Life is an adventure

My stepdaughter is a senior in art school. Money is tight, so we have offered to have her come live with us. This really is much easier and less expensive than trying to help her monetarily, otherwise. As long as we don't fall on any really bad financial hardships, collectively, we should be fine.

Now my biggest problem is clearing out our office (really the front bedroom in our two bedroom condo) to make room for her. This means no home for either of our desktop computers. I've started looking into making my computer an Ubuntu Linux file share, since it has 1.5 TB of disk space, but I still do need to boot a Windows machine for no other damn good reason than I am chained to Quicken for home financial management. Methinks I will start looking for a better alternative, but not right away.

My wife Carmen will get a new laptop, probably with Ubuntu, for all her web surfing and letter writing needs. Open Office and Firefox are both familiar in this household; she uses Firefox already so there's no real problem.

We're already wireless, here, so we should be in good shape with just a couple purchases of new laptop equipment. For printing I'm going to look for a wireless printer that supports CUPS, and we'll all use it for our everyday printing needs. I'm pretty sure we'll be able to print, wired, to either of our existing printers (both Dell, BTW), but wired printing would mean moving to where the printer is. Who knows, it might not be a huge problem.

On a personal note, I am very excited to have Emily here. I could gush on and on about how great she is, but in the off chance she actually reads this blog, I think I'll just say what I've already said and leave it at that.

I know there are a lot of logistical things to be worked out, but these should pose no real problem. The dog will probably have to learn not to bark at night if/when she gets up, but we're all prepared to deal with him when the time comes.

I may or may not post more about this change in our lifestyle as time goes on, but I thought I would at least share, this time.