Installing Slackware on a Dell Inspiron i3162-2040

Wednesday 15 November 2017, 12:52

My venerable Asus eeePC netbook finally gave up the ghost, and I replaced it with a Dell Inspiron i3162-2040. Here are some notes on what I had to do to get it up and running with Slackware Linux, both for my own future reference if I ever have to reinstall from scratch, and to help others who may be facing a similar adventure.

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This is why your Shopify storefront has no sales

Sunday 8 October 2017, 11:03

Since launching my own Web shop on Shopify in August, I've spent a fair bit of time on the Shopify forum, reading comments from other shopkeepers. There's a specific genre of discussion thread that comes up there about once per day: the "Why don't I have any sales?" thread. Someone will post that question, with a link to their own shop, and ask for advice from the other shopkeepers. I don't have all the answers, but I have noticed some pretty consistent habits of shopkeepers who have no sales and are asking the forum for help.

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Begin Primary Ignition

Saturday 22 July 2017, 13:41

I'm very close to officially launching the North Coast Synthesis Web storefront. I have stock for the first product ready to sell. All that remains to do is file a few more sales tax registrations, and I expect to sort that out this coming week. I'm aiming for August 1 as the launch date. If you're reading this on my Web site you'll note I've replaced the long-running Chessudoku ad with one for my new store.

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North Coast May update

Thursday 18 May 2017, 12:10

It's been a while since I posted an update on where things are going with the synthesizer business, so here are some notes.

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Mastodon WTF timeline

Sunday 23 April 2017, 20:08

In the last few days I've been fortunate to witness an interesting chapter in the Internet's history, and I'm trying to compile a timeline of what has happened while the memories are still reasonably fresh. This is incomplete and a work in progress; I'll be updating it, and not necessarily in chronological order, as I dig up other things worth including. Some of my TODO markers may remain. But here goes.

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The Well-Rounded Total

Saturday 25 March 2017, 12:30

I've posted some notes on the computer-science aspects of reporting rounded numbers in financial statements and hoping for the totals to add up correctly. You've doubtless seen footnotes on things that say "Totals may not add due to rounding." Can that be avoided? Here's a detailed examination of the question.

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Regningen

Sunday 19 March 2017, 12:15

As a side effect of some other accounting I was doing, I've managed to put a number on how much my venture in Denmark cost me.

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Panels and testing

Friday 10 March 2017, 15:37

It's been about a month since my last update on North Coast and my life in general, so here are some notes on how things have been going.

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Some thoughts on the Cost Disease

Saturday 18 February 2017, 06:40

The lovely and talented Scott Alexander has a posting on Cost Disease: the costs of some things, notably education and medical care especially in the USA, have increased in the last few generations to a really unfathomable extent. He gives detailed statistics, but it's typically about a factor of 10 after accounting for general inflation. Why has this happened? He gives some hypotheses, and in a followup posting shares some ideas contributed by readers, but it's not at all clear what's going on. And it seems like knowing might be valuable, because the fact of this phenomenon's occurrence (whatever the cause) is causing a great deal of misery for a whole lot of people, bearing on many other important issues.

I don't know either, but it made me think of some things.

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Dongguan Wizbang

Thursday 9 February 2017, 18:44

Here's another update on what's up with my new life and new business. In general, there's progress being made, but I'm still facing a lot of annoying delays.

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