Audubon again

[altivo]

Took my friend Susan to the meeting for a presentation on Shorebirds. Not something I expected to be seeing in Illinois. But it turns out that a lot of species migrate through here in spring and fall, and one hotspot for viewing them is Montrose Harbor, right near where we used to live in Chicago.

The speaker had lots of slides of sandpipers, plovers, and even the big shorebirds like avocets, stilts, and phalaropes. Many were shot at Montrose Harbor. Baby sandpipers and plovers are really cute. They are precocious so they don't just sit in a nest and get fed but are out running up and down the beach even before they get their first feathers. Think fluffy baby chicks only with long awkward legs and some black markings like neck rings or eye stripes. Several of the sandpiper species are endangered. They are small birds, the size of finches and sparrows, and they apparently don't get out of the way of people walking on the sand and can be stepped on. Since they are ground feeders and ground nesters (though they don't nest here) they are also prey to rats and domestic predators.

Gary's desktop computer was crashed this morning. Apparently another Windows misfire. He's had several of these over the years. Not an actual hard disk failure, but a software malfunction that trashes a cache or directory somehow, making the hard drive unusable. It won't boot, just goes into an endless cycle of scandisks. Of course he had a homework assignment nearly complete but not yet turned in and had to reduplicate all the work. Fortunately the needed software is also on the laptop I got him for Christmas, so he managed to do that and get the assignment done in time. He can continue with his laptop for a few days but it disrupts our house LAN as his desktop was the router, firewall and connection manager. I'm back on dialup for the present.

About 20 years of using Linux for me and I've never had one of those software wrecks with it. I have had one on Windows XP at work though, which is when I switched my work PC over to Linux. Gary has had at least three of these where something in Windows trashes the hard disk, necessitating a complete restore. The hardware itself is fine, but the software just went crazy and overwrote chunks of the drive.

Comments

[schnee]

This may be a stupid question, but... if his machine is prone to shooting himself in the foot like that, why are you using it as the router, firewall and connection manager? Doubly so when it's doubling as a windows desktop.

[altivo]

Many reasons, but the most obvious is that I'm not here during the day and he is dependent on the connection for schoolwork. He doesn't know UNIX or Linux, has no interest in learning about it, and doesn't know much about networking hardware or configuration. Our connection depends on a cell phone modem that of course has documentation, instructions, and support only for Windows. If he has a problem and I'm not available, he's much more likely to get it resolved if the connection comes directly to his machine. Verizon support will not help with Linux or with local networking. (Probably won't help with much of anything, I suspect, but at least he feels better about it.) He can reset or restart the connection himself as long as only Windows is involved. In fact, yesterday he migrated the modem to his laptop and got it working without my help, because it is made to work for an idiot on Windows. A Linux box would require some setup actions.

If we had a real DSL or wireless broadband connection then I'd insist on a Linux box as router and firewall, but those services are not available here.