the girly who shall end all girls

i was always about to sit down and write here in May. oh well.

this morning i replaced the battery in this laptop. battery is working well.
( it was a little scary, and i may have broken the keyboard )

then i shoved a muffin in my face and went up to Fiber Fusion NW. they were in a much nicer building this year, more room and better ventilation. (they asked everyone to be masked and i only saw one person who wasn't.) it wasn't crowded, which was lovely for my comfort level but leaves me concerned for the event and the vendors. i came home with a bag full of fiber grown and/or dyed in the region. i am a sucker for farmers - i bought some discount brown Targhee wool just because the story charmed me:

these are four dollars. Pigpen kept slipping out of her coat. when we brought her in [for shearing] she looked like she was wearing a ghillie suit. nothing would get all the vm [vegetable matter] out.

i had enough of the show floor faster than intended, which was fine, since it left me time to pick up flowers for my balcony planters before i had to return the car. the nursery was a madhouse, but i found everything i was planning for: more verbena since the one from last year miraculously overwintered; alyssum for fill and the smell; calibrachoa to trail. on a whim i got a bright orange black-eyed susan vine in hopes that it will climb the railing. they're all planted now and i split the creeping jenny so there was some in both planters (we'll see if the one i moved takes).

we really need to class the internet as a utiity. home internet is down. C will take the service call tomorrow. it's killing me that i won't be involved.

• i set up pyenv and thought i was cool.
• i need to use IDLE for the beginning of the class and there was a package that was out of date.
• turns out getting that package is broken in Homebrew and in pyenv (literally for years). there are workarounds on github but i when i follow the steps exactly they don't work. (i am not alone in this.)
• spend over 90 minutes faffing around.
• uninstall all versions of python 3 and pyenv (possibly breaking a dependency in something else installed by Homebrew)
• install Python 3 from their website
• discover pyenv is still in my PATH
• remove pyenv from PATH
• i swear i saved that file why is this still stealing my command?
• remember that i have to restart the shell before that takes effect
• accept that i will be typing "python3" and "pip3" forever.

the Kuki Linux project is seeking designers and programmers based in the UK.

i think it was mrdorbin i told that i hadn't had much trouble with Vista and it seemed like the complaints were overwrought.

i was dead wrong.

( blah blah blah ginger )

between that and the hours of Windows update running since, i've spent the entire day dicking with this thing. i knew that i was going to break stuff, but that was the sorriest reinstall i've ever experienced.

one more firewall tweak, and then i'm logging out. and i'm not touching Vista again unless i need it for work.

i'm currently auditioning Linux distributions on a 64-bit PC. the livecds i have lined up are all based on Ubuntu and i feel like i should branch out.

knowing that:
i do not fear the command line but don't feel up to a Gentoo or Slackware level of tinkering
i do not need or desire a replication of the Windows UI experience

any distribution you recommend? (or unrecommend?)

the work stuff what ate my life is winding down a wee bit, just in time for mom and dad to arrive. i've missed writing here, and i hate how content-free 2009 has been. i will attempt to make May a month where i post more. not just more often, but with more substance.

- today (with five key minutes of consultation from an actual developer) i got my Omniture pilot project running. since yesterday i was told that the only person at my skill level who had tried it previously gave up, i am extra-pleased.

today i also had a mai-tai. and got doggy kisses. and walked barefoot on Alki.

- i haven't seen much of buhrger in this MTBWA, but any party where we all adjourn to the kitchen to play with non-Newtonian fluid is a success in my book.

-Norwescon was lovely, even though i didn't care about the writer GOH. i did have fun with friends, and good panels, and mimerki and i danced and danced. oh, and i bought a corset. i forgot to take a picture of me wearing it, but i swear that i will wear it more than just at con and therefore there will be pics and live sightings. we buy nice and spendy things to use them, dammit.

-kuki linux. i meant to wait until they had another rev or two under their belts, but then i accidentally zeroed Bianca's battery during the con which led to startup trouble and then i was thinking harder about how i should do a full backup to restore from and then i did and then what the hell if i don't like this distribution i can always roll back or try another one and okay the maintainer says one way to solve this issue is to edit grub...you know how it goes. it's slick and pretty nice and so far my only issue is that the Linpus i used to have had a circular scrolling gesture for the trackpad and i keep reaching for it. someone wrote the two finger gesture for Ubuntu, i bet i can look this up...

-i worked Saturday and Sunday this weekend. but i also had Norwegian pancake breakfast at Leif Erickson Lodge Saturday morning- a fundraiser for the Sons of Norway scholarship. Ballard is adorable and i love lingonberries. the lodge seems to be pretty modern but the walls have huge turn of the century paintings of Norwegian history. (no birthday party, so very tired.) and we made time on Sunday to get to the Friends of the Library booksale. i only bought 15 books this year only three of them were about linux and Sunday is half price day, so i got books and a burger and lemonade from the burger stand at the booksale and spent less than $15. hangar full of books is the reason a bunch of people come out and picnic on a beautiful day. i love this town.