Posted by Robyn on Mar 9, 2008 in
Technology As many of you know, I have an Asus Eee PC. It is a wonderful little laptop, and I carry it in my purse. One of the things that first attracted me to the Eee PC is the fact that it runs Linux, which I had never really played with much. I know, I’m losing geek cred here, but stay with me.
It came with a very cute customized installation of Xandros, running something called “easy mode” by default. It has a handy tabbed interface, with plenty of productivity software out of the box. Firefox, Thunderbird, and Open Office are all included. Here’s what it looks like.
While I loved the interface at first, I started to feel a little confined by it, so I enabled “Advanced Mode”, which gives you a full KDE desktop interface. It looks a little something like this.
But then the Xandros OS itself started to cramp my style. The more I used the Eee, the more comfortable I became with Linux. The problem is that a highly customized version of a pay distro isn’t really the best introduction to Linux. Linux is all about customization, but all the juicy repositories would break Xandros.
So, I am officially waving “goodbye” to Xandros. I am installing Ubuntu on my Eee PC as we speak. 
Posted by Robyn on Feb 26, 2008 in
Technology I am posting this from a brand new MacBook Pro!
Again, from the Apple Store. I have to wait for my student loan disbursement, but I would so walk out of here with one of these if I had the money right now. This thing rocks! 
Posted by Robyn on Feb 9, 2008 in
Technology I tend to mess with my computers quite a lot. I enjoy upgrading and tinkering, and it’s actually quite relaxing for me. As many of you know, I have a Windows Home Server that is awesome. It is no less than revolutionizing the way I store and access data. I am still tweaking it and adding storage, but it’s a fun project.
However, tonight I learned a few things about myself.
Things I am good at:
1) Creating five units of work by attempting to skip a step that saves one unit of work.
2) Not taking even a moment to complete that skipped step, regardless of how much extra work it created.
3) Stubbornly completing the now overly complex task, even after realizing it won’t come close to solving the original problem.
I had begun to grow frustrated with my otherwise awesome Hiper 580w modular power supply. It did not come with quite enough molex and SATA attachments to connect all my drives and still route the cables in a non-insane fashion. So, I started to wonder if the Antec 500w PSU that came with my server’s case wouldn’t be a better option. After a quick check of the power specs and run-down of the connectors, I decide to swap it in.
Power supplies are big. To make a long story short, I ended up having to remove two hard drive cages and a CPU cooler to accomplish this. And I did so without ever breaking down and unhooking the server so I could put it on the floor. FYI, my server lives in the corner of our office, and I had about two square feet of work space.
My back hurts now. 
And initially, it created a bigger cable mess than I had before, but with the creative placement of a few twist ties, I resolved it, and like heck I’m putting the old power supply back in after all that.
It’s fine. 
Posted by Robyn on Jan 1, 2008 in
Technology Hey, everyone! Happy New Year!
I am posting this from a shiny new MacBook Pro.
I wish it were mine, but no, I’m just in the Apple Store. Justin and I are killing time playing with the cool toys before our movie starts. I’m being a good girl and waiting for Macworld. But that is getting harder and harder as the days go by…