Since Friday, I’ve been hearing from various people that, not only is the snow coming, but that a blizzard is imminent, and “We’re gonna get it!”

So far, I haven’t seen a single snowflake in Albuquerque. True, some areas in the East Mountains have gotten some, but those areas are also at higher altitudes than Albuquerque.

All I’ve seen in town is the usual New Mexico winter weather — wind, clouds, and “cold” temperatures (it rarely gets below 20°F here).

This just reinforces what I’ve been thinking for years — forget the hairspray heads on TV with their Doppler radar and airport weather stations. The best weather report you’ll get is the one you see when you look outside through your front porch window in the morning.

Recently, some questions were posed about pizza preferences, such as Thin-crust or deep-dish? and What toppings do you prefer?

I don’t recall ever having a deep-dish pizza, but I’m definitely game for a try. I don’t see how I’d have a problem with it, unless someone put in something I didn’t like. But that goes more to toppings than style.

Let’s see –

• pepperoni
• sausage
• ground beef
• extra cheese
• green chile
• jalapenos

Things that should NOT go on a pizza, in my opinion –

• black olives
• pineapple
• mushrooms
• broccoli
• spinach
• chicken
• ranch dressing

For the record, I’ll state that the best pizza I can remember comes from Papa Murphy’s, where they put together the ingredients as you specify,  then wrap it in cellophane. After you pay for it, you take it home, put it in the oven at 425°F for about 15 minutes, and serve.

1.) What year did Star Trek first air?

A) 1966 — 8 September 1966 was the first time that the original series aired on TV.
B) 1967
C) 1968

2.) Who played the original Chief Medical Officer?

A) William Shatner
B) Leonard Nimoy
C) DeForest Kelly

3.) How many Star Trek movies are there?

A) 7
B) 10
C) 12

4.) What allows the Enterprise to go faster than the speed of light?

A) The Flux Capacitor
B) The Warp Drive
C) It cannot go faster than the speed of light

Nitpicking here — the answer SHOULD be [C], in that starships in the Star Trek universe don’t actually go faster than light.

What they do instead is create a bubble of stressed spacetime around them, the bubble travels at FTL speeds, and the ship goes along for the ride. This is the idea behind the Alcubierre drive.

5.) What TV network did Star Trek first air on?

A) NBC
B) ABC
C) CBS

That was in the good ol’ days when NBC could come up with programming on its own, instead of copying from the BBC.

OK, so I got the 100% score. Still, I’ll pass on the ringtone.

On 6 March 2009, I got Linux installed on a desktop at home and working. Finally — don’t know how many times I’ve tried.

So when I can’t get Windows XP to work any more, I’ll be OK. That, and I have absolutely no need to pick up a copy of their latest (Vista), about which I’ve heard almost nothing but bad reviews. Fuck ‘em and the (Trojan) horse they rode in on.

I first considered using Linux back in 2001, when I was having all sorts of problems with Microsoft’s Windows 98. I purchased a copy of Red Hat, but it didn’t work, so I tried Mandrake 9. Again, no cigar.

Between then and now, I’ve tried various boot “live” CD versions of Knoppix, Slax, Ubuntu, DSL, etc. but since for whatever reasons I wasn’t able to get onto the Internet with them, I wrote them off as failures. Meanwhile, in August 2005, I signed on at Burlington Coat Factory, which uses a version of Red Hat as the operating system for its corporate computer network.

Then last semester (and last year), I signed up for the Linux Essentials course at CNM. The course focuses on looking at Linux from the command line, which was how I learned MS-DOS. There, we installed Ubuntu 8.10 and SuSE Enterprise 10 onto detachable hard drives.

In February, I tried the boot CD option again, and was able to access the Internet using Gentoo 2.4. Finally, on 6 March, I downloaded the ISO image for OpenSuse 11.1, burned it to a CD and installed it to a desktop.

I’m still playing with various boot CD versions — Knoppix, Slax, Backtrack, and Puppy Linux — with other desktops and my laptop with the burned-out (?) Internet connection.

I won’t stop using Windows entirely — I’ll have three XP keys (2 Pro, 1 Home) and one for 2000 Pro. But I won’t be locked into it as I was before.

“tokyoexpressman” makes an interesting point on the Datingish blog entry “Nice Guys Finish Last and ‘You’re Like My Best Friend’” –

Because you don’t stand out. End of story. As soon as you start being nice, you get filed away in the friends drawer.

Not that you have to be a douche, but don’t put all your time and energy into her. Chick flicks (which is where romantics and nice guys draw much of their schtick from) are a poor example because while the guy might win the girl over with a bunch of sweet acts in 90 minutes, don’t forget the movie is set over periods of weeks or months. What else was that tall good-looking romantic lead actor doing when we wasn’t wooing the lead actress?

Sleeping. Shaving his face. Hanging out with the guys. Watching hockey. Working out. Killing terrorists, I don’t know. Point is that he was NOT spending every single moment of every single day chasing her; he was doing his own shit too.

Make yourself less available. People want things that are scarce, not commonly available. Simple economics.

This makes a lot of sense — and it isn’t the first time I’ve heard this. John Ross has written several articles on the same theme in his “Ross in Range” articles.