Darkoshi

laptop computing

2025-02-22T07:25:14Z

Depending on where I'm sitting, it can be convenient to set my laptop on my lap or legs while I'm using it. Often I put a flat metal baking pan, or sturdy cardboard under it to avoid blocking its ventilation ports (as well as to redirect its heat away from my legs, but that doesn't seem to work...)

After a certain amount of time, it always makes my legs start feeling a slight burning sensation. They keep tingling long after I remove the laptop. I suppose it may only be heat from the laptop, even though this laptop rarely gets very warm. But I also suspect I'm getting radiated by being so close to the battery and shifting electric fields. I wonder if it could cause cancer. It's not enough to make me stop putting the laptop on my lap. But I should get something thicker to put under it, I suppose.

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new laptop, switched over

2023-08-07T07:16:17Z

Finally, I have switched over to using the new laptop as my primary one. I am not finished setting up all my programs and settings, but the most important parts are done.

I figured out how to customize the menu colors in my Firefox and Waterfox browsers via my userChrome.css file. I hadn't planned to do that, but for some reason the browsers' menu spacing was less compact on the new laptop than the old one. While researching how to fix that, I also found out how to change the colors:

/* Make menus more compact, and change their color */
menupopup > menuitem, menupopup > menu {
	padding-top: 2px !important;
	padding-bottom: 2px !important;
	color: #00ffb2 !important;
	background: #4d056e !important;
}
menupopup > menuitem:hover, menupopup > menu:hover {
	background: #000000 !important;
}

I had a week of vacation to do it.
Besides the new laptop, I:
- baked brownies and chocolate chip cookie bars
- made cucumber salad
- cooked grits
- sewed a cloth cover on my headphone's headband after cutting off the original one which was sticky with age
- tried out the solid bike tires; returned them.
- watched some TV, including 3 more episodes of "I Don't Want to Be Friends With You".
- miscellaneous other minor things

I am not feeling rested at all. But at least I'm using the new laptop.

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Windows 11: Command Prompt vs Terminal

2023-08-04T09:31:34Z

I'm finally in the process of copying over all my data to my "new" laptop so I can switch over to using it as my main personal computer.

Now guess I what I discover?

Firstly, Windows 11 has an application that looks like the traditional Command Prompt, but apparently it isn't, it's a new thing called "Windows Terminal":
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-terminal-default-in-windows-11-by-2022

That's all well and good. It looks like it has some nice features.

However, as far as I can tell, this Terminal app doesn't let you change its screen buffer width to be larger than your screen. If the terminal displays data that is wider than can fit in your window, it is automatically line wrapped and there's no way to turn that line wrapping off. There's no way to have it show a horizontal scroll bar and let you scroll to the right to see long lines. They just wrap.

I've found various bugs written about this issue since 2019, but it seems to STILL not have been fixed/implemented:

Terminal desperately needs a horizontal scrollbar (similar to Command Prompt) #1860 (opened on Jul 7, 2019; still open)
Word wrapping #6378 (opened on Jun 5, 2020; closed as a duplicate of #1860)
Ability to switch text wrapping off #6730 (opened on Jun 30, 2020; closed as a duplicate of #1860)
Ability to disable line wrapping in Windows Terminal #6895 (opened on Jul 13, 2020; closed as a duplicate of #1860)

Rationally, it may not be that big a deal for me on this laptop. But I can't help but think how debilitating it would be on my work laptop if I ever have to upgrade it to Windows 11. All my scripts which query database rows; their output is unreadable when it is line wrapped. Sure, often I redirect the output to a file anyway, but not always.

Even a simple directory listing has the output wrapped, which is how i discovered this.

Aaahhhhhhhh finally, here is how to get back the legacy Command Prompt, which does let you set up horizontal scrolling:

How to get back legacy command prompt

Change Default Terminal Application in Windows 11

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the new laptop

2023-05-23T08:34:14Z

I turn it on after 3 weeks of not having used it.
I get a prompt to update one piece of software. I click the link to see what changed.
The browser gives me a prompt to update it.
The laptop also is showing a prompt for an update from the manufacturer.
I let the browser update.

