So a lot, and I mean, A LOT has happened in the past year. I've gotten a job, lost a good bit of weight thanks to the job, got hooked onto a game called Minecraft, finally got around to getting my drivers permit at the age of 19, gotten hooked onto mechanical keyboards, and a bunch of computer upgrades! Of course the computer upgrades are always fun.

So I guess to start off, I got a job at UPS over peak season, starting out on the Ramp as thats where they needed people during peak. That was fine up until they hired me on after peak, at which point they would have required me to have my license, which, at the time, I did not have, so they instead move me into the hub in Small Sort. BUt, having that job during peak had allowed me to do a a few upgrades to my PC. I had upgraded to a Phenom II x4 925, an ATI Radeon HD5750, and also got a new 520W Seasonic Power Supply.

I might as well go into some of the other upgrades I've gotten throughout the past year as well. I've finally gone to 8GB of Kingston RAM. Was going to go for 8GB of Patriot, but, I couldn't find a single matching kit to what I had, so I said hell with it and sold the 4GB kit I had, and bought an 8GB kit of Kingston. I also got myself a 1TB Hitachi hard drive to go along with the 500GB WD Caviar Black that is in my system, because I felt like I needed to get more storage. I replaced the optical drive due to that was giving me issues, had to replace both my 120mm case fans, and I am now buying a new case in the upcoming week so I could throw a larger CPU cooler into my system.

Now onto the subject of Mechanical keyboards. After having played with a mechanical keyboard somewhere, I really enjoyed the feeling of typing on one so I decided to start looking for an IBM Model M. First off I ordered a Model M off of eBay, with the seller neglecting to tell in the description that it was the rubber dome version of it, but that was still a strong keyboard.Then in March I went to a Hamfest in Southern Kentucky with one of my friends, and out of the corner of my eye at one of the booths I had seen two IBM Model Ms. They were the Silver Square logo Model M's, with no indicator LEDs, both manufactured in early 1986. I have been using them since I have gotten them and they are amazing to type on. Since then I have also acquired a Dell AT101W, which uses Black Alp Sliders, which aren't as tactile, but nice as a backup keyboard.

I guess thats enough rambling on for now, isn't it? I'll probably be posting more, especially now that I got around to updating WordPress. OH! I also do plan on getting a new computer case at some point soon, so expect to see pictures of a new case up soon, PLUS a review of it. Probably sometime not this week, but next week as I can't order one till Friday. Thanks for reading, if anybody even bothers to check anymore.

- Tyler J. Brown (Condoulo)

I'm gonna be honest, because I've been kinda put in a spot, I don't have anything to really blog about today. I'm actually writing this right before I head off to bed because I really need to fix my sleep schedule so I'm not sleeping the entire day away.

However, I am pretty excited for tomorrow. Tomorrow will be the release of OpenSUSE 11.3 which I have been waiting to try for a little while now. I've been really trying to find a Linux distribution that has a really good implementation of KDE while still providing a few other great features as well. I'll be sure to talk about my experiences w/ OpenSUSE on Friday.

Anyway, thanks for putting up w/ the lack of posts this week or late posts this week, check back Friday for another post, and please subscribe.

Also, just before I forget:

Is there any reason you give other Linux distributions a try, is it because you like to distro-hop or are you trying to look for something Unique or Specific? Answer in the comment.

- Tyler J. Brown (Condoulo).

The post is brought to you by lekhonee v0.7

Another thing I was thinking of is maybe have a different type of content for each of one of those days? Maybe a software review on one of those days, a News roundup on another day (probably Friday), and even a Linux distro review on another?

However, what I'm also looking for is Feedback. What I'm wanting to know is what do you want to see on this blog? Software reviews, Linux Distro reviews, more news, more personal stuff (although I think personal blogs won't follow any schedule, and will be posted just whenever), more videos, etc? Please leave comments on this post to let me know. Because lately I've definitely felt more motivated to start getting stuff setup on this blog and creating more content.

What I would also like some feedback on, is possibly getting a new theme for this blog, as well as what would you like to see on this site in general?

So again, thanks for reading, subscribe for more upcoming content, a new post coming this Wednesday, and PLEASE leave some feedback in the comment sections. I'd like to see what you all think.

