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Scratchy throat, etc...
Dec. 30th, 2007 09:56 pmSomewhere toward bedtime last night, I noticed a certain familiar and unwelcome feeling in the back of my throat. And whether it works or not, I dosed myself with a couple of grams of Vitamin C before hitting the sack. I was awakened awoke this morning with just the slightest sensation of something going on behind my tongue.
I've been okay today, with an awareness of just a touch of something (that word again) and a slight narrowing of the eyes.
The narrowing of the eyes might be explained by the Candidate Last Job of 2007™, which consists of a number of cost estimate line items. The format explains the multiple megabytes of references. (Dig it: a conscientious translator will look up each of something like 500 line items to see if it, or a close variation, appears in the references.)
I have my methods to deal with such idiocy, thank Providence.
* * * I have abandoned efforts to install eeexubuntu on my Eee, having come to the conclusion that the Xandros the unit comes with is capable of addressing my needs, with some caveats.
What are my needs? The ability to realistically use the Web (e.g., send and receive mail) and to compose text in a package that exhibits high portability and good battery life. (My BlackBerry 7130e is not a contender in this category, except possibly in the category of receiving mail.)
A major "gotcha" I found soon after firing the machine up for the first time was the unionfs file system, which is designed to aid in making it easy to restore the original configuration of the unit in case of a malfunction caused by - as my high school typing teacher put it - "the nut operating the keys." Basically, all the changes you think you're making in the machine's configuration are being recorded in a way that doesn't actually change the configuration, just the machine's perception of the configuration; erase the file containing the changes, and presto! the original configuration is restored!
While this may sound like a neat way to implement a lofty goal, its practical consequence is that deleting software from the machine frees up zero disk space, which sort of defeats the whole purpose of the exercise. Defeating the unionfs file system (courtesty of instructions at an Eee PC user site) has allowed me to delete a wagonload of unwanted software from the unit, enough to pursue the next part of my overall strategy.
Deleting a bunch of unwanted software liberated over half the relatively limited capacity (4 GB) of the machine, and allowed me to consider the issue of whether it was better to continue to negotiate the learning curve for OpenOffice or look to some other solution for on-the-go word processing.
In the end, I have decided to try out CrossOver Linux (a commercial... version? fork?... whatever, of wine), which installs on the Eee and permits Office 2003 (and some other Windows) applications to run on the machine. It's all done by placing Windows programs in an environment that acts just like Windows, but is actually Linux (cf. the Matrix trilogy).
Anyway, I have not yet put Word to the acid test (which would involve installing the Wordfast .dot file and actually translating something with it), but so far, I am impressed.
Again, it grows late. I will leave the reviews until tomorrow, and then plan on taking the rest of the year off.
Cheers...
I've been okay today, with an awareness of just a touch of something (that word again) and a slight narrowing of the eyes.
The narrowing of the eyes might be explained by the Candidate Last Job of 2007™, which consists of a number of cost estimate line items. The format explains the multiple megabytes of references. (Dig it: a conscientious translator will look up each of something like 500 line items to see if it, or a close variation, appears in the references.)
I have my methods to deal with such idiocy, thank Providence.
What are my needs? The ability to realistically use the Web (e.g., send and receive mail) and to compose text in a package that exhibits high portability and good battery life. (My BlackBerry 7130e is not a contender in this category, except possibly in the category of receiving mail.)
A major "gotcha" I found soon after firing the machine up for the first time was the unionfs file system, which is designed to aid in making it easy to restore the original configuration of the unit in case of a malfunction caused by - as my high school typing teacher put it - "the nut operating the keys." Basically, all the changes you think you're making in the machine's configuration are being recorded in a way that doesn't actually change the configuration, just the machine's perception of the configuration; erase the file containing the changes, and presto! the original configuration is restored!
While this may sound like a neat way to implement a lofty goal, its practical consequence is that deleting software from the machine frees up zero disk space, which sort of defeats the whole purpose of the exercise. Defeating the unionfs file system (courtesty of instructions at an Eee PC user site) has allowed me to delete a wagonload of unwanted software from the unit, enough to pursue the next part of my overall strategy.
Deleting a bunch of unwanted software liberated over half the relatively limited capacity (4 GB) of the machine, and allowed me to consider the issue of whether it was better to continue to negotiate the learning curve for OpenOffice or look to some other solution for on-the-go word processing.
In the end, I have decided to try out CrossOver Linux (a commercial... version? fork?... whatever, of wine), which installs on the Eee and permits Office 2003 (and some other Windows) applications to run on the machine. It's all done by placing Windows programs in an environment that acts just like Windows, but is actually Linux (cf. the Matrix trilogy).
Anyway, I have not yet put Word to the acid test (which would involve installing the Wordfast .dot file and actually translating something with it), but so far, I am impressed.
Again, it grows late. I will leave the reviews until tomorrow, and then plan on taking the rest of the year off.
Cheers...