I open a text file in Notepad++ and start typing. Then I change my mind and close the file. I don't get prompted to save the changes like usual. I check the file's last modified date in File Explorer. It still shows 04/30/2023. I reopen the file. What I typed today is still there. I close the file. The file's date still displays as 04/30 in both File Explorer and from a command prompt.

The laptop starts making an annoying high-pitched sound; the fan is on high. It gets quiet again after 8 minutes. Now there is a Windows update ready to install.

I don't have the external keyboard plugged into the laptop. The laptop has a single key for both Page Up and Home, and today I can't figure out how to press Control+Home to move the cursor to the start of the file. I try several key combinations without success and feel like shrieking (ok, I shrieked. Later, I determined that Control + Function Key + PageUp/Home button works. I thought I tried that before but I guess not).

I restart the laptop to see if that will clear up this weird text file issue. The file still shows a date 04/30. I open the file; it still has the prior change. I make another change and again close the file without saving it. Again, my change is retained even though the file's modified date is unchanged. What the hecking heck?
When I open the file it still shows the asterisk in the title bar as if it hasn't been saved yet.

Ah, so it is a Notepad++ "feature":
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24447786/notepad-doesnt-save-document-on-exit

I turn the feature off.

I connect the external keyboard to the laptop. The USB dongle is hard to push in. Why? It's turned the right way around. It was hard to push in the other times too. I hope I'm not ruining the port.

I try to remember why I turned on the laptop to begin with. Oh right, to copy some clips from the cam's SD card.

Now I can't find the paper where I'd written down the time range of the clips I wanted to copy. It's 4:46am! I need to get to bed!!!!

My whole day has been like this, sort of. The only thing that feels like a success is that I washed a load of clothes and hung them up to dry.

A car hit my mailbox post again, pushing it so that it's now loose in the ground. I need to dump in some dirt and tamp it down. At least the post and mailbox don't seem damaged. But it's the clips of that incident which I am trying to copy so that I can see better what happened. There were cop cars on the street with flashing lights. A different car drove up, then apparently on seeing the cop car at the corner - maybe the cop car was blocking the street, decided to turn around. It did a 3-point turn right into my mailbox. And then it looked like a cop ran by on foot, but I'm not sure.

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computer setup and windows 11

2023-04-07T07:45:06Z

Over the last few weeks, I've managed to get my new work laptop set up almost completely like the old one was. They are both running Windows 10. All my customizations, shortcuts, utilities, etc., are set up the way I like. I'm almost ready to mail the old one back.

I had worried the new laptop might have the same network connectivity problem as the old one and that all the effort setting it up might be for naught. The new screen doesn't adjust as bright as the old one, which makes a difference when using it outside, so I might be even worse off than before. But so far, other than one small hiccup which hopefully was a fluke, it has been running fine.

..

On the personal computer front, I'm still setting up my "new" (4-months old) Windows 11 laptop.
I now keep finding myself aggravated to discover that things I thought were already set up on it, aren't. It was the new work laptop I set them up on, not this one.

Today I discovered that I'm missing the "Pictures" folder. Then I discovered that most of the Shell Folders in the registry are pointing to a non-existent user path. Argh.

Let me backtrack a bit.

When I turned the laptop on the first time and started setting up Windows 11 Pro, I discovered there was no way to set it up without a Microsoft account. (There is a way that might work, but not an officially supported method. Most of the ways that are mentioned online were disabled in more recent versions of Windows 11 like mine.) I read that installing apps from the Microsoft app store would require a Microsoft account, and I *might* someday want to install such an app. So I set the laptop up with a Microsoft account, with the intention of setting up a local user account later, and using that one most of the time.

I found a way to create a new Microsoft account without providing or linking it to my real name and identity. Doing so was tricky and might not have been possible if I hadn't already had an anonymous hotmail account I'd created in the past. When setting up a new MS account now, you have to give it either a phone number or an existing email address. (It seems like all free email accounts are like that now?) I was able to use my old anonymous hotmail account as the backup email for the new account. As the old hotmail account was then also requiring me to enter a backup email for it (which it hadn't required in the past), I entered the new account as its backup. Hah.

