“The RoseBouquet”

I told you last week that I was going to install this new linux operating system, called SuSE, on this computer, right? Well, I did. Fred phoned me from two time zones to the east several times through the day. I followed his directions, and although it took longer than I’d expected (I was able to do some ironing and house-cleaning and filing in the spells when I waited for his next call; plus make meals, etc.) by about mid-afternoon I was exploring what I have here.

(I must write an article describing this as a castle with many locked rooms; I had the idea for it over the weekend, but haven’t had time to write it yet).

In Mandrake only the black and white laserjet would work. I couldn’t get the colour HP psc 1350 to print. Now I’ve discovered that they need opposite print drivers. ptal and hpjoi cannot work in the same operating system. This time SUSE configured the colour printer first, so the laserjet got left behind.

However, that’s okay. It still works in my old PIII which has Windows 98 and can only take the parallel printer anyway. I use that one just for my genealogy on Saturday nights now.

Weak spots in SUSE so far. I haven’t figured out how to get the sound to work yet, and my email (sigh) I THOUGHT I had done faithful and good backups, but I discovered that only the mail that was in single level folders came through. The folders that had sub-folders are all empty!

On top of that, even though KMail seems to be nicer and jazzier than in Mandrake, and now comes in the Kontact suite with calendar, planner, etc. While I was trying to fix the installation of my backup emails from the other system, somehow something has gone fooey and it WILL not remember my settings for sending out email. If I close it and re-open KMail, it has forgotten the settings for all my addresses that I’ve entered, and I have to start all over again!

I’ve fussed and fiddled with this Saturday night, Sunday night, all day Monday, and all day Tuesday! I’ve read quite a lot of chapters in the SUSE manual and learned a number of other things, but I haven’t solved this one problem yet.

So, dear friends, YES, I have read your emails. I long to answer you, but aside from going to each address’s web-mail site, and answering you there, (which would be very tedious and slow, so I’m only doing it for very urgent matters) I can’t get to you just yet!

Believe me, I WILL answer as soon as I can, but I’m waiting to hear back from Fred and maybe some other savvy Linux/SUSE experts who can tell me how to fix this. At the moment, I’m stuck.

But know what?! I have this Bible verse written out on a slip of paper and I look at it a number of times throughout the day. It says; “The LORD your God is with you, He is mighty save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17 NIV)

So I figure, this is a learning crisis - not the end of the world. I will recover and be in full swing soon. Meantime, I’m chalking this week up to vacation time.

‘Course, next week is going to be vacation time too. I have two events in the city to attend, and on Thursday, we’re going to the airport to pick up my niece Jalise, and her 1 year old daughter Elise. I may or may not get around to writing a blog next week. I mention that just so you’ll understand.

For the time being, I rejoice that I can go online, post this, send off the ezine edition too, and carry on with my learning week.”

Can you help me to be patient?

Whew! I thought it would only take a couple of minutes to finish that sales and the download page. It has taken me a couple of hours! But it is done and ready for you. Feel free to pass this link on to others as well; Ruthes-SecretRoses.com/R/Heart2Heart.shtml

(If you forgot to get your free copy last week as I had suggested, for your memory, (Connie remembered!) you can still do that, but you’ll have to search the blog archives to find the instructions.

Sorry, no article this week. I haven’t had time to finish the one I started last week, and been too focused on settling into my SUSE estate. I won’t forget you though!

The school buses have just roared by. It’s the first day of school here in Hague. Maybe in your community too?

It doesn’t affect Dad and me personally, but it does whisk my mind back to my very first day of school. I don’t have space for the full story here, but you can read it on this page about how I .

learned to read
Dad decided last Thursday to have a garage sale. He complained that he didn’t know how, but he’d read in the paper that there were to be several multi-family garages in town over the weekend. I agreed that if he put up balloons, the garage salers would spot them, and he’d get “traffic” even without advertising.

It didn’t fit into my plans, so I let him go to it on his own. He mowed the lawn, as I’d suggested, pulled the car out and parked on the street, then swept the garage floor. He called me to help set up the heavy folding table of my sister’s that leans against the wall there. Then Dad began to bring out odds and ends, small motors, and screwdrivers that he thought he could give up. He really wanted most to sell his chipper/shredder, his red bike, and a wooden cart.

I brought up two boxes of kitchen ware that I’d set aside to dispose of when I cleaned out the storage/cold room a few weeks ago, and went back to my computer business.

Later Dad went downtown to buy some balloons. He wasn’t finished tying them to posts yet, when folks stopped by and asked, “you got a garage sale here?”

Despite the rain showers, and down-right chilly air, he sold some stuff on Thursday, more on Friday, and did better on Saturday when the sun came out. He did not sell his chipper/shredder, or the bike, nor the home-made cart, but he made 82.75 all by himself, and was satisfied.

We split the $5 we got when some people stopped Saturday afternoon, and asked if we had any garden produce to sell. We picked and dug up two shopping bags full for them.

Anyone else for some zucchini and cucumbers?

Yeah, I’ve had an almost normal work week here at the computer. I finished the ebook I was making for Joanne Lowe, (you’ll get the download link below), and have made some good progress on renovating the Arbour area of the site.

In fact, I learned of a public domain photo site, where I could download some lovely roses. I’ve resized them so I can scatter them in the left and right columns of my web pages. (Looking for photos you can use, even on a commercial site?
http://pdphoto.org/)

Which reminds me. I want to thank all those who were kind enough to let me know they enjoyed the photo story last week, of my cousin’s wedding. That makes me want to do more photo stories for you!

I should mention, since it might affect you, that I’ve made plans to install a new operating system on this computer this coming Saturday. Fred Miller, an expert in this, has offered to call me and walk me through the whole thing. It could take a few hours. But this SUSE 9.3 Professional will replace my current Mandrake 9.1 system (both Linux), and if all goes well, should have me sitting pretty!

But I’ve done enough Operating System installs, to know that some times things go “funny” and you are stuck trying to solve some problems before things go smoothly. Fred says it will be a piece of cake, but if you don’t hear from me for longer than you are used to, it may mean that I haven’t been able to transfer my emails and addresses into the new KMail in SUSE, or whatever. - Just hang tight. I WILL be back sooner or later!

P.S. Hey, I bet you didn’t know that in Indiana there’s a school board that is providing every school child with a computer with SUSE on it! In Europe and Asia, whole governments are switching their offices to Linux. Open Source software is getting to be the IN thing.