Learning Ubunto #9 - Upgrading to 9.10, using lsb_release, and installing Virtual Box

Hi there fellow Ubuntu users. I have not posted about Ubuntu for awhile, but I continue to use it as my daily OS, and it works well.

Not long after 9.10 (Karmic Koala) became available, I went ahead and installed it. The install was painless, and since I did it a few weeks ago, I really can not remember any detail worth mentioning. It was a non-event for me. Also worth noting is that there were no features in 9.10 that have jumped out at me. But, hey, I am current.

At some point also a few weeks ago, I found out about "lsb_release -a" which is a really handy way to tell exactly which release of Linux you are running. The one weird thing is that it includes a message stating "No LSB modules are available" - spent a couple of hours trying to figure out what the heck this means, but can not tell. Anyway, the command - as well as just looking at the /etc/lsb-release file is handy.

I spent some time looking at installing KDE in side-by-side mode with GNOME,but the more I looked at that, the more it looked like trouble. Back in about 2000, I did run a version of RH with GNOME and KDE both available, and it worked OK, but it just looks like trouble with the current builds to try and get that to work, so to heck with it.

On the other hand, I have spent a little time looking at virtualization for a desktop, and I am fairly sure that VirtualBox is the best solution for desktop virtualization. My objective is to run Vista in a VM, so I can access the few Windows applications which do not work well under Linux.

Stay tuned.

Windows Live OneCare has changed to Microsoft Security Essentials

This post is mostly for my family, since I am the official family computer geek, with my daughter Kate as the Heir Apparent.  Before we start talking about MSSE (Microsoft Security Essentials), let me declare my biases.

1. I have been using mostly Ubuntu for about a year, but I admit that for my family and non-geek friends, Windows is the way to go.
2. My wife Kim and I both ended up with new Toshiba laptops about 1 1/2 years ago. And, when we did this, we ended up with Vista which works OK. To secure them, I decided at the time to go with Windows Live OneCare (WLOC)
3. I am pissed at all the various flavours of Norton. I think it is too expensive, plus I have seen at least three case of computers which appear to run really really slow because of Norton
4. Like I said, WLOC has been installed for over a year on two computers at home, and so far so good.
5. About two weeks ago, I bought a new Vista computer for my Dad, and decided to install CA Internet Security, which has also succeed in pissing me off in record time. For one thing, I left it to do a scan for over 48 hours, and it had still not finished. WTF!

So, of the Windows Security products I have had hands-on with, so far WLOC has pissed me off the least. It integrates well with Vista, as well as successfully keeping adware and viruses off of both my machine, and more importantly my wifes machine.  That is, for both a geek and a non-geek, it has exhibited a sufficient degree of easy-to-use, and enough control and info. I will say, as far as being a useful backup solution, it is completely lacking, but I was looking at it for adware and virus - and it seems to do that.

So, I think MSSE is worth a try. It claims to give you:

• Comprehensive malware protection
• Simple, free download*
• Automatic updates
• Easy to use

Hey - sounds good to me - stay tuned -  I will by trying this when the WLOC subscriptions are up. And like I said, to my dear family - if you are on - the next time your AV software wants money, I am on for helping you try to switch to free.

My Rib Recipe

Had not done this in awhile. Then, cooked in for Mom & Dad on Sunday, and took Dad for his surgery on Monday. Ended up talking about this recipe with some people (Hi Dawn) we meet at the hospital, and I decided to post it. This is the perfect way to do ribs!

Bone Dust
½ cup paprika
¼ cup chilli powder
3 tbsp salt
2 tbsp ground coriander
2 tbsp garlic powder
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp curry powder
2 tbsp hot dry mustard
1 tbsp black pepper
1 tbsp dried basil
1 tbsp dried thyme
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp cayenne pepper

Give a good mix. I had an old quart sealer which stays nice and airtight, so I have stored for a month or more, because this makes a lot of rub. But, keep in dry and in a dark place, and it stores well

What is Brazing

The way I do it, to braze something, you need a pan you can put your fluid in, then a cooking rack to go in the pan, and meat goes on top of the rack, above the fluid. I looked around, and could not find exactly the pan I wanted. I ended up with two really large cookie sheets which were the deepest cookie sheets I could find, and cookie cooling racks which were big enough to “fill” the cookie sheet and act as cooking racks.

