10:33 – We’re back at comfortable inventory levels on all our kits, so I can spend some time today placing orders for more components.
In fact, I just cut a PO for a bunch of components. In what must be a corollary of Murphy’s Law, the one line item we really, really need (we’re down to two in stock) was for 480 10 mL graduated cylinders. That, of course, is the one item the vendor is back-ordered on. Oh well, I’ll pick up a few from another vendor, enough to hold us until the back-order ships in about 30 days.
For ten years our computers been running Linux exclusively, but I’m about to bag Linux in favor of Microsoft Windows. Don’t get me wrong. I still don’t like Microsoft, but I dislike it less than I dislike Apple. And what other realistic options are there for the desktop? I’m tired of desktop Linux “upgrades” that break things that used to work. I’m tired of not being able just to plug in a mainstream scanner and have it work without hours of screwing around with manually loading drivers and editing configurations. I’m tired of entire classes of application software disappearing. Right now, for example, there is no longer a WYSIWYG HTML editor that runs on Linux Mint. And I’m tired of mainstream applications like Firefox and Libre Office that crash frequently and remove useful features with every “update”. I’m just tired.
And, no, this is not an April Fools post. I’m seriously thinking about bring up one Windows 8/8.1 desktop system just to see if I can live with it. But I think I’ll wait and give Linux one more chance. When Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu LTS releases later this month, I’ll take a look at them and see if I can live with one of them.