GeekLinux

So I thought by now there would be a flood of blog posts on the Interwebz by those who already have a Google Voice account making my measly post mute, but I haven’t really seen that many so here’s my .02.  I received my Google Voice invite on Friday evening June 26 and immediately signed up.  Now that I have been using it for the better part of a week it has already started to feel like one of the applications you-don’t-know-how-you-ever-lived-without.  You can read all about Google Voice here so I won’t waste your time spelling out every feature but only mention the ones I have come to appreciate the most.  The first is that you have four chooses when a call is coming in; you can of course, press 1, to answer it; press 2 to have the incoming caller go directly to voice mail; press 3 to listen-in live while the voice mail is being recorded, or press 4 to record the conversation.  Pressing 4 makes the announcement “Recording” so the caller knows they are being recorded.  Somewhat surprising I have also enjoyed the voice-to-text feature that I expected would be klugey at best but has in-fact been very useful and the conversion of speech to text surprisingly actuate.  Also nice is receiving that text as a SMS message on my cell phone.  One thing did catch me off guard and I have not yet found a way to change it is…When someone calls you for the first time Google Voice sees the incoming caller ID as a new caller and asks the person to record their name so when your phone rings you hear that person’s name recorded in their own voice…fine; except when, a business, which may have hundreds of lines all sharing one out-going caller ID.  So now when I receive a call from XYZ business it always announced to me as the name of the first person who called me from that number.  There are certain numbers that I would like Google voice to ask the caller each time to record their name so that I know whether I want to press 1 thru 4.  I might even want to do this when several people in a household share one phone, because there are some people I want to answer the phone for and others I don’t.  Anyway I betcha Google will fix that issue pretty quickly, but hey for free I’m not complaining, and unlike Gmail it’s not in Beta

I have be an advocate of Gmail and cloud computing for quite awhile but this appearing on my screen this morning gave me quite a start!  My Gmail Account had been locked down for unusual activity?  I can assure you I did nothing unusual!  Now I know Gmail is still in beta (has any other Google project had a longer time in beta?), but even so I, like many others, I have come to rely on Gmail web mail as my main email client.  I may now need to rethink that!  I still don’t know what made this appear and after attempting to login again I was thankfully able to get right back in…whew, dodged-a-bullet!  Was it a glitch? a bug? I’m not sure, it was just scary!

Gmail Lock Down

My daughter is on a 10 day tour of Italy with her high school.  The first picture she sent home was this photo and adding “Look what they have in Italia :-p”.  She really knows her ole’ man.  Looking closely at the photo I get the distinct impression that Linux is much more prevalent in Italy than here in the US.  Anyway, I was just tickled that she thought to take the picture.  Did I get a picture of the Colosseum?  The Vatican?  The Leaning Tower of Pisa? Nope, just a magazine rack full of Linux mags.  Does she really know me or what?!?!

Just a quick blog post to congratulate Sansa for recognizing the fact that some people prefer the OGG file format.  I first heard about the Sansa Clip while reading Pat Davila’s blog.  He mentioned that the 1GB model is available at Walmart for $30 ($29.88 to be exact).  The Sansa Clip web site confirms that it supports OGG and FLAC formats but there is no indication on the packaging itself.  When I got the new Sansa Clip home I snapped a few pictures, attached it to my System76 Pangolin laptop running Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex 8.10 64-bit.  Immediately the Sansa Clip came alive and an icon for the player appeared on my desktop. I found I was easily able to copy the latest Linux Cranks oggcast to the device and within seconds I was enjoying my new player.  The player says that it can last up to 15 hours on a single charge, if that is true then that is amazing and I will definitely be putting it through its paces.  The only initial negative is that the player does not display the total duration of the file, it only shows the time the file has been playing. (UPDATE: To see the length of an audio file just start the file playing and then press and hold the rewind button, this will cause the ending time to be revealed, afterward just restart the file.)  This player will not totally replace my Palm Zire 31 with The Core Pocket Media Player 0.72RC1 (for Palm OS).  My Plam Zire 31 has an external speaker which comes in very handy in the shower.  So now I have 2 players and the Sansa Clip is going to be the cat’s meow for morning walks and chores around the house.

For the first time since 1993 I have purchased a new computer that is just for me.  It’s not for work, it isn’t for the kids, it’s not to share with my lovely wife; its just for me.  I have to say I enjoyed the shopping experience and it was enthralling too. After considerable searching and questioning folks whose computing prowess I admire I decided on a Laptop from System76.  The Pangolin.

My wife and I agreed that I could get a new laptop for Christmas but that I should wait until after the holiday and all the Christmas bills were paid. My time had come but in anticipation I began shopping.

I knew I wanted the machine to have Linux natively installed. I have installed Linux dozens of times but this time was going to need to be different. For one I wanted every piece of hardware to “just work”. The SD Card reader, the finger print reader, the web cam, EVERYTHING!. Also I wanted the whole “new computer” experience, like the “new car smell”, the computer I purchased would have to meet this requirement. I also knew I wanted the new computer to be a laptop. Over the past several years I have found myself working almost exclusively on laptops. The issues I had early on like not liking the keyboards as well etc. had all passed away, and I have become totally comfortable with using a laptop and the laptop keyboard.

My first impressions of System76 start with a phone call I made several weeks ago which started with questions about the 13.3 inch “Gazelle” model and ended with me believing that the 15 inch Pangolin was the best fit for me. What attracted me initially to the Gazelle was its size and weight but after speaking with the Sales representative “Tom” and covering the items I wanted to do with the laptop he suggested that my 45 year old eyes would be happy longer with the 15 inch model. I was really impressed with System76’s pre-sales support. I spent also 45 unhurried minutes on the phone asking questions about 64 bit Ubuntu and then went over every detail of the hardware and their after-the-sale-support. Every question was answered in a polite and knowledgeable manner, I never felt like they were trying to get me off the phone or make decide right then and there to make the purchase. They knew at that point I was just-shopping and they were fine with that.

