Productivity...
May. 21st, 2006 03:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivo...is doing the laundry, cleaning the oven, and discovering what appears to be a useful software solution all at the same time.
Well, laundry, you know. I hate it. I'm good about some household things, but that one goes until I've run out of clothes and then I have to do them all and iron shirts and all that horrible stuff. So it was time.
The oven. Well, we're pretty tidy cooks, actually. Still, it seems to be inevitable that an oven gets baked on grease spatters over the inside eventually. Now that my mate does more cooking than he used to, and he likes to use the broiler which I never do... Fortunately when we replaced the kitchen range two years ago, we got a modern, self-cleaning one. I have only used the oven cleaning feature once before, that's how rarely we spill, splatter, etc. But it was more than time, so I pulled out the instruction booklet and read again how to do it. Cleaned the glass, removed the racks, and had at it. Decided against the "heavy-duty" cycle, which would take six hours to cool down for use, and ran the normal cycle instead. Amazing. It just finally got cool enough that I could wipe the white ash out of the inside, and now it looks like new. I couldn't have done as well with a traditional oven and that nasty oven cleaning stuff.
The software. You all know I'm a Linux user by choice. Unfortunately, given the way the marketplace is, there are always some hardware vendors and services that simply refuse to support Linux. I was completely weaned from Microsoft's own applications long ago, but I do subscribe to audible.com for some of my audio books and their proprietary loader (required to decrypt the files) runs only on Windows. I could dual boot my old Win 98SE for that, or (now that my mate also listens to audio books) install the app on his machine, since he's still a Windows addict.
I've been getting by for work the last two years without needing Windows at all. Wonder of wonders, our library catalog and circulation system runs on a Linux server and has a full-featured client for Linux that looks identical to their widely used Windows client. The OCLC system we use, and our other database vendors, all run on web browser interfaces that guarantee compatibility not only with IE, but with Firefox and sometimes Netscape, so running Firefox on Linux takes care of that. However, that is about to change. The library consortium, in it's infinitedly defective wisdom, is forcing us to switch system vendors. The new catalog software, Unicorn/Sirsi, comes from a UNIX background, runs on a Linux server, yet has no Linux client. They support only Windows as an environment for their client software, and claim there is "no demand" for a Linux client solution. This, even though their piggish client is written entirely in Java and should be directly portable. I must be able to run the client for work, and I don't want to reboot my PC all the time to get to it, nor do I want to give up my Linux environment and work only in Windows (shudder). I actually considered having two machines on my desk. Ugh. But it looks as if VMWare is a suitable solution. In theory, it will let me create a Windows virtual machine that runs as a guest under Linux. Standard Windows apps should run in that box without any problem. The beta version is a free download, so I'll be trying it. This is not an emulator, nor a substitute with matching API (a la wine) but a complete licensed installation of Windows that runs as a subsidiary to the host Linux. If it works, I can use it for my development efforts toward getting Windows 2000 off our servers too, I hope.
Well, laundry, you know. I hate it. I'm good about some household things, but that one goes until I've run out of clothes and then I have to do them all and iron shirts and all that horrible stuff. So it was time.
The oven. Well, we're pretty tidy cooks, actually. Still, it seems to be inevitable that an oven gets baked on grease spatters over the inside eventually. Now that my mate does more cooking than he used to, and he likes to use the broiler which I never do... Fortunately when we replaced the kitchen range two years ago, we got a modern, self-cleaning one. I have only used the oven cleaning feature once before, that's how rarely we spill, splatter, etc. But it was more than time, so I pulled out the instruction booklet and read again how to do it. Cleaned the glass, removed the racks, and had at it. Decided against the "heavy-duty" cycle, which would take six hours to cool down for use, and ran the normal cycle instead. Amazing. It just finally got cool enough that I could wipe the white ash out of the inside, and now it looks like new. I couldn't have done as well with a traditional oven and that nasty oven cleaning stuff.
The software. You all know I'm a Linux user by choice. Unfortunately, given the way the marketplace is, there are always some hardware vendors and services that simply refuse to support Linux. I was completely weaned from Microsoft's own applications long ago, but I do subscribe to audible.com for some of my audio books and their proprietary loader (required to decrypt the files) runs only on Windows. I could dual boot my old Win 98SE for that, or (now that my mate also listens to audio books) install the app on his machine, since he's still a Windows addict.
I've been getting by for work the last two years without needing Windows at all. Wonder of wonders, our library catalog and circulation system runs on a Linux server and has a full-featured client for Linux that looks identical to their widely used Windows client. The OCLC system we use, and our other database vendors, all run on web browser interfaces that guarantee compatibility not only with IE, but with Firefox and sometimes Netscape, so running Firefox on Linux takes care of that. However, that is about to change. The library consortium, in it's infinitedly defective wisdom, is forcing us to switch system vendors. The new catalog software, Unicorn/Sirsi, comes from a UNIX background, runs on a Linux server, yet has no Linux client. They support only Windows as an environment for their client software, and claim there is "no demand" for a Linux client solution. This, even though their piggish client is written entirely in Java and should be directly portable. I must be able to run the client for work, and I don't want to reboot my PC all the time to get to it, nor do I want to give up my Linux environment and work only in Windows (shudder). I actually considered having two machines on my desk. Ugh. But it looks as if VMWare is a suitable solution. In theory, it will let me create a Windows virtual machine that runs as a guest under Linux. Standard Windows apps should run in that box without any problem. The beta version is a free download, so I'll be trying it. This is not an emulator, nor a substitute with matching API (a la wine) but a complete licensed installation of Windows that runs as a subsidiary to the host Linux. If it works, I can use it for my development efforts toward getting Windows 2000 off our servers too, I hope.
