I really like this laptop (specs). It’s extremely lightweight (3.5 lbs) and portable without sacrificing on features. And it’s hundreds of dollars cheaper than the equivalent Fujitsu and almost a thousand dollars cheaper than the similarly small Sony Vaio and Sharp offerings. The only features missing are integrated bluetooth and webcam.

The idea was to wait for OSX Leopard to ship so I can pick up a Core2Duo-based Macbook/Pro with it inside, but none of these Mac laptops are actually lightweight — which is a big deal for me. Again, I have to weigh in how much I value Macbook’s extra features (and price, if I go for the Pro) compared to Averatec’s small size. Decisions, decisions…

Almost exactly 3 years ago I published a review of YDL that TerraSoft’s CEO Kai Staats didn’t particularly like. What followed was a big shouting match via email. He wouldn’t back down, and in my normal fashion, I didn’t either. Maybe I would have if I knew that Kai is so damned cute. Don’t worry, our (professional) relationship is much better now.

Can’t wait for my JBQ to buy a PS3 so I can run YDL in it.

When not using one of the top-5 distros today (ubuntu, fc, suse, mdk, debian), it has it’s ups and downs. I like Arch Linux because it’s fast, uses less RAM, it’s clean and it’s Slackware-like simple. But on the other side, by being a small distro means that it doesn’t have enough maintainers, some (standard) features are to be supported or not depending on the maintainers’ whim, plus some stuff are not setup’ed by default (so the user has to do some initial manual work to make the OS a usable modern desktop).

I believe that GnuCash 2.x is a major OSS application and there should be an official package for it, mostly because it requires some patching in order to work on Arch Linux properly. If it was a straight compile, I wouldn’t have made the feature request. But it isn’t. Additionally, the “community packages” are unmaintained and the GnuCash people themselves suggest that users should not try to build it themselves because it’s a pain in the rear to do so properly (they fully recognize this). The verdict was that Arch won’t create packages for it because there is no one who wants to maintain it in the Arch Linux team. Great, just great.

Despite this blow I will stay with Arch because I can build Gnucash myself and apply the patches needed. I evaluate how much simplicity and speed means to me compared to the lack of packages and added conveniences, and then I make my choice. But I never suggest this distro (or Gentoo, or even Debian for that matter) to newbies. For users who need added conveniences, Ubuntu is the best choice right now (with FC6/SuSE close behind).

I can’t understand people who go to see ugly horror movies that have lots of raw gore in them. I mean, why would I want to see in great graphic detail how a person gets tortured? WHY?

There is even a TV commercial these days here in USA that a horror fan coming out of the theater says “everyone wants to get scared”. Well, no, not everyone. I don’t mind some “light” horror movies that don’t really take themselves too seriously (e.g. “Final Destination”, “The Others”), but when you have to deal with raw gore violence of excruciating proportions like some movies in the last 4-5 years, I am against it. I just don’t see any entertainment or other value in them. It’s not only that I don’t have the stomach for them, but I also loath them just for existing. In my mind, there should be no reason for such movies to exist.

Oh boy.

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