Yeah, I haven't really been doing very much for the last few... months. (Except playing Gothador, of course.) I haven't been entirely unoccupied, however.

Recently, I have had the opportunity to hang out with a few of my friends. Right now, they are in need of computer help... something that I can do quite handily. (A lifetime of experience helps in this regard.) It has been fun, it gives me the opportunity to get out of the house, and allows me to get reacquainted with people who I haven't spoken to very much over the last few years.

Right now, the current dilemma is twofold: a dying Dell workstation and a dying Lexmark printer. The Dell suffers from a bit of Windoze brain-damage (it believes the processor is overheating). A quick bit of troubleshooting reveals -- nothing is obviously wrong. The computer won't boot up past the log-in screen because of the error, but nothing seems to be actually wrong.

The Lexmark printer is suffering from a loose paper-feed mechanism. This causes it to draw the paper into the printer unevenly... resulting in a nasty paper jam. Completely disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling the printer was quite difficult, but doable. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to fix the problem... and (unrelated) driver issues have made the beheamoth totally unusable.

My personal prejudice tells me that all of these problems are caused by Windows. (Besides the mechanical malfunction, of course.) I would like to take this opportunity to promote a usable, and inexpensive, alternative to Windows: Debian GNU/Linux. I have been using Debian for many years now, and have had longer uptimes and fewer crashes than I ever did with Windows. .

Finally, I would like to thank my friends, without whom my days would be much gloomier and boring. You bring a much-needed smile to my face, each and every day.