I'm going to ramble somewhat.
All sorts of stuff. Probably not enough to merit a cut though.
I got a shipment from the Tayler Corporation today. Until The Tub of Happiness comes out, I have a complete run of Schlock Mercenary. I also have enough in my PayPal account that I'll be able to afford Book 0, possibly even defaced... but anyway, the two I have are DEFINITELY worth it. Howard Tayler consistently hits the mark of "funny", moves the story along, and has characters you care about. You care about the guy with four arms. You care about the flying maraca-robot. You definitely care about the pile of crap with several large guns. I've been squandering PayPal funds, since I can't get at them offline and don't have the opportunity to set that up... so I have some subversive t-shirts on the way too.
Another thing today... I got to thinking about what Windows does and doesn't do right. It does allow sysadmins to lock things down from a user perspective (and I don't go looking for how to get round that at work; I'm employed to work, not to set my computer up how I want it), but there are things I'd like that aren't there at work. Among them: a way to use Windows Classic rather than Luna (it's XP...). Among other things, Luna has HUGE title bars. However, today I discovered that the wossname which lets you set custom colours (nowhere NEAR as flexibly as Windows 3.1 did, but it's enough to make my emails have my preferred pale orangeish backdrop and thus make my eyes happy; I'm less than keen on black-on-white) has some... interesting extra wiggles. I couldn't set the colours of the "caption buttons" (those ones in the corners of the windows) but I COULD set their size. Dropping it by a sixth made things FAR less annoying. Interesting. Another thing I'd like, that's a Windows thing rather than a sysadmin decision: separation of form and function. That is to say... yes, the clock should be tamper-resistant. You can't have your users futzing with the system time. I get that. However, if your users want to use 24-hour times rather than 12-hour (as I do, but my boss doesn't) I don't see any real REASON to keep that choice away from them. It's a purely cosmetic choice; it's really only legacy that keeps it conflated with actual time setting. Anyone know if they've fixed that in Vista?
Not that I want Vista. XP was bloated aplenty; Vista's worse, the new interface is a triumph of style over functionality, the system requirements are a sick, sick joke, the DRM aspects are so counterproductive it's not even funny, and overall it's a suicide note of an OS... but there simply isn't a viable alternative right now. MS are refusing to sell XP, and so we're left with Hobson.
And finally, Rob's dessies are on their way, finally.
I got a shipment from the Tayler Corporation today. Until The Tub of Happiness comes out, I have a complete run of Schlock Mercenary. I also have enough in my PayPal account that I'll be able to afford Book 0, possibly even defaced... but anyway, the two I have are DEFINITELY worth it. Howard Tayler consistently hits the mark of "funny", moves the story along, and has characters you care about. You care about the guy with four arms. You care about the flying maraca-robot. You definitely care about the pile of crap with several large guns. I've been squandering PayPal funds, since I can't get at them offline and don't have the opportunity to set that up... so I have some subversive t-shirts on the way too.
Another thing today... I got to thinking about what Windows does and doesn't do right. It does allow sysadmins to lock things down from a user perspective (and I don't go looking for how to get round that at work; I'm employed to work, not to set my computer up how I want it), but there are things I'd like that aren't there at work. Among them: a way to use Windows Classic rather than Luna (it's XP...). Among other things, Luna has HUGE title bars. However, today I discovered that the wossname which lets you set custom colours (nowhere NEAR as flexibly as Windows 3.1 did, but it's enough to make my emails have my preferred pale orangeish backdrop and thus make my eyes happy; I'm less than keen on black-on-white) has some... interesting extra wiggles. I couldn't set the colours of the "caption buttons" (those ones in the corners of the windows) but I COULD set their size. Dropping it by a sixth made things FAR less annoying. Interesting. Another thing I'd like, that's a Windows thing rather than a sysadmin decision: separation of form and function. That is to say... yes, the clock should be tamper-resistant. You can't have your users futzing with the system time. I get that. However, if your users want to use 24-hour times rather than 12-hour (as I do, but my boss doesn't) I don't see any real REASON to keep that choice away from them. It's a purely cosmetic choice; it's really only legacy that keeps it conflated with actual time setting. Anyone know if they've fixed that in Vista?
Not that I want Vista. XP was bloated aplenty; Vista's worse, the new interface is a triumph of style over functionality, the system requirements are a sick, sick joke, the DRM aspects are so counterproductive it's not even funny, and overall it's a suicide note of an OS... but there simply isn't a viable alternative right now. MS are refusing to sell XP, and so we're left with Hobson.
And finally, Rob's dessies are on their way, finally.