This week's WXPnews editorial on making the investment in screen real estate by either buying a bigger monitor or deploying multiple monitors has generated a lot of reader mail already.

One of the more interesting and useful responses came from Geoff Walker, author of How to Select an LCD Monitor: A Personal Approach. Geoff has kindly permitted me to reprint his email here:

Monitors today are limited to 101 pixels per inch (ppi), while notebooks are available at up to 147 ppi!  Higher ppi means lower yields at the LCD fabs, which in turn means lower profitability.  Unfortunately, 100 ppi in a monitor is seen as "good enough", and monitors are the highest-volume large-area LCD application.  Until users aggressively demand higher-ppi monitors, the LCD industry won't change.

Because neither the LCD industry nor the notebook & monitor OEMs talk about ppi in their product information, the consumer is totally uneducated about this issue.  Consumers tend to look at font size as the defining issue rather than the clarity of the characters.  For example, suppose a consumer sees the following two displays showing the same Adobe PDF file of a magazine page:

(1) Dell Latitude D830 with 1680x1050 15.4" screen
    That's 129 ppi with an image height of 8.16"
    The characters will be small but very sharp and clear

(2) Dell 19" monitor with 1280x1024 resolution
     That's 86 ppi (67% as many pixels) with an image 
      height of 11.87" (145% larger)
     The characters will be large but less clear 
     (more pixelated).

Consumers generally tend to prefer #2 because the image is bigger.  They have no understanding whatsoever of the actual difference between the two screens.  They don't recognize the implication of the good readability of the small characters on the notebook screen.  If they could somehow magically see a 19" screen with 129 ppi, their reaction would be "Oh my, that's much more like a real magazine page!"

The monitor industry wants to sell larger displays because the profit margin is higher.  In Dell's "Choosing a Monitor" page, they say the following: "Consider this: The Dell 30" UltraSharp widescreen monitor (2560 x 1600 resolution) displays more than three times more pixels on the screen than the Dell 17" UltraSharp flat panel monitor (1280 x 1024 resolution)."  What they don't say is that the 17" monitor is 96 ppi and the 30" monitor is 101 ppi (only 5% more pixels per inch).  Dell is focused on "three times more pixels" because a 30" monitor costs $3.20 per square inch, while a 17" monitor costs $1.00 per square inch (see my original email below).  Of course they'd rather sell the 30" monitor -- there's a lot more margin in it.  What the consumer doesn't understand is that the 30" monitor won't be significantly sharper (since the pixel density is very similar); there's just more room to put more stuff on the screen.  That's not a bad thing, but is it really worth 3X the price?  It's much more cost-effective to buy three smaller monitors.  The main functional difference is the shape of the workspace.

Geoff makes some great points, especially concerning the cost effectiveness of multiple monitors vs. giant screens.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

We've had an old AT&T cordless phone system for the last six years or so that has worked really well. You can use up to eight cordless handsets and we have both the landline and VoIP line connected to the base station, so we can answer either from any of the handsets.

I've been wondering what to replace it with one day when it inevitably gives up the ghost. This morning I read about this: a new AT&T system for the SOHO market that has some really great features.

It allows you to connect up to 12 handsets (not that we need that many) but the really cool thing is that you can use your Bluetooth enabled cell phone with it. You set the cell phone down within a few feet of the base station when you're at home, and your cell calls will ring on the AT&T system, with separate ring tones for the regular phone line and cell phone.

The only problem is that it doesn't support dual corded lines, and that's a bit of a deal breaker for us. I'm hoping they'll come out with a two-line model of this by the time I need a new one. Meanwhile, if you only have one line and your cell phone, this is a very neat idea.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

Well, it had to be either Microsoft's or George Bush's fault, since everything is. It's great to always have someone to blame for your troubles. This time, Skype is blaming their two-day outage last week on Patch Tuesday. They say that it was all those users rebooting their machines after installing the security updates that triggered a "previously unseen software bug."

Ummm. Okay. They failed to mention why it happened on this Patch Tuesday. After all, it's not like Patch Tuesday is a new thing. Users have been installing security updates and rebooting their systems afterward on Patch Tuesday every month for years.