Anyway, after that was all done, I created the local account. But I did it wrong. I should have added it via "Family & Other Users" as shown on this page:
https://nerdschalk.com/using-windows-11-without-microsoft-account-everything-you-need-to-know/

Instead, I selected the "Sign in with a local account instead" option. It asked me "Are you sure you want to switch to a local account?", and I confirmed it by clicking Next. Then I discovered that the Microsoft account I had so painfully set up on the laptop was GONE (from the laptop). Now only the local account was shown. That's what I had originally wanted, but......

That was two and a half months ago. Now I discover Windows didn't do the switch to the local account right. The shell folders are still pointing to the path of the old user account which is no longer there. Who knows what else might be borked up too. I'm tempted to see if I can reset everything and start over from scratch again.

Update, 2023/04/17:
Reading back through my laptop notes, I realize I did some additional things which may have contributed to that account's folder paths getting borked up:
Before switching to the local account, I unlinked OneDrive.
After switching to the local account, I updated my User Profile folder name.

Anyway, I've now created a new local user account (without OneDrive, and with a nice User Profile name to begin with) and will eventually delete the other one.

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new laptop

2023-01-26T07:19:59Z

I think my new laptop is probably very nice, from the little bit I've used it so far. It certainly is light and large and lovely.

But there's a problem in that Windows 11 is between it and me, and Windows 11 keeps doing things that destroy my serenity. I continue to think that once I get over the initial difficult hurdles, I'll get the laptop set up in a way that pleases me. But in the meantime...

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one letter differences

2022-09-14T03:49:39Z

While checking Task Manager..
"Animalware! Did it just f'n say 'Animalware'??"

::Looks again::
"Oh, Antimalware, ok."

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weird speaker buzz

2020-11-20T18:04:59Z

This wasn't only a fluke late last night; it still happened today after having restarted the computer.

Original post from last night, ie. early morning:
Tonight I'm hearing a low buzzy sound from my speakers when I scroll the wheel on my mouse. It only happens when something on the screen is scrolling, not when the mouse is over something that can't scroll. Weird! Only the computer knows the cursor's position, not the mouse or speakers. So the computer must be generating a signal that the speaker is picking up. The loudness of the buzz differs based on which application I scroll. Weird!

Further observations today:
The buzz happens even without the mouse, when I scroll a page with the keyboard arrows.
The buzz also happens if I play a video with the sound off, without scrolling anything.
It only happens when the external speakers are plugged into the laptop. I should have noted before that the sound is coming from the external speakers, not the built-in ones.
Unplugging the power cord from the laptop makes no difference.

Current theory: The display must be generating electrical noise when it updates large portions of the screen at once.

Further observation and solution:
The laptop's volume was set to very low, and the external speakers' volume was turned higher than usual.
I don't remember when or why I did that. After switching them back to normal with the laptop volume set mid-to-high and the speaker volume lower, the buzz isn't noticeable.
Thank goodness; it had gotten quite annoying!

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snackish

2020-07-13T00:12:53Z

Note to self: Don't buy Kroger store-brand potato chips anymore. They're not salty enough. And two bags (both probably bought at the same time) had oil leaking out the seam like the seam hadn't been sealed shut well enough.

I'm considering going shopping tonight, even though it's already getting late. Because I'm out of corn chips, and snacks are getting scarce. I've been missing having cookies, though the stores don't have ones I much like, so going shopping won't really help with that. I ought to go back to my place and bake some chocolate chip cookies.

I've still got 3 carrots, a pear, and a bag of Food Lion potato chips (not opened yet, so their saltiness is unknown). Some cake and peanuts. Snack bars. Other nuts. Chocolate. It ought to be enough. I hate being out of corn chips though. I should just deal with it and eat all the other snacks up. Completely. I can live without corn chips. Heck, I've got a shaker of salt.

