The World According to Marc

  • Keyboards

    49 Comments

    I am on a “great quest” to find a keyboard that, to put it bluntly, does not suck. It started out as a tiny “errand“, turned into a “hunt“, and then escalated all the way up to “great quest“ in a matter of days. And if I do not find a answer soon, I fear I may have to jump right past “epic quest” status and head straight to “ludicrous obsession”.

    Every keyboard I have tried in some 6 odd stores has been some variation of the “mushy key” keyboards. I personal feel that such keyboards hold all of the elegance of typing on a napkin and are all so sensitive that you end up fat-fingering every other letter.

    In my quest I have had several recommendations for KeyTronic keyboards. They are nice, but I'm not a fan of the L-Enter style keyboard and the only black, non-L-Enter, keyboards they have come in funky ergonomic shapes. And I'm not sure I would find that a comfortable fit.

    The other recommendation was for Unicomp keyboards. These guys actually make the old buckling-spring keyboards they IBM and Lexmark made famous. This looked the most promising, but they don't seem to offer a keyboard in black that also includes the Windows keys (unless I go with the integrated mouse combo).  Too bad too because I really love this style of keyboard.

    Given they I type for a living, my keyboard matters a lot to me. Most people think its overkill, but I imagine I would find Tiger Woods overly picky about his golf clubs.

    So what is your keyboard of choice? And more importantly, where can I get one. ;-)

  • New MSDN DVD Design

    No Comments

    I just received my latest MSDN installment and found, to much delight, that they have finally redesigned the DVD set so that each DVDs content and color has actual meaning. And even more important, the yellow disks now use black text rather than white (the white on yellow was flat out illegible).

    My compliments to the MSDN crew; fantastic job guys.

  • Blogging Blues

    5 Comments

    I've been looking for a good rich client to post to my blog with (I just don't like editing in a web page). Unfortunately I can't seem to find a workable client out there.

    NewsGator works, but only occasionally. For example, this post was first attempted from NewsGator but it never got here. This happens a good 9 out of 10 times. It is one heck of a reader, but the posting has a way to go.

    w.Bloggar looks promising. But I just cannot get it to work. When I point it at weblogs.asp.net/mlafleur/services/metablogapi.aspx it just returns an XML parsing error. I know other have made it work before, but it sure seems broken now.

    Any ideas out there?

    UPDATE: It seems my issues are related to a bug in .Text rather than the client software.

  • Out From The Dust

    No Comments

    I've learned something this month. Ok, I learned a few things:

    1. Life without an internet connection is just too much to take.

    2. Life with a dial-up internet connection is inexplicably more horrible that #1.

    3. The world needs better keyboard. I'll elaborate on this one in another posting soon. But I would guess you know exactly what I'm talking about.

    4. Video drivers don't work, ever, period. And even if they do, they will be broken by morning.

  • Drivers Drive Me Dizzy

    1 Comment

    Why is it that every piece of hardware I buy these days comes with drivers that simply do not work? It seems that no matter how new the product is, the drivers it ships with will be useless and I'll be forced to go hunt down updated versions. As a developer I know that bugs happen, but this is getting ridiculous.

    Today it was a new LinkSys router and 3 LinkSys NICs. These are all brand new products (they are from the new 802.11G product line) but before I could use them I had to download new drivers for the NICs and flash the router's BIOS.

    Normally this isn't too much of a problem, I just download the drivers and move on. But this just happen to be in the new office that currently has no internet connection (see previous rant). So I ended up having to drive home and download the drivers.

    For what it is worth, I'm very happy with the products now that they are working. But the amount of work it took to get them working was a bit frustrating.

  • Big Bang #2

    No Comments

    Ed Kaim's latest post is going to change will change the face of every industry forever.

    [Now Playing: Unknown - Chapter 7 (00:00)]

  • Phone Company...

    2 Comments

    .... I'll just leave it at that.

    [Now Playing: Unknown - Chapter 7 (00:00)]

  • Holy Acronym Batman!

    4 Comments

    As I mentioned last night, we are moving into a new office. Along with this move comes the purchasing of new development machines. Now it has been some time since I actually purchased a myself, so I was in for quite a shock. And after spending 3 hours working on a PO I came to a conclusion; we must end this acronym madness!

    I mean it guys, we have gone way overboard in the naming department. I can't for the life of me tell whether I'm purchasing a PC here or ordering a medical procedure. It is no wonder that the rest of the world looks at us like we are lobotomized martians.

    I know that we spend so much time surrounded by this technology that we simply get used to the massive collection of acronyms. And I'm sure it as true for the hardware guys as it is for us software geeks. But I've now seen what it looks like from the outside, and it ain't pretty.

     

    Oh, and does anyone know what an AOPEN MX440/128/DX9 is? Is it anything like a vasectomy?