The post is brought to you by lekhonee v0.7

So in the past month I've probably used Ubuntu 10.04 95% of the time, and Windows Vista about 5% of the time. So, I'm definitely using Linux hell of a lot more than I have in the past, which is definitely a good thing! Yes, I have gotten used to the buttons being on the left side of the titlebar, and even Ubuntu's new Ambiance Theme (although I changed it to something else eventually anyway).

So, around a week and a half ago I decided to order a new 500GB HDD. I wasn't running dangerously low on space, but I figured I might as well order one just to have the extra space, have one nice really large drive, and for performance too (the 32MB of cache is pretty nice). The drive I ordered was a 500GB Western Digital Caviar Black. Absolutely amazing drive. Boots up into Ubuntu 10.04 much quicker than the 40GB I previous had Ubuntu on. And just to bring it, my previous drive configuration was 1x120GB for Vista, 1x80GB for Storage, and 1x40GB for Ubuntu 10.04. Now its 1x500GB for Ubuntu, 1x120GB for Vista, and 1x80GB for Storage. I'll include the unboxing video of the HDD below. I gave the 40GB SATA to my younger brother to use as an extra drive, which brings up the next topic.

My younger brother having had suffered 2 months on a A8N-SLI board (after trading motherboards with my other younger brother) which wouldn't work with his video card or Processor correctly (it detected his Socket 939 Athlon x2 as a Single Core), he finally got a new motherboard/CPU with 3GB of DDR2 RAM included. He's now finally able to use his 512MB 8600GT again, and his new CPU is an Athlon II x3 CPU at 2.7GHhz. Of course, because that boards only IDE channel would have been taken up by his Optical Drive, we had to order ANOTHER 500GB Western Digital Caviar Black drive. The pure fact that it was on sale AGAIN when we realized he needed another drive was some pretty good luck, otherwise we would have had to go with a 320GB or 250GB drive instead. But basically we set up a dual-boot on his system w/ XP and 7, plus a partition to store games. My youngest brother also got an upgrade out of this, including an upgrade to 2.5GB of RAM, Socket 939 Athlon x2 2.4GHz, and an extra 80GB IDE HDD.

Another thing I would like to mention is I have an extra Pentium D + a Board laying around I am actually considering doing something with. I just need to get a case, HDD, an optical drive for it (and maybe just a little bit more RAM). What I was thinking is I could possibly set that up to do videos on AND I will also probably use that as a machine to setup and do distribution testing and reviews on.

Anyway, I did mention I was getting used to Ubuntu's Ambiance Theme, well, thats when I decided to install the Elementary Theme Package, including The Elementary Modification of GNOME's File Manager Nautilus. I absolutely love this theme, and its actually going to be the Default theme of a Ubuntu-based distribution coming out called "Elementary OS". I think I might do a review on that in the future. That, along w/ Installing the AWN Dock, and using GNOME-DO, I can definitely say this UI is heck of a lot better than Window's UI.

So to continue on with my aimless rambling (is it really aimless?), while I kind of didn't go through with my blog every day in June, I definitely plan on doing more blog posts this month. I have been messing around with some pretty interesting software packages lately, mostly ones I found via Ubuntu's Software manager, that I would probably like to talk about, including an application I'm using to type this blog post in right now. So thats what I might focus my blog posts on in the next week, and I might even include videos. So, I would recommend keeping your eyes glued to this blog.

Anyway, thanks for reading this rambling blog post just updating a few things. Please subscribe to my Blog so you can keep on reading the next series of posts reviewing certain pieces of software, and I would definitely love some Constructive Feedback/Criticism in the comments section.

~ Tyler J. Brown

Well, as some of you may have known, I had gotten an MSDN account through another staff member when I was a staff member at McInTEC. After I had decided to leave in January, I lost my MSDN account too. No big deal, right? I saved my keys. That was all fine and dandy until just within the past week or so all my Windows 7 Ultimate Keys that I had, about 3, ended up getting blacklisted from Microsoft for no reason.

So why didn't I fight Microsoft to get my keys back? Well, for a couple reasons. First off, I got the MSDN account for free through that other staff member at McInTEC. No point in trying to get back keys that I didn't even pay for in the first part, even if they were legit in the first place. Secondly, I will be going to college this fall, and as a college student, I will either be able to get a huge discount on Windows 7, or the school that I plan on going to will offer a copy of Windows 7 Pro to their students via an MSDNAA account.