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I was at my mom's place for the rental bed delivery, since she had to be at work at that time. The mattress turned out to be one of those foam ones, a "bed in a box". Ashley Furniture brand. Both it and the bed-frame were definitely new items; that was very apparent from the packaging. I checked Amazon, and the same bed-frame is on sale there for $150, and the very same mattress for $439.

So the $150 which my mom is paying for the first month is about a quarter of the actual price, or maybe even more if the wholesale price is less than what Amazon sells it for. Still, it seems that if RentACenter allows it to be rented for a single month, that they'd still lose money on it? Unless they take advantage of a free-returns deal from the manufacturer.

Maybe RaC makes it hard to return items, requiring them to be in pristine condition. Maybe most people end up keeping the items for multiple months even if they didn't originally plan to (which I suspect might end up happening with my mom).

My mom didn't ask whether RaC will pick the items up for free, or if she'll have to pay for that. We certainly won't be able to fit it back into the box that it came in. For that matter, it won't even fit into the plastic cover it came in, due to mattress's foam expansion, so how could one cover it to keep it clean in transport? In the mattress encasement that I ordered, perhaps?

While browsing Amazon, I found that they even sell "bed in a box" mattresses with innersprings!

While at my mom's house, I wore my surgical face mask for a good 3 hours straight, and it didn't bother me much. Even though it was about 90 degrees in the house to begin with, and even with the A/C turned on, only got down to 87 by the time I left. It's good to know I can do that when necessary. Besides setting up the bed frame and mattress for her, I also fixed a problem with her printer. That turned out being a known issue with a Windows update, for which another special Windows update was required.

.

There are several topics in this post for which none of my existing tags are very good matches.
Rentals. Mask-wearing. Mattresses.

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strong signals vs tangling wires

2020-07-01T05:51:23Z

I'd been swapping my wired keyboard and wireless mouse (one of the older ones with a wired transceiver, not the nano USB adapters they have now) between my personal laptop and my work laptop at the start and end of each work day.

One of the laptop's USB ports started getting loose, such that the mouse connection would drop & reconnect every once in a while. I used a toothpick to pull up on the prongs inside the port. That is a possible fix for a loose port problem, but it didn't make much difference in my case.

That made me realize that plugging & unplugging items into the USB ports multiple times a day isn't a good idea.

Not only was I swapping the keyboard & mouse; I was also swapping the position of the laptops on my desk. Therefore using a separate wired keyboard & mouse for each laptop wasn't ideal either. It's hard to move laptops around with peripherals plugged into them. It's also not practical to keep peripherals plugged in when carrying the laptops back and forth between Qiao's place and mine.

Using the laptops' built-in keyboard and trackpad isn't good either. I can't type nearly as fast on them, and it's quite frustrating.

I thought a good solution would be to get a separate wireless keyboard/mouse combo using a single nano USB adapter for each laptop. It is a good solution. (Except for the minor problem that I might need a bigger laptop bag now for my personal laptop, as having a nano USB adapter plugged into the side makes it not fit into the bag. Which is hard to believe as it's less than a centimeter difference, but yeah. Or I could simply unplug the nano adapter for that; that's not something I need to do every day.)

Today after eating lunch I noticed some grease spots on the wireless keyboard I'd been using. This keyboard doesn't have an on/off switch; it goes to sleep automatically when not in use. So I carried the keyboard all the way into the bathroom to wipe it off, thinking that was surely far enough away that any keys I pressed while cleaning it wouldn't be recognized on the laptop.

Much to my surprise, when I carried the keyboard back to the laptop, I saw that the keypresses had still registered on the laptop! The bathroom is about 35 feet away, with 2 walls in between. I had no idea the wireless signals being used were strong enough to travel that far!

Later I tested the other wireless keyboard and mouse, which are made by a different company. They also work from far away. I tested the mouse outside the house from the porch, with the front door and storm door closed, about 20 feet from my laptop. The mouse's scroll wheel still was able to scroll the browser page open on my laptop.

That got me to wondering whether using a wireless keyboard can be a security risk. Suppose someone planted a device outside your home to record the signals from your keyboard, thereby capturing all your key presses, including any user IDs and passwords you type. Maybe a malicious app on your phone could even listen for wireless keyboard signals, and secretly record your keystrokes.

