I’m at a conference today and occasionally pull out my laptop to check email, or get away from a boring lecture, etc. Yeah, I forgot my blackberry. Argh!
I use Trillian as my instant messenger, and have Rendezvous set up as one of the IM clients. Suddenly this category “People Nearby” has started populating itself and being useful!

While I was at lunch a friend of mine popped up on there, someone that I didn’t know was at the conference. This is a pretty darn great idea – it’s basically showing me people who are also running the Rendezvous protocol that are on the same local subnet. Most of these folks are on Macs, but Trillian Pro also supports Rendezvous. This can be very useful at a conference.

Okay, actually *I* didn’t lose 50 pounds, I lost 50 pounds of monitor!
I finally caved in and replaced my old Dell Trinitron. It’s been a great monitor, I’ve had it about 9 years I think. It’s a 21″, does 1600×1200, and has been very reliable. But it weighs 67 pounds!

Last week my co-worker Bret pointed out a cheap deal on Dell LCD monitors, using a few online coupons, so I caved in and bought a Dell 2005FPW for about $475. This monitor is a 20.1″ widescreen that does 1680×1050. And hey, it only weighs 17 pounds!

So far the monitor is great! With the digital DVI input, the clarity is incredible, and it’s quite high contrast. Reduced resolution games are slightly blurry, but hey in a year or two I’ll be able to run at native resolution with no problem. The only problem I’ve had so far is that my computer refuses to identify the built-in USB 2.0 hub. Who cares?

Maybe this one won’t need so many patches.
Patch wires, maybe.

Seriously. Now where’s my hover car?
I love that it will be easy to use because of Fortran. But of course! Because Fortran is so user-friendly! As long as you don’t forget to put spaces in columns 1-6!
Also, what’s that big Love Boat wheel for? Does that excite the hyperion laser beam, enabling me to instantly send datagrams to my neighbor’s computer via the 300 baud modem? So sweet!

Why is it that every day, when I log in to my computer at work, I get prompted to install more Windows security patches? I’m getting pretty damned sick of it. Maybe I’ll just turn the shit off. If I didn’t have to reboot after installing them, it wouldn’t be so bad.
And no, before you ask, I’m not switching to a Mac (Jeff). Or Solaris (Chris). Or Linux (Bret).

ABC News declared bloggers as they’re “People of the Year”. Some nice folks digitized the video and posted it to BoingBoing, and it features cameos from Xeni, Wonkette, and a young girl who … I have no idea who she is.