It's here! My new Wacom Tablet. I wanted to use my old Intuos GD on my Mac, but I could not find a good serial to USB adapter. So, I bought a new Graphire 3 tablet. It came with not old a pen, but a mouse. I'm not sure if I would ever use the mouse, but I will surely use the heck out of the pen. It's a really cool one also. It's all white with a clear pen stand. I bought the 8x6 pad because I wanted to have it big enough to actual do some graphic work with, if I ever wanted.

So far it works much better than the only one. I don't have to hold the pen so high off the pad when I don't want it to move the mouse. The old one, I had to hold it more than a inch above it. This one has a much smaller foot print too. Almost a few inches smaller, but the same size work area.

It's strange that the old pen does not work on the new tablet and the new pen does not work on the old tablet. Well, I find it strange. I guess there really is something in the pens. I still haven't found a doc that tells me how they work. I would like to know.

Mac OS X Inkwell. It works. My hand writing sucks, but it works.

"I'm writing this from my table, you can see MY hand writ1`Ag is not very good. I don't thinis the settings for InIL are set UP to fit my writing skills also. They are Just set # Default right now."

You can see that I should stick with typing for now. ;-)

Anyway, I need to get back to work. I hope this tablet saves my wrists...

The other day the temp was way up to 32/35c and now it's down to 8c. Gesh... I even heard on the news that it could be snowing on the mountain today.

Two days ago I was hot and running the cooler for most of the day. Now I'm bundled up in sweats, freezing.

It's another day in Silver Springs Nevada... That's for sure.

ARG! Stupid USB->Serial was the wrong version. No work'ee on my Mac'ee. Dam. I guess I'll just buy a USB Wacom for $145 and sell this one on eBay. I just wish the stupid lady could have told me the S/N on it when I asked. Instead it was, "I don't know the S/N..." I bet she did know, but just wanted to sell it. She didn't include the driver CD like she said either. I'm going to note that in her feed back. I'm testing it right now to see if it will work in Windows 98. If it doesn't, then I'm going to be pissed. This is the third thing I've bought on eBay that didn't work. I'm not buying from eBay anymore.

I'm back from my weekend away. It was good to get away from things for a few days. Unfortunately it wasn't long enough. My wrists and head are still hurting. I have really bad back aches also now. I need to get outside more and work out. More exercise is what I need.

The WISP stayed running the whole weekend without crashing. That was a surprise. Next week is the big upgrade. I will be redoing everything again. This time I'm installing Pebble on all the AP's. I have been told that the new HostAP drivers for Linux are working out well. So I'll give them a try.

I might install m0n0wall on my VPN/firewall server. m0n0 has VPN with IPsec built in, so that might come in handy. I never did figure out how to get Radius running right. I'm still working on it though. Soon.

I still need to convert my database server over to FreeBSD, but you know how it is. Don't fix it if it's not broken. I may just wait a bit longer.

I should get my USB to Serial cable today. I sure hope it works with my Wacom tablet. I would really like to switch while my wrists are still not too bad.

Anyway, I need to take a break now.

Jane and Johnny worked on the window trim today. It's looking really good. They are almost done with it. They would have finished it today, but they ran out of wood. So off to the store later to buy some more.

Funny thing... We were running our cooler because it's really hot out right now. I started to feel kinda cold and so I checked out the temp. 65F! Wholly Cow Man! That cooler works really good.

I should be getting my IOGear USB to Serial cable next monday. Arg! Stupid 7 day shipping. I should have opted for faster shipping, but all-well. I don't need to spend more than $10 on stuff anyway. I need to save up to replace my roof.

I sure hope the Wacom tablet will work with it. I tried to find out what the serial number was, but the person I am buying from was not very helpful. So I'm hopping it's the newer version that will work with Mac OS X. If not, then I'll be selling it on eBay soon. ;-)

DSL is finally here in Silver Springs. I believe it's only available in the downtown area where the CO is. I have had one customer switch to it so far and I'm hopping for a few others to do it also. I would be happy to close down that relay and reloacate it to another area. You know, the customers that are always having problems with their service where others never have a problem.

It's so strange that some people have constant problems with their connection and computers, and other people never have a problem. I like the ones that the stuff just works.

Now that lightening season is coming up, there will be a bunch of people getting their internet blown out by lightening. That will be fun....not.

So anyway, back to normal work and stuff.

I started to clean up my office this weekend, but didn't get very far. I moved out the old metal shelf and that's about it. There is still all kinds of stuff all over the floor. I need to get cracking on that.

I am getting a lot of stuff out of here to sell on eBay. There is currently an auction for a very small server used as a router or whatnot. It's cool. I have a bunch of T1 equipment going on eBay soon.

Well, now it's monday and it's time to get back to work on stuff. Version 4 is coming along well. By this time next month I should have a pre-beta for QA.

Anyway, back to work...

A few years ago I switched my mouse to my left side due to stress on my right wrist. This helped out real well. It was not hard to learn to mouse around with my left hand at all. In fact I can even run Photo Shop left handed.

Well, today my left wrist is starting to hurt and bother me. Time for a change. Now that I have moved the mouse to the left, I'm just not used to it being on the right. Plus, the mouse on the right is so far away due to the number pad being on the right side of the keyboard.

So my plan is to make a drastic change in my mousing. I'm going for the Wacom Tablet. This way I can change not only my mouse hand, but also the position at which I use the mouse. This should help out a lot.

Problem: Wacom tablets are very, very, very expensive. Not because they are difficult to produce or have high end technology. It's because Wacom has a patent on the technology. Other tablets have to be tethered to the pad with a wire for the pen or require batteries in the pen. Wacom has no batteries and no cords.

Sure I can buy a 4x2 pad for under $100, but it's so small. I would rather have the larger one. And they are over $300. That's more than I can pay at this time.

Answer: I have a old serial Wacom tablet that still works well, except there are no serial ports on a Mac. After searching around a bit, I found that IO Gear has a USB to Serial converter for about $30. Then I found a bunch of them on eBay for $5 each.

So I placed my bid, and I'm crossing my fingers that it will work with the Wacom Tablet.

Something that I just realized today.

Q: What is Microsoft's Logo?
A: A butterfly.

Q: What is a butterfly?
A: A bug.

So Microsoft's logo is a bug. A bug for their buggy software.