Viva Batista

ThinkPad Love

From the profane to the mundane... This guy really loves ThinkPads.  And I completely understand.  Having used a ThinkPad for about 6 hours a day, almost every day for the past 3.5 years, and even though I burned out a screen and a hard drive, I can't imagine using anything else.

When my wife needed a laptop, getting a ThinkPad was a no-brainer.  When I started getting ready to buy a personal laptop and hand over my trusty T23 to my successor at work, I flirted briefly with an iMac (I was inspired by the joy my iPod brought me, but my test sessions at the Apple store proved disappointing), and with a Dell (I was tempted by the low prices, but a little online research convinced me that there were too many problems with the chassis I wanted--like scorching hot palmrests), and I eventually came back to Big Blue, err, Tai Lan Yan Se.  (Actually, it sounds like the Feds are going to kill the deal, which is fine with me.)

IBM's high prices are tough to swallow, but a great alternative to buying new is their certified reconditioned program.  They don't promote it extensively, but you can find some very good deals right on their site:

IBM.com > Products > Clearance Corner > Certified Used Equipment > Notebooks

There you'll find a list of available ThinkPads, all competitively priced.  I picked up a T40, WinXP, 40 GB hard drive, 512 MB RAM, 1.5 GHz Pentium M, integrated wireless card, CD/RW-DVD, yada, yada, yada, and an 18-month warranty, for $1,150.  With an extra battery that swaps with the CD-drive (the batteries that ship with used ThinkPads are notoriously close to end-of-life), plus tax and 2-day shipping, the whole damn thing was about $1,400.

Comparable to anything similarly equipped from another manufacturer, with all the good stuff that just makes ThinkPads nicer to use, particularly the rock-solid keyboard and chassis.  And if I feel like shelling out a few hundred more, I can still get IBM's next-day, on-site service deal.

So far, so good with the new T40.  I had an initial bout of hair-rending and teeth-gnashing when it appeared that downloading WinXP Service Pack 2 had created an irresolvable conflict with the integrated wireless card, but IBM's telephone service was actually helpful!  (Well, they batted .667.  Call Center Dude #1 was  an uber-geek who put me on the right path, told me to download and install some new software and call back.  Dude #2 was dumb as a goddamn rock and put me on hold in the hopes I would just hang up and go away--which I did.  But then Dude #3 called me the next day to see if everything was OK.  Long story short, it is.)

A few minor gripes: the display on my old T23 was much brighter than the one on my new T40--however, that's not really a fair comparison, because the T23's original display burned out and had to be replaced.  And the T40's hard drive is a little noisier--again, not a fair comparison, because the T23's first HD also died and was replaced.  And the T40's chassis, while thinner, is also slightly creakier.

Those are quibbles, but remembering the dead screen and HD I suffered through remind me that I really should get the extended on-site service deal.  Like health insurance, it's money well spent.

UPDATE: Although I fixed the WinXP SP2 conflict with my wireless card the first time around, I subsequently screwed things up again by changing too many configuration settings in order to network the XP T40 with my old Win2K T23.  I got the little LAN set up, but then couldn't get the T40 back up on the wireless network.  Tried everything, everything failed.  So I went for the complete factory restore.  Shouldn't have been that big a deal, really, since there wasn't much installed software on the machine--but I was just fried at that point, and it wasn't much fun, either.

So starting from scratch I updated the wireless card's drivers and IBM's Access Connections, and I'm not going to install XP SP2--instead, I'm just going to switch to Firefox.

Primo Levi

The 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, two days ago now, prompted thoughts of Primo Levi's If This Is A Man: Remembering Auschwitz, which I read four or five years ago but which remains vivid in my memory.

One of the aspects of Levi's writing that had such a strong effect on me was the way he portrayed the intimate, personal, horrifying details of the Holocaust.  The full reality of millions of people imprisoned, executed, or worked to death is so vast that it causes an emotional numbness; I simply shut down, because to feel in the face of so much suffering would be too overwhelming.

