Random Bits

I have spent the last few days trying to iron out problems with the Acer Aspire One 772, and Ubuntu. I purchased the AO772 for $299.99. It weighs around 3.5 pounds, has a nice screen and a decent keyboard and touchpad.

I began by installing the Ubuntu 12.04 daily build, which worked fine at first, but subsequently experienced session ending freezes. I then tried to an earlier Beta version of 12.04, and then the more stable 11.10 version, and in each case, I would end up with session ending freezes. None of the these problems appear when I boot under Windows 7.

I just asked Verizon how much it could cost to get Current TV, so I can watch Keith Olbermann's show. For me, the answer is $25 per month. This was my live chat with Verizon:

I decided to upgrade to Ubuntu 11.10, without using Unity.

First, I installed "gnome-session-fallback"

I logged out and back in using Gnome Classic.

I added launcher-icons to the top panel by alt-rightclick on the panel. When I tried to use the kill icon, everything stopped working.

I would not recommend that anyone upgrade to Ubuntu 11.10 at this point. I don't know what is going on with Ubuntu these days.... but making it faster and more stable seem to have a lower priority.

Romney is up, a lot. Perry starts high but fades, and losing a lot of ground to Romney. Herman Cain rising, but for how long? Christie and Palin drop out. No one else seems to have much of a chance.

Intrade.com is a betting site. Romney has widened his lead in the Intrade betting odds for the GOP nomination, while Perry prices continue to fall. Chris Christie, a non-candidate, is now up to 10.8% Herman Cain now leads Palin, who has fallen to 4 percent. The Intrade odds of Christie entering the race are 24%.

Today I found myself reading HG Well's 1921 3rd edition of the Outline of History, and noticed these quotes:

http://openlibrary.org/books/OL6639591M/The_outline_of_history

According a March 28, 2011 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Southwest Information Office,

Texas, at 9.5 percent, tied with Mississippi for the highest proportion of hourly-paid workers earning at or below the prevailing Federal minimum wage among the 50 states and the District of Columbia in 2010.

In 2010, for the nation as a whole, 6 percent of workers paid by the hour earn the federal minimum wage or less.

In terms of numbers of workers, the BLS reports that:

With Rick Perry a possible GOP nominee for President, we are all a bit interested in Texas these days.

The Texas Tribune provides a nice web page of government salaries in Texas, including this table of the top 25 state government salaries. Apparently sports and medicine are both high profile in Texas.

It appears, at least for now, that the inmotionhosting.com hack by TiGER-M@TE is not that destructive for most people, and many sites can be restored by deleting or changing a single index.php file. Of course, we don't know how deeply the security of sites have been comprised yet, so this is based upon limited information.

This is a graph of the intade.com odds for the GOP nomination, from Sept 1 to Sept 24, 2011. The most recent Google/Fox debate led to a significant improvement in Romney's numbers and a big dip for Perry.