So:

• This works best if you start first thing in the morning, get the oven part done, let the meat cool right down, and then finish on the BBQ latter in the day. Read on.
• Get your ribs out, and rub them down, both sides with bone dust
• Slice up an onion, and toss it in the brazing pan.
• Take out a head of garlic, cut off both ends, strip away the easy to strip-away stuff, and then crush, and toss that in as well. I always just use the flat of my big knife to crush, and usually hack at it a bit as well just so the flavour gets out good.
• Add tequila, orange juice, and pineapple juice.  With my pan, 1 cup tequila, 1 cup OJ, and 1 cup pineapple works perfect. Make sure lots of juice, but not so full the pan is a PIA to move around, and not enough to come over the rack. Which, by the way, is the reason I wish I could, find a better pan than a cookie sheet. A big cookie sheet works great as far as size goes for two racks of ribs, but it could be deeper.
• Stick the cooking rack into the pan, and place the ribs on the rack, with the meat side down.
• Slice up lemon and orange, and cover the ribs with them.
• Cover up the whole thing with aluminium foil, so that the moister stays in.
• Now, my oven cooks cold, so I set the oven to 275° F, but if your oven is accurate, try 250° F. Try 275° the first time, and if the ribs could be a little more chewy, then drop the temp the next time.
• Cook for 4 hours, until meat is very tender, and starting to come off the bone, but everything is still holding together. Once they cool, they get back a bit of ability to hold together
• Set aside, and let cool, right down to room temp is best if you have time
• Cut into the size to want for BBQ – 2-3 ribs per section works good.
• Get the BBQ up to about 350° - 400°F, slap the ribs on, about 3 minutes then flip, cover the upside with Dianna’s Chicken and Rib sauce, turn the BBQ down a bit, cook about 2-3 minutes, flip them, sauce the other side, give them another 2-3 minutes, flip them, 2-3 minutes more, and voilà

Credits

• Got started based on a recipe I got from Dave McConnell
• He got the bone dust from Ted Reader’s book “Hot, Sticky, and on Fire”, which also has a great coleslaw recipe in it.

Variations

• Try Guinness instead of tequila & fruit juice, then just lemon so not so sweet - Yummy.
• Bourbon and fruit juice also works
• I bet slices of fresh pineapple would be yummy.
• I have tried a couple of different home made BBQ sauces to finish with, but have not got anything I can recommend - post a good one if you have a good one!
• Rum? Hmm………..  

Klean-Prep Was Invented by a Devil Out of Hell

The good news is that that the colonoscopy itself was a piece of cake. The bad news is that Klean-Prep was invented by the devil out of hell.

A couple of weeks ago, I did my yearly physical and heard those words that all men over 50 will eventually hear - time to have a colonoscopy. Well, I thought I knew what there was to know about a colonoscopy - after all, 2 or 3 years ago - I saw Billy Connolly describe his colonoscopy at Masey Hall here in Toronto. I damn near died laughing during his routine on this nasty little procedure. When I just viewed the clip again on YouTube, I was literally crying, I was laughing so hard. Well, I thought, anything that funny can't be too bad.

So, modify my diet for a few days leading up to the big day, then fast all day the day before. Get home after work, rip open and mix the first 1 litre out of 4 of Klean-Prep. No problem I think, drink 4 liters of this shit between 6PM and 11PM. I chug back the first 250 ml glass, and think Christ, nasty stuff. A few minutes latter, I start to drink the second glass and the gag reflex kicks in. I think it took me at least 15 minutes to force it down. After that, it got even tougher. I have never had to drink anything like that. It just made me gag. About half way through the second litre, I puked up about 250ml, and then had to clean up the mess in the kitchen, and start drink this crap again. Can you imagine? Just nasty! By midnight, I had got down 3 1/2 litres, I was shivering and woozy, and really at my wits end. At that point, I really no longer gave a damn. I tossed the last half litre out, and headed to bed.

If you already watched the Billy Connolly video, then there is no need for me to describe the bowel activity which had been going on since about 7PM. If you want to know - listen to Billy describe it - he tells it better than I ever can! Suffice it say, all night I was in bed for 15 minutes and then off to the can again. By around 5 AM, I was at the oily discharge state Billy describes so well, and fricking exhausted.

