New DVD burn of Ubuntu Studio won't load - not sure why. Could be a bad burn or the DVD drive in the machine is dying. So the broken Ubuntu Studio install was fixed by reinstalling some packages via the GRUB menu. I didn't know I could do that - so I learned something new today.

I'm not sure how long I'll be using that particular system - it's always been a bit problematic. The motherboard is ancient and one stick of RAM has already given up the ghost.

One of the problems with the Windows XP machine was an incorrect audio driver. It took me awhile to find the right one. I still don't have Internet on it - probably another driver issue - but I'm pretty sure I don't want to be on the Internet with an XP machine. I shouldn't complain - it's a hack of several machines cobbled together. I should check the RAM too as it's mismatched.

I also had a scare with one of my Ethernet hubs. It's the oldest one of the bunch and every few years it needs to be rebooted once or twice by unplugging it. My home network is a bit of a Rube Goldberg with several hubs daisy chained together but most of the time it works well enough and it covers a lot of the house.

Then my media rig started beeping at me instead of booting. Four beeps on a Dell system means there's a memory issue. Scary. Re-seating the memory sticks seemed to fix that. I'll have to keep on eye on that because it's done this once before.

I've been gifted another unwanted system which I may use as my *next* media rig. Although I don't like that Ubuntu Studio went from XFCE (light weight and clean) to KDE Plasma (shiny and more of a resource hog) as the desktop, it mostly does everything I need to do right out of the box. Graphics? GIMP. Video? KDEnLIVE. Audio? Audacity for simple stuff, QTracker (which is just okay) and Ardour (which I don't like they layout of). Reaper is 'experimental' but I have run it. It's only 60 bucks so I might go for it.

I have to use the version of LMMS - my main music composing software - from the main website as the version in Ubuntu Studio doesn't support VSTs. I'm not sure why they don't use the main version. You need do WINE and it only handles 32 bit VSTs but there are still a fair number that can be used. WINE doesn't come preinstalled so that may be an issue.

I'm babbling. Sorry.

In a recent article on the website "The Register" they mentioned a hack that would activate Windows XP without using the Internet (that method is defunct anyways) or by calling a phone number and getting a really long string of numbers to insert into the right place.

I read the article and said, "I've got to try this."

I had to do a little digging to find the program - it was a tiny thing - and download it. Then with two different Windows XP Professional disks (pulled from a dumpster) I successfully installed and activated Windows XP Pro on two machines that originally had XP installed on them.

No, I'm *not* connecting them to the Internet.

XP gave you a 30 day grace period to activate Windows. If after 31 days machines still boot without issue then I'll know the hack worked.

I would *not* recommend this unless you have ancient software and/or hardware that *only* works on Windows XP. I understand there are machine systems that interface with XP *only* or are no longer supported by the original manufacturers or coders. Some of this equipment is critical so some businesses. Me? I *could* install some hardware that I doubt works with Windows 7 or 10 (and does *not* work in Linux) and play with it but I mostly did it just to see if I could do it.

XP was around for a really long time and some people have fond memories of it. I switched to Linux just before XP was released so I only used it in at work so I don't have fond memories of it. But honestly, after Microsoft worked the bugs out it had some serious legs. Windows 7 was better. Windows 10 is annoying and Window 11/12 promises to be AI driven. No. No way I'm using them.

But it was fun to see the old wallpaper with that great green hill again.

-m

Fortunately, this doesn't affect my main machines - but on oldie I pieced together several years ago.

It's "The Craiger" - a box I *mostly* put together with Craig's list parts. It's an olddie... a Rampage motherboard sporting 8 gigs of RAM and a Q9500 quad core CPU. An SSD makes it speedy and an Nvidia GTX660 makes it almost game worthy... for older games. It was running Xubuntu 20.04 - updated from 18.04 and I wanted to update it to 22.04.

I ran the update and everything seemed to go okay. The upgrade seemed to take so I loaded up Firefox to get some added goodies off the web... and the program failed to start. Okay, install Chromium. That failed to start. Then I get a warning that my APT/SNAP database was corrupted.

WTF?

A reboot later... and it completely hung on booting. Did SNAP packages bork my system?

Okay, let's start with a fresh install - but let's try Linux Mint Debian Edition. I take my USB stick with a fresh copy of LMBE 5 ... and the motherboard is too old to boot from a USB.

Darn, I forgot about that. But hey! I'm totally Old School and burn a DVD. Cool. It installs okay although Firefox did lock up the system when installing Duckduckgo security add-on. A reboot fixed that. And...

No Nvidia driver? Oh, darn. They're going to start allowing that in the *next* edition of Debian. I could fiddle with config files... nah... that's why I switched to Ubuntu... you want non-free drivers? Ubuntu asks you if you want to install them... and it does! Debian... eh, no.

