National Silly Clocks day, autumn edition

[jhetley]

Spring ahead, fall back. Problem is, we live so far east we should be in the Maritime Zone with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Daylight Savings Time just puts us close to _real_ time. What idiot put Maine in the same time zone as Michigan? And my digital watch does _not_ reset automatically.

In other news, this computer made a funny fan noise when I started it up this morning. Don't know if it was the case fan or the power supply fan, but I shut down and restarted a few times and the noise went away. And the processor hasn't cooked . . . yet. The machine is a 300 mhz pentium, Win98 just when 98 was first released, and it really doesn't owe me much. But I hadn't planned on shopping for computers anytime soon. May get a Mac next time, get away from the eternal updates and virus attacks. Of course, if there were enough Macs out there to make it worth a punk's time, there'd be viruses and worms and spyware for the Mac.

Don't need a fancy computer. Word processing, simple accounting, and simple digital photo processing. And solitaire. Does the Mac have a solitaire game?

Gray, damp, not actually raining this morning, temps supposed to reach 60 F -- maybe the last time we see 60s until next April.

Comments

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

Jim --
you can order in a new machine from Staples -- $499... you can get the one loaded with Linspire OS (Linux)
http://www.staples.com/Catalog/Browse/Sku.asp?PageType=1&Sku=583631

as for the games you can get ... http://www.linspire.com/lindows_products_categories.php?category=100&sort=1&lang=en
takes you to the card games...

It is still raining here; the cats are bugging me to feed them because we watched half of Pride and Prejudice last night -- over two hours worth... so we up well over true midnight...

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I don't have a geek license anymore*. Don't want to play with finding and installing drivers, discovering funny new ways to break systems, etc. Want to be able to go out and buy a digital camera and plug it into the computer and have it download photos and print photos without scratching my head and searching the internet for _this_ instead of _that_ when I don't even know what this and that are. You willing to drive up to the big city and hook my system up and make it work?

People like to trash M$ and WinWhatever, but when I bought the laptop (other machine) I brought it home and plugged it in and connected printers and it worked. Bought the camera years later and plugged it in and it worked. No fuss, no lost sleep. Macs are reputed to be even better that way.

*Hey, I learned computers with punch cards and Fortran and batch processing. Terminals were mechanical Teletype machines. Even DOS was user-friendly compared to that.

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

No geek license needed. My experience with Linspire is that it just works. I have mandrake on a couple machine here and have played with others...
I talk to you more about it after we get back from our trip, if you liek...

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Hey, if I can plug it in and connect a couple of printers and USB stuff and turn it on and _use_ it, instead of frigging around, I'll consider it. Does it come off the shelf with Word or compatible? With Quicken or MS Money that'll do internet banking/investing? Our broker and bank sites only admit to those two.... Photoshop elements? Off-the-shelf with drivers for a Sony digital camera and HP inkjet all-in-one and separate laser printer?

I want _simple_. Simple computer for a simpleton.

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

To agree with a later commenter, OpenOffice does an amazing amount of different formats. There's this lovely thing (you've got to pay for it though) called VMWare that will let you run M$ programs on a linux box. Also there is Basilisk II that allows you to emulate a Macintosh. But not the OS X system.

And if you can help me find a job up there as a construction manager than I bring along unixronin who is indeed a linux Guru. He's been using linux before the 1.0 kernel.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Don't need all the extra baggage of OpenOffice -- just a simple WYSIWYG word processor that does manuscript format and business letter stuff. Nobody has mentioned financial manager programs or digital photos yet....

And I don't _want_ a Linux guru. I want a system I can pull out of the box and connect up to existing peripherals and use. As-is. *stamps foot petulantly*

I can't recommend coming up here for a CM job -- we live on the ass-end of nowhere in a poverty pocket. People leave Maine for a job, they don't come here for one.

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what you mean by manuscript format. There is always LaTeX. If you want just a plain text editor then there is pico and xcoral. For accounting programs there is Gnucash. I'm not sure if it will work with your bank though.

And a lot of linux systems will now work out of the box. The thing about your camera is that you'll probably need to treat it as a hard drive and mount the camera so the system can read it. It might just be a simple plug and play though.

We're in the swamps of North Carolina. I want to live somewhere cold and snowy. I'm applying for jobs in Canada right now. Hoping for one with Kindred Construction in Vancouver. They did the Warehouse Studio renovation and I love it. But they want someone familiar with the local construction scene and a self-starter so I'm guessing they want someone who can go out and bring in projects. I've got a few ideas that I'm going to put together to send along with my resume next week.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Ya know, I never realized Linux missionaries were as bad as Jehovah's Witnesses. Or Mac apostles. I'd expected the Mac crowd, since I invoked their deity. Must be a shortage of Appleheads on LJ.

Anyway, the fan still seems to be working. We'll see what happens when I start up tomorrow morning.

(Yes, everything important is backed up. And it isn't the hard drive flaking out, anyway.)

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

erie@shelbyvilledesign.com has one G3 macintosh left for $90. He's in IL. You'll have to find a monitor on your own.

I like Linux. No blue screens and things just work and I don't have to reboot to get resources back. I like the games I can get too. I really like not having to pay Bill Gates money for something that irritates me.

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

Ummm didja go tot he link?

Linspire does a *lot* out of the box; if you look around in the CNR
Warehouse you'll find a bunch more. I can't vouch for all for them... haven't tried them all.

Steve

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

>Ummm didja go tot he link?

The Staples link just asks me for the zip code where I want the product shipped. No product info. Screw 'em.

And I hate downloading software on a dialup connection.

[madshutterbug.livejournal.com]

What kinzel says is a good thought (I was thinking the same, because I am thinking about switching to Linux).

You can also investigate
Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org/). Open Office is an open source code project which provides applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and can work with a wide variety of file formats including Microsoft. One of their goals is to provide software that works on all platforms, and they do offer a version which works on Linux.

(Wandered in via starcat_jewel's LJ)

[wcg.livejournal.com]

What idiot put Maine in the same time zone as Michigan?

The Railroads did that Jim. On November 18th 1883 the US Naval Observatory began recognizing four standard time zones in the US at the behest of the Railroad mavens.

A year later, standard time zones, became an international standard, and have remained so until now.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Rhetorical question, Bill. But Maine should be part of Canada, anyway. We'd get along better, besides having the right time.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

My loyalist ancestors would have agreed with you Jim. They felt that Maine (and New York, and Pennsylvania, and all the rest of New England, and even those awful places to the south) should be kept within the Empire.

Still, time zones are an interesting thing. They're really not such a bad idea. They just have odd edge effects.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Well, as I've commented elsewhere, both my father's parents were born in Ontario....

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Especially when the edges are artificially gerrymandered! For example, Louisville really should be in the same time zone with Chicago -- but sometime way back when, they decided to align themselves with New York instead. So in the summer, it's daylight until nearly 10PM... which feels really odd for being that low a latitude.

[iamjw.livejournal.com]

The specific Railroad maven you're looking for is Sir Sanford Fleming, a Canadian.

Just one of my Canadian Imperialist colleagues at work, redesigning the world the way we want it.