Month: July 2006

Flirting with Ubutnu

Jeromey Balderrama

Given some of the recent commotion about Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage, and my ever-growing curiosity, I decided to dabble in the world of Linux using Ubuntu, a popular distribution of the operating system.

When I got my new desktop a few months back, I played with a Windows Vista beta by partitioning my hard drive into 2 equal partitions: one booting into Windows XP, one booting into Vista.  I figured I’d send the OS’ head-to-head, the winner gets the other’s partition.  Not even one day later, I was blowing the Vista partition away, as it wasn’t working with my critical hardware (the music hard drive is really important to me!).  Granted it is unfair to compare a production OS to a beta, but the early adopter in me wanted to toy with it.

Side note: This wasn’t the last time I got bit by Vista.  Two weeks ago I tried installing the latest public beta on my laptop.  It wasn’t even 4 hours later when I ditched that attempt – due to Vista not being able to access the network/Internet (both wired and wireless!).  I ended up having to rebuild my laptop, which was a painful blessing.

Realizing that I’m done with Vista for anytime soon, I still have the curiosity bug that needed attention.  I decided to let curiosity get the better of me and use my old Vista partition for Ubuntu.  24 hours later, I have been mostly pleased with my experience. The installation went off without any issues.  I followed some great video instructions on how to dual boot a machine with Win XP & Ubuntu, and  that’s been working great.

The process hasn’t been painless, and I’ve run into a few snags.  I went to bed Wednesday night without being able to enable my dual monitors.  I spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out how to mount my music drive into Linux.  That said, the problems have more to do with my (lack of) understanding in Linux, rather than the OS itself.  I would consider myself an intermediate to expert Windows user, and with the trouble I went through with Vista had everything to do with the OS limitations.  It’s probably not fair to compare a production-level Linux OS with a beta Windows OS, but for the curiosity’s sake, I’d definitely recommend Ubuntu.

Some web sites that helped my in my Ubuntu quest thus far:

“Evil” eBay, anyone?

Jeromey Balderrama

It looks like eBay may be the lastest company that should have an "Evil" branding right on their butts! Last week Google released their competitor to PayPal, called Google Checkout. As of this morning, eBay is now banning sellers from requesting payment through Google Checkout. The online auction giant updated its Safe Payments policy this week to add Google’s new payment service, Google Checkout to its list of online payment methods not permitted on eBay.

read more | digg story

Where the heck have I been?

Jeromey Balderrama

Well, it’s definitely been a while since I’ve found time to blog.  I’m sorry for that. There has been so much going on, and I’ve had every intention on giving updates as to my whereabouts.  Unfortunately my lack of computer/internet use preventing me from doing so.  Before Wednesday (and not counting work on Friday) I’ve probably spent a grand total of an hour in front of the computer.  I’ve enjoyed my break and time away, but I’m anxious to get back in the saddle and find some kind of routine again.
In my time away, I celebrated my 25th birthday with a BBQ and Poker tournament with great friends. It was great to see friends I haven’t seen in a while, as well as eat, drink and be merry.  Last year the party lasted until 6am.  This year we did a little better with most people going home around 1.
I had a great 4th, going up to Red Rocks with friends and family to see the Blues Traveler concert.  This is the first July 4th I’ve spent away from Loveland for as long as I can remember.  It was a great celebration, although I was disappointed with the (lack of) fireworks at the show.  We saw fireworks there, but they seemed at a bad angle and far away, leading us to believe that it was a neighboring city’s fireworks.  However, as the night grew later, we were convinced we weren’t going to see any close Red Rock fireworks.  Still, any day spent at Red Rocks is a good day.  I have pictures from the concert, and I’ll get them on Flickr in the next day or so.