Randomness

[Alelou]

David, I am interested to learn that you can buy a right-clicking Mac mouse. Will have to tell my Dad, though he seems to have adjusted and might be better off with FEWER options.

I'm sure Linux is a good thing, but every student I've ever had who gets into such things seems to have had an obsessive compulsion to continually reformat their hard drives and such -- anything rather than actually write their papers for me. This doesn't fill me with confidence.

[putaro]

Pretty much any USB mouse will plug in and work with a Mac these days. I have a fairly fancy Logitech mouse with a bunch of buttons and it works great and I never mess with the drivers or anything.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

Scott Bakula Beams To NCIS Spin-off

[Transwarp]

I'm sure Linux is a good thing, but every student I've ever had who gets into such things seems to have had an obsessive compulsion to continually reformat their hard drives and such -- anything rather than actually write their papers for me.

Sounds like 'the dog ate my homework' to me...

[Alelou]

Oh yes, definitely. But I had a student who really was OCD about it, I think. It was bizarre. He just couldn't stop fussing with it.

[putaro]

There's a version of Linux called "Gentoo" where every piece of software comes as source code and needs to be compiled for your particular hardware. It's supposed to allow you to optimize for your machine but it's kind of like watching paint dry or sitting around watching the dryer spin when you install new software. Definitely for the OCD crowd.

[Weeble]

I have limited understanding of Linux, so I just installed Virtual Box on my Mac so I could run some old Windows XP stuff. Works real well so far; the concept is simple but a bit unnerving.

[Transwarp]

I *love* Virtual Box!

[Cap'n Frances]

A friend sent me a link today to a flowchart that looks like it could save Trip a lot of time: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dullhunk/7214525854/

[Cogito]

Y'know, I was really hoping that would turn out to be a starfleet engineer's guide to vulcan females named T'Pol.

[Cap'n Frances]

When I was getting my new story ready to go to my beta, I decided to try the Grammarly online grammar checker. I got several excellent suggestions but two or three were LOL. The best was when it wanted to change Trip wearing "tropical wool pants" to "tropical wool plants". It gave me an amazing mental image. Unfortunately, it didn't fit into the story.

[panyasan]

Tropical wool pants/plants? Isn't that very warm for the tropic?

[Cap'n Frances]

Tropical wool is a lightweight weave. It's great in hot climates but also does well in layers when it's cold. I had a tropical wool suit that I loved. When I moved, moths got into it. I almost went into mourning when I saw all those holes.

[putaro]

I always thought moths were kind of a joke because they're pretty rare in California. Then I moved to Japan and they started eating my suits

[Alelou]

People used to be able to do amazing work on moth-eaten wool. I bought a couple of wool skirts in a thrift shop in NH once that were busy plaid patterns and only after I'd worn them for awhile did I realize someone had carefully rewoven holes in each of them to match the pattern.

I might still have them today if I hadn't grown out of them.