Sunday, September 28, 2003

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Wow, a clean Inbox (at home), for the first time in ages. After years without problems, by "free forwarding for life" mailbox at Bigfoot became deluged with spam. So I finally quit forwarding it to my regular account. Then to cleanup. I like to keep all email of any significance, so I hated the idea of just deleting everything. But I also hated the idea of going through it all. Then I had a minor brainstorm--I used the Outlook grouping feature to group it by the TO: field. It took less than 10 minutes for me to delete all the garbage that way. 9:27:10 PM    comment []

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Fixed Card Wi-Fi Reception Much Better than PCMCIA I have a home wireless network, and connect both my notebook and desktop PCs wirelessly (there was no cable modem outlet in the computer room of our new house). My desktop PC has a card with an external antenna, while my notebook has a PCMCIA card. The desktop gets WAY better reception than the notebook, which I attribute to the antenna. (As an aside, I have the Linksys D614+, which was dinged for its range in a review, so maybe that is a secondary factor.) So, that got me wondering--why not make a PCMCIA card with a fold-up antenna? It still probably wouldn't be as good as the antenna on the fixed card, but seems like it might make up half the current difference. 8:58:31 PM    comment []

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First two posts in ongoing list of inconsistencies I have noted in the Harry Potter stories. 2:24:20 PM    comment []

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How Cell Phone Handsets Are Like Search Engines NYT article on cell phones: "But for all these wireless wonders, industry analysts, researchers and consumers say that many of the sleek, versatile new models are simply not as good as the old ones at being telephones." I have had this experience. I had the Samsung N200, and now I have its successor, the N400, which only has 2 new features: color screen, and speakerphone. The latter would be nice, if it worked decently, which it really doesn't; all it's good for is listening for when it is time to come off hold. As for the color screen, it is completely useless. Actually, worse than useless. It drains the battery life very quickly, plus it is almost impossible to read in un-lit mode. The negative progress in phone handsets' performance of their basic function--being a phone handset--reminds me of search engines, circa 1998, when they stopped focusing on "boring old search", and tried to become sticky portals. 2:17:56 PM    comment []

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Text of my letter to the editor, on bike paths. 2:08:35 PM    comment []

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Sick Man Europe Insightful but scary article by Paul Johnson, in Forbes, on the EU's coming economic crisis. Actually, crisis probably doesn't capture it. A crisis is often a moment of truth, where all courses may be painful, but taking the right one could be seen, in hindsight, as a "defining moment". Europe seems headed for debacle. As bad as our Social Security mess is, this is a reminder of how much worse it could be. As well as a useful reminder that mass programs for social payments inevitably devolve into pyramid schemes. I've been reading various articles, for several years, about Europe's multiple, interrelated crises: besides the financial crisis above, the crisis of confidence that causes people to choose to have few children (one child is becoming the norm). The gathering population crisis that is obviously related to the other two. The crisis of faith--religious conviction in Eurpose is extremely low. Europe is very, very much in decline. And the denial that seems to wrap it all up. I know, the title is hardly original. Neither, really, is anything I said. But I am surprised this is such a slow-breaking story (almost everything I've read about it has been in lower-circulation pubs like The Economist, The Industry Standard). 1:37:31 PM    comment []