Ah, I see. There seems

Ah, I see. There seems to be a limit of 160 characters in each message. I must learn to express myself much more concisely, lest I find myself

I'm riding metro on my

I'm riding metro on my way home after work, and trying out the "blogging" capabilities of this Treo 700p. I'm still fairly slow with the keyboar

Treo 700p Sync via BlueTooth

I've been test-driving a Palm Treo 700p, looking into it's abilities first as a no-wires modem to keep me connected during my commute. That part is going OK: not great, not terrible.

Today I decided to try to sync the Palm applets with my laptop using the BlueTooth virtual serial port. This was going terrible, with a "port in use" type of error, until I found, via Google, someone else's report that turning off the "require security" option on the laptop virtual serial port configuration solved the problem for them. Sure enough: me too.

The error was "Hotsync Problem: Unable to initiate hotsync operation because the port is in use by another application." I'm posting this in hopes that it will help someone else. Several other posts I saw suggested purchasing a new BlueTooth adapter for the laptop. Given that this ThinkPad has BlueTooth built-in, upgrading it was not my first choice. I'm grateful that it turned out to work fine after a little reconfiguration. Point to take away: The BlueTooth adapter in a ThinkPad T40 works just fine with the Treo 700p, both for synchronization and for dial-up networking.

Next question: Has anyone developed a LAN Access or Network Access applet for the 700p? Why should it be either/or? Why not use a Network Access BlueTooth profile to share the network connection between the 700p applets and my laptop?

Voting Trash

Why would I vote for this guy when his supporters can't be bothered with presentation? A little trash pick-up would have gone a long way. Mr. Silverman, take note!

EdTech Musician Podcast

I came across these guys recently, thanks to a mention in an old episode of Brasscast. EdTech is somewhat like Click-n-Clack, but with less outright silliness and more Max Headroom. They focus on music (classical and pop) and on technology, approaching both subjects from a teacher's perspective. I found it enjoyable, although the featured pop song this week got a little too explicit. Check it out: see what you think.

Caltech Physicists Successfully Split The Bill

This article from The Onion was worth several good laughs for me this morning. Enjoy!

Being Fruitful

I don't know why I hadn't analysed this earlier, but it struck me, as I left the house at 5:45 this morning (half an hour later than yesterday), that productivity is necessarily going to be at a premium because of my current work situation and schedule.

I've known for a long time that my most fruitful hours are between about three in the afternoon and eight in the evening, with some residual productivity trailing off until around ten or so if I'm on a roll. So consider my schedule:

On Friday I leave the office between five and six, or earlier as the winter comes on, to be home before the beginning of the Sabbath.

On Thursday I leave by 5:02 in order to be at choir rehearsal in Rockville by 7:15 or so.

On Wednesday I leave by 3:30 so I can reach Columbia for brass rehearsal at 6:00. And until now, Monday has been similar.

On any other day (Tuesday) my "last" options are to catch a MARC train (for which I've paid and which travels all the way to Germantown) by leaving the office at 6:00, or to catch the last bus at 8:10 (going East) or 8:23, landing me at the Shady Grove metro station between 9:30 and 10 PM, which is a bit more of a drive from home if Vicki's picking me up, or a very long bus ride.

Net effect: I'm lucky to be able to take advantage of my really productive time of day even twice a week.

Preliminary conclusion: I need to seek a way to shift this time earlier in the day, and I need to consider different locations for work, living and making music.