I am fixing up the Rackable Systems server and then going to sell it, if someone will buy it.

I have learned some of the BIOS settings for the Rackable Systems server now. The hard drives I have tried to use in it are former systems drives, so I can not get the BIOS to see them. I need to reformat them but have so far not found a way to do that. I might try with a Mac computer to do it. I have not been able to do the formatting with a Windows or a Linux PC. I did buy two used 160GB hard drives on eBay. I will put these drives in and then test an install but not install then try to sell this server for the cost I paid about 300$ now.

I have Google Wave as of today.

I have Google Wave as of today. Google Wave is another word of mouth distributed Google service. In other words, one user invites other users they know. Google Wave profiles imitate Facebook. The profiles are public to all of Google Wave. I am not sure I will fill in my profile. I often set rules in technology for myself and then later break them though.

I have been playing Eve Online for almost two years now.

I have been playing Eve Online for almost two years now. It occupies a lot of my time at home on the weekends and weeknights and over night. I play this game almost well enough now to play for free. I opened a second account after a little more than 1 year. I have kept a fan fiction blog of my main avatar's adventures. I have learned that, yes, other players cooperate in playing this game. I have also been learning to use Excel during this time period and this game has given me exercises to practice my spreadsheet work. Also I have developed an "in game" business plan that has worked. All in all, I have had some social time chatting with other players from the USA, Australia and Europe. I have even chatted in French a little.

I did try to buy an account on World of Warcraft but this did not work out and I did not yet try that game. I also considered buying a game console. I did not consider myself a computer gamer in the 1990's. In the 1980's almost all my computing was gaming computing because the Commadore computers I had seemed limited to that given my finances. I did complete some school exercises in GIS programming and Fortran 77 programming in the 1980's and these were not gaming. In the 1970's I also played some games. In the 1970's I worked in programming with Fortran IV and data entry on punched cards and even played with the cards making little hang gliders from the cards. I also did some other non-work exploring and gaming and mostly school programming on BASIC in mini computers with terminal access. I was able to design computer games and computer graphics in the 1970's and 1980's. So my connection with gaming now continues.

I actually did end up getting my Palm schedule into Outlook 2007 using Google Calendar Sync.

Google Calendar and its sync software tool seems to have helped my Microsoft Outlook problem but won't help my Microsoft Entourage problem. Entourage can still not import anything from other programs. I think Microsoft make some very closed products. But that said, I now do have my Palm schedule in Outlook 2007. I learned that after a court case (I still believe it was this court case that popped the Internet bubble), other companies such as SAS have had access to adding things onto Microsoft office. So back to Palms... now I will see if I can get my Palm schedule into Evolution on the Linux side.

I have done a fair amount of work too with one of my more action oriented volunteer groups in Palm contacts as well. I have recorded scheduling details and micro-historical records along with contact information for other volunteers. I really may not need this info and the perfectionism I might express to access this info again from saved back ups might not be healthy. I also probably do not need to update this type of info to make up for not recording it for a year or two now. I will just have to live with the fact, that when I recorded this info it was useful and that I learned by it back then and may not need it now. I could start to record it again in some other way. I may though not need this part of my life and those records to have consistency. My time is better spent on something more current and perhaps a new system for recording the same details. In fact, now that I think about it the organization does have a recording system that I use with doc files.

I have started to use both Outlook 2007 and Evolution e-mail on my Dell Inspiron but I do not send e-mail from the Dell yet.

I was able to import e-mail on the Dell Inspiron using the Linux side of the computer and Evolution e-mail. I have not sent e-mail from Evolution and want to make sure I can take any evolution e-mail and transfer it back to the Mac.

I turned on Outlook 2007 and configured it to download e-mail but leave a copy on the server as I also do with my Macbook. It may be impossible to export e-mail from Outlook so I have not used it to send any e-mail or really create anything yet.

I am using Google Calendar successfully with my old Palm schedule and have also tried to synchronize the Google Calendar with Outlook 2007. This has not brought the Palm calendar into Outlook which is one goal I have for my calendar.

