Julie told me that someone at SXSW noticed that my blogging had slowed down. We are in a slightly better computing situation in the house. Getting the Thinkpad running for ETech means that Julie now has a computer that she can use, which means we no longer need to share a single computer.

I however, am still struggling with a loss of productivity on Linux. One of the biggest pain points is IRC. With only a single monitor, It is much harder for me to keep track of what is going on in the OSAF IRC channels. On the recommendation of several readers, I've been using X-Chat. I have it configured so that it makes sounds when someone says my nick, so at least people can get my attention when the X-Chat windows are buried. The problem with X-Chat is that it opens every channel in a new window. If you quit and restart, it doesn't remember the spatial layout of the windows, so I've taken to not quitting. Unfortunately, private messages also create a new window, and I haven't trained myself not to click the close button. So every time I finish a private message session, I click, which kills all the X-Chat windows. Then I have to restart X-Chat and manually layout all the windows again. If you're used to seeing me in IRC and haven't, it's because it's just too much pain to use X-Chat to get to all the channels.

My MacBook is still in the backorder queue. It's been 1 month now. So much for MacMall's prediction of 3-4 weeks. The latest is that they are receiving a huge (10,000 unit) shipment from Apple on the 17th. Even if that turns out to be true, It's still going to take several days for the unit to show up on my doorstep. Under better circumstances I'd be psyched to get the machine and test it out against the old one and all of that. At this point, I'll just be happy to get off the Linux box, and return to some modicum of productivity.

We did get some good news this week. The insurance company is going to cover Julie's laptop (I tend to expect the worst from insurance companies), so at least we'll have some help in replacing it.