Ubuntu to you, too!

As you can imagine, it can get lonely out in a mail truck by yourself for three or more hours at a time. What is The Mailman's solution to all this deafening solitude? Podcasts, people, podcasts! Near the top of his list is The Tech Guy with Leo Laporte. The Mailman and Leo go way back, all the way to our old house where we used to have cable and he could watch him on TV. I find his show about tech and helping people troubleshoot their techy problems enjoyable and entertaining. But The Mailman is way into it; he gets all the podcasts that come with it. Things like, This Week in Tech, This Week in Google, The Daily Giz Whiz, it just goes on like that. It is from somewhere in this realm that he learned the word "ubuntu".
Now, he already knew some other foreign words like Linux and Mozilla. Technically speaking, ubuntu is an ancient African word which means humanity to others, but technoligically speaking, it is an open source Linux operating system for desktops and laptops. Upon hearing this new word, The Mailman thought of our old, rather slow but quite reliable Dell Inspiron 1000 laptop. Like The Mailman and this Leo character, the laptop and I go way back.
Not quite as far back, but at least back to the time that it decided it didn't want to work anymore, right around a time when we didn't have money in the budget to replace it, and I spent several afternoons coaxing it back into utility with updates, defrags, disk sweeps, and whatever else it took to breathe life back into it. Eventually, it was replaced as the family computer by a new desktop, and the laptop was relegated to schoolwork for the kids and occasionally being pressed into service as a dvd player. Everyone seemed happy with this arrangement. Happy, that is, until ubuntu came along.
"What are you looking at?" I said one day to The Mailman as he sat at the computer. "Ubuntu", he said. Tempted to say bless you but suspcious already about what was coming next I said, "Oh, what's that?" An operating system, he said; we should put it on the laptop, he said. I'll order a disk from the Netherlands and create more postage, he said. When do you think it will come, he said. "Just when you've forgotten about it", came my standard reply to such questions.
Well, he must have forgotten about it on Wednesday, because that's when it came. Eagerly he opened it and looked it over as he waited for one of the children to bring him the laptop from its perch in the attic. With visions of sugarplums and a rocket-like ascent into the stratosphere of geekiness dancing in his head, the disk was slipped into the drive.
Were we through the looking glass? No, not yet. Not until the moment that I made the decision and said "Yeah, go ahead and install it over the Windows if you want." Or maybe it was the moment that ubuntu didn't install quite right on the laptop and he declared "I knew I should have gotten xubuntu instead. It's for older machines." Maybe it was when he spent 2 hours downloading xubuntu and burning it to a disc, or maybe it was when I spent half an hour installing xubuntu, or maybe when that didn't install right either...I'm not really sure anymore.
All I'm sure of is that the laptop needs me again. Can I bring it back one more time? We'll have to wait and see. Until then, I have at least learned two things. One, beware of husbands muttering strange words after listening to podcasts. Being alone in the hot sun inside of an aluminum can of a truck for hours and listening to geeky gurus can put crazy ideas into a person's head. And second, like Leo always says, before you do something to your computer, always back it up. Turns out, that's good advice.

April Showers in July

I would actually wish for April showers right now. We are on our second day of 100 degree temperatures here, with a couple more to come. No, the April Showers I am referring to is the latest Oddball Blanket I have contributed to. I knit the last section (the one at the top on the photo) and crocheted the border.

This blanket is actually April Showers II, the original one being knit last year. I did the last two sections (again, toward the top of the photo) and the border on that one as well.

I think that, looking at the two together, they came out pretty similar. The stitch patterns in this year's were all very vertical, suggesting falling rain. As always, it was a treat to be involved with these blankets and all the good ladies (and gents) of the Northeast regional group of Oddball Charity Knitters.

Postage Due

So, The Mailman is into self-preservation. I'm not talking about the wheat in the basement or the life hammer thing in the car, I mean postage. There are several ways this impacts our lives. Rule #1 is no electronic bill paying. Every month I write a pile of checks and stuff them into envelopes and put these pretty little stickers called "stamps" on them. Quaint, I know. I've written in the past about my Oddball Blankets and how I know he's calculated the amount of postage spent collectively on that project by all the knitters in all the groups in the US. We won't talk about the time one of my packages showed up on a UPS truck. He was not amused. And then there's his Swaptree. Swaptree is a site that facilitates trades of CD's, books, DVD's, and video games. I know he loves to get new CD's in the mail, but I think part of its appeal is the postage people spend on it.
Our most recent endeavor to Save the Mail is actually my fault. I was reading a magazine at the library called "Practical Homeschooling" and came across an article about a site called Postcrossing. This site gives you an address of a registered user somewhere in the world to send a postcard to. When they receive it and log it into the website, someone else is given your address, and you get a postcard from them. Now, Postal Preservation was not the first thing that came to mind. No, I am a mom, not a mailman. I thought of how wonderful it would be for the kids, how it would improve their writing skills, their penmanship, their geography, their understanding of different people and places and cultures. I pictured how we would track our sent and received postcards on the giant world map, the excitement every time a new one came. It was with all these lofty ideas swirling in my head that I showed the article to The Mailman and said breathlessly, "Read this!"
I watched anxiously as he read it and waited for his response. Yes, he agreed, it sounded like a good idea. So, once we registered and got our first address, all we need to do is find a postcard. Easy, right? No, not easy. I can't find a postcard anywhere. This has been incredibly frustrating as I have spent most of my holiday weekend searching out postcards in what seemed to me the most obvious places. Forget that the lady in Leipzig, Germany we are sending it to has requested postcards of libraries or reading related themes. I'd settle for any old postcard. On the way home from another fruitless search last night, I had a brainstorm...I wonder if you can get postcards made from your photos at Costco?
Yes, hooray, yes you can! For 69 pennies they will turn any photo you take into a postcard! My project has become fun once again. We will take a picture of the library in the town we live in and make a postcard. The children will indeed hone their writing, penmanship, and geography skills. We will generate postage, even international postage. What joy I have found thanks to two of my favorite places: the library and Costco.