One year ago today, me and Laura closed on our new house. We moved all of our stuff the following day, September 1st. But since we started moving in and spent the night on August 31st, today is the one-year anniversary.

I have tried my hand at several distributions of Linux over the years, from Red Hat to Fedora, Suse and OpenSuse, Knoppix (briefly), and now Ubuntu. I’ll choose Ubuntu over all the others. I’ll tell you why.

Fedora is very barebones. You have to do a lot of tweaking and manual labor to get it the way you like it. That said, it is a solid OS. Suse is easier in the sense that it takes a lot of that work away during the installation, even automatically mounting Windows partitions. It tries to be more user-friendly. Ubuntu, however, out shines them both. It is the slickest, easiest version of Linux I have ever installed. I am running v6.06 (Dapper Drake). This new 6.06 has been billed as LTS (Long Term Support), with updates and patches for three years on the desktop.

Instead of downloading five CDs worth of programs, all I needed was to download and install a single CD. It is a “live” CD where you can boot from the CD and use the operating system to try it out before it ever writes to your hard drive. After that, installing the OS is dead easy. There is a link on the desktop to install. The single CD has most of the tools you’ll need to be up and running. If you want more, you download them via an interface much like the Windows “add/remove programs”, but this pulls all of the software from online servers. I found the software and libraries to be shockingly up-to-date when I first installed the OS, even though it supposedly came out in June of this year.

The update icon on the desktop actually works! Unlike the other distros, this one actually reports and updates correctly from the taskbar without any command line entry. Finally! In fact, I haven’t needed to use the command line hardly at all. Everything is pretty much perfect as-is. Adding to my amazement, when I put the Ubuntu Live CD into my Dell laptop, the wireless net connection worked instantly with no questions asked. I was stunned! Never in any other Linux distro was I ever able to get wireless networking to actually work.

To make life even easier, some folks have put together a package of goodies to install to your Ubuntu system in a single swoop. It is called Easy Ubuntu and installs things like java, flash, acrobat, audio/video codecs, etc. It is awesome!

I am very satisfied with this Linux build. I have been reading about how a new version is supposed to be released this October. This is my first experience with Ubuntu, and from what I’ve seen, their slogan “Linux for Human Beings” actually holds true. If you want to try Linux, this is the one to get, hands down.

Links: Ubuntu, Easy Ubuntu, Ubuntu Guide

GoldenEye is back online again! I was able to get on and play last night. The official EA Games website for GoldenEye says that the servers for online play will be taken offline on in October. That’s too bad. I guess it doesn’t have a big following, but I do enjoy it.

I turned on GoldenEye for my PS2 the other day and found that there were no game servers operating for the online feature. Since it is my favorite online shoot-em-up game, I have tried almost every day since, with no luck. I finally did an online search to find that EA Games is pulling the plug on GoldenEye: Rogue Agent effective October 1, 2006.

Other titles from EA Games have already had their servers taken down as of early August. Most of them are outdated sports titles with the year after them (like Madden 2004, etc). But I am very disappointed to find out GoldenEye is going bye-bye. The weaponry, respawning speed, and hilarious kills will surely be missed. No other game that I own quite compares.

Again, they say official online gaming ends 10/1/06, but I am finding that I cannot join or host a game, even now. So much for a good thing. Shame on you, Electronic Arts!

My jury is still out on my feelings about MySpace. By now, I assume you know what MySpace is. I like the idea behind it. Everybody can post pictures and info about themselves and find info on others. I have found a few old friends by using MySpace. The good thing about it is that since it is by far the most popular social networking site, pretty much anyone who uses such a thing would have a profile on MySpace. The bad thing is that the service needs a lot of work.

The problem is that the service is slow, and so full of ads and clutter, it gets bogged down. Creating graphics and styled pages for your profile is unexplained and difficult work. Too many profiles have audio and video files that play automatically when you view the page. In a short while, all of its bells and whistles become overpowering and obnoxious. Searching for people, the whole point of the site, is usually slow and cumbersome.

Beyond finding friends, I am not sure what else to do with it. Once I finally figured out how to spruce up my profile, and had added most my friends, there isn’t anything else to do. The mail and instant messaging features leave a lot to be desired. I just want to find people on the service and then use regular email and IM software to communicate. Browsing random profiles is somewhat fun, but the site is mostly filled with teenagers who post the stupidest crap.

I don’t know if MySpace will survive ultimately. I want a better, sleeker service to come along and take over. MySpace is too junk-filled to actually be useful. Of course, the more social networking sites that crop up, the more spread out everyone is. I like that there is one big game in town, but MySpace needs an overhaul.

Link: My profile on MySpace.

I have been a customer of Netflix for years now. It is an excellent service and I highly recommend it to anyone. If you haven’t tried it, it is well worth it. They have so many titles that the video store doesn’t have. Plus they offer unrated versions of some titles that the family-oriented Blockbuster won’t put on the shelves. Not long ago, Netflix added a distribution hub in Raleigh, so now when I return my movies they receive them the next day after mailing. A receive my new movie the day after that. I have only had just a couple of problems with discs that were damaged on arrival, but that is a drop in the bucket of how many I have rented.

I hate Blockbuster with a passion, so I cringe when someone tells me they use Blockbuster’s new subscription service. Netflix beat them at their own game, so they had to follow suit and try to ruin them. I’ll stand up for them. I’ll be a loyal Netflix customer for years to come.

Me and Laura have a long, funny history with Tab. I have always made remarks about the fact that it is still made. I found this website called ilovetab.com and it is for Tab fans everywhere. It is pretty crazy.

I have created yet another topic. The Net category of posts are to be centered around noteworthy websites, links, and topics on the Internet in general.

Have you ever seen those tall, skinny trucks on the road that have an advertisement on each side? I have only seen a small few in the past few months. I have a question. Are they transporting billboard advertisements in that small truck, or is it simply there to drive around moving ads? I’m not sure. If this is purely for advertising, then end this now. The roads are crowded enough to not need some idiot driving around with a sign.

I watched the remake of Willie Wonka, called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This new one, as you probably know, was directed by Tim Burton and stars Johnny Depp. I am a huge fan of the original movie and it was in fond memories of my childhood. I didn’t know what to expect from the remake, but gave it a shot.

I’ll tell ya…it was simply awful! Some of the imagery was nice, but the movie was too dark, as is Tim Burton’s style. I like some of his movies, like Batman and Sleepy Hollow. This movie was simply awful, though. I couldn’t watch it all the way through. I watched about half of it. I know it isn’t fair to judge a movie without seeing the whole thing, but I couldn’t bare it. The only thing I can say positively about it was that the boy who played Charlie was wonderfully cast. He was great for the part.

The storyline was not enjoyable and the way that Wonka acted the whole time was not good at all. He acted weird and ridiculous the whole time. The storyline kept yanking back to his childhood, which I didn’t care about at all. The Umpa Loompas were just one old man, repeated over and over with computer graphics. The too-frequent music numbers in the movie all had a childish feel to them. It was very distracting and made me groan every time they broke into song. I don’t want to see a musical.

The whole factory had a creepy feel to it. It saw no message that I could take home. At least the first one had a message about misbehaving children, and later, a surprise. This one had neither that I found. It was just another excuse for Tim Burton to make dark, shadowy movie imagery and cast Johnny Depp yet again. Whether or not you saw the original movie, do not bother with this remake. Trust me.