On Friday evening our iBook finally came back from the shop. Overall the customer service related to this Mac is very good. The iBook went away 2 weeks because of a hardware problem. They replaced the logic (mother) board and the hard drive. It took a week for a box to arrive at my house, for DHL to pick it up and deliver it to Memphis, for them to fix it and for DHL to bring it back.

All in all, it was really very speedy. Nonetheless it was a week. And last Monday, when it came back there was some kind of bad connection between the monitor and the rest of the computer. So I took it to the local Apple shop. They confirmed that it behaved like I said it did and then agreed to ship it off. I actually saved a couple of days bringing it over there because the DHL wouldn’t have brought it back on the weekend. As it is, the computer finally came back on Friday — pretty good time really. Apple replaced the logic (mother) board again.

Their web site says I have 497 more days left on my AppleCare warranty. Looks like I may need it.

On Saturday me and Ben took the dog for a run. We rode our bikes while he trotted along beside us. We didn’t go too fast or anything and the dawg had a great time. There was still a lot of snow and ice so we didn’t stay out that long but it was something different to do. Afterwards we went down to Stoughton, MA to the new Ikea that opened up in November.

This new one was every bit as enormous as the others I’ve been to in Vienna, Austria and Newark, NJ. We bought two small peanut shaped tables and a desk chair to go with each. They’re more comfortable than they appear. We also got a couple of cool lamps to go on the tables. I think we spent about four hours there and the kids were good the whole time. We had Swedish meatballs and a wonderful piece of apple pie at the cafe.

The kids were great, but after four hours I was needing to be somewhere else.

See, it has become apparent that the purpose of the sunroom has to change. Since we bought the house its been a playroom. Its been chock-a-block full of toys for kids of all ages. Toddler toys are mixed with action figures. There baby dolls, play kitchens and millenium falcons strewn about with abandon. All manner of costumes appear to multiply and dominate whole portions of the room.

But as the kids have gotten older they’ve started spending more of their time elsewhere. Anywhere else, really. Their rooms, the den. Sure they come back and visit the room and spend a little time there, but its some prime real estate and we had always assumed that as the kids got older the design of the room would change to accomodate their new needs.

So its time.

The kids are spending more of their time on the computer — on my computer. Ben actually has had some homework that requried the computer and the web. We decided that it was time to get a couple of new computers.

Dude, we’re gettin’ a Dell!

Actually, we’re getting two. I got a good price beause of a corporate discount I can use through work. They’re Pentium 4’s running at 2.8Ghz with 1GB of memory and 160GB of HD space. I think its an amazing amount of overkill, but whatever. I think I’ll set up a weekly backup to copy my important data to the HD’s of the other computers. With all that space they can spare a few GB for my peace of mind. We’re getting a pair of good flat panel screens to go with them — we’ll be able to mount them on the wall if we decide to.

The desks are going in the playroom against the living room wall — they will flank the doorway as you walk in. I only made a couple of changes to their base system:
I increased the memory to 1GB
I got the nice monitors
I got the CD/DVD writers
I got an optical mouse

They come with printers, but I’m only planning on keeping the one printer downstairs and sharing it. I already have one of those little print-server boxes on the network and it seems to work pretty well. So if anyone wants a printer or two cheap, give me a shout. Naturally, they come with an ethernet card, modem and WordPerfect Office. And it will have that new Windows XP Media Center OS installed. I’ll be curious to see what its all about.

I was thinking about putting both machines on our local network with wireless cards to save the trouble of running wires, but frankly, I haven’t been impressed with the response time of our current machines when they run over wireless. The hard-wire solution results in much better performance, I think. I have four ports on the wireless hub, so I’ll have one each for:
-my current computer in the den
-the print server in the den
-playroom 1
-playroom 2
That ought to fill them up! So between now and the weekend I have to run two ethernet wires in to the playroom. It will have to go through the dungeon and under the playroom. I have 50′ of ethernet cable, but I’ll need another small spool. At the retail shops its very expensive! like $30! I can’t bring myself to spend that for cable. So I’ll track down another 50′ on the internet. I should be able to get it for $5 or so.

The kids won’t have to fight over the computer any more. They won’t have to congregate downstairs. And they’ll have decent computers. Frankly, they’re good enough computers that I suspect I will like using them too — although those little chairs could be a real drag.

I had originally considered getting an iMac, but I have to admit that I was able to get two good Windows machines for the price of one iMac! Most of the kids friends will have PC’s. I have a PC or two (depending on if you count my work-machine).

So I fel good about this. They’re supposed to ship out this week and arrive very shortly afterwards. Maybe by this weekend.

I’m a little concerned about what kind of websites the kids are likely to run in to without supervision. I like having them upstairs where we can actually see them and whatnot and I’ve had the requisite talks about internet-safety, but I don’t think they’re getting it. So I’m thinking about what kind of filtering software I can get. Right now I’m leaning towards a product called Safe Eyes. It looks pretty good and I’ve installed a 15 day trial at home. I like the architecture and the way it goes about filtering. It didn’t seem to slow things down appreciably. You pay for it like a subscription because I guess they have people fine tuning it all the time. I can tune the kind of websites that are ok and can set time allotments for each user. So the kids will each get, something like, an hour of internet time. The only downside is that at $50 a year its a little more than I wanted to spend. But its not crazy-out-of-the-question expensive.

I’m also a little bit concerned about putting the computers in a room that’s so easy for strangers to look in to. I’m a little afraid that its like asking for a burglary. But we’re going to put some cafe-style curtains that will make it hard for someone to see in. The blinds we have in there now are about to give up the ghost and need to be replaced.

I also started work on some shelves for the small closet in the guest room. I cut them yesterday and now I just need to paint them before I install them. Maybe I can do that tonight.

Work is still the same. Nothing new to report.

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