Al's Blog-o-Sphere

A while back I mentioned that I had bought a new netbook computer. It was a replacement for my main laptop while I had to send it out to be repaired.

I ordered it and received it while on the road, so I didn’t have my whole library of software at my fingertips. But I needed to get it set up to do the things I needed to do with nothing but software that I could quickly download.

Now, I don’t like to spend hundreds of dollars on software anyway. I’m not a business. I don’t make my livelyhood with a computer, so I really can’t justify spending several hundred dollars on software. If I had to buy the operating system, I’d probably have used Linux, but since Windows XP came on the Acer Aspire One Netbook, I was happy to work with that.

But that was the theme for the rest of the software setup. Everything I put on it was Open Source or Freeware. Here’s what I used and why: Continue Reading…

Sometimes, I get frustrated by the local paper. I’ve been known to rag on their errors – typos, misspellings, and technical errors – but by and large, they are like most businesses that are trying to survive on a small local scale against the mega-conglomerate competition. The fact that they continue to try, day after day, in this heroic struggle, is often under-appreciated and taken for granted by us, who see only the flaws.

Scott Leffler, local talk-show host and former US&J reporter, has been putting the thumbnail-sized images of all the local papers on his blog on a daily basis. It’s interesting to see the similarities and differences between them as they often cover the same stories.

It’s especially interesting when you consider that three of the papers, the Lockport paper, the Niagara Gazette and the Tonawanda News all are owned by the same company and share much of the same staff and infrastructure. They often carry the same stories by the same reporter, but the placement on the page is interesting to note. Top of the front page in Lockport might be a sidebar in the Tonawandas… Continue Reading…

This article appeared in the Lockport Union, Sun & Journal on February 7th, 2009 in their Cheers and Jeers column on the editorial page. It appears to be contributions from their editorial staff, but no specific editor was credited.

While I certainly agree with the writer’s conclusion that the delay to the DTV switch is unnecessary, the article illustrates how people are not only confused enough on their own, they have the media to thank for it.

The flaw in the article comes when it says “If they miss MSNBC for a few days, the world will not end.” Continue Reading…

We’ve been relying less and less on the traditional landline phone these days. Now that everyone in the family has their own cellphone, why shouldn’t calls be naturally routed to the specfic person? Most friends and family either have those numbers or know we almost never answer the regular phone unless we hear them leaving a message on the answering machine.

I make no apologies for the messages on the answering machine. Some of them have been borderline rude, but when people and/or companies insist on trying to defeat caller ID by blocking or disguising it, I’m not going to be nice to them. Real people are willing to say who they are trying to call and wait for us to answer. The majority of the calls we get don’t bother to leave a message.

It must be the phone we have, but it has an odd quirk. When a caller comes in from outside the local area, it can display the number, but not a name, so it calls them OUT OF AREA. My twisted sense of humor finds that hilarious, and I refer to them as spatially challenged callers. I can just envision the caller as being so remote, so minimized, that they no longer have a name, just a number and become dimensionless, reduced to a point. Continue Reading…