Hello and welcome to my first posting on this new blog I am starting today. My name is Steve Newbauer. As I state in my About page I have had a couple of other blogs in the recent past … tadpolerider and midnightcryer. I chose to close both of them down  for personal reasons. I reckon writing a blog is “in my blood” though as I just can’t seem to get away from it. I chose this title because what I really want is the freedom to write about anything I decide to … whether it is about tadpole trikes, end time bible prophecy,  the weather conditions, or … well, I think you get the idea. I have various things going on in my life right now … some of which effect my writing a blog.

I just made a switch to using Linux on my computers so that has been quite time consuming getting things set up and working as well as my having to learn how to use Linux. I have tinkered around with Linux off and on over the years, but I have always used Windows as my main operating system having started off with my first computer in 1999 with Windows 95. I quickly upgraded to 98 and later to XP. I bought a new computer with Vista so I have used XP and Vista since then. My wife has a laptop with Windows 7 on it so since she doesn’t know much about computers I have had to learn Windows 7 so I can help her. I have found that I don’t care for anything Windows has produced since Vista. Learning and using Linux has been quite challenging and at times frustrating, but I am slowly learning and am really enjoying Linux. My biggest challenge thus far has been getting my printer working. I finally had success today (well, yesterday now as it is past midnite) so I am a happy camper.

With end of support of XP by Microsoft on April 8th I will be busy helping some others switch over to Linux on their computers.  In fact later this morning I will be starting on my first one for a family member. If you run XP on your computer(s) I highly recommend that you think twice about continuing on with it after support ends as hackers will really be going after those who are using it knowing that there won’t be anymore updates to fix those things which are discovered allowing attacks on the system. Antivirus programs and Malware programs won’t be able to protect against new attacks since they won’t be able to update their protection either.  Sticking with XP is inviting problems. Microsoft would love to have you spend your money upgrading to something newer they offer. That is what it is all about for them. As for me, they won’t be seeing any more money from me. They have seen the last of my money. Linux is free and superior to Windows. And it is the safest operating system available.

In case you are wondering I am using Linux Mint 16 on my main computer set up to dual boot with Vista. I am using Linux Ubuntu 13 in place of XP on my oldest computer.

Hopefully winter is almost over with and soon it will be decent enough weather conditions allowing for riding my tadpole trike. I usually manage to ride thruout the winter, but this winter has been so nasty and brutal that it was quite impossible to ride. I am raring to go. I had my first ride two days ago and quickly discovered I am much more out of shape than I figured I would be.

Well, I told you that my writing on this blog would be a mixed bag and as you can see it has been already. With that I will close before I start on something else. :) Thanks for stopping by.