On the topic of after-the-sale support they said that the support process normally starts with an email describing the issue. If emails can’t resolve the issue they will call you or you can call them…and yes you get a person very quickly on the phone, not holding forever waiting for someone. If a hardware part needs replacing they will attempt to assess your proficiency with changing out the hardware part in question. If you both come to the conclusion that you can probably handle the part swapping then they will ship you the part with a pre-paid return package for the defective part. Assuming that fixes the problem you simply package up the defected part and send it back. If however you both come to the conclusion that the repair is out of your comfort zone they will ship you a prepaid box to ship your machine into them. This of course adds time to the process, but the key is customer satisfaction. If you have ever gone through the nightmare of phone support with the big chains then you know the frustration that awaits and the pain of being without the machine you rely on.

So far everything is working great and I have been really pleased with the Pangolin. If you are interested in a System76 machine I can definitely recommend them. Feel free to email me any questions you may have. Check out my podcast episodes 31 and 32. In episode 31 I talk about shopping for a Linux laptop and in episode 32 I give a review of the my new laptop.

I hope to come back and post additional updates going forward, I still have yet to test the modem, HDMI port, SATA port, burn a CD or DVD, heck I haven’t even popped the battery out yet!  I just got my new laptop and I’m lovin’ it!

Pictures of my System76 Pangolin

System76.com

Episode 31 and Episode 32 of “The Techie Geek” Podcast

Click here to see my pics from the 2008 Ohio Linux Fest.

A bunch of us went to “BD’s Mongolian Grill” for dinner, I think maybe as many at 20 were there. It was the TLLTS guys, Chad Wallenberg from “The Linux Basement”, Dave Yates from “LottaLinuxLinks”, Klaatu from “The Bad Apples” podcast and “Fedora Reloaded” podcast, I sat with my Dad, Nick, and Jim. Over dinner Nick taught me about the ‘watch‘ command which I will be trying out as soon as I can. I never ate at place like this before; you went through three salad-bar-like stations where you selected your own ingredients in a stir-fry you design. You then gave the bowl and seasoning mix you prepared to a cook and they cooked it on a huge hot iron grill, awesome! After dinner we all headed over to “Barley’s” for the Pre-Party in the downstairs “Underground”. Barley’s is a micro brewery and you could see the tanks in which the beer is brewed. I ask the bartender for “the darkest beer they made“, not knowing my beers I can only relate it to Guinness Stout, but this was better I thought, very robust, and I had two. We had a great time. I spotted John “Maddog’ Hall and Jono Bacon, I hope to meet these guys in person tomorrow, but didn’t have a chance to tonight. I met a bunch of listeners including “ChrisFromDallas”, “Timrit” and “ECLUG” all of whom I’ve talk to on IRC so it was a real pleasure to finally meet them in person. Tomorrow is the big day! The Ohio Linux Fest baby!

We had a great breakfast at the Drury Lounge where we enjoyed sausage with biscuits and gravy and I even made my own Belgium waffles. Dad and I then did some venturing around learning the layout of the Columbus Convention Center. At one point I wandered over to an Information Booth were an older gentleman was ready to field questions from curious visitors. He said to me “Are you here for the big day tomorrow?” I said “I sure am! I’m here for the Ohio Linux Fest!” he looked at me oddly and said “No, I meant the big game, Ohio State plays Purdue tomorrow” LOL, I bet the area is going to be mayhem! Along the way we found where the OLFU was being held and we had a chance to meet Beth Lynn Eicher from The Ohio Linux Fest staff, hear Beth Lynn’s interview on The Linux Link Tech Show here. We were so impressed at the size and facilities at The Convention Center. One thing we noticed was that there were alot of people walking around looking like “Fencers”, you know, the sport of “Fencing”, so we followed them and found that The United States Fencing Association is holding a large tournament which started today and runs through Monday. But the highlight of the morning was running into Pat, Alan, and Linc from The Linux Link Tech Show, they had just checked in and were heading out to lunch; can’t wait to party with those guys tonight!

It’s Friday morning October 10 and I’m sipping coffee while I write this post. Yesterday my Dad and I made the 500 mile trek from PA to The Ohio Linux Fest. I was warmly greeted by listener Nick who joined us for dinner and beer at Barley’s (Thanks for the beer Nick . Nick arrived early to take the “Linux Professional Institute” exam on Friday, he mentioned he used elpicx 2 (free Live DVD .iso here) which includes learning aids for preparing for the LPI exam. I hope to make regular posts to my blogs, both here and over at The Techie Geek Podcast. I am also making some recordings on my Nokia N800 that I hope to piece together a podcast with when I get home. See ya soon!

I am thrilled to announce that I have been selected as the new host of the “DistroWatch Weekly” podcast! Wow, what can I say!?! DistroWatch! Ever since I started using Linux I have made weekly trips to DistroWatch.com to check out distro rankings and read the latest news and now I am hosting their podcast! Somebody pinch me!

I would like to thank the former host, Jim Putman for all his help during the transition, Jim has certainly left impressive footsteps to follow in. Thank you to Ladislav Bodnar, owner of DistroWatch, for allowing me the privilege of continuing the podcast.

My first recorded episode is issue 257, 16 June 2008. Here you can subscribe to the mp3 feed or the ogg feed