Still cloudy today, but temps already in the low 40s, and will continue a gentle warm up for a few days. I must remember to get to the well house and turn off the heat lamp too.
I slid off the anti carb bandwagon last night, and had a roast beef sammich, with toasted buns in the fry pan, pickles, slice of real cheese, some mayo and mustard…and fries. My BS was still only 127 this morning. Sometimes, one just has to say “what the heck!”
Still, was a nice change from the drudgery of the same thing, day after day.
The kid ended up calling in yesterday, instead of leading me to believe that they had closed due to road conditions; no, huh uh, it was likely too icy for her to make the 50 mile round trip on the icy roads, that continued to degrade during the day.
My Linux version, Mint 19.3, Tricia, is end of life in April, meaning no more support. I see no alternative except dumping Mint altogether, and going with Ubuntu or Debian, as long as I can find a 32 bit OS…seems everything is shifting to 64 bit these days.
I’ll likely not find another deal like this notebook for $400, without an OS that I got in 2014. Most reliable computer I ever had.
This time of the month is time for me to order my measly allotment of OTC meds from United Healthcare…and of course, they are out of what I needed most, which is so fucking typical. They have gone from (two years ago) being able to order $90 per quarter, with little or no restrictions on amounts, with ample variety to choose from in many categories.
Last year, their stock depleted by at least half, and this year it’s $35 per month, and they are pretty much out of what I need most. This is one of those deals that one has to “use it or lose it”.
So tired of being manipulated by the big corporations.
extexanwannabe 
I would recommend Zorin OS Lite but they are end of life on the 32 bit next year. Are you looking for something lightweight that doesn’t have much pre-installed take a look at Bodhi. If you want something that has a large choice of desktop environments look at Debian. If Mint is working for you why not stick with it until there is an issue with the box? I ran Mint on a Dell 610 Latitude for a print and media server for 9 years until something smoked on the motherboard.
at this point, I am only looking for a 32 bit system with support.
This distribution works but the Firefox crashes frequently with more than say 4 open tabs. Not a big deal, but it shouldn’t be happening. I just did another update today, and it crashed again later.
I store all my important docs and pics on an external HD
If you are running a disk HDD I would upgrade to a solid state drive. When I repurposed my old laptop I put an $18 SATA 240GB SSD I off Amazon and installed Zorin on it. The old drive had bad sectors and doing the slow death.
I think you’ll find that all modern computers are 64-bit. I don’t have a recommendation for you on the IT side.
but on the prescription front, have you checked https://costplusdrugs.com/ which is a company started by Mark Cuban to sell drugs at cost. I’ve not had to use them (i try not to take even aspirin…) so I can’t vouch for their inventory or prices.
I have not heard of them…will look into it..thanks!
How I do so hate to be forced to take the new path to the 64 bit system..
I started with United Healthcare for my medicare advantage provider, got fed up after a couple of years and found that Humana was a tad bit better. The OTC is $75/quarter, but their pricing is sometimes outrageously high and other times just high. All depends on whether there is a similar or identical product sold somewhere nearby at retail. And the biggie: terms and conditions can be quite a bit different from plan to plan, state to state. I usually get 6 or 7 bottles of vitamins/supplements every quarter. Occasionally you will find a real winner, like the allergy eye drops that work better than anything I have ever tried.
Unfortunately, their variety of choices has been severely depleted as of recent. They don’t even provide mouthwash any more.
The only reason I chose them was because they were the only company that paid for all my prescription meds…except the IE…if one was to ask UHC, they would wave a big flag showing how much they spent for my meds…the Metformin alone they claim was over $15,000 per year…which is of course, pure dee bullshit.
Bro yall needs to get away from United Healthcare…about anybody else is better..ya know?
That is what I needed to hear.
Thanks for the advice!
From what I am seeing, Ubuntu dropped support for 32 bit machines when they released version 18.04. The latest version of Debian still has 32 bit machine support. I would suggest downloading an image file that includes the non-free and firmware packages so you’ll have the best chance of successful installation.
At this point, I am open to suggestions.
I was leaning toward the Debian.
I’ve been running the latest version of Debian for the last few months on some of my computers and so far I’m happy with the performance I’m getting from it. As I understand it, before releasing new versions of software in their repositories, they do a lot of testing and bug fixing first to ensure stability. While that means Debian may not have the latest versions of software in their repositories for a short period of time while they are testing and bug fixing a new release, I think that’s a good thing overall in the long run if you’re looking for stability.
I agree. I only use the word processing app, browser, and Wine for my Risk game. The rest, I don’t use. Some music storage and play lists, but not real happy with that side either.