Hooked

An old seaman met an old pirate in a bar, and talked about their adventures on the sea. The seaman noted that the pirate had a peg-leg, a hook, and an eye patch.

The seaman asked, “So, how did you end up with the peg-leg?”

The pirate replied, “We were in a storm at sea, and I was swept overboard into a school of sharks. Just as my men were pulling me out, a shark bit my leg off.”

“Wow!” exclaimed the seaman. “What about your hook”?

“We were boarding an enemy ship and were battling the other sailors with swords,” recalled the pirate. “In the skirmish, one of the enemy managed to cut off my hand.”

“Incredible!” remarked the seaman. “And how did you get the eye patch?”

“A seagull dropping fell into my eye,” replied the pirate.

“You lost your eye to a seagull dropping?,” the sailor asked incredulously.

“Well,” sighed the pirate, “it was my first day with the hook”

Waking up Grumpy

Stan and Jerry were a couple of old fishing buddies. Early Saturday morning, Stan called Jerry and said, “Jerry, it’s Stan. Look, I’m not gonna be able to go fishing this morning like we planned.”

“Why not?” asked Jerry. “We’ve been planning this fishing trip all week!”

“Look, I woke up grumpy this morning,” explained Stan.

Jerry thought for a moment and said, “Well, have you tried getting her to go back to bed?”

Parental Concern

A woman sought advice from a family therapist, “It’s my daughter that I’m worried about. I found her with the little boy next door. They were both naked and examining each other’s bodies!”

“That’s doesn’t sound unusual,” smiled the therapist. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“But I am worried, doctor,” insisted the woman, “and so is my daughter’s husband!”

Coffee Run

A recently hired blonde was tasked was to go out for coffee. Armed with a large thermos, she hurried to a nearby coffee shop.

When she got there, she held up the thermos so that the man behind the counter could see it. “Is this big enough to hold six cups of coffee?” she asked.

Looking at the thermos the man replied, “It should easily hold six cups.”

Handing the thermos over, the blonde said, “Wonderful! I need you to fill it with one black, two decaf, and three with cream and sugar.”

Sunday, September 9, 2018

LMDE Upgrades

Let’s back up a moment… Like way far… Before Flush Twice… Even before Windows 95… The internet had only just reached Ohio, and BBS’s (aka Bulletin Board Systems) were still the coolest thing you could do with your home computer on a Saturday night. (Hey, it actually got me laid many times, which is more than I can say for reddit.)

It was the early 90’s and a friend of mine had introduced me to a new operating system. He was so excited about it! “What can you do with it?” I asked while feigning interest. Denny typed a few cryptic commands into what looked like a broken DOS prompt. It spit back equally cryptic nonsense as he explained with great excitement what the system was doing. At the time it didn’t make that much sense, and I wasn’t really all that impressed.

A few years later I would be very impressed during a computer show at Hara Arena when I witnessed an entire operating system installed with a graphical desktop environment in a mere 20 minutes. In both cases, that OS was Linux, and after the latter, I became a Linux user. Fun fact: Flush Twice was originally hosted on a Linux server in my basement.

Of course some of you may recall my foray into the military back in 2005. After I joined the Army, my propensity for Linux was not well tolerated, and I had to switch over to Windows again, but in 2012, I was a free man, and I immediately steered back towards Linux. Of course my old distro had withered and died, so I had to find a new one.

Linux Mint was particularly appealing, owing to the fact that the system could be installed with full multimedia codecs in a mere 20 minutes. Everything just worked, and the Mate Desktop Environment was so clean, simple, and intuitive that I really didn’t have to Google info on how to use it.

Now while Linux Mint offers a variety of desktop choices, their flagship is called Cinnamon. It’s a home grown desktop very similar to Mate, but slightly more hackerish. It also seemed glitchier to me, and it looked very dark. I prefered Mate. It was lighter, seemed to work better, and it was easier to find everything.