From what I've read now, wireless keyboards & mice may use encryption to prevent that kind of thing. But how can you know if yours are using encryption or not? I don't recall reading that in the specs of the ones I have. I will have to look up more on that.

The first thing I found when searching on it was not about the keyboard signals being captured, but rather hackers transmitting their own signals to control your mouse, "mousejacking".

I wonder if having my hands on these wireless-transmitting devices all day (as well as being within a few feet of the laptop's wi-fi signals) is deleterious to my health. The cell phones and iPad are also usually not far away. The wifi router is a bit further away, but still not that far. And there are several other devices in the house that send out wireless signals. I know they say it's nothing to be concerned about. But maybe it all adds up. I wonder.

And then there's the physical problems one can get simply from typing a lot and using a mouse. My right wrist has been achy today.

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Graphics card confusion

2019-06-08T05:38:45Z

I'm confused. When I bought this laptop, my notes say that it came with "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M 4GB Discrete Graphics".

When I check Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Display\Screen Resolution\Advanced Settings,
it shows "Adapter Type: Intel(R) HD Graphics 5500", with "Dedicated Video Memory: 128 MB".

My quicklaunch area has an "NVIDIA GeForce Experience" icon, which when I click it, and select to open the NVIDIA Control Panel, it does list a "GeForce GTX 950M" with "Dedicated Video Memory: 4096 MB DDR3".

So why does the Control Panel/Display window list an Intel Graphics card rather than the GeForce?

Further confusing me is this page:
https://www.consumerreports.org/products/laptop/hp-envy-17t-384316/overview/
which says my laptop model comes with "Nvidia GeForce 940M/Intel HD Graphics 5500".
I don't know if that means it has 2 graphics cards, or that the laptop can come with either one?

Based on these pages:
http://hwbench.com/vgas/geforce-940m-vs-hd-graphics-5500-broadwell-gt2
https://www.game-debate.com/gpu/index.php?gid=2802&gid2=2575&compare=geforce-940m-2gb-vs-intel-hd-graphics-5500
It seems that they are 2 different graphics cards. So why would I have both?

Hmmmm.... According to this page:
https://forums.tomsguide.com/threads/i-have-2-graphics-card-intel-hd-graphic-and-nvidia-geforce-610m.72644/
Maybe I do have both. Maybe since I've never installed any games on this laptop, I've never even used the GeForce yet.

Ah, more info:
https://superuser.com/questions/908824/why-does-my-laptop-have-two-graphics-cards

The only reason I was checking on this now was to find out if my laptop meets the requirements for this game: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/journey/home
Since it does have the GeForce, I believe it does meet the requirements.

Edited to add:
In Device Manager, both graphics cards are listed under "Display Adapters". When I was looking for them there at first, I couldn't find them. I expected them to be listed under an entry with "graphics" or "video" in the name, and even though I read through all the group names in case they were listed under something else, I still overlooked it.

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suspicious cyber activity

2018-01-12T05:29:23Z

Do you ever get the feeling that your computer is doing something and trying to hide it from you, even though you are rather sure it isn't infected with malware?

There are times (both on this laptop and my old one, and my work one) where I hear the fan start spinning loudly, even though I haven't been doing anything that should take much processing power.

Then I open Task Manager, and click to see what process is using the most CPU (showing all processes). But then either
...the fan continues spinning loudly for a little while, even though according to Task Mgr the CPU is 95% or more idle
or
...the fan abruptly goes quiet as if it stopped doing whatever it was doing, so that I wouldn't see it listed in Task Mgr.

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other things

2017-06-04T07:10:51Z

Still tweaking other things on my new cell phone too.

I found out that one can remove the pages from these old family photo albums (and put them back together again). Which means that scanning the albums shouldn't be that difficult after all (as long as each page fits on the flatbed - one of the albums does just barely. The other one would require using my mom's larger scanner). Which means that's another thing I want to get done.