The good news in the rest of the story is straightforward. Arrive at the clinic in the morning, lay down on the bed with my pants down to my knees, joke with the doctor about Lou Rawls Colonoscopy Exam, then the anaesthesiologist stuck me with the magic needle, and the next semi-coherent thought I have is as someone walks me to the recovery room from the little room where I guess my anal cherry had been successfully popped! Note how Klean-prep changes your perception? After Klean-Prep, laying on a table with your pants around your knees while three people, one of them female, work a meter and a half of tube up your ass is just not a big deal even after the happy needle wears off.

A half hour latter, we take the elevator down to the ground floor, and walk outside into a sea of police barricades and cameras. Christ, I think, it was big news to me, but I did not expect my colonoscopy to make the news. Turns out, it did not - the building where the clinic is, is also the one that many of you in Canada will have heard of because of the fact that Toronto Cops Had to Capture Doe a Deer the other morning.

By mid-afternoon, I felt fairly recovered. Like I said, the colonoscpy itself is not too bad. But I will never again willingly drink that horrible Klean-Prep shit.

Klean-Prep was invented by a devil out of hell.

---

It's Not About the Bike, It's About the Journey

I waited a long time to buy my first motorbike. I turned 13 in 1969 and remember it well – not so much for Woodstock – but for the Lunar missions, and the fact that my family moved from Edmonton to Scarborough. Throughout high school in the early 1970s, I watched the Honda revolution occur – the invasion of the CB-750. Although I never owned one, I have friends who still ride them.

High-school, college, job, get married, and have a daughter named Kate in 1984 – still no bike. My daughter Kate – the best thing that ever happened to me. We cottaged, snowmobiled, went on road trips, canoe trips – we just had a great time. And we still do. I could spend a long time talking about Kate, but this is about bikes.

Along came 1995. I wanted a bike, I was in a marriage crisis, and I thought that if my first wife and I both got motorbikes, it might help us build some bridges. My brother Scott called me with a line on a beat up old Honda Nighthawk 450 – so I bought it.

Off we went for a couple of years – she on her Harley Sportster, and me on the old Nighthawk. We had a few good rides together. But you know something? There is no magic “re-united by the love of biking” story here. We continued to drift apart. There is a long story about the complex nature of relationships between man and women, but even assuming I could tell it, I wont - this is about bikes.

Towards the end of the summer of 1999, I bought a 1996 Yamaha FJ1200ABS. What a great ride. That same fall, a young friend of mine was badly-badly hurt in a bike accident. Jordan, at least a part of Jordan, is still with us today, and I wish him and his parents the best. This is a story about bikes – and Jordan's accident is a sad part of the story.

Latter that fall, I decided to take the FJ to see my buddy Gord in Boston. Since my sister Cheryl lives in Jacksonville, Florida – I thought I would stop in to see her on the way to Boston. This was a great idea – it was my first long ride, and I truly fell in love with the experience of riding a motorbike. I was inexperienced about planning a long ride - for whatever reason, it seemed to me that I could take off for a 4500 km ride, and not take chain lube with me. When I got back to Toronto, the chain and sprockets were shot, and needed to be replaced. A much cheaper lesson about the cost of a mistake on the bike than the one Jordan learned. A much cheaper lesson than my buddy Gord learned about the effect of years of alcohol abuse – rest in peace Gord – hey – lets talk about bikes.

Yup – 1999 was a heck of a bike year. It was the evening, of Nov 17^th, northbound on Bathurst, just after sunset – a lady in the solid stream of southbound traffic decided to turn left in front of me. My only option was full on the brakes, stand up on the pegs, watch the front end of the bike disintegrate into her front bumper, hit the hood, the windshield, black out for a 1/10^th of a second, and come to on the southbound side of Bathurst thinking, “Damn, know I'm gonna get run over”. But, everyone stopped, along came the ambulance, the police, the fire department, off to the hospital, and you know what? I walked out the hospital that same evening, glad to be alive.

