For those of you following my exploits with the instrument of torture that is my home laptop, you will be happy to know it's been solved. Here's the long and the short of it. After re-installing Vista on the beast and routinely waiting up to 20 minutes for it to load and experiencing up to 23 crashes in an evening I found the solution.
Let me backtrack.
It all started one bright, shiny, happy day when a nice FedEx man who didn't mind my lurking in the hallway (that much) delivered my shiny new Mac. They say the iPhone is the gateway drug: and it's certainly true in my case. I will never go back to a PC. You can't make me.
So the Mac-ifying of my life continued on in a rocketing snowball fashion. It soon rolled right over my Dell Mini 9 (That started when I sorta locked it by letting Linux background install too many apps...100% of mini's mini 4GB hard drive used up. oops. my bad. Purchased a 32GB replacement and solved the mini's biggest limitation. If you're looking for a replacement hard drive for your mini consider www.conics.net in Japan. Offer good selection, good price, amazing delivery.).
Once all was said and done, my new world order made me look at my instrument of torture in a new light. Whereas it had seemed slow before...well, now compared to the speedy Mac it operated at a painful crawl. Action was immediate.
No, I didn't take a sledgehammer to it. Number one reason being that a fire a few years back a fire at my cottage resulted in the firemen taking the sledgehammer (a small price to pay for salvaging the ruins of my home I think). Number two reason being that the perfect solution to my wiki woes (side story here: I snapped up a five-user Confluence license when they went on sale awhile back...but sadly the server I was using for my brother's website can't handle the install...needs more juice) is setting up my own home server. I had hoped to steal the kid's computer. But he resisted. Something about college, homework, etc., I have to say it all seemed really trivial to me, but he wouldn't let me take it. How rude.
So my greedy eyes next lit upon the instrument of torture. A-ha! It had once held Linux quite happily. Could it, would it be the perfect solution?
Well...it took me all of five second to make that decision (once I recalled that the sledgehammer was gone). Vista: no more. And good riddance. As one of my past installs on the instrument of torture was Ubuntu, I decided to go with the Ubuntu Server on it (Jaunty for those who care). Biggest blip in the half hour it all took to configure was setting it up with a static IP. And that took about two minutes.
Tonight I'll be installing Confluence and setting up my wiki once more. Yippee!
Yes, I know this is not Flex. And it is not that Flex is dead to me. It's just that playing in the world of shells and wikis is a lot of fun and very very distracting. Some day, once my wiki woes are long forgotten I'll return.
I'll keep you updated on the Confluence install and I'm also toying with adding Melody for my brother's website (currently on Movable Type).
[Note that Ubuntu now has a netbook remix...interesting.]
Let me backtrack.
It all started one bright, shiny, happy day when a nice FedEx man who didn't mind my lurking in the hallway (that much) delivered my shiny new Mac. They say the iPhone is the gateway drug: and it's certainly true in my case. I will never go back to a PC. You can't make me.
So the Mac-ifying of my life continued on in a rocketing snowball fashion. It soon rolled right over my Dell Mini 9 (That started when I sorta locked it by letting Linux background install too many apps...100% of mini's mini 4GB hard drive used up. oops. my bad. Purchased a 32GB replacement and solved the mini's biggest limitation. If you're looking for a replacement hard drive for your mini consider www.conics.net in Japan. Offer good selection, good price, amazing delivery.).
Once all was said and done, my new world order made me look at my instrument of torture in a new light. Whereas it had seemed slow before...well, now compared to the speedy Mac it operated at a painful crawl. Action was immediate.
No, I didn't take a sledgehammer to it. Number one reason being that a fire a few years back a fire at my cottage resulted in the firemen taking the sledgehammer (a small price to pay for salvaging the ruins of my home I think). Number two reason being that the perfect solution to my wiki woes (side story here: I snapped up a five-user Confluence license when they went on sale awhile back...but sadly the server I was using for my brother's website can't handle the install...needs more juice) is setting up my own home server. I had hoped to steal the kid's computer. But he resisted. Something about college, homework, etc., I have to say it all seemed really trivial to me, but he wouldn't let me take it. How rude.
So my greedy eyes next lit upon the instrument of torture. A-ha! It had once held Linux quite happily. Could it, would it be the perfect solution?
Well...it took me all of five second to make that decision (once I recalled that the sledgehammer was gone). Vista: no more. And good riddance. As one of my past installs on the instrument of torture was Ubuntu, I decided to go with the Ubuntu Server on it (Jaunty for those who care). Biggest blip in the half hour it all took to configure was setting it up with a static IP. And that took about two minutes.
Tonight I'll be installing Confluence and setting up my wiki once more. Yippee!
Yes, I know this is not Flex. And it is not that Flex is dead to me. It's just that playing in the world of shells and wikis is a lot of fun and very very distracting. Some day, once my wiki woes are long forgotten I'll return.
I'll keep you updated on the Confluence install and I'm also toying with adding Melody for my brother's website (currently on Movable Type).
[Note that Ubuntu now has a netbook remix...interesting.]
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