Oh, well. If that story doesn't hold water, maybe they can blame Bush after all.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

Verizon called me the other day to tell me that I qualify for a free phone upgrade. That's nice - or would be, if they had something for me to upgrade to. My Samsung i730 is great and has served me well but it is getting a little long in the tooth. Still, I'm not going to trade it in lightly, having paid nearly $600 for it. But I would dump it if the right replacement came along. So far, it hasn't.

At CES in January, the Verizon rep told us the Samsung i760 would be out "around July." Well, it's around July - on the other side of it, in fact, and Verizon not only doesn't offer the i760 yet, they don't offer any Windows Mobile 6 smartphone/PDA phone.

"It's the network" is Verizon's mantra and I admit that I love their network. But someone needs to tell them a secret: "it's also the phones." Especially with ATT/Cingular bringing the phone itself to the forefront with the iPhone, people want a cool phone with great features.

You don't have to give me the i760; I'll "settle" for the HTC Vogue. In fact, the more I hear about it, the more I think I'd prefer it to the Samsung.

I know the Qualcomm patent infringement case and injunction are probably preventing some of these new phones from getting to market (Grrrr), but it's really getting annoying. It's like if Vista were released to the public but you couldn't buy a computer running it.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

At last report, I had narrowed down the cause of Microsoft breaking its Word (see post August 15) to one of two updates installed on Patch Tuesday: the Office 2007 security update or the Office 2003 security update. Now I know the culprit was the latter.

I figured this out when I noticed last night that my Vista laptop computer had automatically updated on Patch Tuesday and did not experience the same problems with Word 2007 that I had on my primary desktop after the update. And when I checked what updates were installed, I saw that the Office 2007 security update had been installed on the laptop but the Office 2003 update wasn't. Apparently the desktop installs the 2003 update because I have Frontpage 2003 installed - haven't gotten around to upgrading to Expression.

So I went ahead, crossed my fingers and installed the Office 2007 patch on the desktop. Word kept working the way it's supposed to. I guess there's something in the 2003 patch that doesn't sit well with Word 2007, at least on my machine. So if you still have any Office 2003 programs installed along with Office 2007, you might want to be aware of this problem.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

 I confess: I'm an addict. I spend a lot of time at the bar - the Vista sidebar, that is. I'm ga-ga about gadgets. I love these little applets that sit on my desktop and make my life easier. I love them so much that I've expanded my collection way beyond the sidebar itself, spilling over onto the desktop of my second monitor.

Some folks would call my desktop cluttered. Cluttered is what I call the Windows desktops I've seen where there were a bunch of random icons sitting around, old files that had been downloaded there and never got put away into their proper places, program icons that put themselves there, but that never get used.

My desktop is like the cockpit of a 747. There are LOT of things there, but they're all things I use every day and they're nicely organized and in place.

Here is a photo of my two main monitors (the third is extra screen real estate where I spread out when I need to view several open windows at a time, but doesn't have any icons or applets on it):

Click to enlarge

As you can see, I effectively have three sidebars. The real sidebar on the middle monitor (the one with the cockatoo wallpaper) has the following gadgets:

• Multimeter that displays (dual) processor and memory usage
• Weather gadget that displays the current local temperature
• The cool electric blue analog clock that comes with Vista

• Three digital clocks, showing the Central, Eastern and Pacific time zones. These are handy for coordinating phone conferences and online meetings since I work with people in different parts of the U.S.

• A monthly calendar that makes it easy to plan ahead at a glance
• A notepad where I can type or cut and paste short notes I need to remember
• A Dictionary applet in which you can type a word and get the definition

The two pseudo-sidebars on my other monitor were created by detaching gadgets from the real sidebar and lining them up in the black areas of my wallpaper.

• A Moon Phases applet that, when clicked, displays the phases of the moon for the month. This is helpful in planning outdoor parties and events.
• A Wikipedia search applet that lets me quickly find articles.
• A Translator applet into which you can type a word or phrase and translate between English and several other languages.

• An area code lookup applet so when the phone rings I can quickly determine where the call is coming from based on caller ID info
• A currency converter that converts between U.S. dollars and Canadian, euros, and many other currencies

• A multi-clipboard applet that lets me save lots of bits of text and go back to previous ones.
• A calculator applet for quick calculations.