Fast forward – spring 2000 – separated from my first wife, living on my own and loving it. Nearly getting killed really makes it clear that you never know when it is going to be over, and decisions get easier. As the weather warmed, I knew I needed another bike. By May, I was the proud owner of a brand spanking new 2000 Honda VFR – the bike I still own and ride as often as I can. The rest of 2000 was great – tons of little rides all over Ontario, including a day on the track at Shannonville. I managed to get good enough that I actual found out I was still a real beginner with a lot of skill development to come.

Summer 2001 was my best bike season to date -I road to Vancouver where my honey Kim meet me for a few days of R&R, then she headed home, and I headed south down the coast into California, before zigg-zagging back across the content to Toronto. To this day, when I have 1000 KPH brain at bedtime, I can still “count sheep” by remembering a bunch of different sections of that trip in particular detail – mountains, rivers, corners, hills, prairies, oceans – the geography of a content. That is what I want to talk about – the bike journey. That is what it is about.

Since then, I have put a ton of kilometres on that bike – short rides, long rides, just running around town. I have fast friends that I occasionally ride with, who wait for me at the corners where we change roads. I have other friends I ride with, where I am one of the fast guys in the group – it is all relative. Mind you, none of us is fast in Ontario anymore – not worth the risk. Wow – a place where the punishment for speeding is likely a little more severe than what you might be able to get away with for a gun - Brrr. A few days on the track, and lots of days on the backroads, man do I love that bike.

But hark, what is this I see at www.feelv4.com? Honda has a new 7^th generation VFR – in time for a spring 2010 roll out. Hmmm, could my 10 year love affair with a 5^th generation model be nearing its end? The bike journey will tell.

Alex, “Sandy” Cameron

Etobicoke, November, 2009

Learning Ubuntu #8 - Sirius, Garmin Mapsource, Windows Networking

Well, I have not posted for a few weeks, but i have been mostly using Linux. I have for sure found two really bad pieces of news:

1. Nothing I can figure out looks promising for Garmin Mapsource. That sucks, so I have at least one application which is going to push me back to Windows now and then.
2. Even a bigger issue, I can not get Sirius Satellite radio to work. I spent several hours fooling around with something called "sipi", and got nowhere. Sigh. It looks like Konquer might be the solution, but I have not tried that yet.

Then, I got sidetracked on another issue - remember I said that I had to replay my old USR router with a new LinkSys router? Well, after that, I could not get Windows networking working in the house - two XP machines, 1 1/2 Vista machines (this laptop runs Vista most of the time). Turned out that one of the XP machines which runs Norton Internet Security had decided to treat the network as restricted, and all I had to do was change that to get the Windows machines working on the network again.

Before I close for the night - a couple of good links:

1. This looks like all I need to get Samba working: SettingUpSamba
2. This was a good explanation of the difference between apt-get and aptitude.

See you again soon!

Learning Ubuntu #7 - Suspend is Working, Upgrading to OO 3.1, Getting CIFS working

1. Have a look at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/336158. I cut, modified slightly, and pasted the following into the specified file. All is well. Suspend is now working.
   
<match key="system.hardware.product" contains_outof="L300">
<merge key="power_management.quirk.vbe_post" type="bool">true</merge>
<merge key="power_management.quirk.s3_bios" type="bool">false</merge>
</match>

   


2. This appears to be the definitive guide for the OO 3.1 upgrade
   
   • How to Install OpenOffice.org 3.1 on Ubuntu 9.04
   This did not work out the way it was described, but I did end up with 3.1 installed - note - look carefully - it still look like 3.0 - read the small print. Spell check is not working - I will follow up on that latter.
   
   
3. This appears to be the definitive guide for basic Samba setup
   
   • File Sharing Using Ubuntu 9.04 And Samba
     

Learning Ubuntu #6 - Mounting a Partition, Fixed My Internet Problem, Install Wireshark

1. I find I am access stuff off of the Windows partition frequently, and I plan to do that even more, so I wanted to have the Windows partion permanently mounted. A couple of simple things make this easier:
1. Create a directory named /windoz - i used root, and created it 755, but not sure it really matters
2. Like I said earlier, I am a GUI kind of guy, so figuring out to get Nautilus to "open with" and use "gksudo gedit" to open /etc/fstab just makes it simple
3. I had used automont, and noticed the windows partititon was mounting as "fuseblk" - but after experimentation, the line in fstab should be:
   /dev/sda2 /windoz ntfs
4. Use "mount -a" to test, then reboot - /windoz will be good to go
   
