A Little Ludwig Goes a Long Way

A smattering of opinions on technology, books, business, and culture. Now in its 4th technology iteration.

Deleting Office from all my machines

18 August 2008

Office 2007 for Windows has some really cool features. I love the table formatting in XL, a totally obvious and good feature. And the fact that it is only in the Windows version and not in the Mac version has driven me batty, and has pissed me off so much, that I have finally converted all my XLs into Google Docs spreadsheets and dumped them into the cloud. Yes I lost some cool features. But I never have to install office software again, I don’t need to worry if the latest version is installed on the machine that I happen to be using today, I don’t have to worry about the fact that the last version of that spreadsheet is in my home office machine and not here at work, etc. I am immediately happier. I will miss table formatting, but not that much.

Amazing trained Michigan cat

18 August 2008

A guy walks into a bar in Ann Arbor wearing a Michigan jersey. And carrying a cat that also has a Michigan jersey on with a little Wolverine helmet on his head, too.

The guy says to the bartender, “Can my cat and I watch the Michigan game here? My TV at home broke down and my cat and I always watch the game together”.

The bartender replies, “Normally, cats wouldn’t be allowed in the bar, but it’s not very busy in here right now, so you and the cat can have a seat at the end of the bar. But, if there’s any trouble with you or the cat, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

The guy agrees, and he and his cat start watching the game. Pretty soon Michigan manages to kick a field goal and the excited cat jumps up on the bar, walks all the way down and gives everyone a high five.

The bartender says, “Hey, that’s pretty cool! What does he do for a touchdown?”

The guy answers, “I don’t know, I’ve only had him for 2 years.”

Recent Books -- An American Tragedy, Beginner's Greek, Big Russ and Me

13 August 2008

* “An American Tragedy”:amazon by Theodore Dreiser. A compelling story of overreaching ambition, lust, and tragedy. But oh my gosh could it have used an editor – needs to be about 40% shorter. The whole first book establishing the lustful ambition of the protagonist should have been a chapter. * “Beginner’s Greek”:amazon by James Collins. Entertaining comic romance. Light and breezy, appealing leads. * “Big Russ and Me”:amazon by Tim Russert. A light autobiography, particularly poignant in light of Russert’s untimely passing. No deep messages but solid life lessons and makes you sorry that Russert is gone.

Edison PC Power Management Software

12 August 2008

[Edison PC Power Management Software Edison](http://www.verdiem.com/edison/) – tried on my home machine but had to uninstall. It is lipstick on a chicken – a nicer UI than the default Windows power management UI but that is all it is. If the underlying hardware doesn’t nicely support suspend, then this tool does nothing and that is my case – my desktop will not reliably recover from suspend, I have no idea why. Hangs on unsuspend, and on reboot, my video resolution was set back to VGA resolution.

Stuff I Want But Don't Need -- Geekhouse Bikes Powder Coating, Boynq Iris, Cyclone, Earthworm Hydro Drill

11 August 2008

* Geekhouse Bikes Powder Coating Graphics – I never ride my bike, but wow could it look cool collecting dust * Now that I’ve installed Edison, let me burn up all my savings with this dynamic LED keyboard * Boynq Iris webcam-speaker-light-mic combo. I was just asking myself, where can I get a webcam-speaker-light-mic combo? * Cyclone metal cleanup tool. As they say, if only this worked for sawdust * Earthworm Hydro Drill. I actually could use this for routing cables for Halloween in the yard, tho it seems like it might be a disaster.

EV roundup

06 August 2008

[Greentech Media Treacherous Roads for EVs](http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/treacherous-roads-for-evs-1232.html) – good summary of the EV entrants to date. My next car…