GMail Invites

I have a bunch of GMail invites available.

If anyone actually reads this, and would like an invite, post a comment with your name & email address and I’ll send you one.

The way Google is giving them out now … I suspect they are just ramping up their rollout.

Pounding streets

They have been resurfacing the street outside my office for the past few weeks … and today they are breaking up the concrete.

To do this, they are using one of those huge pneumatic sledge hammer devices … the kind that lift the weight up and then drop it down to break the pavement.

Unfortunately, this is causing our entire building to shake … which is really distracting and annoying.

I’m kind of worried that something is going to break … like a window.

Must visit Lake Wobegon someday

While I usually don’t comment on politics that often, Ginny found an article by Garrison Keillor that we both found absolutely tremendous.

How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the party of Newt Gingrich’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk?

Suffice it to say … I agree 100% with Garrison on this, and he had stated it quite elegantly and succinctly.

Blast from the past

A recent thread on MIDRANGE-L got people talking about some of the old hardware they had worked on.

I mentioned the fact that, when I was in school, I used to know how to program an IBM 029 card punch.

Ken Shields generously sent me a link to information about the 029 … just in case I need to re-hone my skills.

Dunno if I will really need to bone up on 029 card punch programming … I have enough of a problem just dealing with the differences between Unix and iSeries editors. You wouldn’t belive the number of times I click on the “X” close button on my 5250 emmulator when I’m done editing source in SEU. Heck, occasionally I’ll start editing in ‘Stream of consciousness’ mode, and look up to find a bunch of J’s, K’s, I’s, and L’s in the middle of my seu screen (J, K, I, & L, are the cursor navigation keys in VI, the standard unix editor).

Windows XP Desktop Grid

Note: I found this somewhere on the internet … but I can’t remember where.

Sometimes there just isn’t enough room for the all the text underneath those icons. Or, you maybe you are having some kind of overlapping problem. You can fix this by adjusting the space between your icons.

There is an invisible grid on your desktop the computer uses to place icons and associated text in to. This grid sort of looks like a checker board. You can adjust the size of the boxes. Here’s how:
Right click on any empty spot on your desktop. Click Properties, and then click the appearance tab. Next click the advanced button and you should find yourself in the “Advanced Appearances” window. Click on the pull-down window under “Item” and select “Icon spacing (horizontal). Note there is also an “icon spacing) vertical too. Click on the size arrows to adjust icon size. Do the same with Vertical. You will need to work at this some until you get the size/spacing you want. Click ok.

Note: You may have to uncheck and recheck the “Align to grid” option before your icons will move into place. Here’s how: Right click on any empty spot on your desktop. From the menu select “Arrange icons by” and click on “Align to grid” to uncheck it and then click to option again to recheck it. Once you do that your icons will move to your new grid settings.

Internet enabled thermostat

EnGadget has a piece on a cool Internet enabled thermostat.

I gotta say … this item is something I would really like to have. I even think I could drop the wire down the wall from our thermostat pretty easily.

I wonder how long it will be until you have to use a class B subnet for your house?

Hmmm … what other ‘internet’ enabled devices are available for home automation?

Update 11/29/04 – I heard back from the company manufacturing this unit … the list price is going to be $400 each. As cool as it would be (ha, I made a pun) , I think the price is far out of reach.

Building a box in Malaysia

I ordered a new laptop from Dell (yeah yeah yeah … I said I wasn’t going to buy another Dell).

The estimated ship date for the order is August 27th.

The order went from “Order Accepted” to “Boxing” in about 6 hours … and it’s been sitting in Boxing since then.

Of course I had horid thoughts about the box sitting on a Dell dock for 7 days just so they can meet their shipping estimate.

Turns out the computers are actually built in Malaysia … and when the order status shows ‘Boxing’, the computers are being shipped to the Dell distribution factility in Tennessee. Once in Tennessee it takes another day to be truly ‘Boxed’ up and shipped out.

Hopefully the new machine will be here by the end of next week.

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Business class is cool!

We’re taking a long weekend trip to San Francisco on some freebie tickets that Ginny got. As an added bonus, we’re taking Steve along for the ride. He gets to finally take us to The Stinking Rose (which he has been singing the praises of for years.

To add sugar to the treat … we’re flying business class on United. Now I’ve flown First Class a few times … but it was a fluke … and usually because everyone on the plane was going to the same place (COMMON) and everyone ws booked into coach… so I would get bumped up to first class because there wasn’t enough room in the main cabin. Not that I complained … but I always figured that I wasn’t getting the real “First Class” treatment because I didn’t acutally deserve the upgrade.

Anyway, Business Class is very nice … lots of leg room, nice seat amentities, reasonable food.

I need to figure out a way to finagle that kind of upgrade on a regular basis (no, I’m not going to hold my breath on that one).