2016 — 20 February: Saturday
I have a domestic cleaning consultant1 so I described my "glass mug" cleaning situation yesterday. Recall I bought the things in hopes of defeating the combination of hard2 water and tea stains that quickly spoil the appearance of my more conventional drinking vessels.
"Cif will do the trick."
"What's Cif?" ask I.
"It used to be called Jif" comes my not entirely information-packed reply from my consultant.
Turns out I actually already have a couple of dusty plastic bottles of Jif in the long-unexplored inner reaches of Christa's cleaning arsenal.
It further turns out that the stuff works, though now I can see how scratched and clouded the inner surface has become during my numerous earlier cleansing assaults3 in the last few months.
I shall now deploy Mug #2.
Yesterday's switch...
... of desktop manager to Xfce on BlackBeast Mk III brought an unexpected side-benefit. A daily irritant of MATÉ has been the fact that its system panel refuses to accommodate the HP status panel unless I first change the size of the panel away from, and back to, what I want. This forces a re-draw after the set of boot-up race conditions has settled down. Starting up with Xfce (which, I'm pleased to note, pops up the desktop "instantly" by comparison) there's no HP status panel to worry about. And here's proof that its absence has no effect on scanning:
(Yesterday's CDs. He's a good guitarist, but a bit less skilled in the art of the razor.)
Of course, I won't know if I can still do any printing until the next time I have to battle the Dept. of Work and Pensions. But, so far, I seem to have battered them into submission. Four months have now elapsed without so much as a further peep out of them (except for their very welcome Winter Fuel Payment). That resumed its former level — I interpreted it as their grudging recognition that Technology Towers is not a care-home, but rather a splendid Fortress of Solitude.
Comment...
... as they say would be entirely superfluous. But, I'd go with "Wow!" (I got there from here and have just ordered Orthofer's book of the first 2,500...)
I must say...
... some of the BBC's afternoon jazz has been particularly fine today. Unlike the uniformly grey weather. Meanwhile:
- Kodification ticks gently along.
- Customisation of the appearance and behaviour of Xfce on BB Mk III is (I believe) complete.
- The chap who's been poking away at an aerial survey of the possible crash site — a glacier — of George Cogar's 1983 fatal flight out of Smithers, B.C. has just updated me.
NUC thoughts
I was thinking about drafting some notes on the NUC for a page in the "bits" area but, really, what's to say?
- Buy a NUC, with a fast new-format M2.SSD and a matched-pair of sticks of DDR4 RAM.
- Stuff the silicon into the aluminium case. Close the lid.
- Connect the power, a screen, a keyboard and a mouse.
- Boot from a USB stick with your chosen Linux distro in ISO form. Install Linux.
Job done. [Pause] Oddly (in my opinion) Big Bro has declined my offer to configure one for him :-)