Again I feel slightly burned by an ebay deal but it is probably alright.

I thought I was buying PC 5300 RAM from an ebay seller but it turned out to be PC5400 which is I am gathering from ebay information some kind of Vista upgrade version of PC5300. I was trying to avoid PC 5400 in this purchase.

Saving up for OCZ netbook.

Rather than force money from a stone to buy the netbook immediately, I am going to save money for at least 3 months, if not 6 months or something in between. I may be able to manage 60$ to 120$ a month in savings. I have 60$ saved now. I need to save up 360$ for the cost of the netbook and tax.

I did buy some OCZ RAM memory for this netbook so far. This cost about 50$ on ebay for a new 2 GB stick of PC 53000 677 RAM. This is the correct RAM for this netbook.

I am looking at the OCZ DIY netbook.

Here are the specs on this netbook http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/diy_notebooks/ocz_neutrino_10-diy_netbook. I have an 80 GB hard drive I could use with it from my Macbook. This 80 GB hard drive was the original hard drive in the Macbook. The drive was replaced late last fall and the drive was been just sitting here not being used, in case of being needed for restore. The Macbook is working fine now, so I think this old drive can be used for something else now like as a netbook hard drive.

I have transfered all the 1997 and 1996 e-mail to my netbook.

I have successfully transferred all the e-mail from my Mac Perform 580CD from 1996 and 1997 to my netbook. I did not really read any of this old email at the moment. I only have 1998 e-mail to still transfer. The e-mail from 1998 to 2000 is I think lost on a Windows 95 PC I never backed up.

I can now import all my e-mail to my netbook.

I am organizing my e-mail now in Evolution on the Netbook. I have imported all the 1996 e-mail which is the oldest email I have electronic copies of. I will also try to import this e-mail into Pine and access it with Emacs. I am trying to move towards more free software use.

Evolution can import the mail if it is imported as a single mbox file.

Apparently Evolution can not import the Mac Mail's folders. Oh now I have it. Rather than import from other programs or folders you use import a single file and chose an mbox file. It seems to work now.

My portable USB drive got zapped by the netbook.

I seem to have lost about 80 GB of files and another 40 GB are no longer easily accessed on the USB portable drive. I was just thinking that because the drive is a LaCie it is high quality. I was fooled. What did I do? I accepted that I probably did not need the files on the drive and it is only one failed drive so there are back ups if it somewhere else. I then did the archiving again and am now copying the archived email to the netbook. Live and learn eh?

Further progress on transfering my e-mail storage to another computer.

I of course, searched Google for solutions to moving my e-mail from the eMac and Mac Mail to my Dell Mini 9 Ubuntu netbook and Evolution Mail. I found a web page helpful, once I sorted out that it is actually only about Mac Mail under Max OS 10.5. Here is the web page: http://www.cognitivecombine.com/2008/11/importing-emails-from-mac-mail-into-evolution/. A fellow gamer playing Eve Online helped me sort that out. Mac Mail on Max OS 10.4 does not have an archiving option that the web page mentioned.

The present route I am going now is to use the stored mail on the USB drive and import it into Mac Mail on the Macbook which is running Mac OS 10.5. This is now done. The next step which is now in progress is to archive this newly imported mail box as an mbox file. Then I will need to move this file to the USB drive and copy it to the netbook home folder in a folder named Mail. Then Evolution may be able to import it.

I have a plan now to move my email to other email softwares and I am just about finished step 1: copying the email from the eMac2 to a portable drive.

I have just about finished copying all the email I have stored that is all the email on the eMac2 to a portable USB drive. This drive can be accessed by Macs, Windows and Linux computers unlike the Mac backup drives which are only accessible on Macs. This has to do with the way the hard drives are formatted. So now it should be possible to import this mail to Evolution on the Netbook. Or at least move in this direction.

Backing up strategy and present progress.