2. Remember I mentioned a couple of posts ago that suddenly all my internet access had slowed down - both on windows and Linux? Did some problem determination today - and I am not sure exactly what the issue was, but it all pointed at an old USR router that I have used forever. I removed it, reconfigured every fricking think in the house to point at a LinkSys wireless router I have also had for a long time, and have all the key stuff back online with much improved speed. Not really sure what caused the issue, but this fixed it.
3. Also, used "sudo apt-get install wireshark" to get wireshark installed. Went perfectly smoothly. In case I have not mentioned it yet, I am a huge fan of the way apt-get work - what a great way to make managing a system easy.
   

Learning Ubuntu #5 - Flash, Gnome Terminal

1. After looking around at options to get flash working, I decided to try opening a terminal window, and then I ran "sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer". I shutdown firefox, restarted it, and it worked like a charm. Too easy! I loved it.
2. Ok, so I am not always in a GUI, I like a command line. So far, gnome-terminal seems fine, but I disliked the fact that it always opened a small terminal. I wanted to resize the terminal to a larger initial size. I had already dragged a launcher out to the Gnome panel, and it turns out all you need to do is right button the launcher, click properties, and change the command to read "gnome-terminal --geometry=150x60", and presto, nice 150 wide * 60 line terminal. Nice.
   

Learning Ubuntu #4 - Pidgin, APMS, Slow Internet, Grub

So, last night, I spent some time with Pidgin. Look under "Applications > Internet", and select Pidgin. Select Accounts > Manage Accounts", and add your MSN account. Really straight forward, and seems to work OK. I have a couple of issues where my logon drops, but that may be because I am having an internet problem - more about that latter.

The other thing I did was set up Pidgin to start automatically. That is also easy. Select "System > Preferences > Startup Applications", click add, hit Alt+F2, scroll down to make sure the command name is "pidgin", hit cancel, fill in the name you want and set the command to "pidgin", click add, click close. Your done.

The other thing I did was fool around for an hour or so with power management. I mean that I was trying to get hibernate and suspend to work, including resume. Hibernate was straight forward - it just works. But, I screwed around with suspend and could not get it to work. Did a bunch of surfing, and found nothing that looked very helpful in the way of a fix, but lots of hits indicate the problem is fairly wide spread. It did sound like Ubuntu 9.10 might help, so I revisited power settings, and turned off all the suspend stuff, and just it the machine hibernate.

Next, I spent a couple of hours on my desktop with Wireshark trying to figure out the Internet is slow then fast - the good news is this is not an Ubuntu problem - reproduced on the Win XP machine. The bad news - I will have to talk to my ISP and get them to try and do something - never likely or very pleasant - sigh.

Also, found this post about a GUI to manage the grub boot manger: http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Jaunty#Use_Startup_Manager_to_change_Grub_settings - will give it a try, and report back! Two more things:

1. Per http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Jaunty#GRUB_boot_manager_settings you need to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst to change descriptions and stuff like that.
2. I am a GUI guy, and wanted to do that from the Nautilus file browser, but you need to be root. Turns out to be simple - right click the file, select "open with other application", and specify "gksudo gedit". There may be ways to improve this
   

Learning Ubuntu #3 - Firefox, Mplayer, Update Manager, Misc

A few more things today:

1. To upgrade Firefox to 3.5.1, go to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FirefoxNewVersion , and click on the "install the following package: firefox-3.5. Firefox 3.5 will be installed alongside Firefox 3.0" link. After this finishes, you will see on the "Applications > Internet" menu, a new application named "Shiretoko", and that is Firefox 3.5. A couple of things left to do:
1. Go to "System > Preferences > Prefered Application", change the browser setting to custom, and set the command text to "firefox-3.5 -new-tab "%s""
2. Right button the firefox icon on the lauchpad, and delete it. Then, from "Applications > Internet", right-button the Shiretoko icon, and select the "Add this launcher to panel"
3. If you already did some profile changes in 3.0 that you want to save, then have a look at http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Backing+up+your+information?style_mode=inproduct#Backing_up_your_profile and at http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles?style_mode=inproduct
   
   
2. After a little research, I found that opening a command window, and doing "sudo apt-get install mplayer", and installing the mplayer movie player gave me a tool which would play back .wmv files. But, I notice that the application keeps issuing errors like "error overreading 55 bits". Not sure what to do about that. Strangely enough, I downloaded the same video again, and this time it played just fine, also Firefox now knew that mplayer was the correct application - good stuff - FIDO.
3. The other cool thing was "System > Administration > Update Manger", was really easy to use to download updates to keep the system current - good stuff.
   

