Kavanagh-O'Connell
Occasionally up to date

Christmas Eve

We had a very nice evening with Ev and Arnie and the boys. All the cousins were more mirthful than this picture would lead you to believe...

SUSE Me

About a month ago I picked up a circa 2000 Pentium PC, without an operating system, for $26 (it was for a good cause.) I figured that at the very least I had an 80 G hard drive from the deal, and even better, I might have another computer for the kids to IM and Runsescape the evening away.

I loaded SUSE linux on it -- because it's free and I wanted to see how workable it is for a desktop. Installation was a snap (as easy, and faster, than the recent reinstall of Win XP I did) and the resulting system was pretty nice: OpenOffice is functional and familiar, and it easily meets my modest mail, browsing and light office-app requirements for not-work stuff. It auto-updates patches, has a really usable interface, and is mostly plug-play are far as peripherals. It took a bit of digging to get it to find and use the remote printer, but otherwise, it's been surprisingly smooth sailing.

Bottom line: I deeded to the kids my (very similar) Windows desktop and I'm keeping the linux box for myself. I don't have to hear the cries of "This is different than the one my brother/sister is using!" and I get a perfectly functional replacement for the price of a wireless network card. Sweet.

A month into daily use, the only thing I miss is easy Nikon RAW photo editing, and I haven't solved lack of access to the data from my old computer -- the disk is mounted, but access is denied, for now. Even when allowed, it will be read-only, because of Window's HPFS. OK, that's 1.75 things. I guess I have to dust off those old and never really robust unix skills.

Christmas, the Early Days

Last weekend, Kevin and Diane and Diane and Tom and Jeanne came to town for an early Christmas/Tom's 40th dinner. Yesterday - Tom's actual birthday - we found out he and Jeanne are engaged. Congratulations, you crazy kids.

Chris Whitley

This is pretty sad -- dead at 45.

Turkey Day

We braved the Wednesday traffic to spend Thanksgiving in Rochester, where we braved hot flaming death to enjoy deep fried turkey again this year. It even snowed a couple of inches for some nice winter visuals and a family snowball fight.