But reading Levi's description of life in Auschwitz, one man's experience makes the Holocaust more terrifying to me than the staggering death count:

TypePad Stickies

Want to post a sticky in TypePad?  You have to be using an Advanced Template and be willing to muck around in the index.html template, but Don at TypePad Users Forum has posted the code.

Offline Blogging

With client-side software like ecto.

Holy War?

In my book, sports and politics don't mix. I root for the home team, especially when US athletes are going up against Belorussian boxers or Russian wrestlers. But I'm still pissed at Jimmy Carter for boycotting the Moscow Olympics in '80. It was a well-meaning gesture, but it didn't do diddly to get Soviet tanks out of Afghanistan.

That's why I'm fully down with Carlos Delgado's refusal to stand for the national anthem before games. (Sam Borden of the NY Daily news has a well-written update.)

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, it made sense to express our collective feelings at mass gatherings, including sporting events. But I'm not sure what purpose is being served today by turning games into quasi-patriotic rallies.

Don't assume that my endorsement of Delgado's actions means that I endorse his views on the war. I disagree with most of what he has to say, although I can't condense my full perspective down into a blog entry.

But ultimately there's no real connection between what's happening in Iraq and what's been happening on our football fields and baseball diamonds. Protest the war, or support our troops--exercise your right to free expression. Just keep it out of the games.

Clean Code

The W3C has lots of great online resources, including X/HTML validators for websites and for uploaded files.

Moving iTunes

Need to move your iTunes library from one computer to another?  No problem--just use your iPod.

McCovey Chronicles

Grant of Waiting for Boof, my old favorite S.F. Giants blog, has moved over to swanky new space at the McCovey Chronicles, my new favorite Giants blog.  From his first post a few days ago:

Welcome to McCovey Chronicles, all.  Perhaps you are the type who picks up the San Francisco Chronicle each morning, hoping to find bathroom humor and a Journey reference mixed in the Giants article.  Every single day you do this.  Every single day you are disappointed.

This is your site.

I should also mention Athletics Nation, which covers, yes, that's right, the Oakland A's, but seems to take itself a little more seriously than the McC.  For example, here's a recent AN interview with Billy Beane.

(It'll be readily apparent to visitors that both McC and AN are using nearly identical templates on the same platform, but I can't find any info on what they're using.  Anyone have any ideas?)

Golden Gate Bridge, Up Close

Golden Gate Bridge, Up Close,
originally uploaded by edbatista.

Another Flickr upload (see the previous post).

Worked well again, although it doesn't appear that I can categorize photos when posting from within Flickr--I had to log in to TypePad again.  Ah, well.  One nice thing is that posting to a blog apparently doesn't count toward the 10 MB monthly bandwidth allowance that comes with my free Flickr account.  The worst thing about it is that it's sort of a pain to type f-l-i-c-k-r.  Sort of sad when you consider what someone's doing with f-l-i-c-k-e-r.com.  Very '98.

United States of Apple

United States of Apple,
originally uploaded by edbatista.

I'm trying out Flickr, a photo-sharing service that's getting increasingly popular. Plenty of not-really-useful features (captions and that sort of thing), but what I'm really interested in is the ability to tag photos, search for and identify photos using tags (yours and others'), and create an community that makes it easy to share images with others.

What's also interesting about Flickr is the integration with your blogging application.  This photo and the paragraph above were posted directly from within Flickr--I had to configure my Flickr account so that it could access my TypePad account, but I didn't have to use TypePad at all.  (If I were slicker with HTML/CSS, I could do a lot more with the photo and text format, but I'll leave that for another day.)  Another upside is that the photo's hosted at Flickr, so it doesn't count against my TypePad storage limit.  (With a free Flickr account, you can upload a total of 10 MB a month, and you have unlimited storage capacity.)  A downside is that I don't think I can select a category for the blog entry--I had to categorize this entry while writing this paragraph from within TypePad, but there may be a workaround.