• A handy stopwatch and countdown clock, so I can time how long it takes me to complete a task or set the alarm to remind me to check on the laundry in thirty minutes.
• A zip up lookup applet to make it easier to address letters and fill in forms when I know the address but not the zip (or not the nine digit zip).
• A Live Writer applet from which I can quickly create a new post, open an old one or configure program options.

• Finally, there's my system info gadget. I have it set to show system uptime and the status of each of my hard disk partitions, although you can set it to show much more.

You might notice that I also have a number of custom toolbars, and display a quick launch bar on each monitor. No "pristine" Vista desktop for me - I like having my controls right there in front of me where I can see them without clicking anything.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

Okay, I've narrowed down the culprits in my "Microsoft breaks Word - again" problem described in a post earlier today. When I got some free time, I went back to Windows Update and installed all of yesterday's updates except KB936048 (which is a security update for Office 2003, which I don't even have installed on my computer but which WU wanted to install anyway) and KB936960 (security update for Office 2007, which I do have).

Rebooted and ... no problems with Word. Made sense that was probably one of those. I'm hoping it was the 2003 update that did it, and I'll check that out tomorrow by installing the 2007 one by itself (after making a system restore point in case it turns out to be the 2007 update that broke things).

It's one of these two guys that caused all the problems

I'll keep you updated.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

Well, I got up this morning to find that a slew of new updates had been installed. That's nice, except that when I tried to open a Word document, I found myself with the same old extremely annoying problem I've wrestled with several times before: the mysterious "Word won't open a document by double clicking and when you do open a document, you can't click to put the cursor where you want it" syndrome. If you close the document with the X in the upper right corner, you get an error message that Word has stopped responding. All very frustrating.

I needed to get some work done and I didn't have time to figure out (again!) which update broke it, so I did a System Restore to yesterday's restore point and everything works fine again. But I'm also now missing whatever good updates might have been in that batch.

I make my living as a writer so a properly functioning word processing program is not a luxury; it's a necessity. For Pete's sake, guys, I could understand you not being in a hurry to fix this problem if it were putting Word Perfect or Open Office out of commission - but you're killing your own software here. In fact, last time this happened I actually started using OO for a while until I got it fixed, because I simply cannot work without the ability to instantly place the cursor where I want it within a document. Using the arrow keys doesn't cut it.

Meanwhile, no updates for me until I figure out which one caused it this time.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

I reported a few days ago that WXPnews readers were responding to my article on online backup services with much praise for Mozy (http://mozy.com). Michael Horowitz took issue with my listing of some of the claimed advantages of Mozy over other services, and pointed me to his CNET blog post titled "Everybody likes Mozy - except me."

Although I have quibbles with some of his arguments, such as the dangers of the backup service having the encryption key, since the usual alternative - storing your files unencrypted - exposes them to even more of a security issue. Personally, I would never store truly sensitive files with an online service anyway, but that's just me.

However, Michael does make some good points about accidental deletion of files and having the software run constantly in the background. I gave Mozy's free version a try, and I was immediately put off by the latter, too.

His post is definitely worth a read, especially for those who are using or considering using Mozy. No backup method is perfect but it's important to be aware of the drawbacks before choosing one.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

Coming back to the backup issue, I've gotten a good bit of mail on the subject this week, and the backup service that seems to be getting the most votes of confidence is Mozy (http://mozy.com/). It offers 2 GB free or unlimited backup for $4.95/month (that comes to around $60/year).

Some of the advantages it has over other similar services include bandwidth throttling, block level incremental backups, automatic Outlook file detection and backup, private encryption key option and support for Mac OS X. It's also Vista compatible.

I've also gotten several messages from readers affirming that they had the same problem I had with MediaMax, getting stuck in the endless loop when trying to upload a large number of files.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

Apparently I'm not, at least according to one web site on which I was trying to register today. I had to try three times before it accepted my typing of the letters in the graphic.

Or maybe 'bots are getting more sophisticated, because it seems these graphic representations of text are getting more and more difficult to read. This one was apparently case sensitive, but it's pretty difficult to tell a wavy, stylized uppercase "P" from a lowercase one. Same with the "S."

