Marc’s Musings Reality from Marc’s point of view!

It’s almost here. The computer and its accessories are coming in two different shipments, one from Shanghai China, the other from Hong Kong.

It’s funny that, when I first saw the package progress, my mind kept translating the “CN” that is “China” to “Cincinnati”. The times were even all wrong - in the future by over half a day. That really should have been a hint.

I think I cerebrally have always understood that a lot of my consumer goods come from China, but that fact is usually masked by a vast net of retail distribution outlets. Somehow, tracking my packages directly from the Orient in this way makes them seem exotic.
I suppose “exotic” means “comes from far away” in my mind

I almost picked up the movie “Big Trouble in Little China” in honor of the Shanghai source of half of the shipment…

I’m not quite sure when the packages will arrive, the only delivery date I see is a “Resched Delivery” one that yesterday gave yesterday’s date and today, well.. says today’s date. Given the track record of things coming from Kentucky (where both packages resided as of about 3 am today) I’m betting that I’ll actually receive them on Monday. I’m not sure that UPS actually makes deliveries here in “the bible belt” on Sundays.

Posted under General

I know this is late and I wish I could remember who forwarded this to me, but this is one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

If anybody can tell me how to capture this so I can save it to my own hard drive I’d be eternally grateful!

Make sure you take a few moments to actually watch what the characters are doing. There is a *lot* going on in there.

Posted under General

Finally got the pictures posted, click below:

Posted under Photos, Travel

It’s Not Funny If I Have to Explain It : A Dilbert Treasury. Like many of Scott Adams’ “Dilbert” books now, there is a fair amount of repetition in this treasury. But the comments after each of the cartoons makes this worthwhile. As scary as it can be to wander around in this realm, I *do* like to know what Scott is thinking when he creates his mini-masterpieces. So I definitely think this is a worthwhile addition to my collection.

Posted under Comic Books

I finally had to break down and pick up one of these fine machines. I’ve been itching to get one for a while now.

Since the IBM (now Lenovo for the laptops) site is ever changing - I’m not sure that I’ve ever managed to find the same page more than once - I’ve copied the spec sheet onto my own website and you can view it here.

The tablet PC format sold me right off the bat, but there are a lot of them out there. This one is very light, about 4+ pounds with the 8 cell battery attached. The battery is *supposed* to give up to 6.5 hours of working time - we’ll see. But it should be much better than the 2+ that I am used to with laptops.

Also slick is the integrated biometric fingerprint reader to unlock the machine and to supply passwords to various applications.

Here is some more info on the x41.

Take a peek and tell me what you think.

Posted under Tech Stuff

**Update 1/24/2006***
Don’t download the 1.2.7 release, use instead 1.2.6. There is a problem with numlock and shift keys with the 1.2.7. I installed it and went back to 1.2.6 and am still very happy.
***End Update 1/24/2006**

Where KM is just a play on KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse). If you ever deal with more than one computer on your desktop and have plenty of screens but want to get yourself down to one keyboard and mouse, this is a solution for you.

I find the cramped keyboard and pointing solutions associated with laptop computers to be fine if you’re on the road. They are designed to work in a confined space and meet that need admirably. However, given the choice, I prefer the nicer feeling “real” keyboard with a separate keypad all the keys where my fingers “remember” them from years of touch-typing.
And nothing I’ve tried yet matches the precision and intuitiveness of a mouse for day-to-day GUI operations (note I’m not talking about specialized apps like gaming and the like).

Synergy (from Sourceforge.net) is a free software solution allows you to choose your primary computer and then allows you to control both the mouse and the keyboard for any number of different other computers. Linux, Windows, whatever, this will work. It even lets you share your clipboard across the different machines.

You can line up 5 laptops side-by-side and just run your mouse across all 5 screens if you choose. You can even go so far as to synchronize the screen savers.

All that’s required is that they all be talking via TCP/IP on the same network.

Take a look at it and don’t just dismiss it out of hand. It can take a few minutes to get your head around what it offers. This is a rock-solid application that impresses me a LOT.

Posted under Tech Stuff

Ever since immigrating to the United States from Canada, I’ve been looking for a restaurant that can replace the venerable Swiss Chalet. Their menu has grown incredibly over the past 10 or so years to obscure their real purpose for existing (the Chicken on a Kaiser with fries). But Swiss Chalet is still a no nonsense, value-for-the-money place to go and get a reliable meal that pretty much everybody will enjoy.

I’ve not been able to find a place that offers the basic, satisfying food that is as ubiquitous as Swiss Chalet, but due largely to their Chicken Fajita Roll-up, Applebee’s restaurant is a rising star on my short list of reliable, satisfying places to eat.

Posted under Opinions