Al's Blog-o-Sphere

After just having bought an Acer Aspire One netbook as well as a D-Link router, out comes a combo deal on Christmas Eve.

Of course, it’s the version of the Aspire One with the 16GB solid state drive, not the 160GB hard drive mine has. They managed to squeeze WinXP on it anyway, instead of the smaller Linux also offered. I don’t mind Linux, but the stripped down version that they put on the AAO seems weak. I hear they run really sweet with Ubuntu, though. Mine does off of a USB thumb drive, no less. Continue Reading…

I love my new cell phone. It’s finally a fairly modern phone. I mentioned it here recently, the LG VX-9100 aka. ENV2.

But I have one problem with it. I keep dialing random numbers with it when it is in my pocket. Sometimes, it even treats them as a redial or gets into the directory. That’s the worst, because it calls real numbers and real people!

If I’ve called you and you heard nothing but background, or worse, heard whatever I was doing at the time, please accept my apologies for anything I said! One friend called me back to let me know it was happening and we laughed about it, because her son did the same thing all the time. Continue Reading…

Well, I decided to live dangerously and upgrade the version of WordPress this runs on again, even though I was not at home and relying on the wifi at UPMC. The way things have been at home lately with my internet service, it’s probably just as reliable.

It seems to have worked, and I got through it without much trouble. I use a plugin, WordPress Automatic Upgrade, which does most of the heavy lifting for me, so it didn’t take long.

Ther plugin used to work really well, but the last time I used it, there were a few glitches with the database backup. That uses another plugin. I found out that by disabling all other plugins and changing to a default theme first, it all works and the upgrade proceeds smoothly.

The problem is, they do disable all the plugins during the upgrade process, they just do it automatically at a later point. If they would just move it up sooner, it would work without my intervention. They also put the site into a maintenance mode, which probably accomplishes what using a default theme does too.

But that’s all minor. The main thing the update seems to do is change the Admin interface, the part of the site nobody else sees except the privileged few. The screen shot shows part of the new Dashboard. They did clean it up and organize it really well. I like it, but there isn’t much for the user to see.

Whenever I travel, inevitably, sooner or later, I have a little leisure time that I spend listening to local broadcast radio. Sometimes it’s in the car, driving around. Sometimes it’s listening on a portable radio, Walkman-style.

I rarely travel far without my MP3 player and a collection of music in it, but it’s still fun to listen to the local FM music scenes. My current MP3 player has a FM radio built-in. Not much of a consideration when I bought it, but I’m glad it’s there.

Why would I want to listen to the radio when I have my own selection of music at hand? I’ll answer that question with another: Why do some people seem to be stuck in the era they grew up in? Why do they go to bars and listen to cover bands and never try new music?

Because they know what they like and stop looking for anything else. They get stagnant in their music. Continue Reading…