I need a better back up strategy. I have not yet sent disks off site and should just take action on this and mail the boxes I have to family. I also need to start to fully back up the eMac 2 as it is almost 4 years old now. It is starting to fall apart software wise and as well the Combo drive is of unknown functionality. On the eMac are certain older computer files but these have been backed up to USB drives and also to DVD. I need to search out in my apartment all the DVD's and make sure are they are all labeled. This is the next step. Then I will put these in the boxes and mail them. I will set a date of September 3rd to have this all done.

At the moment I am backing up my Macbook email. I am also not done backing up the Documents folder on the Macbook from August 2, 2009.

I whipped the Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 LTS the was the original OS on the Dell Mini 9 and just completed a fresh install of Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook remix!

After downloading Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook remix from Ubuntu I read the instructions for installing it. Running off the command line I was able to check the MD5SUM code for the download and it was good. I followed the instructions carefully on the Ubuntu install page and used a third party web site to install usb-imagewriter and wrote the downloaded USB img to a 1 GB USB disk ( I did of course back up the previous data on the USB disk and then reformatted it to MS-DOS using Disk Utility on my Macbook).

The weird frustrating fun began. I check the help manual for Ubuntu installation and found out that what could be done is an incremental upgrade from Hardy 8.04 to another higher version than another higher version and so forth until I got to the current version. But the Dell Netbook software update was so locked down this was not possible. I wasted about an hour trying to change the software repositories and nothing worked. The Dell software update had been failing to update with security patches for about one month now. So instead after becoming frustrated I went with the original plan and did a fresh install of the latest Ubuntu 9.04 and that is installed now with my Freenet email set. I have not had NCF email for years. I have simply been forwarding mail to my sympatico account. So I am have reclaimed my NCF email account. The software update on the Dell Mini 9 is just doing its first get caught up update now on the coffee table beside this Macbook, I am writing this on. The net install also automatically choose to use Dell drivers, so I may be no worse for wear and even better with a fresh install and working software update now. Ubuntu 9.04 is current as of April 2009.

I discover www.linux-netbook.com and decided to register www.linux-netbook.org and www.linux-netbook.net. I hope to create two basic index pages today for these sites.

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My Macbook was updated to Mac OSX 10.5.8.

I updated the MacBook to OSX 10.5.8. Rather Apple did that over the Internet.

Learning SAS Output Delivery System (ODS).

SAS stands for Scientific Analysis System or Statistics Analysis Software or Statistical Analysis System. I have learned SAS at Carleton university as part of my B.Math in statistics studies and then have further used it as a teaching assistant in statistics. In that work I helped teach SAS to undergraduates in statistics courses. I now use it daily at my workplace in the government.

I have been reading the book: Haworth, Lauren. Output Delivery System: The Basics (Cary, NC: SAS Institute, 2001). So I am studying the new Output Delivery System in SAS. I have read chapter 1 at work and am today reading chapters 2 and 3. I have completed the reading of chapter 2 so far today. Chapters 1 and 2 are merely introductions to what ODS is and what it can do. Although chapter 2 covers how ODS works with SAS procedures (PROC) and the output objects from procedures, and has some syntax for using ODS. Chapter 3 is about using ODS to output HTML files.

I am reading about Emacs and learning to use Emacs on my Dell Inspiron and my Macbook.

I have been reading the book SAMS Teach Yourself Emacs in 24 Hours. I have read chapter 1 and chapter 3. I did not read chapter 2 as that was about installing Emacs on Windows NT. The book was written by Jesper Pedersen, et al. I have started to use the Diary in the Calendar in Emacs. I hope to become effective at email, code writing, LaTeX and basic word processing in Emacs. I have stated chapter 4 today.

I have started another end of month back up process.

I am backing up to the network drive again today. I should start to examine and label all the DVD's I have used to back my eMac and my Macbook. I really need to make some progress on clearing off the two LaCie 250 GB USB drives to DVD. These would be good drives to have to store music when recording with the Remembrance computer which is now loosely placed in the music rack.