I was born in the United States a member of Generation Y, but have lived much of my life in Northern Europe. I consider myself a pretty fierce and independent girl, but sometimes the winds are so rough.

I like people that have the spark. I enjoy the works of Stanley Kubrick and Steely Dan. I love to sit with good company and drinking wine and listening to records.

Each of us has so little time on this planet. We have to enjoy its beauty while we can and be good to one another.

What an exciting time it is to be alive! Exciting as any. Who knows what tomorrow or next year will bring? I can't wait to turn the page.

Here's my recommended Ubuntu package list:

sudo apt-get install vim vim-doc vim-scripts ascii pv ipcalc pwgen traceroute-nanog wakeonlan mailutils mutt irssi rtorrent htop iftop fslint tofrodos minicom lrzsz beep vlan bridge-utils ucarp gpm mail-notification avahi-utils avahi-discover wmctrl compizconfig-settings-manager openssh-server dhcp3-server dhcp3-dev bind9 bind9-doc ntp ntp-doc ddclient sendmail sendmail-doc lighttpd lighttpd-doc quagga quagga-doc nmap wireshark netsed ngrep irpas 4g8 netdiscover eclipse build-essential automake manpages-dev binutils-doc indent cvs bison bison-doc linux-doc abs-guide gqview gtkam imagemagick comix agave evolvotron blender povray povray-doc povray-examples povray-includes ardour jamin meterbridge paprefs pavucontrol pavumeter paman jackeq jack-rack jack-tools blop caps cmt fil-plugins ladspa-sdk mcp-plugins omins swh-plugins tap-plugins freebirth zynaddsubfx bristol csound csound-gui csound-utils jaaa freqtweak moc mixxx streamripper kino ffmpeg mjpegtools dvgrab celestia-gnome stellarium xaos wordnet xmaxima texlive-latex-base texlive-latex-base-doc texlive-latex-extra texlive-latex-extra-doc texlive-latex-recommended texlive-latex-recommended-doc texlive-humanities texlive-humanities-doc texlive-music bsdgames bsdgames-nonfree an fortunes fortunes-off fortunes-bofh-excuses jargon xevil gcompris tuxpaint scummvm beneath-a-steel-sky flight-of-the-amazon-queen wesnoth-all wesnoth-editor gnome-games-extra-data xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl-extra ubuntu-restricted-extras

And a small firewall to be added to /etc/rc.local:

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport ssh -m state --state NEW -m recent --update --seconds 900 --hitcount 2 -j DROP
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport ssh -m state --state NEW -m recent --set

To evaluate: gnucash/homebank, rosegarden. Added to the default install since the first version of this: xauth. Dropped from the repository since then: xcruise, shaper, xlife, paketto, nemesis, soundtracker.

Random ideas: Need to add a spam filter with live tarpitting and maybe MySQL server. The temperamental email client Evolution and the dog-slow image viewer Eye of Gnome should be improved or replaced. Home directory and desktop should be the same thing by default. Canonical should offer a dynamic DNS service instead of jumping on the cloud bandwagon; our home computers can be useful and independent personal servers. Someday, the realtime kernel will become stable and default, we'll be able to live without ubuntu-restricted-extras, and the train wreck that is Linux audio be sorted out.