• I, personally, have never posted anything to Facebook that would incriminate me in any way.
• I haven’t posted anything that might cost me my job.
• I haven’t posted anything that might damage any of the relationships I have with friends and family.
• I haven’t posted any photos that would embarrass me, or anyone else for that matter.

So, why on earth would I be concerned with Facebook’s privacy issues?

First and foremost, Facebook’s business model is undergoing a fundamental shift. I ask you this question: Are you, as a Facebook user, one of Facebook’s customers? If you answered something along the lines of “Yes, of course Facebook’s users are their customers”, then this may come as a shock to you. Quite simply, you, as a user, are not Facebook’s customer. You, as a user, are Facebook’s PRODUCT that they sell to their REAL customers.

It comes down to one very simple concept: Data is king. Data is worth a boatload of cash.  Facebook has realized that there is a lot more money in aggregating data and selling it to others than there is in running a service that lets you keep in touch with your friends and family, and supporting it with targeted advertising.

I recognize how valuable this data can be, which brings me to my second major concern. There are lots of companies who have lots of data about us, but, there is a big difference between a company like Google and a company like Facebook, and that is the man at the helm. In my opinion, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to ethical behavior. Between the legal battle over who owned the original source code to Facebook, and more recently, accusations surrounding hacking email accounts to read other people’s email, I have decided that this is not a man who I want deciding who can do what with my data. If you haven’t read the book The Accidental Billionaires, you should.

My third concern is with the annoying behavior that Facebook has exhibited lately regarding privacy settings. When many of us created our Facebook accounts, we were under the impression that our accounts were private, or, at least, as private as we configured them to be. Even though I have my Facebook privacy settings locked down, Facebook has repeatedly added new features, and, by default, opted every subscriber’s account into an “open” setting. I have then had to manually go into my privacy settings and opt out of the new feature in order to protect my data.

I’m conflicted over this decision though, since I really do find value in Facebook. I am reluctant to leave because I have so many friends who use the service. I suppose, in a way, that should be one more reason to leave. I know, that probably sounds backwards. I have to wonder though, if I am having trouble leaving Facebook because so many of my friends use the service, it stands to reason that my friends would also think the same thing. By staying, I would continue to be part of the problem, by giving my friends one more reason to continue using the service.

I’m really leaning towards deleting my account, and I want everyone else to think about it to.

It’s been years now that I’ve known I’ve needed to make some changes, but I’ve always just thought about it and said “I wish”, as if change in my life was this unattainable thing.  Sure, there have been a few changes along the way, but not the ones I’ve been dreaming I could make.

I’m talking about changes in who I am.

I’m talking about changes in how I think.

I’m talking about changes in how I relate to others.

I’m talking about changes in how I view the world around me, and changes in how I perceive my place in the world.

It’s time for me to stop dreaming and start doing.

I discovered audio books this past year, and have enjoyed listening to audio books from Audible while commuting to and from work.  This gave me an idea!

I would like to produce a podcast of original short stories.

Here’s the catch: I have always been a facilitator.  I have the technical skills to produce the show, but I accept the fact that I don’t have the prolific creativity to produce enough content on my own.

Have you written any short stories?  Would you like to publish them online as an audio book?  Please let me know!!

I will be setting up a “studio” to produce the recordings.  Authors would always be welcome to read their own stories for the podcast, or I can voice the recordings myself in the studio.

Through Twitter, I have had the opportunity to interact with others in Delaware, and on Friday, met up with a few of them for lunch at El Vaquero.  It was great to finally meet in person and make some new friends.  I’m really looking forward to continuing to forge new relationships and expand my personal network within the local community.

I am also excited that I have been offered the chance to write for a new web site focusing on Delaware, Ohio.  Look for my first post over there soon!

It’s been too long since I’ve updated here.  I’m going to have to make some time to write more often.

I had the opportunity to help out with some of the promos for the show.  I recorded a handful of lines for Brian to use.  He mixes them and puts some music behind them, and in the end, they sound pretty good!