Don't get me wrong - I loved Debian. Stable, reliable. I just got tired of having to fiddle with config files and newer hardware not being seen.

Hey! I was going to make this a spare Ubuntu Studio machine! And I've got a DVD already burned! Boot the DVD and .... SNAP deamon failed? CUPS daemon failed?

WTF?

Doing a little digging in the Ubuntu forums and it looks like they're doing away with DVD booting. It might still work... but it may take a few times. Well that sucks. Yeah, I get it... USB boot to install is faster and DVD drives are getting old. Still... that sucks.

So... I've burned a DVD of the latest version of Linux Mint Cinnamon. I've been contemplating jumping to Mint because Ubuntu has gone all in with Gnome 3 (which I hate) and SNAPS (which are slow) so this will give me another chance to kick Mint around a bit. It's too late to try it tonight so we'll see what happens tomorrow.

I'm a long time Linux user and I just installed... Windows 10 on a machine. It's a Dell Optiplex 990 that was destined for the rubbish. I got there first.

It took a little longer than it should have because... silly me, the BIOS was set for RAID and didn't see the fresh install at first. A few minutes puzzling over BIOS settings and things went okay. It did take a while to install on a 256 gig SSD - longer than a Linux install. The machine has 16 gigs of memory and an i5 clocking at 3.2 ghz with 4 cores/4 threads. I got a serious scare when I went to flash the BIOS and Windows took the opportunity to install some more updates and the machine seemed to hang - but everything turned out okay.

I should check the thermal paste. That was on the list but I just plain forgot.

Tomorrow I'm going to drop in a AMD RX580 graphics card and install drivers. After that I'll run some benchmarks. I'm hoping to flip this machine as a low end gaming system. I've got another Dell 990 that I might not put as much money or energy in and flip that too. I'm not trying to make a lot of money on this... just trying to make a *little* money to fee4 my habit of fixing up old systems.

I've got my eye on some mid-2010 Macbook Pros that they're talking about trashing at work. I haven't worked on Macs before so I'm eager to try them out. SSDs are a cheap update for the machines and I'll probably donate some to my church.

There is something I want to do... or at least try to do... this year. It started in November when a song idea started to percolate in my head. All it was was a feeling, a chorus and a thought. Later, after noticing some old VHS recorders in Goodwill (which I did not buy) a whole concept sort of exploded in my head.

The song is titled "One Track Mind". (No, it's not about sex.) I want to play and record all the instruments: guitar, bass, drums and vocals onto a four track cassette deck and mix down all in analog. I also want to video tape the performances on VHS - edit the video digitally (I'm not crazy) to post on my YouTube channel.

Technically, I think I can do this. If I keep the music simple the instruments I could handle after I relearn them. The vocals - argh, my voice is thin at best. But I want to make the attempt. I may fail but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I want to start playing again anyways - even if my hands hurt.

-m

A few years back a friend of mine was stilling running his business on an ancient and creaking Windows XP computer. It was a mess. Fortunately, I had just resurrected a Windows 7 machine which a gave to him and it basically kept his business going, computer wise.

Recently, he asked for help with his home system - and even *older* Windows XP system. I was able to cobble together a Linux Mint system for him. Although he was completely unfamiliar with Linux I was able to get him up in running in Mint. Linux Mint looks and acts very similar to Windows so I thought he'd be okay. It was a lot faster with more memory, more cores in the microprocessor and a solid state hard drive (ssd).

However, the system started to have intermittent problems booting up. I've occasionally seen older systems that don't like the new solid state drives and they act erratically. Fortune smiled upon us again as I obtained another Windows 7 system, cleaned it up and delivered it.

Now, my friend is no dummy. Yet, both the Linux and Windows 7 systems threw him. He knew how do all the basic stuff like opening programs and copy/pasting files but he was unfamiliar with the different looking (and occasionally acting) interfaces. I had to guide him through things I thought he should know and he said, "A wise man told me that if you want to really mess someone up, move everything around him one inch."

I thought a lot about that on my way home and realized that my knowledge/experience with computer systems was greater than I thought - probably greater than most people. In my time I've hacked away at the following systems/operating systems:

Commodore 64
MS DOS
MS Windows 3.1/3.11
Windows 95/98
Windows XP
Windows 7

I've done a little bit with Windows 10 but I hate it. But there's more:

Debian Linux
Ubuntu Linux
Xubuntu Linux
Ubuntu Studio
Linux Mint
Puppy Linux

Mac OS X

and recently I've dipped my toe into Haiku OS which is based on the old BeOS.

