MichaelGuo.com

Well, I just listed twenty items on eBay with many more to come this week. Lots of furniture and the such will go on Craigslist, too. In case you haven’t heard, I’m moving to San Francisco at the end of the month. As part of the move, I’ve decided to sell nearly everything I own. I’m basically keeping a couple laptops, some photo equipment, the Wii, some clothes, and some mementos along with a few “necessities” that just make more sense to ship than to re-buy.

If you’re interested in any of my stuff, then please let me know! There’s lots and lots and lots of stuff for sale. If you can picture something in a house, e.g., a bookcase, a sofa, a desk, a TV, etc., then I likely have it for sale!

I’ve posted a page devoted to upgrades, mods, and hacks for the MacBook Core Duo. Yeah, I’ve really pimped it out with MacStyles, iColours, an OptiBay, and 802.11n card! I’m devoted to trying to keep this computer for as long as possible minus AppleCare!

• The snap of a mousetrap in the middle of the night
• The crunch of my glasses under my foot
• The screaming of our neighbor’s children

Sigh.

In my quest for an ergonomic bluetooth keyboard, I decided to plunk down $254.98 for the Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000, and Amazon-ly enough, it arrived less than 24 hours after I ordered it via A-1 Courier Services. The whole setup itself isn’t bad, and I didn’t even have to use the included Bluetooth adapter. It paired just fine with my MacBook. The recharging unit is especially nice. Though on the ugly side, I can live with the aesthetics. What I can’t deal with is the ridiculous keyboard layout. Why in the world did the Windows key become this stupid shiny badge the in the middle of the keyboard below the space bar? Is this even usable under Windows?

Usually, I have the Windows key remapped to option and the Alt key remapped to command to mimic a normal Mac keyboard. That’s worked quite well on my split keyboard for years. However, on this keyboard, the option key then migrates to that stupid shiny badge. Then, there’s this useless Fn key in between the ctrl and new command keys that can’t seem to be remapped to anything. Does anyone know a solution to this? If there’s something that can be done, then I won’t return or sell this keyboard. Otherwise, this has to go. I use it too frequently when typing, particularly for moving and highlighting word-by-word rather than character-by-character, for this to just be a minor annoyance. I can live without a number pad, I can live with the F keys being these weird bumps rather than keys, I can even live with seeing a Windows icon, but I really just can’t live with that Windows icon being a stupid shiny badge.

Overall, though, I’m impressed by the amount of support for Mac users built into this keyboard with IntelliType and IntelliPoint. On the other hand, why is the latest version on the Microsoft website older than the version on the included CD? That’s just silly and backwards.

Anyway, is there really so little market demand that Microsoft is the only company making ergonomic bluetooth keyboards? (And here, I use the term ergonomic quite loosely, as the comfort curve design barely qualifies compared to the split for me.) Are there really no other ergonomic bluetooth keyboards out there? I don’t have so much hope that someone would actually come out with a Mac-specific ergonomic bluetooth keyboard, but come on, someone else please come out with an ergonomic bluetooth keyboard. Logitech? Logitech?

Thankfully, my last backup was yesterday around noon, as my hard drive failed a mere five hours later. I hied to Microcenter in the morning after determining that it was indeed the hard drive and bought the largest available drive that was compatible with my MacBook, installed it, and was up and running about five hours later. (320GB notebook hard drives are astoundingly inexpensive!) The restored volume has a few quirks that I’m currently fixing (reauthorized iTunes, had to reimport mail, Fusion was missing a snapshot, etc.), but everything appears to work just fine. The only thing I lost were some movies I’d purposely not backed up anyway. As a result, I can happily say that my recent Time Capsule purchase was worth it. It was a little slower than I expected, though I doubt a hard drive hooked up via USB would’ve been much faster given the large number of files. Luckily, I had a Cat 6 cable on hand, so I could take advantage of the Gigabit Ethernet.

I’m happy to announce the birth of Today’s Reason to Play Hooky. “Isn’t this basically Today’s Reason to Drink?” you say. Well, yeah, kind of. However, I’ve reworded the reasons and am working on adding additional ones. Plus, this is much more family-friendly. One of the things that likely hurts Today’s Reason to Drink is it isn’t listed in the Google Gadget Directory unless users specifically search for it, so I’d been meaning to put together one that’s not quite so drinking-oriented for a while.

Anyway, add it! Let me know if you like it! And of course, tell me how I could improve it!

Also, these sorts of announcements and more are always available at my company blog.

I was originally writing on the bus from DC to NYC, but then, the wireless cut out. Now, I’m on the bus to Boston after a pit stop in NYC where I ate some falafel and just sat around for a while.

I’ve noticed the buses getting progressively fuller on each trip (except for the trip down to DC for some reason). Megabus must be really marketing the heck out of this. I did notice an ad on the Q train today.

DC is currently not the best place to be. It’s hot and humid, and for the last couple days, it’s been very rainy. As a result, I decided to make yesterday a day of museums and beer, sandwiching visits to the Air and Space Museum and the National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian American Art Museum in between refueling at The Brickskeller and Capitol City Brewery.

Philly was unexpectedly nicer than I remembered, and there have been a lot of changes since I was last there. I did do the touristy thing and saw the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, etc. I also stuffed myself full of burger and fries at Five Guys and went to Monk’s Cafe.

I’m actually writing this post from a bus headed to Philly from NYC. A couple months ago, I’d heard about Megabus’s new routes on the eastern seaboard and that they were completely free for the first week (except for a $0.50 booking fee). I immediately figured out a crazy route for that week that would take me from Boston->NYC, NYC->Philly, Philly->NYC, NYC->DC, DC->NYC, and NYC->Boston that cost me a total of $0.50. I’m now on day three of the trip after hanging out in NYC for two nights.

NYC was good fun. I got a chance to catch up with a number of friends, some whom I hadn’t seen in years, and I drank plenty of great beer at the Brooklyn Brewery and at St. Marks Ale House. I also shared a couple great pizzas at Fornina, ate Thai at SEA (which was apparently at the beginning of “Garden State”), and a really good very un-kosher bagel at Absolute Bagels.

I don’t really know many people in Philly, so I think I’ll do the touristy thing there. I haven’t seen that big bell with a crack in it or other stuff since I was maybe ten years old, so that should be interesting. Of course, I’ll stuff myself with a couple cheesesteaks, too. And then, there’s all the good street food I remember from ages ago.

I bought a Master combination lock sometime last year to use with hostel lockers, but I keep on forgetting the combination. Every once in a while, it comes back to me in a flash of enlightenment, but I can’t really count on that happening by tomorrow. (I leave for NYC, then Philly, then DC for two days each on a crazy $0.50 total Megabus trip.) A little Googling turned up this page on cracking a Master Lock, which works! Thankfully, I didn’t have to try all 64 combinations, as I remembered the lock repeated the first and last numbers, which was somewhere in the thirties.

Anyway, this is really cool. I don’t have to buy a new lock or go through the ridiculous process of finding a notary and getting them to send me my combo.