I recently started a job where I am required to use a PC at least until I can prove that a Mac can do the job just as well. One of the ergonomic benefits was that I got a Kensington Orbit optical trackball to replace the carpal-tunnel-inducing mouse that came with my workstation. This is the same trackball I use at home on my mac so I have become pretty familiar with it's features. One of them is "scroll with mouse", a feature that allows you to "chord" or press both the left and right buttons at the same time and then use the trackball as a giant scroll wheel. This works great on my Mac at home but I discovered on my first day here that it's quite sluggish and choppy under Windows. I don't honestly know where the problem is and I figured that I'd just deal with it for a while.

A few weeks ago, I decided to take it up with tech support. After being instructed to un/re-install MouseWorks and try again, they determined that my trackball had bad firmware and sent me a new one. Well, you can guess that that didn't fix the problem. I opened a new ticket with Kensington's tech support and was instructed to un-install MouseWorks and then go through and look for a long and specific list of stray files that could be preventing a good re-install, then re-install the software. No luck, most of the stuff they told me to delete wasn't there anyway. Guess what they said. You got it "As the issue is related to the firmware of the mouse so we are replacing it for you. Please note that I have placed an order for a new trackball and you will receive it within 12 to 15 business days."

I for one would like to see how many new trackballs I can get this way, and I encourage anyone else who has had this problem to do the same.

If the third one really doesn't have a firmware problem, I'll be sure to update this post.

Update 10-03-2006: I received my new trackball via FedEx but I haven't bothered to open it yet.

Update 12-20-2007: I replaced my desktop machine with a MacBook Pro. The trackballs work like a charm.

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A while ago, I asked a sales person at a T-Mobile store if there was a plan other than T-Mobile Total Internet that would work with my phone. They said no, that was the only one since they were moving more to devices with wi-fi capabilities and they had bundled the hot-spot service in with the other web browsing. Now, that may be true, but this page had an interesting bit of information on the subject.

Basically, the idea was that T-Mobile allowed its users to connect to their mail servers via the T-Zones connection for free so, if one were to set up a proxy server on a mail port, one could sneak web traffic through it. Unfortunately, I can't seem to connect to my mail server through T-Zones. A later post gave the address of T-Mobile's proxy server (which should have been pre-configured in my opinion) 216.155.165.50:8080 (which I verified was a T-Mobile IP). So I set that up, was prompted to pay $5.99 per month for access, and was online. I still suspect there is a better way, but wouldn't be surprised if T-Mobile had closed most of the holes that might have let people out for free. Anyway, the result is that this post was typed on a very small keyboard.

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I am an avid reader of Gizmodo: the Gadget Blog because of my obsession with gadgets. They recently had an article about the lighting boot camp that David over at Strobist was about to have. His intent was to share his and others' knowledge of off-camera flash photography. Since most of my photography has been outdoor and nature photography, I've never had the opportunity to really learn how to use a flash, much less an off-camera flash. Of course, I signed up at Flickr right away so I could participate. I've learned more about flash photography in the last month than I could have imagined. If you've ever wanted to take pictures where you control the light or if you already think you're hot stuff in that department, check out the site and I guarantee you'll learn at least one thing.

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As I have no doubt mentioned. Grand Marais was a really nice little town. I think it would have more appeal to a mariner since most of the town is a marina (by area). There's a point that sticks out into the lake which is where I took the picture of my self from two posts earlier, and the land forms the start of a natural harbor in the other direction. On the way out to the lighthouse before I left for Thunder Bay I took a series of panoramas.

The breakwater has a really interesting interface between concrete and stone.

Here's an overview of the whole thing taken from right up next to the water.

Grand Marais has one of Minnesota's 3 geodetic markers. This panorama was taken from PID AA2869. The camera was right over it.

And the last two are an overview of the area and one from right next to the cute little lighthouse

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When we were in Duluth, I took a couple more panoramas with my Treo 600. One was on the St. Louis river, where it goes through Carlton, MN. We spent some time fishing there, but didn�t catch anything. You can see Raster, Rick and Nick on the far bank. Nick's hard to see though, 'cause he's wearing camo.

The second one was at Split Rock Creek, just north of Split Rock State Park. We didn't catch anything there either, but we decided it wasn't SmeltFest without dipping our nets in water for half an hour. Afterward, we drove back to the campsite and drank beer and played cards. Yay!

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I'm currently in Grand Marais, MN, but I got here by way of Hancock, MI.