Because I've puttered around with all these operating systems, I can usually work my way around them all. Sometime not very well at first... like a screwed up setting up some Windows shortcuts and accidentally created 700 shortcuts, but I figured out how to fix that pretty quickly. There's enough common to all the systems that I can do that but I've also had the experience (and time) to fuss with them until I had some idea what to do.

And no, I can't code to save my life. But put me behind almost any computer desktop system and I can work with in. I may use Google a lot for some things but I can do it. So I shouldn't blame my friend who's work with XP and only XP for over a decade for not picking up things quickly. Just moving from XP to Windows 7 I haven't moved everything an inch on him... but a foot.

Oh, for all my work and computers given to him, I've only asked for lunch, dinner and multiple cups of coffee.

-m

I slept in. I did laundry. Mopped the floors. Vacuumed. Pretty standard Saturday.

Tried out one of the latest nightly builds of Haiku (it's still in Beta). It was disappointing. Word processing, graphics creation and web browsing are all okay - sound and video programs.... need some work.

Discovered the kitchen sink was clogged. Removed trap and cleaned it out. Yuck. Discovered the trap seals were worm out by some nasty leaks. Ran with housemate to Home Depot at 7:15 at night to buy replacements. Replacement gave me attitude until I finally figured it out. Housemate was helpful holding light and keeping my spirits up. We letting the sink area dry before resuming operations. We're hoping there aren't other leaks because the pipes getting jostled.

I don't know if doing plumbing work on New Years Day is a sign of anything - I'm just glad we figured it out and didn't have to call the plumbers.

-m

If your Linux hard drive goes south, it's okay to temporarily grab another hard drive with Linux on it and just through it in the machine. It will basically work okay.

Just don't expect any *interesting* drivers you've installed will work. Or that the kernels will updated correctly. I spent a few hours fighting with the system trying to get it to work correctly, but no dice.

I didn't loose any data - just the capture system I had set up with an old, Epiphan VGA to USB adapter. It's outdated and the Linux drivers are supplied basically as is, but it was working until the hard drive threw a few sectors. Swapping in a different drive with the same OS but installed on a different system? Nope. Not going to work. There went a few hours of my life.

A complete reinstall of the OS, VGA2USB drivers, VLC and OBS for good measure and my capture machine was back up again.

I do have a back-up capture computer that's far older and crankier using the same OS... but I wanted to get my 4 core 8 gig system back up. I don't use it a lot; it's just nice to have.

To be honest, I could use a legit Windows 10 machine I *sorta* own with the Epiphan... but I prefer not use Windows if I can. Convictions make convicts and I spent some jail time fussing with my old Linux box. That's okay - lessons learned.

-m

Either the needle technology has come a long way over the years or I'm getting more use to getting shots.

Vaccination number 3 happened Friday after work.

It seemed to hit me pretty quickly with being tired and achy in general. I might have been briefly feverish overnight as I had weirder dreams. Beats going to the hospital!

I pulled out an ancient laptop and decided to install Haiku on it. For you non-geeks out there, Haiku is basically a fork of the Be OS. It's in Beta-Beta so I'm fairly hopeful it will be useful. The lappy is an HP Very Old with and AMD Sempron and maybe a gig of memory? It had a broken XP OS on it originally and I've installed various Linux distros on it. It seemed to install okay but after a reboot it got hung up on GRUB?

I'm wiping the disk with DBAN now. Almost any OS that's not Windows makes me smile so why not give it a spin.

I'm heading back to bed.

-m

Locally, people living on a certain street will hold a street wide garage sale. Not everyone who lives on the street will host it, but they tolerated it.

So it a couple of blocks you can hit a couple of dozen garage sales.

I can't resist.

Sometimes I score big. Not this year. 20 inch Dell flat screen monitor? I'll take that for 25 dollars. It was a little pricey but I could tell the owner was having a bad day. Attach cables and power up. Score!

24 inch LG flat screen TV? Antenna and HDMI input? No remote? I'll take that for 5 dollars. I know with some of these TVs you don't need a remote just to turn it on. Plug it in... no action. Hmmm. Check the power adapter... seems flaky. Check it in another outlet... and the TV comes to life! It *talks* to me!

A female voice says, "No signal." Well, yeah... I didn't attach an antenna.

Spooky.

Feeling around the sides and bottom I notice a tiny switch. Push it in... I get a menu! Wiggle the switch around and I get options! I turn down the spooky voice and change the input to HDMI. I attach my Blue Ray player and it works! Score!

I'll probably invest the 10-20 dollars on a 'universal' remote control for it but in the meantime I'm going to haul that puppy into work and attach it to my new Mac Air. I've got the Air attached to a 20 inch Dell monitor (they seem to be real common around here) via a HDMI to DVI adapter. We'll see how that works.

-m