I just want to give out a little advice to everyone out there. Recently I’ve been helping lots of people with Linux through the Qunu service. I’ve noticed a recent trend of people causing their own problems. So I wanted to give a short list of generic advice for anyone who is new to Ubuntu or Linux in general. Continue reading
To continue the trend of blogging about recent discussions I’ve had, I want to talk about insurance. The way I see it, insurance is gambling. If you buy insurance, you are betting that bad things will happen. Personally I would buy very little insurance (except when playing The Game of Life), but I do not think insurance, or any gambling, should be outlawed. What I am against is government mandated insurance purchasing. I see it as no different than the government forcing everyone to go to the casino and shove money into slot machines. Continue reading
Recently I have had many discussions about the mentality of collectors and the materialistic nature of our society. In these discussions it has been very difficult to get my point across as precisely as I would like. Sometimes I feel like an alien from another planet when trying to communicate my ideas. It’s almost as if the people I am trying to explain them to are incapable of comprehending my thoughts. Part of the problem lies with me, so I write this in hopes that I will be able to get my point across. Continue reading
Not two weeks ago I attended my fifth Otakon. I attended many events at that convention, one of which was The Old School Anime Panel. There were many problems with this panel, and there are many problems with panels at cons in general. That topic is covered in depth on my podcast, Dave and Joel’s podcast and possibly in the future on AWO. Regardless, during that panel a friend of mine decided he wanted to start trouble. He raised his hand, got up and stated that Sailor Moon is not old school. This of course, created quite a stir among the general fandom attending the panel. Continue reading
A few weeks ago I discovered a great service known as Qunu. Qunu is a Jabber-based service which allows anyone to offer or request free technical support. Most of the support relates to, but is not exclusive to, open source applications such as Linux, Firefox, PHP and MySQL. I’ve been using it mostly to help people. In fact, I don’t think I’ve asked for help once. I guess that’s appropriate since I don’t have computing problems, because I avoid or solve all of them on my own. Continue reading
Most people in the United States are barely aware of its existence, but Formula 1 is the pinnacle of motor sports. Formula One Grands Prix have the best drivers in the world with the most technologically advanced cars in the world. Michael Schumacher is second only to Tiger Woods on the list of highest paid athletes in the world. Reigning world champion Fernando Alonso is younger than I am, yet he was smothered by so many fans in his native Spain he was forced to move.
Hey look at this! Two blog entries in two days. I’m finally getting around to doing something slightly useful with my downtime at work. Anyway, you might be aware of Skype’s recent free SkypeOut for the rest of the year on calls to the US and Canada. Because of this I’ve started to keep Skype running on my work PC during the day. Like other IM systems, Skype has a setting in which you tell the world you would love to be contacted by strangers. Out of curiosity, I have enabled this setting. The results are a bit surprising. Continue reading