To get Flash working, i tried to go to http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/alternates/, and it screwed up - i386 instead of x64 was the problem I think. So, for tomorrow, some key issues:

1. I am finding a lot of web sites really slow - so will boot Windows and check to see if the sites are slow, or if I have an Ubuntu issue.
2. Will try flash again.
3. While I am in Windows, I will look up my Windows IM credentials, and try and get Pidgin working
   
4. Also, in the above system update, I noticed that I got an update to power management - will see if that makes suspend work - I found the machine would suspend OK - but will not resume.
5. One other interesting thing, in this blogger window, every now and then my cursor jumps to an unexpected location - not sure if that is an unknown fat finger problem, or something else weird.

1. See you next time!

Learning Ubuntu #2 - Partitions, and getting started

Well, I am posting this entry using FireFox running under Ubuntu on my laptop. When I went to install the other night, the Ubuntu disk partitioning was not giving me the "Guided Install" option. It turned out that this was because my Toshiba L300 laptop comes from the factory with 4 partitions:

1. A small EISA partition - this is a hidden partition - not really sure what this is for - sounds like Toshiba uses this to store setup info based on the searches I did. Also, it sounded dangerous to delete, so I decided to leave it alone.
   
2. The C: drive, where Vista is
3. A D: drive which is empty and apparently was where the french version of Windows was, and which was deleted when I selected the language as english when I bought the machine.
4. A medium sized hidden partition which is where Toshiba stashes the recovery copy of Vista

So, because there were 4 primary partitions (which is the max supported), Ubuntu was not able to offer me guidance for partitioning. After doing my research, I became sure that deleting the D: partition would be safe, and that is what i did.

After that, when I booted from the Ubuntu CD I created the other night, the install proceeded fine, and I ended up with two new partitions - one for Ubunto and one for a paging file.

To make sure I new what was going on, I did a little research, and found out about gparted, and even better, I found out how easy to use the "add/remove applications" function is to use. I installed gparted, and confirmed that an extended partition was created to hold the two new partions, and all is looking good.

Spent an hour or two just knocking around in Ubuntu, and it all looks good. More to report shortly.

Learning Ubunto #1 - Getting Started with 9.04

The objective of this blog entry, and likely several more, is going to be getting Ubunto dual-booting on a Toshiba laptop, and getting it doing the things that I do day to day:

1. Surfing the web. Preferably with Google Chrome, but I can switch back to FireFox
2. File sharing with some XP machines, and Vista machines scattered around the house. Oh yea - with another Ubunto machine I built a couple of years ago as a web server.
3. I use OpenOffice a lot, so will need to get 3.1 up and running
4. Gimp - great tool for photographs
5. My other favourite tool for photos is Picasa 3 - great stuff for simple photo management
6. I use Google Earth now and then - would like to get that working
7. Gotta have Garmin Mapsource - I love my Zumo - great for travel - especially on the bike
8. I have about 12G of music - some AAC mostly Mp3 - if I have to - I can toss the AAC and rerip from the original CDs
9. Burn a few CDs and DVDs now and then
10. Current Python and Perl for some work stuff I fool around with sometimes from home
11. Wireshark, just because I am a geek
12. Sirius Satellite radio - I love the Outlaw Country and Blues channels.

Thats about it. No doubt, I will find a couple of other things I forgot to mention, but that is the basics.

I have used Linux off and on since early 2000, but this is going to be my first shot at making Linux my "daily driver". A couple of nights ago, I downloaded the Ubunto 9.04 64-bit ISO, created the CD, and was pleasently surprised to find that most everything seemed to work.

