• Dell laptops in electric shock shocker – Crave at CNET.co.uk
  Another good reason to buy HP instead…
  (tags: dell shock laptop power)

Wouldn’t you know that just about the same time I got my new system, the laptop that my wife had been using gave up the ghost.  It was an old Dell Inspiron 2600 that died a merciful death, having long suffered from a progressive case of Wirth’s syndrome.

So I decided to move my old development system (a Dell Dimension with P4 and 1.25GB RAM) over to that end of the house for my wife to use.  We don’t have any ethernet cable over there, and I’m not about to climb under the house to run more than 100 feet of the stuff (yet).  The laptop operated fine on 802.11g using a card that was matched to the Linksys WRT54GX access point.  This system didn’t have wireless, and I couldn’t find a matching PCI card online, so I ordered a new Linksys 802.11g card.  But connectivity sucked.  My wife uses a lot of files on a shared folder on the server, and the share kept going down from mometary loss of connection.

So I ordered a new 802.11n access point and matching PCI card.  Linksys WRT330N churning out the aerial bits at 270 Mbps!  But connectivity got worse.

I tried out several channels on the access point, and I finally seem to have found one that doesn’t get too much interference (wide radio band, channel 9).  We’ll see how that holds up.

Next, my wife didn’t like the huge CRT monitor on her desk.  It takes up so much room compared to the laptop to which she was accustomed.  So I ordered her a new HP L1706 flat-panel LCD.  Much smaller footprint, and a much crisper display to boot.  For once, her sysadmin managed to do something that merited no criticism.

Having an extra monitor on my hands, I could now become a member of the dual monitor club by plugging it into the external monitor port on my laptop and configuring Vista to extend the desktop.  I’ve always had multiple computers, each with their own monitor, but I’m amazed at the productivity gain of extending one desktop with two monitors.  Just being able to fully read an email or feed while composing a post or modifying code has reduced my mousework dramastically.

Trouble is, the display on the old Sony Trinitron is considerably inferior to the WXGA+ Ultra BrightView on my laptop, even if it does have a larger viewable area.  Moving my eyes from the latter to the former is almost painful.  I guess now I’ll have to order another new monitor…

Besides ditch, another slang term for relieving oneself of something is 86.

Evolution of a Python Programmer (thanks, Assaf).  The Windows and Enterprise versions were so true they made me laugh and cry at the same time.

Tish, Shelley, and Randy responded to my tag on the What’s Your Web 2.0 meme.

Gabrielle wants to send her Dell to Hell – and she wants to enlist your help.  I’m glad I went with HP instead of Dell for my last purchase.  I was partly influenced by an earlier post from Kent — whom I consider a friend as well, although we’ve never met in meatspace (his point exactly – I’ll have to visit some of the others Kent included in that list.  Social network indeed).

I released a new version of the keywords-tagcloud widget for WordPress.  This one improves font sizing options and passes XHTML 1.0 strict DTD all at once.

Roxzen linked to my post on installing Apache and IIS on the same system.

I recently reconnected with a former college roomate: Darrell Grizzle.  Looks like we took quite different paths in life, but eventually they crossed again on the web.  Mutually subscribed.

Joseph correctly guessed my numeric reference in the previous “Chipping the web” subtitle “GET along, POST haste“: port 80 is generally used for HTTP, and GET and POST are two of the more common HTTP requests.  Be the first to guess today’s reference to 81 and get a free link in the next edition.

Joseph also pointed me to The Rootless Root: The Unix Koans of Master Foo.

Hrafn is taking a poll: who’s afraid of robots?

Happy Birthday, Doug, and congratulations on 500 subscribers!

“A little link-love” back at you, Kent.

Unstrung links to my Vista-Verizon tirade.

Shasam.net links to my tag cloud widget for WordPress.

Something smells: Area 51, test site for Lockheed’s Skunk Works, where many erstwhile secret aircraft have been developed (and perhaps are yet being developed), is also connected with long-running alien conspiracy theories. Decide for yourself which way the scent carries.

Congratulations, Chad! You’ve graduated from having the occasional comment troll to celebrity hate searches. Next level: cyberstalkers.

I love WordPress. It’s free, and it rocks. But I do wonder why they didn’t store timestamps in universal time to avoid problems like these.

NoDaddy.com: “Exposing the Many Reasons Not to Trust GoDaddy with Your Domain Names”. Thanks, Doug, and long live freedom of the press (including, but not limited to, WordPress).

Speaking of domain name registration, Dell had better register every domain matching the pattern dellcansuckmy\1\.(com|net|org|info|ws|us|biz), where \1 gets replaced by every um, “member” of this list.

In the year 41 the Roman emperor Caligula (whose nickname means “little boot”) was given the figurative boot via the literal knife. There? ouch!

John McCormick sees aesthetics as Vista’s only apparent benefit: “… buy a good painting for your office and skip Vista.” Don’t hold anything back, John!

While Microsoft slips the surly bonds of the desktop market, has Dell finally gotten both feet aboard the cluetrain? (via Doc, of course)

Shelley sends us some interesting links, including how Beatrice Potter might have discovered penicillin in the 1890′s, the most convincing evidence for global warming I’ve ever seen (Subscribed), and even a nod to yours truly. Thanks, Shelley!

Shelley Batts poses some difficult ethical questions: exactly when does a person have the ability and right to determine their own fate? When should a caretaker make those decisions for them?

Beyond Good and Evil.

Thanks for the link, Randy!

Lager legend : Rolling Rock beer has the mysterious number 33 printed on the back of the label, due originally to a communication error.

Joseph responds to my tag on the infamous and insuppressible “five things” meme.

How come I never discovered Dave Rogers before yesterday (via Shelley)? Screw subscriptions, I need an aggregator that will feed me the ideas that are just beyond the event horizon of my mind, wherever they come from. Good stuff from a self-proclaimed authority on nothing: “…you don’t so much ‘change’ yourself, as you, perhaps, ‘uncover’ yourself.” Subscribed. Oh, and thanks for the link.

99 Bottles of Beer: 1046 variations on a theme. This Perl version is pure genius and a work of art. From apotheon: Acme::Eyedrops is the real stroke of genius here.

Steak tartare for the wife tonight, but none for me (thanks, apotheon).

Assaf on voodoo programming.

RFC 1925 – The Twelve Networking Truths. I like (11a) (thanks, Doug).

Only in the web age can a pun like this work in a general news title: “Roaster writes new java script”, about a unique coffee venture here on Bainbridge Island.

I got my check and deposited it already. The first time I’ve ever received more than a dollar from a class action settlement. This time I got enough for dinner.

Rest in peace: Gerald R. Ford and James Brown.

• On Web standards, Libertarian candidates win
  As more of the nation becomes more webified, does it also become more Libertarian? Or is the mass of web consumers still doomed to follow authority (liberal or conservative)?
  (tags: libertarianism technology web)
• Sony posts loss, cites battery recall
  So sorry you lost some money on the proposition of placing exploding components on the world's laps. Oh, and we still haven't forgotten about that rootkit thing.
  (tags: sony battery laptop)
• Humanity and The Pace of Change
  Sure starting to shape up like a singularity. Thanks, Armchair Anarchist.
  (tags: history human science technology change future)
• 2 Sentences or Less
  via Doug Karr. Bill’s first two posts exceed the 2 sentence limit by several each, but we’ll see how he progresses. Subscribed.
  (tags: blog)
• Global Standardopolis – iBLOGthere4iM
  Randy links up the YouTube of Dell’s supreme ad. They better watch the use of the word “hell” in there, though. Rhymes with Dell, ya know.
  (tags: humor dell oracle emc amd intel video animation)