A bunch of useless crap
Published on June 19, 2010 By MasonM In Blogging

In Miles City. MT tonight. On my way to Seattle. The wind was terrible today and made for a very tiring drive. I called it a day here after fighting those high winds all day.

Last night I stopped in North Dakota and spent a little time at a pub I hadn't visited before. It was a good/bad experience. The good was a fellow came in smoking some cherry blend in a cob and we talked pipes, the bad was that when I went to the restroom someone stole five dollars from the money I had left in the bar. I would have happily snapped his or her neck if I had known who it was. I hate a damn thief.

I don't know about you but I just can't abide a thief. I feel the same way about a liar too.

I am on my way to Seattle with an over-size load, a fire truck, that I will deliver to the port in Seattle. From there it will take a boat ride to Anchorage and then another truck ride up to Whitehorse in the Northwest territory of Canada.

After checking in to the motel in Miles City I spent three hours and several pipe-fulls of tobacco installing Windows 7 on a partition of the hard drive of my laptop. Talk about frustrating!

The actual OS install took less than an hour, the rest was spent hunting down hardware drivers. The sound card, which works perfectly in a Linux install, was the most annoying. It took me over an hour to hunt down and install the correct (digitally signed) driver to make the sound work. Very, very annoying.

Now I remember why I prefer Linux over Bill Gates' mud pit of an OS.

I am now enjoying some Sherlock Holmes in a Peterson Bulldog and when it's finished (as well as the 6 pack I bought next door) I'll hit the sack. It's been a challenging and interesting evening and I spent a portion of it at the local watering hole in conversation with some of the local folken.

There are interesting people anywhere you go if you care to take the time to seek them out. Some of them can be, well, more than interesting, and others are just annoying. But they pass the time either way.

Ah well, at least the bartender remembered me.


Comments
on Jun 19, 2010

Oh, good to "see" you posting tonight.  There have been horrible winds in a lot of places I know.  Sorry you had to enjoy that too.   Hope you are happy with the Windows install.  I have not used Windows for a couple of years now.   I don't miss it.  

Stay safe and I will hope for you that you always find peeps you really enjoy talking to!  Not just to pass the time.

 

j

on Jun 19, 2010

notronaj
Oh, good to "see" you posting tonight.  There have been horrible winds in a lot of places I know.  Sorry you had to enjoy that too.   Hope you are happy with the Windows install.  I have not used Windows for a couple of years now.   I don't miss it.  

Stay safe and I will hope for you that you always find peeps you really enjoy talking to!  Not just to pass the time.

 

j

Thanks. The Windows thing is as much an experiment as anything. I'm a Linux user and Slackware Linux will likely always be my primary OS.

 

on Jun 21, 2010

Thanks. The Windows thing is as much an experiment as anything. I'm a Linux user and Slackware Linux will likely always be my primary OS.

I figured you were installing it because of some of the apps you have to run.  Billy gets you one way or the other.

I found out about drivers trying to do a clean install on an HP laptop as well.  I found them all, but I would have thought that windows supported them out of the box considering it was a 3 year old laptop.  Never believe the hype from Redmond!

on Jun 21, 2010

Dr Guy

Thanks. The Windows thing is as much an experiment as anything. I'm a Linux user and Slackware Linux will likely always be my primary OS.
I figured you were installing it because of some of the apps you have to run.  Billy gets you one way or the other.

Well, Linux hardware support is a problem with many of the hardware vendors. I have a Kodak all in one printer/scanner/copier in the truck and I can make it work in Linux but in Windows I get better results as Kodak doesn't provide a Linux driver.

I found out about drivers trying to do a clean install on an HP laptop as well.  I found them all, but I would have thought that windows supported them out of the box considering it was a 3 year old laptop.  Never believe the hype from Redmond!

Yeah, M$ relies on everyone else to provide the drivers so they don't need to bother.