So anyway, now that I'm back on Vista, this time Vista Ultimate x64 (Thanks to a couple good friends! ),  I might as well talk about my experience a tiny bit. I will say one thing for sure, it isn't until you go back to using Windows Vista, that you start really noticing the small things in Windows 7 that you got really used to. For example, on Windows 7, I had gotten quite used to the superbar, especially how it grouped applications together, and how I could close a window just by clicking the scroll-wheel on my mouse. I had also gotten used to using Aero Peek to check my widgets, primarily using the keyboard shortcut Win+Space. Yeah, I know on Windows Vista it also brings the gadgets to the front, but it doesn't put them back in the background either. Those were just probably a few of the things I've kinda gotten used to again.

So, as usual when it comes to an OS reload, it'll probably take a couple weeks to a month to remember to reinstall everything that I use every now and then, but from the looks of it, everything is running alright, I am having no issues, etc. Enough about Vista though, I'm going to talk about Opera.

So about early March is when Opera 10.50 came out to the public as a final release, in time for the EU Mandated Browser Ballot Box Microsoft had to include in Windows 7 to be released, which is the reasoning they used as to why the Linux and OS X releases hadn't been released. Then about later that month Opera 10.51 was release, which fixed a few bugs, improved performance, etc. Anyway, when I did the reinstall of Vista, I decided that instead of installing Chrome first, I would instead give Opera a chance and use that as my primary browser for a little while.  So far its been a pretty interesting experiences, a few bumps here and there, but definitely I can say its a great browser.

To start off with, Opera 10.5x sports an amazing new UI, including support for Aero integration with Vista/7, as well as including integration into XP Luna, Zune, and Media Center themes, which is going above and beyond what Google has done for UI integration w/ Chrome on XP and what Mozilla has done with Firefox. Opera 10.5x also includes a new tab design, and has moved the entire menu bar over to one button on the top left corner, that sports a red background and a white Opera logo (you still do have the option to move the Menu bar back to normal).

Opera 10.51 UI for Vista/7

Enough about the UI, what about the speed, and its performance. Opera 10.5x is the first version of Opera that I've used that has had an amazingly fast JS rendering engine. Its about as fast as both Safari and Google Chrome's Javascript engines. Its loading of pages is also very very quick. Loading pages is also very very quick. In terms of resource usage, when using flash, it can be a bit of hog, but thats not very surprising. Flash by itself on browsers that take advantage of out of process flash is also very much a hog. Overall, performance for me has been very good, speed has been great, and most of my issues may have come from the websites themselves.

So despite the many great features I've found with Opera, it does have its own issues. Mostly with how certain websites act in it, including a few pages on Facebook, Google Reader, and including Geeks.pirillo.com. I'm not going to go more in-depth of other features, issues, etc. Because, its nearly 2 months after the original release of Opera 10.50, so theres probably already enough blog posts on it. Overall, I'm just going to say thats its been a great browser so far in the past few days, and I'm going to continue using it for a little while. Who knows, it may stay my default browser, or I might have to go back to Chrome. I'll update that for you all in a week.

Anyway, thanks for reading the first blog post in a couple months! Please subscribe to my blog by clicking the orange RSS icon if you want to see more content. I also appreciate comments, and CONSTRUCTIVE criticism on my writing.

- Tyler Brown

I was just randomly thinking, the first month of the year is already over, of the new decade too. Its real hard to believe how much has changed just in the past month in terms of what I do online, and how I do things. I'm also thinking of the changes that will be occurring in the next 11 months as well.

So, lets just start off with the changes that have occurred in just the past month, which has gone by way too fast. To start off, the Downstairs furnace we had failed. Since then we've been trying heat at least the main areas of the main floor with 3 to 4 different space heaters, which has been a real pain due to the Harsh winter we've been experiencing in the past month (with a nice little break of warm weather in between).

I also decided to take a leave from McInTEC at the beginning of the month, and pretty much had decided to leave at this point. I guess this is my official announcement on my blog of me leaving McInTEC? I won't go into the detail for the reasons why, but, I just felt things weren't really the same anymore. Just didn't feel like a "community" as it used to.

