random bits.

A lot of random items today.

• My previous rant about phones led me to go back and look for batteries on ebay - it was the NiMH batteries that died after two years of constant use. Well, they’re available for $10. This is much better than the $70 retail I had found.

  After some consideration I decided to skip this generation of phones (the Nokia 8260 is nearly two years old), return to my old shiny phone and wait for another generation or two before getting a new one. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

  And yes, I do feel sheepish for not having checked ebay before. Baaaaaa.

• I’ve been trying out Fog Creek Software’s CityDesk website content management system in the background. I set up a template similar to the low-bandwidth slashdot display and entered in these journal entries; having some FTP problems uploading to my host.

  There are several features missing that I would really like, like timestamping and web entry. That and the cost of additional pages are keeping me a little hesitant to switch over, though I’m thinking of recommending it as a low-cost alternative to Lotus Notes for some of our clients. Last night I decided to stay with Slashdot for now.

• Finally got Mandrake 8.1 installed on my machine without hosing my Windows installation. Because my computer shipped with a Winmodem, I don’t have an internet connection yet - but I’ll fix that soon enough - knock on wood.

• The more I work with other programs, the more I come to dislike Lotus Notes’s interface and working with Domino. I’m not convinced when Lotus touts RNext as the answer to all my problems - I remember the R5 rollout. We’re still cleaning up from that mess.

• First warm day in a month or so here in Northern VA; nice to have a little bit of a break from the unremitting chill. I took a few minutes to walk outside and enjoy being away from my beige box.

• The new issue of Fudge Factor is out.

Baaaaaaaaaa.