I have purchased an iBook, 12" 1.33 GHz. It should arrive today. I've been wanting one of these for so long I just hope it isn't anti-climactic. Psy was able to purchase it for me with his student discount (I'm paying him back of course), and saved around $200 I'm guessing.

The hard drive is only 30G, and I was a little disapointed about that but everyone tells me that should be plenty so I'll stop being paranoid about not having enough storage space. I did upgrade the RAM from 256, to a total 512, just because I think that's important.

Am very excited!

I've been using Coppermine open source photo gallery on my site and so far it's worked great. I haven't tried my hand at customizing it yet and have used a stock theme, but I think I'll try that out next.

I was really really sick last week with the flu. I tried working from home but my gimped GIMP skills *har har* are non-existent so I pretty much slept for 3 days awaking every once in a while to check email and wheeze and saying silently I wish Adobe ImageReady worked with Crossover Office (Photoshop works mediocrely and is at least useable).

So at some time last weekend during a bout of cabin fever I went to Office Depot to buy overly priced printer ink and saw Maxtor 7200RPM, 60G hard drives on sale for $30 each. No rebate or anything, just on SALE. So I bought myself one and it sat on my floor for about 4 days.

Last night I finally decided that for practicalities sake, at least until I make time to learn GIMP, I would re-install XP on the 80G drive (it's about to crap out anyway), and on the new 60G I would install Fedora 4.

Everything went well and I only had to modify xorg.conf twice and the nvidia driver is also playing nice. I've decided to switch my desktop to KDE. I'm pretty excited about this new pristine installation.

Re: the XP drive, it only has Photoshop 7 and ImageReady installed. I did not install MS Office because Open Office works really well for me. So I've vowed only to use XP when I must use Photoshop stuff. Well, that might be a lie. There are a few games that only work with Windows that I *might* install but really I have so many other things I need to do right now I should stay away from games.

sucks @ss!

I haven't missed Windows in a long time. Been doing a lot more "real art" and shunning the computer a bit. I feel better for it.

I have gone completely Linux at home and dumped the XP partition. This is great!

Missing my graphics apps, even with GIMP, I do miss Adobe. That sounds so wrong to say that considering how monopolistic Adobe is. I really need to become proficient in GIMP.

Installed crossover office and it runs Photoshop in a mediocre manner, and doesn't run ImageReady hardly at all (all the toolbars are blacked out).

Other than that the system is running quite well. Had an aborted attempt at upgrading to Fedora 4 but my nvidia driver :: insert Imperial March theme :: refused it. So back to 3.

Contemplating Fedora Core 4. I just installed Fedora Core 3, 3 weeks ago... it is a bit of an intimidating prospect to do such a major update. I think I've got the driver installations down (video, printer, etc.) but I'm so clumsy it takes a lot of time setting it all up again.

Played with Gimp last night. I have this fantasy of making my personal web project completely in a Linux environment. I did cheat and go over to XP once the other day to zip up my fonts and email them to myself, but I haven't visited XP in over a week other than for that.

Signed up for a usenet service and Evolution mail seems to be handling it ok. So far I haven't seen a way to nest the threads. Maybe it doesn't exist.

Spending a lot of time reading, researching, looking for that inspiration, setting up things. Starting to get antsy about actually producing something. Maybe this weekend, as it's supposed to rain so going outside isn't going to be much of an option anyhow.

So last night I tried installing gAnim8 and went and downloaded the latest gtk and glib. Unfortunately, gAnim8 requires older versions of these so I spent a lot of time installing the latest and finding out it wasn't the right thing to use.

I haven't updated my journal here in a while. However I think I'll start making it my Linux vent log.

Last week I installed Fedora Core 3 on a partition (leaving XP on the other). I like it very much but have had the most problems with learning installation process for drivers. The nvidia driver especially is a pain in the butt, but I've done it so many times now that I think I could do it from memory.

Maybe this is a good thing as it get me familiar with the commands and not totally an X weenie, altough yes, I am an X weenie.

I just reinstalled last night and wiped everything clean. This time I did the kernel update and the 230+ other ones before installing the nvidia driver. I guess it will work for a while, at least until the next update. I need to figure this out.

I love it all so far. My main thing right now is getting it all set up how I like it before starting to do "work."

Wonder if I can wean myself off photoshop...

It's after lunch and food coma is overwhelming!

Last night while Psy and I were riding around we were fantasizing about mods to our cars. I dreamt I had the best suspension that made the car ride like it was on rails. Then, the next mod would be to the engine, like a cold air intake, maybe some other kinds of add ons.

When I thought about a supercharger I liked it, but every picture I see of my car with a supercharger has this huge bulbous hood. I hate that and do not want such a huge hump on my hood.

Lastly came the paint and I waver back and forth between an old WWII design and a more modern Pollack'esque drizzle paint concept. Two completely different ideas. But in any case paint and body mods would be last.

I wish my bank did not own my car.

A side observation is that Psy's mod magazines for his car model (an import) could almost be considered soft porn, whereas my magazines for my muscle car almost have almost zero half naked chicks. I like to kid myself and say that it is because the people who mod muscle cars are more "serious" and concerned with information and content, but that's a joke. Really though I wonder why that is?

I realize I've become quite a complainer and need to stop.

Changed my oil in my car for the first time. What a messy ordeal, but, very satisfying. Great confidence boost in general. Only "girl moment" I had was when I couldn't loosen the oil pan nut and Psy helped me with that. Couldn't have done it otherwise. Damn service stations and their pneumatic (sp?) wrenches!

KHTML sounds like KMFDM

Happy it's Friday but not in a "Wow I hate my job thank god it's Friday" kind of way but in a "I had a good week but now I want to rest and have fun" kind of mood.

I've only been here 2 weeks but already I'm sad that one of the engineers who I take smoke breaks with in a larger group is leaving. He's so cool and has been very welcoming to me. Today is his last day. Crap. Well, there are many cool people here so I am looking forward to getting to know them.

I'm hoping my boyfriend (henceforth known as Psy) and I can get outside or do something fun this weekend. We're both a bit broke which puts a damper on things but I think we'll find stuff to do.

I found an article online on how to change the oil in my specific car year/make/model and am going to try that. Hell if I can pull that off I will count this weekend as accomplished. Then there's laundry. Oh shit as I type this I realize I left a load in the dryer and the G-ma will be on that like a rabid monkey in a banana bin. Must go home for lunch and head her off at the pass.

And part 2 of Enterprise! Plus Netflix came in and there's What the Bleep do we Know and How to Surivive in the Wilderness.

I think I will put my hand to some serious drawing this weekend as well since I discovered the ever so ever blackest black graphite pencil.

CONTROL

I'm sure there's a Skinny Puppy song out there about it.