Promo number 1

Promo number 2

Doing a little bit of recording for Cave Radio has made me think about doing my own show again.  I’ve wanted to do a podcast of my own for a few years now but I haven’t been able to settle on a topic.

Flash drives are shipped pre-formatted using the FAT32 file system because FAT32 tends to be a universally supported format.  I tried to reformat the drive to the new exFAT filesystem (a new Windows file system optimized for flash drives).  The format failed.

As I tried to troubleshoot the issue, I realized that ReadyBoost wasn’t working right.  When restarting the computer, the system would hang on “logging out” until I ejected the card.  The card was quite unstable.  The file system kept becoming corrupt, requiring multiple attemps to reformat it.

I happened to notice some unknown devices in the device manager that hadn’t been there before.  A little while later, I inserted the card into the other card reader slot.  More unknown devices showed up, and the system told me that the hardware didn’t install properly again.   I realized I was on to something!

The card reader hardware wasn’t working properly because Windows 7 didn’t have the right driver included.  A little bit of diging and I came up with another idea.  Most computer manufacturers try to reduce costs whenever possible.  Just like car manufacurers, they reuse parts across different models when they can.

I couldn’t find a Vista/7 driver for the Acer Aspire One netbook that I have, but I was able to find a Vista driver for another acer model that I guessed was probably using the same card reader hardware.  My guess was right!

I found the driver that I needed for the built in Jmicron card reader on this page.

If you have an Acer Aspire One laptop and your card reader slots aren’t working right, grab that driver.  It should fix the problem, and allow you to use ReadyBoost too!

Load #1

When I wrote about my new truck a couple months ago, I mentioned always being on the lookout for a “score”.  Well, this one was a good one, and proves that it pays to knock on doors.

For the last month or so, I’ve been looking at this pile of wood that we pass every day going to and from work.  On Friday evening, we decided to stop and ask the owner of the house if he had any plans for it.  He told me that he did not and asked “Do you want it?  You can take all you want, ’cause I’d love to get it out of my yard.”

We made two trips Friday night and hauled two loads  home in the back of my pickup truck, but there was still a LOT more left.  Friday’s loads were the “small” stuff.  I had to work on Saturday and Sunday, so we were forced to wait until today to go back and get the rest.

I borrowed my dad’s trailer and heavy duty dolly so that Becky and I could load up the last of it.  There was no way that we were going to get the big stuff up into the bed of my pickup truck.  The trailer had a ramp on the back which made it possible to load what was left.

Load #3

Load #4

Load #5

All Done

As you can see, I still have a lot of work to do.  I’m running out of room in my driveway.  Not all of the wood in the picture came from this score.  If I had to guess, I’d say 75 % of it did.

Updates are released regularly for Kubuntu.  At the time I write this, there are no updates immediately available after installation, but as a little bit of time passes from the release date, it is very likely that as soon as the installation is finished, you will probably be prompted to apply updates.  Go ahead and allow the system to download and install all available updates before proceeding.

After finishing the installation, there are a number of software packages that I install to prepare my system for normal everyday use.  I prefer to use the apt-get command from the command line to install packages.  I find it to be much easier than trying to use the GUI based package manager.  The beauty of the package management system, called “apt”, in Kubuntu (and any of the ‘buntu’s for that mater) is that it handles dependencies for you.  Each package contains information for the system that tells it what other packages (if any) need to also be installed in order for it to function.  The system checks, and will download and install the appropriate packages if necessary.  Linux has come a long way.  This entire process was totally manual when I started using Slackware Linux in 1997.  The general term for it: “dependency hell”.  If you’re just getting into Linux now, be very thankful for apt.

Software packages are stored in repositories.  These repositories are hosted on the servers that apt connects to to download software.   There is a file called “sources.list” that apt uses to keep track of what repositories are available for it to download packages from.  There are a few repositories that I like to add right off the bat.  They will be needed to install the various packages that I will list later.  I usually edit sources.list directly, but for this post, I’ll provide instructions for using the graphical interface.

