Todavía buena vista

Hacen uno años escribí de mi vista de aguila 20/10 después de muchos años usando la PC para todo. Bueno, fui a un oculista otra vez y mi vista aún sigue igual en el 2013.

Claro, ahora me cuido más tomando muchos descansos gracias a workrave. Tampoco dejo de comer zanahorias, que son muy importantes para la vista.

Linux adoption improves computing quality

During my years as a junior sysadmin, I quickly realized the importance of a good night sleep. Many, many sleepless nights taught me the importance of having a stable environment to avoid spurious problems i.e. preventable failures.

The first sign of this was when I started converting my friends and family computers from other popular operating systems to Linux. The number of calls I used to receive for various issues went from 10 or so a week to 0 as more and more made the switch.

This graph shows an inversely proportional relationship between the use of Linux and support phone calls

Typically the conversions followed this line:
Person A: "my computer is slow. Can you please help me, I have such and such big project to finish by XYZ date."
Me: "okay, I'll be there this weekend" (or that same day depending on my availability)

I'd then proceed to take my usual toolkit of software, spend countless hours fixing malware issues and other nasty problems. And eventually, as the same problem recurred, suggested switching to Ubuntu Linux.

Initially the switch caused people to be a bit off their ground, since they had years used to familiar interfaces and sets of menus for programs that they needed for their daily work or school projects; but the learning curve quickly subsided as they approach the new operating systems with patience.

In the end, about 1% of the people converted requested to go back to their other operating system. I have to admit that it was a bit discouraging for me, but I needed to understand their need and respect their preference. Those that continued with their new operating system called me back and constantly thanked me because I saved them time and a lot of money on technical support issues that they no longer needed to pay anybody for!

I knew that converting people to Linux would stop them from paying me, or others, for support. However, I valued my sleep more than money, and especially, I valued the truly thankful friends and family who would forever be grateful about their new toy.

Storing any document on iCloud

It turns out that you can store any document you like on iCloud by simply doing ...

1. setup the Mail app to store drafts online
2. pretend to send an email to yourself
3. attach whatever document under 10MB (encrypted obviously)

done!

Good, new year resolutions for 2013

Here are 3 New Year's resolutions to make 2013 count for you.

First resolution: use no credit

Essentially, all purchases must be backed by cash.

Second resolution: purge all online data

That means:

• all non-tax related data gets removed from your computers and other places online: Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, and other sites
• tell search engines to remove you. google yourself and simply ask google to remove everything you find
• use the "do not track" header in the browser

Third resolution: go vegetarian or eat less meat

(you saw that coming).

Your life will be much better. Trust us.

Reading Harry Potter while on death row

If like me, you're a Harry Potter fan who can't stop reading the books (read all 7 books 11 times), then you might get a kick of this article from the Onion. They always make us chuckle... JK might not be happy about it though :)