Quittintime: Slow down !!

Right now, I have four 55 gallon barrels hooked up.

I just finished hooking them up properly, yesterday. It cost 45 dollars for just the plumbing that goes from the downspout tube, to the barrels.

There are two gutters/downspouts on the roofs. 2 barrels on each.

It did rain hard again last night. I collected enough water in the one night, to fill one and two-thirds barrels.

Right now, the water is for clothes washing, only.

Eventually I'll buy a good water heater, and plumb in an outdoor shower.

The main tank is 330 gallons. The barrels will get pumped to that.

Problem is, it's metal. And it is very rusty on the inside.

The metal tank has been dry for a while now. Today I'll put in a plug, and fill it.

I'll run some in first, maybe 20 gallons. Let that sit a bit, then drain it. To carry out what rust is already loosely in there.

Then I'll put in about a quart of bleach, and then fill the tank with as much water as I can.

The hope being that the bleach will precipitate a lot of the rust out of the water.

Some day I'll be able to afford a plastic tank.

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Whatever 'pipeline' Taunton has, to the internet, can handle only just so much traffic.

I am guessing they couldn't afford the kind of connection that their former server contractor had. So they can't handle as much traffic.

Breaktime alone, had more traffic than the other forums, combined.

They made it clear that they would like people to use the other parts of their website, rather than the forums.

Seems to me, though, that it would have been less of a shot in their own foot, if they had found better ways to entice the traffic from the forums to the rest of the website, instead of trying to force it over there.

Oh well. It is what it is. They can probably handle the traffic they have now, and I guess that is as good a goal as any.

=0)

~~~

Yes, the computer is running well.

It's already starting to feel like a good pair of shoes.

My biggest problem with Ubuntu was that it was so limited. It just didn't feel comfortable. I couldn't do most of the things I wanted to, because there was no function there.

You have to learn how to make the system function in all the ways that you are used to.

Learning WHAT I needed was followed by learning what was available, was followed by learning where to get it, was followed by learning HOW to get it, was followed by having to back up and learn some arcane language to type into a terminal window... etc.

And putting in the password every 16 seconds !!!

I am a patient man. Especially when it comes to the computer. I am not easily frustrated when it comes to getting something on the computer figured out.

But I was frustrated.

It was easy to see why so many people give up and go back to windows.

But Linux Mint... Worked right out of the box.

All of the functions were right there, working. All of my hardware worked without a problem.

All I had to do was to install my own choice of email programs, since I prefer not to use thunderbird.

Had I preferred Thunderbird, (And I did use it for a while, while on xp pro. It's a pretty good program. I just don't like the way it calls home, and intentionally blocks you from disabling that.), I would already have been all set, without changing a thing.

If I ever recommend a linux distro to a newcomer who is used to windows, it will be Linux Mint.

And there is a new one called Peppermint.

I am going to give that a try, pretty soon. I'll backup my other internal hard drive, format, and start fresh with that. If I don't like it, I'll format again, and go to the newest Linux Mint. (I am currently on the one that is one step back.)

Although, I will no longer experience Peppermint, as a complete newby to linux. So I don't know if I will be able to explain it to people from that perspective.

Mint is based on Ubuntu. (Peppermint may be based more on Debian. I can't remember.)

As such, it does have some of the same few basic problems.

I have experienced the lockup, as well.

Unlike a blue screen of death, if you just sit back and wait a bit, eventually the system comes back, working just like it should. And it only happens once in a blue moon.

If a program locks up, stops responding, etc... It doesn't kill the entire system.

Wait a bit, maybe the program will come back. If it doesn't, kill it. As soon as you kill it, you can start it again.

Linux doesn't preload a ton of programs, like windows does.

Windows does this to give the ILLUSION of speed.

If the program is already loaded, then when you click to start it, it comes right up.

In windows, it wouldn't do that, if it were not preloaded. It would take some time for the program to actually get up there on your screen.

In linux, the program is not loaded at all, until you decide to open it. Then it is loaded. And surprisingly enough, they load up just as fast, if not faster than in windows.

And if you don't decide to open the program, it is not sitting there eating up your ram and cpu.

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The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. ~Samuel Johnson