Firefox addons; learn how to update them to use these new WebExtensions APIs.
Which also shows me that my JavaScript knowledge is woefully out of date. It's changed a lot in 20 years.

I've just installed 2 and a half years worth of Windows updates on one of Qiao's old Windows 7 desktop computers, which we haven't used in that long. Because it has iTunes on it, and I don't want to install iTunes on my laptop. But there are a couple of items I want to get, which are only available to download from iTunes. And of course, that meant I needed to install Windows updates too, right? I dunno. It seemed the thing to do even though it took all day. Makes me think I might even be able to get updates working again on my old laptop too, if I wanted to.
Simplifying updates for Windows 7 and 8.1 - a rollup for all updates through April 2016, with only one prerequisite that must be installed first.

Researching family tree stuff. Old census records. Found out my great-great-grandmother had at least 10 children, and possibly 5 more that didn't survive.
Need to determine what kind of open-source program I should use for doing a family tree, so that the data can be exported/imported in a widely compatible format.

Want to replace all the screws for the door lock strike-plates and hinges with 3-inch long screws. And replace some of the strike-plates with ones that take 4 screws instead of 2.

I finally took down the rest of the xmas decorations and put the boxes away. My mom helped me take down the xmas tree a few weeks ago. She and Qiao are as bad as me - once I made my mind up to take them down, they both said "I think you should just leave them up", making me debate it internally all over again.

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standing desk setups

2017-01-17T05:00:49Z

I bought this adjustable shelf to try out as a standing desk setup. It's wide enough for both the keyboard and mouse, and deep enough that I can rest my forearms on it.

At home, my laptop is on an adjustable mount that can be lifted and lowered, so that is how I raise and lower the display. At work, I have 2 monitors, one on the desk for use while sitting, and one on a higher shelf for use while standing (to switch between them, it only requires an alt-ctl-fn key press).

The above is okay in terms of comfort. (Having my skin touch cool metal is unpleasant, so I cover the metal with cloth as in the above photo). But to switch from standing to sitting, I need to re-position the keyboard and mouse from the shelf back to the desk, and move the shelf away. The shelf, while light, is big and awkward to move around. So switching between standing and sitting isn't a very simple matter. (Though, if the keyboard were wireless rather than corded, that would help somewhat.)

I found the below setup to be more convenient.

I use a box (or a stack of books) to raise up my mouse & mousepad. I've found that using the mouse is most comfortable when my forearm is horizontal like that, not angled up or down.
I put a wedge (about 2" high) under the keyboard (or stick something else under the front edge so that it is higher than the back edge). Typing is fairly comfortable to me in that position, even though my palms & wrists don't rest on anything. Without the wedge, I would have to bend my wrists a lot, which quickly becomes very uncomfortable.

To switch from sitting to standing, I just need to move over my box, put the mouse & mousepad on it, and slip the wedge under the keyboard. It's much simpler than the shelf.

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staying logged in to LiveJournal

2016-09-23T02:27:48Z

I'm configuring my "new" laptop. 13 months after getting it, I've finally moved my files over to it, and started using it as my main computer. I realized I might never finish doing all those other things I wanted to do before moving the files, so finally just went ahead and did the move.

Now, I kept being logged out of LiveJournal, even though I was selecting the checkbox to stay logged in.

My Firefox configuration is set to delete cookies when I close the browser, but I had added an exception for http://livejournal.com. I added another exception for http://www.livejournal.com, but still kept being logged out. Looking at the cookies after logging in showed that they were still set to expire at the end of the session.

Finally, I tried adding an exception for https://livejournal.com. That did the trick. So even though the LiveJournal login page shows "http" in the URL bar, it must be using https behind the scenes.

I didn't have the same trouble with Dreamwidth, as I had added its exception using "https" to begin with, thinking that the Dreamwidth pages used https by default. But now I see that the Dreamwidth pages show "http" in the URL bar too. I must have configured my old laptop to redirect to https for Dreamwidth. Still need to do that here.

I don't see anything on Firefox's Cookies page to indicate whether a cookie was added via HTTP vs HTTPS. I wonder if there is any way to know which version of the URL you need to add as an exception, other than trial and error.

