and actually adds to the aesthetic value of the surrounding area. Coal has a couple of advantages over wind power. Coal creates far more power with far less time and space than is required for a wind farm. Coal is also not subject to the changing weather. These few advantages of coal, however, are not enough to make it better than wind power. Wind power is a sure sign of an environmentally friendly community that relies on nature to provide a continuous stream of clean, beautiful power.

Found this on Mtekk’s site. From the The Infinite Teen Slange Dictionary:

Jmweirick: v. to intentionally buy a teacher.
Thasp: interj. an exclamation used in celebrating a victory.
XCmiler: interj. expression of disbelief.
CKchaska: v. (vulgar) to kill someone.
PLchaska: n. complicated acronym, meaning ecstasy.
JErm: n. a teacher which the speaker wants to love.
Buu: adj. getting ready to eat something.
Jark: v. to intentionally chase a thong.
Spyed: v. to borrow something in a superior fashion.
Leflaw: n. an old-school term for LSD.
JD: v. to share things, with no purpose or reason.

Those were just a few of the fun definitions that I found at that site. No, their definition of mtekk is incorrect so that’s just too bad.

Mtekk’s Crib » Blog Archive » Mtekk: v. to understand something in a big fashion.

Buying a teacher huh? Not a bad idea :).

I got a copy of Ubutnu Linux 5.10 running. I tried first to update from 5.04 by doing an apt-get dist-upgrade, but I kept running into errors so I downloaded the ISO and did a fresh install. It worked like a dream. I’m looking forward to exploring all the new features :).

I decided to do an experiment. Wanting to see how much spam I actually get, I decided to stop deleting my spam a few days ago. As of now I have twenty emails in my spam folder on Gmail. Of those, only six are in English. The rest? They’re in Japanese! Now, I don’t surf any Japanese sites, and if I did, I wouldn’t enter my email address, but somehow I get Japanese spam.

The other spam is your standard, “I can’t spel but somehow I have a million dollars that I want to give to you, just tell me your account number.” There’s also the occasional, “Get Adobe Photoshop for only $20!” And don’t forget the emails from “Chase Bank” asking to “verify your account information,” even though I don’t have an account with Chase.

The more I look through my spam, the less confidence I have in humanity if people are dumb enough to fall for this crap, but there is good news, I just saved a bunch of inbox clutter by using Gmail’s spam filter (Geico pun intended).