It's not that I really mind so much, having my humanity questioned. After all, I watched Roswell; I know there are aliens among us. But to err is human, after all; and a computer is a lot better at differentiating between upper and lowercase letters that look alike when they're floating out in space and not aligned with anything else.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

In regard to my August 3 blog post, where I wrote about my experience using Hotmail again after many years: I noted that I hadn't found a way to create signatures. That was a fairly big annoyance for me, as I don't like having to type my whole signature block every time.

Thanks to "alfacentauro," who wrote and told me how to do it (and yes, it is supported on the free version). That helped a lot. Here's how you do it:

1. Click the Options button in the top right corner.
2. Select More Options
3. Under "Customize your mail," click "Personal e-mail signature."

I don't know how I missed that before.

You can set up signatures in Hotmail

And before you all write to note that I was using Firefox in the screenshot, I'll explain why. I use IE 7 on Vista for most of my web browsing. But I have a couple of different Windows Live IDs that I use for different purposes. If I'm signed in on IE with a different ID and try to go to Hotmail, I get this rather unfriendly message:

"The .NET Passport or Windows Live ID you are signed into is not supported. Please set up a free email account."

 
Unfriendly IE message

Well, I don't want to set up another account, and signing out of and back into my primary Windows Live ID so I can access Hotmail is a bit of a pain. So I set up Firefox to remember my ID that's associated with my Hotmail account, and when I want to use Hotmail, I open it.

Finally, on August 12, I wrote about trying out some of the free online storage services, including Microsoft's SkyDrive. I hadn't seen a way to upload multiple files at one time, but Kent let me know that with the latest updates, you can now  drag and drop multiple files (but not folders). I appreciate the info.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

Google recently announced that they are going to make online storage space available to users who need a place off-site to store their files - at a hefty price. 6 GB goes for $20/year, 25 GB sets you back $75/year, 100 GB costs $250/year and if you want 250 GB you'll have to shell out $500/year.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/simple-way-to-get-more-storage.html 

Wow. I can buy two 750 GB hard drives for less than $500. Seems a little pricey to me. I haven't tried the Google service, since I didn't really want to pay for it when so many others are free.

Microsoft has opened up their Windows Live SkyDrive (formerly known as Live Folders, formerly known as Live Drive) to public beta. Setup is simple, and you can get an account free, but for now you're limited to only 500 MB of space. You sign in with your Windows Live ID and you can share your folders with friends or keep them to yourself.

Adding a file was easy, but I couldn't find a way to upload multiple files at the same time, and you're limited to 50 MB per file. If I want to back up a whole folder full of documents, that could get tedious.

I also tried MediaMax, which had the best deal of the lot: 25 GB of free storage. They also have a multiple file upload option by which you can drag and drop files, but to use it you have to install an ActiveX control. I didn't mind that so much, but when I tried selecting my entire Documents folder, I got a message saying that "uploading so many files at once is not recommended. Do you want to abort?" When I clicked No, I got the same message again. Okay, then - I clicked Yes. And still kept getting the message over and over, as shown below.

I wasn't able to get out of this endless loop, and trying to close the dialog box or close IE didn't work, either. I had to resort to ending the process in Task Manager in order to get rid of it.

I started over and obediently uploaded only a few files at a time and it worked okay. But that makes it only a little less tedious than Live SkyDrive.

Still, either of these will work okay. Later I'll try out XDrive and some of the other free options and report on those. Meanwhile, I'd have to give MediaMax the thumbs up for both capacity and ease of use (due to the drag and drop feature). But I expect Microsoft will up the amount of space you get on SkyDrive when they go live, and maybe they'll take a look at the other guys and incorporate the multiple file feature too. We'll see.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

If you've been following this blog, you know that a few weeks ago I was almost driven crazy by a sudden problem whereby I started getting error messages on my Vista computer saying "Display driver has stopped responding and has recovered."

It got progressively worse until I couldn't use the system at all with the nVidia video drivers loaded (it worked fine in Safe Mode or if I disabled the drivers). After trying dozens of fixes over the course of more than a week, I finally solved the problem the old fashioned way - by removing the nVidia hardware and replacing it with ATI video cards.