In the past month I've also been trying to bring a few people together to come up with ideas for a community project. In the end we decided to work with Dallin on creating a part of GeekLoop focused around the community. Theres more information here. If you want to do more to help, stop by #GeekLoop on GeekShed.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I have finally gotten a dual monitor setup! I absolutely love the fact that I can do so much more with a dual monitor setup, and I don't think I'll go back to a single-monitor setup, at all.

So with the first month of 2010 nearly gone, what changes lie ahead? Well, I plan on getting my A+ certification in the next couple weeks! On February 5th Portfolios are due, and February 12th marks the end of the Second trimester of my Senior Year. On the 26th of March I will be turning 18, which will definitely open up a lot of opportunities for me. And of course, in May in graduation and I hope to get a job in late May or early June.

I guess when I try to do posts I don't do many personal blog posts, but I really think I should plan on doing more personal posts in the future. I guess its just something I really ought to do. However, I also should start doing more technology posts and opinion posts as well, just to keep things interesting. Got any suggestions on what I should possibly do a video or blog post on? Leave a comment below and I'll see what I can do. Anyway, thanks for reading.

- Tyler

P.S. Just a little extra edit before I publish this, I would like to encourage you all to check out Constant-Hosting if you need a host for your web site, blog, or whatever!

My view? I think we should do something we haven't done in a long time, actually follow the wishes of our forefathers, and follow the constitution that they have actually written.

I would like to live in a country where the media isn't controlled by corporations or the two major parties, but by the people. We have this illusion that we have control, but we truly don't. Only place we do have freedom to express our true opinions anymore is online, but how long is that going to last? The stimulus package almost passed with a section giving ISPs exclusive rights to do more in-depth spying on the American people, luckily that part was removed.

The root of our economic problem. The problem is our current tax and currency system. There is nothing Federal about the Federal Reserve, and Ben Bernanke and previously Alan Greenspan have had more control than Clinton, Bush, and now Obama has and will ever have when it comes to the economy. Basically because one, its not truly controlled by the government (actually, the Federal Reserve controls the government and the two major parties), and secondly, they can print money at the whim. There used to be a point where our money was backed by something, and had real value to it. Then FDR destroyed that and took us off of gold. (Obama, btw, is reminding me a lot of FDR, and that scares me in a way).

We've been stuck with a private bank controlling our currency since 1913. I will never forgive Woodrow Wilson for that. Then came income tax, though most people at the time didn't have to pay it because they didn't work for the government/weren't part of an entitlement program, that was soon fixed by creating Social Security. You can opt to get out of Social security, but than you are stuck with a Tax payers card, but thats too much hassle. I mean if we cut government spending and all of these programs that just don't work, or, just plain illegal according to the constitution because some are powers supposed to be reserved to states. Then you've got the issue that, the IRS isn't even a true governmental organization, or that amendment 16 was it, never was truly ratified. So we are basically paying an illegal income tax, which the founding fathers never wished to have. Originally, in the Constitution, it said that the Government could not tax a mans fair days wage. I think we should replace it with possibly a National Sales tax, something that isn't too high, and reflects the different levels of consumers. Those that have more money tend to buy more, and throw more of their money around, and those that have less, tend to buy less. If that trend keeps true, people may pay a more fair percentage of tax, we'd be able to fund the government, and with such a tax reform, we may actually allow the government to actually control the taxes. (you may have a couple variations here and there, but for the most part, those that have more money tend to more recklessly spend their money. Plus, it'd be much harder to get around a national sales tax when you buy retail.)

I also believe, as Ron Paul says, we shouldn't be the police of the world. Obama wants to pull us out of Iraq, ok, but he still wants us to go into Afghanistan. Also, what about the 100 other countries we almost basically have no purpose of being in. World War II ended in 1945, its 2009, we still have troops in Japan, is Obama going to do anything about that? I also very heavily agree that we shouldn't be working on our offense, but more or less on our defense. Though, we also have to remember to not cross the line from freedom to tyranny. I mean for example, the Patriot Act basically gave the government the right to tap our calls, read our e-mails, etc, etc, and for what, security? I mean sure, we haven't had an attack since 2001, but we trade freedom for security? I mean wouldn't a better security measure be just get the hell out of the Middle East, the rest of the world, and stop intervening with the rest of the worlds business. They aren't mad at us for being "free", they're mad at us for trying to control them. More of it was just going to be added to the Stimulus package. Up until just recently, there are a part in there that would have given ISPs full authority to spy on our data pretty much.

