Saturday, March 29, 2008

More ScribeFire Stuff...

It seems that ScribeFire slows down my browser when opening an new page. I tried to combat the effect last week by various tweaks to Firefox and disabling of IPV6. All the tweaks seemed to help a little bit, but still I had sluggish loading of web pages. Finally I turned off the ScribeFire add-on and my browsing speed was back to normal.

Today I decided to blog and turned the extension back on again. I was notified of updates for ScribeFire so I've just now installed the update. Instantly I have noticed that now the spell checker seems to work properly. It worked before but it was buggy in that when a menu was activated you couldn't select the properly suggested word unless you moved the mouse cursor off the menu and sneaked up on the correct / suggested word from the side. It sounds crazy I know, but that's what it required. Now it works perfect.

I'll be leaving the extension enable for a while to see if the browsing speed is once again reduced or not. I'll update this entry once I've made a determination of the results.

Well that didn't take long to determine. Speed is much reduced with this add-on enabled. I will only enable this add-on when I plan to make blog entries. Too sad...

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Exciting evening to wrap up easter

Today was eventful. I have a new neighbor who is preparing to move in across the street. He has spent the past 2 weeks really fixing up the house and cleaning out the mess of a yard the previous dweller left. It turns out that the mess wasn't caused by the previous dweller but rather their next door neighbor Tim.

Tim is kind of a crazy, alcoholic, pill popping crack head. He has been throwing garbage and debris in the yard of the "soon to be" neighbor. Well the new guy has been cleaning out the property for about 12 hours today, and even cleaned up crack-head's property line too. Then he knocked off from the task about 5:30 PM and left for the day.

At about 7:20 PM I was standing in my kitchen and looked out the window. I saw crack-head had returned home in his usual drunken and altered state of mind. I watched him as he stomped around in his yard waiving his arms about and pointing at the cleaned property line. The next thing I saw was crack-head got into his red Ford F-150 and plowed across the property line, ramming the neighbors wood pile (freshly purchased lumber for a new privacy fence) and smashing it to bits, before ripping and spinning the tires across the property and departing. Then I noticed that the new neighbor's front door was no longer there. It seems that the crack-head kicked in the front door and damaged the inside walls as well.

I contacted the new neighbor by telephone and got him and the police out there. I gave a statement to the police and now we're just waiting to see what drama will unfold next.

HAPPY EASTER...

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Easter Weekend

This has been a busy but productive weekend. We finally cleaned up the leaves from the front yard. 90 bags worth. I got my hair cut. I bought my wife a new bicycle at Wal-Mart. I made some custom shelving for the bathroom (the one in the master bedroom). Everything there is now painted bright white and looks really nice. Joy's very happy and now I get to rest. That's about it for now. We are planing to have a baked ham tomorrow by the way.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Cat Gone Missing!!! She's BACK!!!

Our cat took off for a couple of days and everyone has been looking for her. I was starting to get really worried. Phew! then "Muffin" just showed up on her own tonight thank God. I'll probably get a good nights sleep after all.

Monday, March 17, 2008

FireFox Tweaks

My web browsing has been running slow lately due to some changes made by Roadrunner in their page redirection and filtering service. Probably some other settings too but I don't know off hand unless it's related to IPV6 implementation....

Anywho.... I did some tweaks to the Firefox settings using the ABOUT:CONFIG process. I found the tweaks here at Ubuntu Geek so far it seems to have made my pages load a little faster and snap onto the screen rather than slowly filling the page. Check out the tweaks, especially disabling the IPV6. I think this is the one that put the pep back into my browser.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

ScribeFire

Okay, I've installed ScribeFire (a Firefox Browser Extension) and I'm testing for my Blogging needs. It looks pretty sophisticated and I like it so far.

Now I've installed ScribeFire (a Firefox Browser Extension) and I'm testing for my Blogging needs. It looks pretty sophisticated and I like it so far.

WOW! This thing is the BOMB!!! I've found my Blogging tool. I'm done for now and unless I have some problems of some kind, ScribeFire gets 2 Thumbs Up!!!

Blogger Tool Update

It looks like there is no really exceptional tool for posting directly to Blogger.com. I tried a tool called BloGTK that LOOKED exactly like what I wanted. The only problem is that it doesn't connect to the blogsite. It asks for the URL and I input http://www.blogger.com but it won't connect. After trying several times with different settings the application won't even launch anymore. Reinstalling it does no good either. Only after I search the entire HD to find every mention of BloGTK and delete it, will a fresh install cause the application to launch again.


My only complaint about the current tool I'm using is that entering text into the Title section does not enter it into the actual Blog entry title. Instead it's just some text heading of the same size as the regular text. For that reason alone, I'm forced to actually log into the website and move the text into the blog editor section marked Title. Then the font is much larger and a different color. It also them becomes a hyperlink to the actual HTML page where the entry is stored.

Mother-In-Law

UPDATE: 12:25 AM

Joy and Daniel are home now so they had a safe trip. I talked to Joy's sister Janet and brought her up to speed with the situation. All that can be done for the day is done, and we're turning in for the night. Sleep? We'll see, but it probably won't be a restful night in this family.

UPDATE: 9:03 PM

Joy called again. She's on her way home. She advises that her mother (Betty) is resting and will have an MRI in the morning. Joy has a lab test in the morning and doesn't want to miss that. We plan to go back to Raleigh next weekend to check on her.

UPDATE: 8:30 PM

Joy just called me and said her mother is out of danger for now and resting in the hospital. The medical staff thinks she had a seizure instead of a stroke. That's good news for the moment, but testing has to be performed to determine the cause.

BAD NEWS:

Joy (My wife) got a call from her Step-Father today and she is headed out of town right now. It seems that her mother is en route to the hospital ER due to probable stroke. She left in a hurry and I'm worried about the situation right now. I couldn't go with her due to work but she took one of the boys with her. I'm hoping to hear from her soon.

New ATI Video Driver

So ATI finally came out with an updated video driver for all my ATI cards. I downloaded the Envy installer program and updated my Ubuntu 7.10 systems to the new 8.3 driver.


Now I have desktop effects and everything is just great. It doesn't slow the system at all when desktop effects are running. I get the same FPS in glxgears weather it's turned on or not. I'm really starting to like my ATI video cards again.