Hippo, birdie, two ewes...

... to smallship1!!!! Have a great one!!

Done yesterday (20111218 Su)

Gnomes ate my Sunday. Gnome 3, actually. Upgrading my old netbook to Ubuntu 11.04 had gone so well that I fooishly told Colleen that I'd upgrade hers "Sunday morning before [she] gets up." Yeah, right. There were three big flaws in this:

• Colleen's netbook is a Dell mini-10; Kat's is a mini-10v. Different video. It didn't correctly identify the screen size.
• So, based on the fact that Kat loved the shiny new Gnome 3 UI, I went ahead and upgraded to 11.10, and left it happily loading away while we went to brunch at El Torito (one of Kat's faves). When we got back I discovered that Colleen hated Gnome 3, and it still didn't recognize the screen size.
• After restoring gnome-panel for the old Gnome 2 UI, that's when I found out that the new mail program, Thunderbird, didn't automatically migrate her email from evolution. And that evolution, which was still around, crashed on startup.

So I dropped back to 11.04 which at least had a more familiar configuration (but still had the problem of evolution crashing), and did some frantic googling to find out how to install the proper video driver and which index files to blow away so that evolution could recreate them with the proper format. And, along the way, how to configure gnome-panel in Gnome 3 (which turns out to require alt-right-click to bring up the menus, instead of right-click). :P

Then I went to bed, because it was 11:30pm.

Much of the afternoon was taken up by a shopping trip with the Wolfling, mostly to REI (luggage and camping gear) and AT&T (getting her phone, which hasn't been charging properly, looked at). Also Fry's and Office Max, but they didn't have what I was looking for there. It was a lot of fun, though. We ended up getting Kat an REI membership of her own, to take advantage of the additional 30% discount (on one REI-logo item per member).

Despite the frustrations it was a pretty good day, and I greatly enjoyed having the whole family together. We're a weird bunch, and I like that.

( raw notes )

Party time at the Starport

Yes, once again it's a winter party season at Grand Central Starport. We're having our annual "Somewhere Around New Year's" party on Saturday, December 31^st -- it's the usual noon-to-midnight potluck bash.

We're also having an "open house" from roughly noon to midnight on Christmas, mainly for friends who don't have family to be with, though of course everyone's welcome. Gifts, needless to say, are not expected. We'll be making Ukrainian borscht; bring something you can eat, especially if beef-and-cabbage soup isn't your thing.

Both days are likely to include filking.

Maps, directions, and contact information can be found on the household web page.