Has anyone had any experience with a wireless print server? I have a USB printer (Samsung ML-2010) connected to my desktop, but my desktop's wireless connection is flaky. I also don't relish leaving the desktop on 24/7 when we primarily need printing nights and weekends. A refurbished Netgear WGPS606 has a very attractive feature set at a great price, but doesn't review well. The Linksys WPS54G reviews a little better, but might have issues working with Vista.

Another possibility would be to use the Cube as a print server. It would suck a lot less power than my XP desktop. The bad news is the networking, though there are a lot more wireless USB adapters in the world than there are wireless print servers.

Thoughts?

The chorus just spent twenty minutes with all four voice parts singing the melody. It's great for picking out subtle synchronization issues in the lyrics, but it causes the melody singers to lose track of their own notes. One of the baritones suggested making everyone sing the bari part for a few minutes. "No thanks," said the coach, "I just had dinner."

I'm at Epcot with my fiancee and ddmerillat. We just had an exquisite lunch at the Italian place in the World Showcase. I had the Braised Veal Shank with polenta and root vegetables. It was exquisite. I had to laugh when the bill arrived and I found out I'd just enjoyed Stinco di Maiale. Now I understand why the menu says "braised pork shank." :-)

Remember my spam-handling trick from way back? The one where I gave out one-time email addresses on my web site, and then dumped those addresses that received spam in the trash? And addresses that didn't match the pattern for my one-times were forwarded to Gmail, which has been handling almost 200,000 of them per month? I was excited back when because I automated the process of making the recipes. After 4,243,626 trashed messages (and some other number processed by Gmail's filtering), the hosting company shut it down. They said mail processing on the system had ground to a halt, so they moved all of my forwarding recipes elsewhere. That meant 44,000 messages piled up in my inbox there. When I try to use Mutt to cut that down, Mutt is killed as a resource hog. Sigh!

While standing in Oft-Maligned Big Box Store today, I noticed that they're pushing compact fluorescent lights quite heavily. I'd read some time back that they're striving to push consumers in that direction. They're making a good effort, including informative signage and packaging. Stores selling CFL have a lot to gain. If it's true that a $3 bulb can save the consumer $57 in energy bills and another $6 in replacements over the life of a CFL, that's theoretically $50 more the consumer has to spend at OMBBS!

I've been using CFLs in my basement for a while now, and they're fine there, but I have a few outstanding issues before I deploy elsewhere. If anyone has prior experience, please enlighten (ha!) me.

1. CFLs aren't suitable for applications which require dimming. That's at least five places in my house. Has anyone used anything else? Has anyone seen dimmable CFLs?

2. Apparently, phosphor technology is improving to the point that CFLs are no longer undesirably harsh or blue. Has anyone found applications where the color temperature difference is unacceptable? I'm thinking in particular of bathroom vanity lighting, for example.

3. Can anyone think of a reason I shouldn't use CFLs in my garage door opener? I think it uses a relay so the lights are always full on or full off.

I arrived at work today eager to discuss football. I got in before the usual suspects this morning, one of whom because she was at the game and probably didn't get home until 1:30. I just had to tell a non-football-watching co-worker about the game to get it out of my system.

Who am I, and what have I done with me?

Today I had the good fortune of seeing the touring production of the musical Aida. This is the stage show with score by Elton John and Tim Rice. The new Aida is only loosely based on the Verdi opera. At the end of the performance, a member of our party remarked that he would've changed the ending. Having spent two hours watching a show set in ancient Egypt, we were eager to believe that the ending was drawn from the historical record, which would've made such a change unthinkable.

Upon regaining access to Wikipedia, we discovered that the modern Aida's ending is, indeed, a change from the Verdi version. Sadly, the Verdi version isn't based on anything real. Attempts to look up character names like Amneris and Radames yielded only the opera. What is it about period pieces like this that increases audience gullibility?

I noticed at lunchtime today that my odometer read 74,740 miles. 074740 is pretty good, but 74747 loomed. Sadly, I didn't look at my odometer again until 74,750. I did, however, get to see 7:47:47 PM on one of my clocks.

I've had several occasions to make car trips from Rochester down to the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania area recently. The most direct route involves copious time on Route 15. In Pennsylvania, they have a disturbing habit of offering places to turn around. They have more invitations to make a U-turn than they have signs indicating the current route number and direction of travel. I find this incredibly unnerving; I'm on 15 South, but all of the signs I see are for 15 North. I'd much rather have reassurance that I'm on the right road than offers to reverse my trip. This is all the more vexing because they'll list distances to places I've already passed through rather than places I've yet to go. Are there any other similarly signed roads?