Shortly after reading the note about a VMWare image of the operating system for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), my curiosity got the best of me and I promptly started downloading it into my laptop (roughly 180 MB) and waited for my lunch break to give it a spin. ..image:: http://static.flickr.com/104/309721351_0013360a38.jpg :target: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25563799@N00/309721351/ The bootup process was very quick, even running on VMWare, and within a few seconds I was staring at the desktop.

The very first thing I do with a new laptop installation of Gnu/Linux is to install Network Manager (sudo aptitude install network-manager-gnome). Eventhough I have met people who have claimed to hate it to death, I still consider it to be the best invention since the invention of sliced bread! However, something very peculiar happens if you install it after you’ve already used your laptop to access a.. uhh… access point: the little Network Manager applet won’t detect the wireless device!

This X-Mas will be the first time I’ll have to travel to be with my parents. I have always lived close to them, but now that I’ve moved to North Carolina, we have members of the family spread across the East Coast. One thing we started doing these last 5 years was to shift from a everyone-buys-everyone-a-gift kind of X-Mas (very expensive if you have a lot of relatives), to a buy-something-simple-but-not-more-than-X-amount.

What is it? APTonCD is a tool with a graphical interface which allows you to create one or more CDs or DVDs (you choose the type of media) with all of the packages you’ve downloaded via APT-GET or APTITUDE, creating a removable repository that you can use on other computers. APTonCD will also allow you to automatically create media with all of your .deb packages located in one especific repository, so that you can install them into your computers without the need for an internet conection.

I finally caved in and gave beryl a try. After being literally bombarded with screenshots and videos os people doing some pretty cool stuff on their computers, I figured: “I have a pretty good system here… why not add some bling to it?” I followed my friend Hamacker's recipe (in portuguese, but there’s a good tutorial here in english) and was running beryl in no time! I must have spent at least 1 hour just tweaking all the possible configurations allowed!

Yesterday was my 6th wedding anniversary… Elizabeth and I lived together for almost 2 years first… to get to know each other… to experience what married life would be like before actually doing it. After only 3 months I just knew she was the one and I was destined to spend the rest of my life with her… grow old with her… The problem was that I didn’t make enough to support the both of us… so we lived together, sharing a 3 bedroom apartment with some folks…

The apartment is completely “packed” and what for the last 2 years had been my home has been reduced to a monotonous pile of small boxes. My internet is also down and I’m only able to post this last post due to a generous neighbor and his open wireless access. Tomorrow I’m loading the truck and will drive down to my new place early Friday morning. I confess I feel a bit emotional about leaving behind the friends, places, and things that shaped my life for the last 16 years… But the future looks very promising and I can’t wait for the day (which I’m sure will come very soon) I can finally go back to enjoying life and all the good things it has to offer us!