It’s been a fixit day. It began early with Veloyce’s Jetta. I endeavored to change the spark plugs and the PCV valve. Neither is a simple, straightforward task on VWs. I had to make a tool to fish the plugs out of those deep wells once I got them threaded out. They all had a little oil on them, so the rubber keeper in the plug socket didn’t keep hold of them.
Then I decided it was time to cut some foliage growing over one of the trails I ride regularly. I should have added an ax to the tools I carried on my bike; there was the top of a very substantial dead tree poking out into the path. My little limb loppers aren’t up to cutting logs.
I tried riding the Midwest City SCIP Trails last week, but with all the heavy rain we’ve had, one of the main trails was blocked by a massive muddy bog. It would take something like a raft of big logs to make it passable, and I haven’t felt like doing something that big.
It used to be that getting a printer to work with Linux might take the software equivalent of heavy lifting, but these days all the major printer manufacturers make good, solid drivers for Linux. There’s really very little point in relying on the drivers that come bundled with your favorite Linux distro these days. Epson is probably the only one that makes it difficult, but if you search a little, there are a couple of solutions offered that seem to cover most of their stuff.
Of course, with Brother printers, they have a very nifty script that does it all for you, once you download the various packages. Once you get to the page that lists those packages, you need to open the download page in a separate tab for each one, because it won’t let you come back to it directly. The script requires running it on the command line; then again, so does a whole lot of Linux stuff. It was worth it, because I can now run the scanner over a wifi connection because the script commanded the printer to connect to the router and stay connected.
I noticed Linux does one thing very much better on this tower of mine. Under Windows, when the system went to sleep, it lost the connection to my file storage on the router. It required a reboot to get it back. Under Linux, I just have to log in again and it works fine.
It’s almost time to celebrate the New Moon again; should be tomorrow sometime. Part of the idea is that important big things should be started on or near the New Moon.
Maybe related to your moon comment: noticed today, traffic wise, there was a little more aggression than usual. Lots of horn blowing and yelling, two accidents on my way home. There could be lots of reasons for that…drivers being lazy or absentminded, or sipping the sauce too early in the day, but what could be causing an increase in that?
Going to be clear tonight here. Maybe I will enjoy some back porch time.
I think it depends on peoples’ attitude to life in general whether the moon blesses them or curses them.