My 4th iPod is still going strong. It occasionally starts to play a track, then skips to the end, then goes back to the menu though. This usually happens on podcasts, but I've had it happen on songs too. I'm hoping that this isn't some sort of incremental failure indication. It still plays music though. I've had it running nearly straight through since Tuesday night when I left home.

How much Depeche Mode is a lot of Depeche Mode? I decided to find out. On Tuesday, as I entered the Duluth area, my iTrip started breaking up as expected. There's a radio station that broadcasts on or near 87.9MHz there. Rather than mess around with changing frequencies, I just listened to local radio for a while. When I left Duluth on US 2 eastbound, 87.9 cleared up again and I was free to listen to my own music again. But what to listen to? I had a brilliant idea and set the old iPod to shuffle all the Depeche Mode on it. 135 tracks. I listened from Duluth to Ashland that night, hearing some of my least favorite songs, but ending with John the Revelator from Playing the Angel. I listened on Wednesday from Ashland, WI to Hancock, MI. I listened on Thursday from Hancock to Copper Harbor and back through Hancock and Ashland almost until I met with interference in Duluth again. Wow! That's a lot of depressing music. It was fun, but unlikely to be repeated.

Duluth ended up making me glad I didn't schedule more than one hotel in a day. When I do that, I plan on 2 hours per hotel plus travel time plus 30 minutes. I started three hours early there and still wound up leaving one hour late. I got a great series in the water park though, I'll have to make an animated gif and put it here later.

The hotel here in Grand Marais is nice. I get a good view of the lake from my window and it's easy walking distance out to the point or anywhere else in town really. I hear there's a cafe with microbrews here. I think I'll go look for it. And try to find an eye-glasses place at which to get my shades fixed.

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Smeltfest this year was a hoot. We actually caught a fish and grilled it. (Raster brought his propane grill.) Not that it was a big fish, or that we caught it in the Lester or the Knife, but it was a fish and we ate it, dangit. All one bite each.

When we got to Jay Cooke on Friday afternoon, I borrowed Rick's digital camera and took a hand-held panorama of the campsite. It turned out OK except for one big glitch.

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In the interest of being complete about documentation here, I now am on my fourth iPod. Tuesday afternoon, I grabbed MiPod, plugged in the iTrip and hit "Shuffle Songs". I don't remember what the screen said it was about to play, but it skipped that and played the next song. Since I kind of wanted to hear that first song, I hit the back button and MiPod displayed the grayscale screen of death.

I signed up for a genius appointment yesterday morning and showed up at the Rosedale Apple Store at 5:00 that evening. The nice man behind the counter took MiPod into the back room, and I waited. When he came out, he said the hard drive cable had been loose and he just reconnected it. MiPod looked alive again and I was happy.

On the way out to the car, I started remembering the other symptoms of a dead iPod. In particular, the lack of ability to remember what language I spoke. I rebooted MiPod and waited for the Apple to go away and it asked me to choose a language. OK, maybe somehow he skipped that in the store. I chose English. I rebooted again. I chose English again and headed back into the store. On the way in, I checked out what the "About" screen said, and it came up with a drive capacity of zero.

We reformatted the drive and ran the iPod updater software and everything looked good. I insisted that we copy a bunch of music onto it because it hung at around 100 songs last time. We put 111 songs and 2.6GB of data onto it and everything looked fine again. Then I rebooted it. "Please choose your language" it said. "OK" the Apple genius said, and handed me a new iPod. He also said that, since this was my fourth iPod, If something like this happens again we will "pursue other options". I can only assume that means replacing my 40GB click-wheel iPod with something newer. I told him I was satisfied with the service I was getting and that as long as they'd keep replacing them, I'd keep bringing them in. He told me that after a while, there's a point where that just doesn't seem like enough and he'd reached that point.

This is in no way to be taken as a rant against Apple or iPods. They're one of the best products I've had except for the fact that mine keep dying. The guy at the store had a first-generation iPod and I know people with older iPods that have lasted longer. Apple continues to be willing to replace my iPods under my Apple Care extended warrantee. That last sentence in that last paragraph says a lot too. They want me, their customer to be happy with my purchase and I still am.

Here's to getting a 60GB 'Pod next time

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I recently asked James to take a panorama of his hotel room in Nashville with his cameraphone. He thought that might be a bit tough to do. I agreed with him, but just to show that it can be done (and to egg him on a bit) I decided to try it. This is a panorama done in the basement of a place I was pulling cable today taken with my Tréo 600's built-in VGA camera

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For anyone who doesn't already believe that Homeschooling is for Idiots I present The Complete Idiot's Guide to Homeschooling.

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