A small failing of Linux Mint at the time was that it was based off of Ubuntu. While this made rebranding and packaging a snap, the whole OS had to be reinstalled about once a year when the latest version was released. An alternative was Linux Mint Debian Edition. It was a little grittier, but I wouldn’t have to keep reinstalling it so often.

So LMDE (the Debian branch) became my OS of choice, and with it, I could just get things done. Of course 3 years ago, LMDE became LMDE 2, and just recently it became LMDE 3, and wouldn’t you know it… They discontinued the version that included the Mate Desktop Environment, so you can’t just upgrade in place… Nope. I had to do a fresh install with the Cinnamon desktop.

OK, so all is not lost. This is Linux after all. After installing LMDE 3 with Cinnamon, I just installed the Mate desktop packages (of which there are many) and switched to using it instead of Cinnamon. With three desktop installations, that was a lot of downloading and installing, and it went a little over the usual 20 minutes.

But still, the computers have all been updated, and everything seems pretty much like it was. Given how the interfaces changed from Windows 7 to 8 to 10, keeping things the same is a relief. I take comfort that the Linux community is dedicated to keeping desktop computers alive and well for many years to come.

So special thanks to Clem and company for all their hard work on creating and maintaining Linux Mint.

Also thanks to this week’s joke contributors: Glenn and George. I wouldn’t be able to keep doing this if it weren’t for their contributions, because I ran out of jokes a long time ago. If you would like to contribute a joke, you can submit one here or email me at flush2x@gmail.com. If your joke is used, you’ll get a thank you from me and a warm fuzzy feeling inside!

Pax,

-f2x

The New Hearing Aid

An elderly gentleman had a serious hearing problem for a number of years. He went to the doctor and was fitted for a set of hearing aids that allowed the man to hear again.

A month went by and the man went back to the doctor for a standard follow up.

The doctor remarked, “It would seem your hearing is nearly perfect now. Your family must be really pleased that you can hear again.”

“Oh, I haven’t told my family yet,” said the old man. “I just sit around and listen to the conversations, and I’ve changed my will three times!”

Sex with a Ghost

The university was offering a course in paranormal studies, and to get a feel for his audience the professor asked, “How many of you here believe in ghosts?”

Nearly every student raised their hand.

“Well that’s a good start. Out of those of you who believe in ghosts, do any of you think you’ve ever seen a ghost?”

About half the students raised their hands.

“That’s interesting. Has anyone here ever talked to a ghost?

About half of those students raised their hands.

“That’s great Has anyone here ever been touched by a ghost?”

Three students raise their hands.

“That’s fantastic. But let me ask you one question further,” said the professor. “Has any of you ever made love to a ghost?”

One student in the back raised his hand.

The professor was astonished. He took off his glasses and said, “Son, in all the years I’ve been giving this lecture, no one has ever claimed to have had intimate contact with a ghost. Please come up here and tell us about your experience.”

The student made his way up to the podium.

The professor said, “Now, tell us what was it like to have sex with a ghost.”

The student replied, “Ghost? From back there I thought you said ‘goats’!”

An Israeli Unknown Soldier

A tourist, visited the National Memorial Hall For Israel’s Fallen where there is an eternal flame monument to Unknown Soldiers.

At the base of the memorial, a sign was displayed: “Here lies Seymour Ruthenberg”.

The tourist asked one of the attendants how was it possible that the unknown had a name.

The old man replied, “As a soldier, that Seymour was pretty much unknown, but as an accountant-Oy! He was something.”

Typing Code

A husband and wife decided they needed to use “code” to indicate that they wanted to have sex without letting their children in on it. They decided on the word Typewriter.

One day the husband told his five year old daughter, “Go tell your mommy that daddy needs to type a letter.”

The child did as she was told, and her mother responded, “Tell your daddy that he can’t type a letter right now because there is a red ribbon in the typewriter.”

A few days later the mother said to the daughter, “Go tell your daddy that he can type that letter now.”

The child went to tell her father, returned, and announced, “Daddy said never mind, he already wrote the letter by hand.”