Just when things seem so paperparrent like my toothface? Like my out-do?

[reddragdiva]

It's been a busy few days — having the spare arse means I'm actually keeping track of much more.

On Monday I had a hospital appointment that was the culmination of two years' thrashing through the NHS looking for a solution to my snoring and sleep apnea. The suggested treatment is a mandibular advancement splint: something you put in your mouth when you sleep to push your jaw forward, thus keeping your tongue out of the back of your throat. They apparently work very nicely indeed. The problem is that they aren't on the NHS, being regarded as "experimental" (i.e., expensive), so the ticket price is £775. I've got a dentist's visit on the way, so after that I'll have a good think about whether this is not just a good idea, but that much of a good idea.

I had a job interview on Tuesday in a Debian shop. On the way home I bought an iron, an AA atlas of Britain (the 4 miles to an inch one) and a can of WD-40. And a pile of books from the Oxfam near St. James Street Station, which I highly recommend. redcountess loves the atlas and is planning our next year's worth of holidays.

Out to Borders on Tuesday evening with arkady, karen2205 and neonchameleon. On the way to Wagamama for dinner afterwards, my day was made by seeing a 'Merkin tourist with a "FREE KATIE" shirt.

Tuesday, Liz and I went down to the High Street for her to have an eye test. I got a fresh pack of daily contacts. The taxi driver was a man with a Hot Business Idea: an economically viable water purification system for Africa. He claims to have several current users in the UK already. It was obvious he tells everyone about it. Enthusiasm is nice to see. Liz also got her hair cut.

This evening, Arkady, Liz and I have been sitting around geeking and being very dull indeed. It's a fantastic lifestyle and I recommend it highly.

I'm trying to hook my Palm to the laptop. When you sync with GPilot, is there any way to get your data other than using Evolution? If I wanted an Outlook workalike, I'd use Windows.

Comments

[usufructer.livejournal.com]

I had a job interview on Tuesday in a Debian shop. On the way home I bought an iron, an AA atlas of Britain (the 4 miles to an inch one) and a can of WD-40.

Sounds like the setup for a joke. I can't think of a punchline, but I think it would involve a squeaky lost penguin.

(I'm en:User:Brockert, if it matters)

[greylock.livejournal.com]

Meant to mention, The Scientologists were on The Couch (http://www.westcotv.com.au/) (access 31) last night, talking about all the good work they did in Indonesia after the Tsunami, waving copies of Dianetics around and talking about how their "drug free, proven" technology was helping people deal with the grief.

[phelyan.livejournal.com]

Sounds like an interesting device. I have inherited both the snoring and very occasional apnea from my father, so I might be looking into that as well... um... once the price comes down.

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

You can back up/dump a Palm with coldsync or pilot-xfer (in the pilot-link package).

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Ubuntu comes with KPilot as well as GPilot; I know you were getting along fine with KPilot before - so if GPilot isn't working the way you want to, you can always get it to synch with KPilot instead?

[shamus9999.livejournal.com]

By the way, thanks to your posts I've taken a look at Ubuntu and will likely be installing it this weekend. Dual-boot with Windows though- I DJ on an Internet "radio station" and need my Winamp. If I can get that working under Ubuntu I'll likely be reformatting and reinstalling to become Microsoft free.

[reddragdiva]

There's not really a version of Winamp for Linux ;-) There's XMMS, but it's sorta crappy in many little ways. Don't forget to try the Ubuntu live CD first to make sure most of your hardware works properly, particularly on a laptop.

[shamus9999.livejournal.com]

I did that last night. That's why I plan to go ahead and install. The only thing it didn't detect was my PCMCIA Audigy 2 sound card, and I'm pretty sure I can get Ubuntu to play nice with it. Oh, and it kept insisting that the keyboard was either Hebrew or Turkish, though once it was running the keys worked fine in Anglais.

Doesn't Ubuntu come with a sort of Windows emulator? I was thinking of trying to get Winamp to work under it. Or do some research and find another media player that supports Shoutcast's DSP plug-in. Failing all that I can leave it dual-boot.

[reddragdiva]

There's WINE, which is perpetually alpha, although it's been getting much better since CodeWeavers started selling a commercial version, CrossOver Office, and contributing back most of their code. Or you could just buy CrossOver Office.

Having installed all package repositories, I see wine-20050310 in there. I'm installing it now and will see how stuff works under it ...

[reddragdiva]

In further happy news, http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?appId=5 suggests Winamp works pretty well. We'll see ...

[shamus9999.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course there's WINE. I've actually had fairly good luck with it in the past, getting MS apps to work. I just thought I saw something in Ubuntu's menus about running Windows apps and was set to try a different emulator just for fun. Of course I could have been hallucinating again.

I've not played with a *nix system for a long time (Mandrake 7, I believe it was). I'm looking forward to this.

[reddragdiva]

No, but there's a preference called "Windows" which is to set window behaviour under GNOME ;-)

I've just installed Wine. I'll see what I can get to run. It ran its own configurator okay!