"Reliability" isn't reliable, or, why I wear a belt and suspenders (braces for you Brits).

We have a landline, and one of our phones is a plug-into-the-wall-with-a-cord phone. Such phones draw as much current as they need from the phone line, and therefore will continue working even if the power goes out for an extended period of time, so long as the phone line doesn't go out. We've got cordless phones for the rest of the house, which we primarily use, but, even if the power goes out and wipes those out, we've still got the one plug-into-the-wall as a backup.

We also have a cable modem.

We do NOT have our telephone service provided by our cable company on the cable data line. This means that we've got two separate lines of communication to the outside world.

Which is good, because I'm posting this. And our phones are out. Even the plug-in one in the kitchen.

Maybe it's finally time for me to break down and get a cell phone, so I can have three lines of communication.

My personal trainer at the gym is mean to me.

You know what Brian at the gym did to me today?

LOWERED the wieghts I was working with -- and then made me actually do all the exercises PROPERLY, with proper form, and NO cheating.

Did you know that doing the exercises properly without cheating is harder than doing cheating? Even WITH the lower weights?

I've got a Linux question for somebody . . .

So, after my hard drive died, I bought a new one, tried to re-install Windows on it, got fed up, and installed the Knoppix Linux distribution. Which is a "put the disk in the computer and it runs" installation. So I don't know anything about Linux, 'cause you don't have to to install Knoppix.

And it's been working pretty darned good so far. It's Debian-based, so I've been able to install other programs from packages -- Knoppix is shipped with a little GUI interface thing which lists what packages are available, and then you search the list, and choose what you want, and click, and it downloads, installs, and configures it for you without you having to know what you're doing.

In general, this is fantastic.

I've got only one significant complaint at this point, though: video drivers. My monitor is a 16:9 aspect ratio (1680 x 1050 pixels), and the video driver doesn't allow that.

Can anyone tell me how to find and install a video driver for a Knoppix Debian system running on a Toshiba Satellite laptop computer? Given that I actually don't have many computer skills, could you use little teeny words while explaining it?