Imagine my surprise last week when Microsoft released KB938194, a "compatibility and reliability update" for Vista that claims to fix, among other things, the following problem: "The computer stops responding and you receive a 'display driver stopped responding and has recovered" error message.

So ... if I'd waited a little longer, maybe I could have kept my nVidia cards after all. It came a little too late for me; I already gave the 7900 to my son for a new computer he's building and I'm not really inclined to open up the box and switch them back again anyway. But it's good to know that maybe other people won't have to suffer what I did and buy new video cards to solve the problem.

If anyone out there is having this problem now, let me know if this update solves it.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

Okay, so two weeks after I switch to ATI video cards, this comes up:

ATI driver flaw exposes Vista kernel to attackers 

It seems there's a vulnerability in one of the ATI Catalyst drivers that can be used by a proof of concept tool called Purple Pill (which defeats Vista's anti-rootkit mechanism) to load unsigned drivers into the Vista kernel.

The good news is that the tool is no longer available; it was taken down from the Internet site where it was posted after about 78 minutes.  Symantec has shipped a definition update for its anti-malware products that includes the tool. AMD/ATI has promised to provide an updated version of the Catalyst software that resolves the vulnerability no later than next Monday (August 13). And Microsoft is expected to release a patch for the next day (which is this month's Patch Tuesday).

So I guess I won't have to give up my ATI cards. Thank goodness.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

Today I got an 8 GB SDHC flash memory card that cost $80 from Amazon. Eight gigs of data on a tiny card that's only a little bigger than a quarter - it's pretty amazing.

Eight gigs of data on a card that's only a little bigger than a quarter

 Just imagine how many photos I can take, even at highest quality. It wasn't that many years ago when an 8 GB hard disk seemed huge and held a complete operating system, numerous applications and all my data. We've come a long way, baby.

Something to keep in mind before you pluck down your dough for one of these, though: it only works in SDHC compatible devices - not those made for the older SD cards only. I read several bad reviews on Amazon saying "this card doesn't work." I suspect there are a lot of people out there buying SDHC cards and trying to use them in non-HC devices. It works fine in my newest Casio EX-V7, but not in an older model camera I have.

Doesn't work with my Dell's built in card reader, either. And although I thought the built in SD slot in the Sony TXN laptop might support it since it's a new system, no such luck.

It also doesn't work, unfortunately, on my Samsung i730 Pocket PC phone. Too bad, as it would be awesome to be able to add that much extra storage to the handheld. Oh, well. Mostly likely my next PDA phone (whether the i760 or the HTC Vogue) will use microSD cards anyway. Which means being limited to 2 GB just as I am now.

But this card is great for taking pictures, which is really what I got it for anyway.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

I had several people write to me about my travails with our T-1 line after I recounted the experience in the August 7 edition of WXPnews (www.wxpnews.com).

Some readers wanted to know why we would bother with the expense of a T-1 line at all, when we have FiOS, since our FiOS connection is 15 Mbps down/2 Mbps up and T-1 is limited to 1.5 Mbps each way.

It's not that we just love to spend money. The reason we got the T-1 was its supposed reliability, and at the time, it was indeed much more reliable than our other connectivity option (cable). When we signed the three year contract for the T-1 (that was necessary to get the "low" price of $499/month, which comes to $568/month once with all the taxes and fees), FiOS wasn't available.

As soon as it did become available, about a year and half ago, we signed up and subsequently it's been more reliable than the T-1. However, until just recently only residential/consumer-grade FiOS was available. So we still needed the T-1 in order to run our web and email servers.

Now business-class FiOS is available, with a block of static IP addresses, which solves that problem. So the T-1 made business sense at the time, but now it doesn't.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

I got my second ATI video card installed and am happily running three monitors again with no problems. Several people have expressed curiosity about how I have my multiple monitors set up, so here's a photo of a typical work session:

 
My multi-monitor setup

And yes, the presence of the cat is pretty typical. What you see here are the three monitors connected to my two ATI video cards in my Dell XPS 710. If you click to enlarge the photo, you may be able to see that I'm running Vista, with the middle monitor as my primary monitor.

