Dinner Monday

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Today was freezing out. I was working from home and all set to stay in and warm. That didn’t end up happening. I meet up with Jayson for lunch near Time Square. I was going to head home to finish the day off but I realized I had dinner plans with people from work and a vendor down by my office. So after lunch I ran down there to finish the rest of the day of work at work. 

Dinner was great. We went to a nice Italian restaurant. I had some Veal. For desert I we all had some Mcallan’s 15. It was good. I have had it before and Mcallan’s is fast becoming one of my favorite Scotches. I am going to look for a bottle for my apartment.

I didn’t get home till after 10, so it was a long day but all in all a good one.

And I Thought Buying Electronics Was Confusing

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Over the past few months I have gotten more and more interested in cooking. I am not sure if it is because I decided I want to eat a bit more healthy. It could also be due to the kick ass grocery store that is now open across the street from me. I am now motivated to eat a bit better and I have a steady supply of fresh food to choose from.

My problem is that my cooking equipment is a bit lacking. I have a small George Forman grill and a cookie sheet. Sad, I know. I already ordered a new bigger easier to clean George Forman grill that shows up sometime this week. I also started looking for pots and pans to cook things I am interested in. The problem I found is they don’t make it easy to pick just 2 or 3 things to get. Most of what I have found are sets of 11 or 12 pieces. I want 3 things. A frying pan, large pot, and a steamer. The loose stock items you can get aren’t what I want. I might end up needing to get a set that I don’t really need. I also can’t identify why the price of this stuff varies so much between sets. I know there is probably some fundamental difference between stuff but I don’t know what it is.

At least with technology I knew what to look for no matter how confusing stuff was. I bought cheap steak knives thinking they seemed fine, and now I know why they cost like $20. They are starting to rust after a few uses. This whole experience is teaching me that I have allot to learn.

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email backlog is almost gone for now. Dinner is done and cleaned up. Maybe it is time to sit down and relax a bit.

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I just remwmbered that I don’t like above ground subways. People can talk on their mobiles all the time.

How Some Hardware Companies Can Confuse Their Customers

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I wonder sometimes what Technology companies are thinking sometimes. A few months ago I bought a Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000 to use when traveling with my Macbook. It is a good portable mouse. I had no real complaints about it. That is why when I needed to use a portable mouse with my Thinkpad T61 I wanted to configure the mouse for use with it. The Thinkpad has bluetooth. That is when my problems started.

It turns out that the Thinkpad does not have the control panel option for Bluetooth even though the driver is installed and working. Some forum searches later and I discovered that this is unfortunately common for SP-2 + installs of Windows XP. I can’t really setup a bluetooth mouse without that control panel applet. I then figured I could download the latest Microsoft drivers and mouse software for the Notebook Mouse 5000. I was hoping that maybe I could configure the mouse using the Microsoft Mouse software. This is when things got interesting. When I went to Microsoft’s Hardware site to download the drivers I couldn’t find the mouse I own in the list. I verified that I have the right mouse type and I still couldn’t find it anywhere on the Drivers & Download page.

I then decided to search the internet for references to drivers for this model mouse. After about 15 minutes searching I found several references to the same problem I was having of not finding the drivers. One of the posts was actually on a Microsoft Forum. The answer blew me away. Yeah, there aren’t any drivers to download. According to someone who seems to be working at Microsoft said that since it is a generic Bluetooth Mouse there is not specific driver set for this model. My response to that is, oh I am sorry that I the end user didn’t know that. How can you expect a consumer to figure that out? You sell someone a product but when you can’t find that product listed on support and download lists it is kind of frustrating. I can understand that I don’t need a driver or special software for the mouse. Wouldn’t it have been a good idea to have this model in the list of models to choose from on the support site and when you select it you get a notice about not needing to download anything special for it? Come on Microsoft you can do better than this.

In the end my problem is still not solved since I don’t have any way to pair the mouse to the Thinkpad. Lenovo hasn’t been very helpful either. I am still working on the issue but I thought my little story was odd enough to take a few minutes and write about it

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Company Party Vs Reunion

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Yesterday was a bit hectic at work. I worked out of two different offices. I ran from one to another at lunch so I could be at meetings at the other location in the afternoon. It was very hectic but also extremely productive.

After work I headed out with a bunch of people to the company holiday party. I ended up not staying. There were really long lines. Truth be told I was double booked. A bunch of friends I used to work with at Partsearch were getting together and I hadn’t seen some of them in almost two years. I originally wanted to goto the holiday party and mingle for a while and then head out to the other get together. Well we needed up leaving for the party late, and then there was a huge line so I decided to skip out. I am a bit upset by that, but almost no one I know was going to be at the party. My team wasn’t going.

The Partsearch semi-reunion was cool. One of the big things I miss from working there was hanging out with everyone there. I still am friends with many people I worked with there, but it is still different being friends and seeing people everyday and doing almost everything together. To be able to go out to lunch with a group of friends at work is priceless. OK, enough reminiscing. The get together at No Idea (of course) was fun. I ended up staying out till after 10. Not so late, but late enough when I had a meeting at 8:30 AM today.