Click the K menu (similar to the start button in Windows), and select “system settings” from the favorites group.  Choose the option to “add or remove software”.  Choose “settings” and then “edit software sources”.  In the 3rd Party tab, check mark the check box for “http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty partner” to enable the partner repository.

We also need to add the Medibuntu repository.  It contains lots of goodies!  Click “Add” and paste the following line into the box:

deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ jaunty free non-free

Click OK and allow the system to update its package lists.  Go ahead and close the software sources dialog box and select the “software management” item.

You can type the names of packages into the search box to easily find packages to install.  The first package that we want to install is the medibuntu-keyring.  Installing this keyring will allow your system to trust packages from the Medibuntu repository.  Type “medibuntu-keyring” into the search field and press enter.  The system should find the package and show it in the box below the search field.  Click the plus sign at the right side of the package information box and then click the apply button at the bottom right hand corner of the window.  Although my system did not prompt me, i want to mention that you may be asked to accept this package even though it cannot be authenticated. This is normal, and exactly the reason that we need to install the keyring!

You can install multiple packages with the GUI installer by searching for each one, clicking the plus sign, and then continuing to search for more packages.  Pressing the apply button will install all of the newly selected packages.

I prefer to use the command line to install packages.  For me, it is faster than trying to navigate through the GUI.  I can understand how opening a terminal window and typing seemingly cryptic comands at the command prompt can seem a little daunting for computer users who have never used anything but a graphical user interface.  It really isn’t too bad though.

Click the K menu, and select the Applications group.  In the applications group, select the system menu item, and then scroll down to the icon for the terminal.  To add the terminal to your favorites group, right click on it and choose to add it to your favorites.

When you launch the terminal, you’ll be presented with a black box where you can type your commands.  A good first package to install is the Mozilla Firefox web browser.  Type or paste the following command at the command prompt and press enter:

sudo apt-get install firefox

To a first timer, that probably doesn’t make much sense, but it really is pretty simple.  The first part of the command, “sudo” tells the system to run the command (in this case apt-get) as the administrator user.  Installing new programs requires administrator privelages.

The next part is the actual command that you’re executing: apt-get.  The apt-get command tells the Apt package management system to get a package.  Pretty easy to remember.  Apt-get has a few options though, and needs to know what we want it to do.  Here, we have told it to install a package, and then specified which package we want installed.

The system will check the repositories for lists of packages, and find the one with the matching name, firefox.  The first time you use sudo in a terminal session, you will be prompted for your password.  Enter your password.  Next, apt will report the additional disk space required to install the requested package.  Type the letter “y” for yes, and press enter.  Apt will now download and install firefox.  When it is done, you can find firefox in the Internet menu in the Applications group.

There are many other packages that I install.  The most notible are:

• xchat – My IRC client of choise
• Adobe Flash-Plugin for Firefox
• Skype
• VLC – A great media player that will play almost anything
• K Screensavers
• Adobe Acrobat Reader
• GIMP (A graphics editing program)
• A core set of TrueType fonts found in Microsoft Windows
• Various multimedia codecs for video and audio files

One of the nice things about apt-get is that you can instruct it to get more than one package at a time in a single command.  When installing lots of packages, it’s much easier to use the command line instead of searching for each individual package using the graphical interface.

To make it easy on you, I have included the command here so that it simply needs to be copied and pasted into your command prompt.

sudo apt-get install xchat firefox adobe-flashplugin libk3b3-extracodecs libtunepimp5-mp3 libxine1-ffmpeg libdvdcss2 msttcorefonts sun-java6-fonts sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin unrar w32codecs gimp skype vlc mozilla-plugin-vlc acroread

There you have it!  Copy and paste that line into your fresh Kubuntu 9.04 install and let it Apt work its magic!  This command will not work for the 64-bit version of Kubuntu because some of the package names are different or do not exist.