September 2006 Update

Well, how are things? For me it kinda goes up and down quite often. Just typing on the keyboard seems great. How do I create a new topic that someone else will read. I thought a lot about this BLOG. I started out adding at minimum two BLOGS per week. Then there was the lull. Have you noticed the same article on the top of the screen? Well things get pretty busy, and I have not been able to update as regular as I have in the past.

There are also articles that help people from writing BLOGS.

I have also been rethinking the purpose. It was great to have all the family input items. However not everyone uses a browser as often as others. So sometimes a tidbit of information may lag and not get to everyone immediately. I have also been considering to have only my immediate family to be able to create a post. (Gary, John, Paul, Sarah, Becca) This BLOG may not be for the whole family, but just for my immediate family. This may simplify the layout. Of course anyone can leave comments, as long as you have a blogger account.

For me it is great to have a picture to share, and have you leave your comments. Then I find I leave two kinds of pictures: Current pictures and Past pictures, or family pictures that perhaps you have never seen before.

I have also been busy installing a new operating system on my play computer. Randy Nelson was getting rid of some computer parts. Believe me it is time to move this stuff out, as it was getting old fast. But I was able to acquire a mother board and memory. So with new hardware for me I installed 'ubuntu'. This is another Linux os. (I used to run Mandriva Linux, remember JR run SUSA Linux from Novel) Wow, it runs great. It is much faster than the main computer. I can run most of the same programs. But it is the faster part that I like best. Plus it runs on the slower systems. {AMD is comparable to a Pentium III} This is actually the computer John set up with Andy one Christmas. Thanks John.

ubuntu will run with a minimum of 128 MB of RAM and 1.8 GB of disk space. It also comes with a live CD. This means you can boot from CD and be running Linux on any computer. This is nice because sometimes a hard drive crashes and this can be used to save data without having to reformat.

Firefox is the browser of choice. I like running my windows in tabs. Plus I don't get all those virus things as I do with IE.

Another program is Open Office. This is a suite of programs like the Office suite from Microsoft. This is the office suite that the Church uses for its word processing. The best part of this is it is free. By the way did I tell you it is FREE! Because of the open standard, the creators want people to use their programs, and there is no cost. So now I don't have to feel like I am stealing software (which I have in the past). Another great part of Open Office is that it imports documents from the Microsoft Suite. It can also save them in Microsoft format, although it does better in its own format.

Another program I like to use is Picassa. This keeps all my pictures organized and helps with some editing features. I can also easily share pictures with email or the blog. Plus it is now available on my Linux box.

Another new program from Google is 'Sketch'. I like the free programs. With this one you can create 3D drawings like a schematic with exact dimisions. Well we are still learning how to use this program. There are many other programs available from Google Labs. Have you found any worth sharing? Well enough of these other programs.