So, here we go. Tonight, I started by following the directions posted at "How to dual-boot Vista with Linux (Vista installed first) -- the step-by-step guide with screenshots". So far, the resizing of the main Vista partion seems to have worked fine, I am going to do some backups, and then off we go.

Mussels Marinara

This recipe started a couple of years ago with a recipe we clipped out the newspaper, and I started changing it a bit to make it fit our tastes.


I made it on Saturday night, and we both really enjoyed it. So, I thought I would write it down

Ingredients

• 1 kg (2 lbs) of Mussels
• 1 28 oz can plum tomatoes
• 1 small can of tomato paste
• 1 medium sized red pepper
• 1 medium sized Hungarian Hot Pepper
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh Tarragon - medium-coarse chop
• 4 Roma tomatoes
• 1 medium sized sweet onion
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 1/2 cups of Sauvignon blanc
• 1 tablespoon chili peppers (optional)
• about 1 1/2 cups of cilantro - strip the leaves off the big stems and toss out the big stems
• olive oil
• the best baguette from the neighbourhood bakery

Preparation

• wash and clean the mussels
• medium-fine chop the two peppers and the onion
• cut the four romas into bite-size pieces
• peel the garlic, crush with the flat of your knife, chop, not too fine
• I have a 16" wok that works perfect for this - but whatever you have that will work
• put enough olive oil into the very-hot wok, toss in the peppers, onions, and chopped garlic, simmer until they start to get nice and tender
• turn the wok down to a hot-simmer, add the tarragon, canned tomatoes, tomato paste, wine, and the chopped Roma tomatoes
• cover and simmer for 5 minutes
• add the mussels, cover and simmer for three minutes
• add the cilantro, cover and simmer for another three minutes
• should be done - check for mussels are open and look cooked - give another two minutes if you are not sure
• serve in a large bowl with the baguette on the side on a plate, have a soup spoon handy because the sauce is yummy
• you can skip the chili peppers - the Hungarian pepper has a fair amount of zing all by itself
• If you do not like cilantro, then use some parsley
• Also works great over pasta

A great spring weekend - Macebeth Rocked

I have been a fan of Macbeth since grade 7 - which was back in about 1968. My buddy Hugh and I got grabbed by three girls in our Junior high drama class - Calder Junior High, Edmonton Alberta. I think that Hugh and I were classic rednecks. For the life of me, I can not remember the name of the three girls.

Looking back on it, I am pretty sure that the girls had already awakened to the interesting biological changes which occur about then. But we had not. I think we likely blew a good opportunity. Darn! Anyway, we did the witch scene - act 4 scene 1For the life of me, I do not remember if I was Lenix or Macbeth, but I do know that is when I fell in love with the play.

At various points in the last 40 years, I have seen the "Scottish Play" on film (Sir L.O.), studied in in high school, read it because I wanted to read it, talked about it who knows how many
times,but I have never seen it on stage.

So, in the fall of 2008 when my wife Kim and I found out that Macbeth was in the 2009 schedule for Stratford, it was not open for debate – we bought tickets – and I started looking forward to it.

When I read J. Kelly Nestruck's review - “A Macbeth neither fair nor foul ”, and found his review sort of in the “Nah” category, I went to the production this weekend bit prepared to find it weak. But, I have to say, I 100% enjoyed it.

• I agree, it would have been better to see some more passion between Mr. & Mrs. M – but I thought that Colm Feore and Yanna McIntosh got it – the passion showed and by the end of Act 1 – I was comfortable that the central theme was established. It would have been nicer if it was a little hotter, but I felt it was there.


• I thought the mid-20^th century staging worked. I think that it did not matter where in our globalized world it occurred – the whole treatment of violence as theme that comes forward from 1109 all the way to 2009 worked.
  
• I admit, I got confused a couple a couple of time trying to tie the staging to my memory of the play – but overall – I got it – and I think people who know either a little or a lot about the play will get it
• I thought that both the flag reference to England's take-over of Scotland, and the “generic bunker with static-filled television screens” worked. The first gave us the true historic context – the second played nicely into the reality of the 20^th century staging – Bravo!
  

So, to sum it all up, two thumbs way up. And, I am looking forward to seeingJulius Caesar this fall.