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- February 22, 2010: This morning, so far (or, Why I Drive as Little as Necessary)
- January 18, 2010: Leaves Blown Apart
- December 24, 2009: Predicting the Next Economic Downturn
- December 10, 2009: In memory of Dennis Huff and The Heat of the Sun
- December 10, 2009: Smudging the Book
- November 15, 2009: “Standing at the River, from the Road”
- November 15, 2009: Thoughts on September Reading Travels
- October 28, 2009: Moral Outrage!
- August 8, 2009: Traditions
- April 12, 2009: Raising The Dead (Technology).
Raising The Dead (Technology).
Being antiquated isn’t all that bad.
Everyone says the economy is terrible, but if you are already retired and learned early how to live within your means, it might be an opportunity to invest or buy something you couldn’t have afforded a year ago. On the other hand, why change your habits and spend money you wouldn’t have spent before the economy turned terrible? What do you need that badly anyway? When you are retired, the odds of amortizing out a major purchase over the long-term aren’t that good.
If you amuse yourself by writing and running a publishing business, you probably find it is a struggle to balance the costs of maintaining the business and the limited income of book sales. But to keep going, you may have to stuff a little more money in Bill Gates’ pockets when your ancient computer (running on Windows 95 or 98) doesn’t seem to work well anymore. The problem is, current versions of software won’t work on our technological artifacts. There is no such thing as Viagra for old computers.
But wait! There is hope for old technology (and old cheapskates) after all! The techno-geeks of the world are out there creating new magic. If you pay attention to computer geeks at all, you may have heard of the Windows alternatives, Unix and Linux. Sounds like a foreign language with good reason. They have a reputation of being obscure, difficult, and arcane command-line-driven software packages. Who has enough time and energy left to learn a foreign language at my age? Not many of us. The geeks know this. But there are some kind and charitable geeks out there, because they have worked hard to show mercy toward us simpletons.
I just cleaned the dust out of a computer so ancient that I expected to find a mummy when I scraped the dirt off the fan blades of the power unit. I inserted an extra memory chip from a second ancient pile of techno-rubble, put the Ubuntu Linux CD into the CD reader, and voila! I walked away and twenty minutes later, the operating system software had completely installed itself, along with free office software, internet browser, photo editing software, and a number of other things.
What shocked me was how simple and easy this was compared to the number of times I’ve had to repair my old Windows system and software. I didn’t have to search for drivers for each part. I didn’t have to re-boot the computer twenty times and re-install each piece of program software. The result is an old computer raised from the dead, operating just as effectively as my brand-new laptop. Want to save money to keep yourself in business? Try this! Linux has arrived at the point where it can literally threaten the evil empire of Microsoft! (Stock market traders had better look to their investments.)