K/L/Ubuntu

In my building, we asked our "IT vendor" to fix up our slow, creaky public internet kiosks. They told us the boxes were too old (they're from about 2002), one was running Windoze Professional 2000, and one was running Windows 97 (ack!) And both were running an unregistered free trial copy of the payware SiteKiosk (which is craptastic at best.)

So they say they "can't" fix the current boxes, and we should just throw them out. And their quote for selling us two refurbished windows boxes with SiteKiosk (no doubt again the free trial version)? $1200. Our answer, in two words: Fuck. That.

So I tell our building manager to get the boxes back. I'll try stripping them, install a very light distribution of Ubuntu, create a very limited privilege user account, throw Firefox or Chromium on, and be done with it. A supports this approach and sends a handy instructable.

Great idea, right? Except that the stupid motherfuckers THREW ONE OF THE COMPUTERS AWAY. Say WHAAAAAAT? You threw it in the garbage? Without asking us?

That's kinda like you take your car to the mechanic, and they tell you that it's not worth fixing, so they donate it to public radio for you. Or run it into a river.

So we yell a little, and they agree to provide us a refurbished box (not yet arrived.)

This morning at half of the asscrack of dawn I took the one remaining computer out (which required some power tools to liberate it) and then spent much of the morning downloading torrents of Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) (very new, but I really wanted a Long Term Support version), creating a bootable USB drive with it, only to find out the computer doesn't support PAE (meaning you can't boot from an external hard drive with it.) So I go back and torrent Lubuntu 12.04, remake the bootable USB drive, and try that. No kinda dice whatsoever: just a massive pain in the ass. It takes FOREVER to install, won't properly set the time zone (which even though you used to be able to tell it manually what time zone you're in, it now insists on hanging while waiting indefinitely for a network time server for), won't complete the console configuration properly. And then even though it pretends that the install mostly finished, it just totally freezes, and freezes completely upon startup.

Back to the drawing board. I go through the same miserable process with Kubuntu 12.04.

By now I've learned by lesson about 12.04, and ditch it. I try Kubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) with the same damn result.

So I go get Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal , the alternate (stripped down) version, and it installs like a charm. Well, it takes a while, but with no hiccups.

The moral of the story? Be very wary about early adoption. 

Now time to go configure the machine and make it a public kiosk, and await the arrival of our newly refurbished machine.

Kayak across the Pacific

So, I underestimated the distance to bike to my derm appointment this afternoon (note to all those who haven't yet spent entirely too much time in the sun without sunscreen: don't!)

I'll now have to drive (boo!) and so I turned to the always trustworthy and reliable google maps for directions. I typed in my starting address, and entered 3193 Howell Mill Rd, Atlanta Dermatalogic, as the destination.

Except google maps thought I just meant 3193 in Australia. So it told me to kayak across the pacific to get there. I couldn't get a screenshot of all of the directions, but at the top and bottom of the turn-by-turn directions are the best part, including 6,635 miles of kayaking:


The grand total of the kayaking, with the stretch between Japan and Australia, is 9,993 miles. I guess I could paddle around in circles upon reaching the Northern Territory to make up that additional seven miles.

Should I strap the car to the front or back of the kayak?