When it comes to abortion, I do agree with you that the argument that is religious backed is basically not valid. Though, I think it should be regulated. I mean somebody that is constantly working at a whore-house shouldn't be getting 5-10 abortions a year (though I do guess they contribute to stem-cell research.) Though, if you feel you aren't ready to be a parent, or some other valid reason to get one, than why should I care?

As far as Gun ownship, there are some points I agree with you on, and don't. I agree that we shouldn't own these powerful weapons that should be only for military use, and I also agree we should be able to own rifles, hand-guns, etc. For our own defense, or for hunting if one pleases to do so.

I half-agree with you on the driving issue. I think once you hit a certain age, you should have your health tests, eyesight, etc. to see if you are fit for driving, though, not ban all of it alltogether. Though, I see where you're coming from when it comes to the whole deal with Accidents. As far as getting a license taken away after an accident, in a lot of locations thats already happening, and they are making rules for teens stricter (hence why I'm waiting till I'm 18 to get my license. probably learn from my Dad), though yes, they can probably get even stricter. Hell, here in KY, if you don't keep grades up, you don't drive.

(I know I'm doing these out of order, so deal with me)

As far as legalizing pot, I totally agree with you, and I do agree with you on the driving issue. Though it'd be hard to determine sometimes without testing their breath of something. One odd thing about marijuana use is that it effects different people in different ways. Its not gonna be the same for everybody. Some people may smoke pot and be as you described, impaired thinking, etc, as if they are somewhat drunk, and other people may smoke the stuff, and may be as alert as ever.

I also agree that we are not a Christian Nation. I'm agnostic/verge of being atheist. (I'm still trying to stick under the belief of you can't prove it either way to screw it), but, yeah. I mean we were founded on the principles of religious freedoms. Problem is, religion in some areas ended up getting as bad, and as intolerant as it was back in Europe to cause them to come here. I have this belief that those that wrote the constitution, weren't that religious. I think some of them knew more than most people even know today.

Now, what about nationalizing some things? I don't really agree with that completely, though I think regulation could do a lot to improve the situation than nationalizing certain things would, primarily because of cost. Healthcare is the biggie. I mean we're already in debt, the IRS gets away with taking most of the tax money which doesn't even make it to the government, how are we going to pay for it? (Maybe the National Sales tax could help since its harder to avoid, and couple provide more than enough to pay for government functions if we cut all the crap we don't need/is illegal). Though, one thing I do believe the US government should take into their hands, and at least heavily regulate, and modify, is our energy grid. I mean, being from the state of Kentucky, we have coal mines, use coal power plants, all that stuff. You'd expect us to have some of the cheapest power bills in the country as we have some of the cheapest cigarette prices. Wrong. The state is really making no money from it, the power companies are basically paying politicians to shut up, LG&E (Louisville Gas and Electric) is owned by some company in Germany, which doesn't even really make any sense. I think what we need to do to our power infrastructure, is basically put solar panels in the Mojave (with improved solar panel tech of course), and Wind turbines in the mid-west, and we could power the whole nation. In great numbers, and creating the jobs for maintenance (which won't even cost that much, especially for solar), the whole Nation has greener energy, cleaner air, and people in the mid-west and Southwest have more jobs. I mean even Obama (one of the few things I actually agree with him on) realizes we have these untapped resources we need to get into.

Cleaning the air up, brings me onto my next point, the auto industry. The problem right now, is both parties are heavily influenced by the auto industry, and there are actually restrictions which only keeps innovation within the big three. Not to mention all the good battery technology, and alternatives which could replace our entire fuel infrastructure within a few years if we wanted to, is owned by the big three and the oil companies. If the government could only crack down on this, and then lift the restrictions that could allow more individual innovation in the auto industry, we could quickly transition to electric cars, hydrogen fuel cell cars, and many other alternatives. I don't believe we should switch to diesel because despite there being Biodiesel, and it having better MPG and such, its not a completely clean source, and still contributes to dirty air.

The primary reasons I have for supporting the two would be for cheaper power bills for one, cleaner air to breath, and more economic freedom in the auto industry.

Thats basically what I think should be done about some of the problems we face Today, and what the causes are, and what we should do to fix/get rid of those causes.

~ Tyler Brown (AKA, Condoulo)