Musings, Semi-Random

1. Door saga. The doorway, if not the door itself, has now been moved and the old doorway sealed up. But the light switch is now not next to the entrance to the office. So far no work on this, but I expect it is a matter of time.

2. The song with "Crimson and clover, over and over." Does this tune even have a meaning at all? It seems more like someone found line they thought was fun to say and just say it a lot. Looking at the alleged complete lyrics hardly clarifies the repeated line.

3. Leaves. Some folks rake them. I have yet to understand this, even though when young I wound up doing it a time or two. Nature has dealt with fallen unraked leaves for a long, long time. What point is there to raking them? Also burning leaves.. why? Some say they like the smell, which is a puzzlement. Burning leaves have a smell very much like burning plastic. This is a likable thing? Perhaps it's one of those things that people go back to as a childhood memory and no other reason.

4. Upcoming election. I found the MPR candidate selection guide thing rather less than helpful. It claims I have a 50% match with Penny, and a 50% match with Pawlenty. The other races are easy choices, at least.

5.a. Linux switch. Another story linked from slashdot gives more reason to switch, evidently switching Microsoft spyware and modware off won't be an option someday. Well, I'm now reasonably happy with the Mandrake box. I still have some setup to do, but I didn't set up the 'new' 2k box to my final liking all that fast either, and I'd done that before. (Note to self: Ask Yakko about the x-chat sound on notify thing. Learning a scripting language would be a Good Idea, too.)

5.b. Fast(er) Hardware. I'm seriously considering buying the low end Wal-Mart Microtel Lindows box. I could give Lindows a shot, and if I found I didn't like it, try something else - like Lycoris. And a few places say Mandrake installs on the Microtel nicely. Actually it'd come with more stuff than I'd need. The keyboard and mouse are extras, now, for me. How wrong I can be for ~$200? Sure, it could use a bigger, better HDD and more RAM, but still. It'd be a cheap upgrade to 800 MHz.

5.c. Tried downloading one of the Lycoris ISOs last night, on a whim. Failed near the end. *grumble* At least it's not an immediate concern. Some of what I've read of Lycrois seems quite good, some seems.. less than wonderful. But I'd kinda like to try it all the same.

6. Animated smooth effects in OS desktops. Bleah. And this applies to a few OSs, alas. Fortunately this can be switched off. At multiple hundreds of MHz, I expect things to be *snappy*. Pointless candymation just gets in the way of actually doing stuff.

7. Customer service. At the wedding Jay & I went to, I met up with a person who sold me a big loose rennie shirt. The shirt had elastic in the sleeves (okkay, so the elastic isn't exactly historically accurate). I mentioned it was tighter than I cared for. I was told to bring to the next faire and it'd be altered. I did. It was. Charge? None. Alterations & repair are free for the life of the garment. Did that vendor just get a repeat customer? Aye!

And that's enough for now.