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pink lights

2016-02-11T04:15:40Z

At work, someone on the other side of the building put up a Valentine's Day Tree. It's a pretty pink (Christmas) tree, with pink lights and heart decorations.

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A dead Canadian goose has been floating by the edge of the pond since at least Monday. Poor thing. I wonder what happened to it. I considered reporting it at first, but wouldn't even know who to report it to.

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Driving home yesterday, there were 2 wild turkeys* standing in the driveway to a car body shop. Very close to the main road I was driving on, which had a lot of traffic. There was also a car parked off the other side of the road with its lights flashing yellow. Not sure if that was related.

*only got a quick glimpse, enough to be pretty sure they weren't buzzards. One looked vaguely peacockish, but I'm pretty sure we don't have wild peacocks around here.

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My laptop is back from being repaired under warranty, with a new keyboard and touchpad. Seems to be working fine so far, yay. The new keyboard is a dual English/French one, which is different.

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It's very cold outside. But something went wrong with the HVAC at work today, and it got very warm inside. Even with the doors to the atrium propped open. In the morning when other people started to complain, I was like "I'm comfortable actually. It's better than being too cold". But it got so warm that by the time I left in the evening, it was way too warm even for me.

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little computers

2015-04-11T21:59:09Z

I was thinking about getting one of these Matchsticks, when they become available (August?).

But now Google and Intel have whole computers in similar sized gadgets, which plug into HDMI ports... I wonder if these play video too.
Chromebit
Intel Compute Stick.

Then there's this tiny computer which can sit on the edge of a penny. More info and diagrams here.

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time time

2014-03-14T03:33:14Z

I'm glad of the time change. I enjoy it still being light outside when I leave work.

Qiao dislikes Daylight Savings Time. He feels that 12 noon is supposed to be mid-day. That "high noon" is supposed to be when the sun is highest in the sky. That does make sense.

But I still prefer it being light outside when I leave work.

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Advice to self: Don't start a 20 minute compile 20 minutes before it's time for you to leave work. And especially don't start other processes too, while impatiently waiting for the compile to finish. Because it will surely end up taking at least 40 minutes to finish, even without the other processing.

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Why does it sometimes take 3 hours to copy 2 GB's worth of files from one location on my hard drive to another?

Is it safe to put a computer to sleep while it is in the middle of a large copy operation like that, or while it is in the middle of a long compile? Will it simply pause and continue when it wakes back up? I wouldn't want to risk having to start all over again. And yet if I leave the laptop on while carrying it home in the carrying case, I risk it overheating and crashing. Unless I awkwardly carry the case by one handle so that the vented side of the laptop can still get air.

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I am looking for a new washing machine. The old one keeps acting up, and trying to fix it would likely cost more than it would be worth.

From what I've read, a high-efficiency front-loader still sounds like the best type for me. Do any of you have experience with particular brands/models that have worked well, or which have had problems? I don't know which online reviews can be trusted.

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he was right

2011-08-20T03:49:07Z

When I first got my work laptop computer, Qiao predicted that pretty soon, I'd be keeping both my personal laptop and work laptop running when working from home, and that I'd be using them both at the same time, switching back and forth between them.

I thought, "Nah, that's not likely. When I'm working, I only need my work computer on. And when I'm done working, I only need my personal laptop on. There's no reason to have them both on."

But he was right. Many a time, I find reason to use them both at the same time. Not even for goofing off, but for actual work purposes.

For example, when the work laptop was having the reboot problem (which may have finally gotten fixed this week (yay!)), I'd bring up web-ex (online) meetings on my personal laptop so that if the work laptop spontaneously rebooted, at least I wouldn't be kicked out of the meeting.

Other times, I'll do web searches or bring up my work email on my personal laptop, while for whatever reason, my work laptop is non-spontaneously rebooting or otherwise occupied.

Sometimes when the work day is over, but I still have some more work I want to get done, I may bring up personal stuff on my personal laptop, and work stuff on the work laptop, and switch between them.

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