I have the document I'm writing open on the right side monitor, and the web browser for research on the middle one. The left monitor looks like it's running XP - that's because I have a full screen Remote Desktop session into my XP computer upstairs open on that one. I use this setup when I'm writing the WXPnews newsletter, because it lets me work in Vista and XP at the same time and address questions and issues regarding both. Another way to accomplish that is with virtual machines, and I do use VMs if I'm working on an article about Windows Server 2003, for example, and need to be able to check things in that interface.

I also have Outlook open on the left screen behind the Remote Desktop session, and can easily switch between the two with a click of taskbar buttons on the main monitor.

I use the UltraMon application to allow me to control taskbar placement (for instance, mirroring the taskbar onto all three monitors or having a taskbar on each monitor that shows only the applications open on that display), but different wallpapers on each monitor, save and restore my desktop icons, and more. UltraMon is a great little program for anyone who uses more than one monitor. It's not free, but it's worth the $39. You can get it from the RealtimeSoft web site at http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/.

I've also created Quick Launch toolbars on each monitor for easy access to the programs I use frequently. In Vista, you may find you can't drag the QL bar off the main taskbar, but there's a way around that. Create a folder on the desktop called Quick Launch and put shortcuts to all your favorite programs in it. Then drag it to the edge of any monitor (upper, lower or side) and the contents of the folder automatically becomes a toolbar. Is that cool or what?

This is the setup that works really well for me, but of course a desktop is a very personal thing, and your mileage may vary.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

One benefit (well, sort of) of having my primary email account down is that I've been forced to get better acquainted with my web mail accounts. First I tried using Gmail as my backup but when people started telling me "I did write to your Gmail account" and I didn't receive it, I figured it was time to dust off my old Hotmail account and try that.

I confess: it's been years since I used Hotmail. And a large part of the reason is the name. Having a Hotmail address is sort of like having an AOL address - there's an immediate reaction to it and it's usually not positive. I wish Microsoft had changed it to WindowsLive.com, but of course that would have necessitated all those Hotmail users changing their addresses so I understand why they didn't.

Still, I don't like the name. Admit it: we all make judgements based on names, even if we shouldn't. Girls, are you as eager to meet someone named Henry as you are to meet someone named Josh? Guys, which makes the best first unseen impression on you: Jennifer or Gertrude? A rose by any other name might smell the same, but it doesn't sound the same.

Names aside, though, I was pleasantly surprised by the new Hotmail interface (shown below). It looks a bit like Outlook, or at least like Outlook Web Access (OWA).  

The new Hotmail interface is pretty hot

It's a lot more intuitive for me than the Gmail interface, and I like that it will import your contacts from Outlook.

One nit to pick: whenever I go to a different tab in IE and then come back to the Hotmail window, I get the message shown below:

Click to enlarge the error message

It tells me that my Hotmail account information doesn't match the browser session. I assume it's because I'm logged onto MSN Messenger with a different account. Anyway, I have to refresh the browser each time I come back to the Hotmail window. Not a big deal, but annoying.

I also haven't found a way to create signatures or to import my calendar information. For basic mail, though, it seems more than adequate.

The real test is whether I'll get my mail reliably here while we wait (and wait and wait) for the T-1 to be fixed. Supposedly Covad and Verizon worked on it all night last night. The service ticket has been escalated to level 4 and I did indeed see a Verizon truck at the corner when I went out last night, but still no joy.

So much for the reliability of dedicated leased lines.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."

Please, Mr. Postman. The lyrics of that song keep going around in my head. It's Day Two of the involuntary partial email hiatus and I am deep in the throes of withdrawal. I've gone from hundreds of messages per day to eight or ten delivered to my Gmail account and I feel as if I've been abandoned on a desert island.

It doesn't help that Tom is out of town so I have only the cats for in-person interaction throughout the day. You'd think I would be getting more work done without the email distraction, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I had a routine, and it included heavy multitasking.

Now it's sort of like when you're used to driving a standard transmission and then you drive an automatic - and you feel totally disoriented because your left foot has nothing to do. It keeps feeling for the clutch anyway, and I keep automatically checking Outlook every ten minutes or so and then have to go through the disappointment all over again when I see that the last message came in Thursday morning at 3:16 a.m.

Addicted? Who, me? :) I just want a return to normality.

deb@shinder.net     www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."