So here I am, trying to play with Ms. Fuzzbutt, but she's decided that she's just going to sit there for 10 minutes instead of chasing the laser. Ergo, I decide to change the game.

I stand up and announce, "You better watch out!" and before I can get to "I'll pat your butt!" she's already jumped up on the bed and flopped down to be scritched. First time that's happened, but I think she's on to me.

I'm not sure which one of us is better-trained.

I have been thinking about getting a laptop computer to go with my desktop for a while now. Years, in fact. But I've never done it, because I've never really needed one and my nature is to spend money on long-term value rather than short-term gratification. Laptops depreciate so fast they feel almost disposable, thus my reluctance.

Now, however, I'm in the position of having a need which cannot be satisfied by anything else. I not only need a laptop, I need one with all the trimmings:

• Good keyboard.
• Decent screen.
• Really a laptop, not a notebook which can't sit on my lap for two hours without frying its CPU - or my legs.
• Built-in wireless.
• Is practical to work with in OpenOffice, do presentations in OOImpress, and the like.
• Enough battery life to run through several hours of talks, using the WiFi.
• And last but not least, SUPPORTED BY LINUX. It'll almost certainly come with Windoze, but if I can't boot and use Linux it's just not going to work out.

Who's got recommendations for brands, options, and vendors? What's good and not good about them?

NOTE: Please try to mention specifics for all the above bullet points if you recommend something. Screen size (both inches and pixels) is a big one. Typical price point is good too.

Between sleep deprivation, general stress and lack of opportunity to exercise, I put on about 20 pounds in the last year. I've been meaning to do something about this, but my fan trainer was such sheer drudgery I failed to get much good out of it. (Perhaps this will change if I can substitute a generator for the fans and see my output in watts - or maybe not.)

But down here in the south, it's already starting to get warm. I got out for a couple short rides last week, and today I took off early from work so I could take advantage of the great weather. Then once I was on the road, I decided to do a little exploring.

I explored quite a bit. I still have no idea exactly where I went, and I wound up about 2 miles north of the town I was more or less aiming for (the intersection put me back into known territory). I was pedalling for roughly an hour and a half, about 3 times my ride of last Thursday. I killed both my water bottles, too.

My legs are telling me that they took some damage, but all in all I did a lot better than I would have thought I could just this afternoon. I'm not in such bad shape after all!

I've concluded that they share two major similarities and one major difference.

I've made neither of them up.
They're both wrinkled.

But only my bed has the world's laziest cat sleeping on it!

Over the last year or so, my Roomba became very ill and wouldn't eat. Charging it just made the battery hot, and it would only run a few minutes. Without treatment, it was not going to have a normal life.

I located a donor stomach at batteryspace.com. It arrived yesterday, and I performed surgery on the battery pack last night. After soldering the terminals onto the new battery and screwing the case back together, I buttoned the patient up and connected the feeding wires for the first time in many months.

It doesn't look like much is happening. The unit itself is cool as a cucumber even after 9 hours. But a brief test off the charger showed a green power light, and a full initial charge should take more like 12-15 hours. The patient's prognosis looks good.

Update: No power difficulties, but it has trouble negotiating this carpet! At least it can do the kitchen.

I filled up today, and I realized after checking the date that I'd driven all of 553 miles in the last 4 weeks.

If my travel consisted of nothing but commuting, I think I'd be fine with a VentureOne. And maybe even otherwise.

In some places, failure of public services to meet demand is a business opportunity.

Unfortunately for me, this isn't one of those places. As I mentioned before, the local county library isn't open on Sundays. You'd think that this would prompt the only general-interest bookstore in the city to capitalize on this fact, and cater to the people who aren't being served by the library. This gets people in the door, which is essential to getting them to buy something.

It appears that the people here aren't smart enough to realize that.

I've been frustrated time and time again by my inability to get Saturday and Sunday papers. (The local scandal sheet isn't published on Sunday.) More than half the time, the NYT and other papers are sold out before noon. Today I found that they were gone within ten minutes of opening time (9 AM).

Yet despite this obvious high level of demand from the community, the distributor only gives the store 3 Sunday papers!

This level of disregard for customers has taken me beyond frustration to anger. I am now motivated to find the person or company responsible for this situation, and give them a piece of my mind in language to make their ears turn red. Then, one way or another, I'm going to quit giving them my business. If they won't stock what they know I want, they don't want me there.

But apparently, caving to totalitarians is "good business", and not offending Muslims is more important than free speech. (We call this dhimmitude.)

And, since Google won't let me use Blogger any more without taking out a Google account and entangling myself in their moral morass to an unacceptable degree, I may be done with Blogger.

So I go out to get a newspaper with a decent crossword and some breakfast.

I go to the best (because only non-religious) bookstore in town. They are sold out of the Sunday NYT. (They only got three.)

No problem, I missed last week's too so I'll just photocopy it at the library. I drive to the library. It's closed Sundays.

I have literally nothing to read except my current Pratchett book and "The God Delusion". This isn't what I had in mind to read over breakfast, and it's all because I'm in this lousy backwater town full of mouth-breathers who think that WalMart is the pinnacle of achievement.

It's time to get my ass back to civilization.

I'm down with something that has the muscle aches and lethargy of flu, without the high fever or sneezing. I've mostly slept the last two days.

Any idea what this could be?

Because of two, er, "indiscretions" in as many days, I put Ms. Fuzzbutt under kitchen arrest Thursday morning.

Then I hit the road and drove to Moonbase ConFusion. I was approximately fifteen hours en route, then had to deal with a few housekeeping matters before I could crash out. Man, did that ever feel good...

I woke up without the kink in my back that's been bothering me for the past couple of weeks. The only difference is that I was sleeping on a firmer mattress than previously. Maybe I need a replacement; something to think about.

Then the convention. If you haven't been to one, I am in no position to do it justice right now.

I had expected to have a Sunday night sleepover at the same place as Thursday, but I woke up early enough Sunday to make it back today. So I checked out of the hotel, did the remaining housekeeping, and hit the road about twenty to ten AM. I got back here about twelve thirty AM, with the trip computer registering fourteen hours and some minutes of engine-running time. First time I've made the trip without referring to any maps, either.... this is getting old.

Or maybe I am.

Among the amusing events of the day (if you count things like snowstorms and people driving slower on plowed and salted pavement than I can drive on the track-ridden snow in the unplowed lane - I passed two people that way) I count a Barnes and Noble only charging me $1.50 for a Sunday New York Times. I wasn't about to go back after I figured it out; let them straighten out their own computers, or employees, or whatever screwed up.

At the moment I am indoors, reasonably warm, dealing with one attention-starved Fuzzbutt (who will mew but takes any invitation to come closer under advisement) and waiting out the ice storm coming down. Oddly, I left with sleet on my windshield Thursday morning. Maybe I drove through a time warp, and I'll arrive at work to find it's actually Friday the nineteenth.

The Pixie has not been heard from since last week. We should make an effort to see if she's okay.

I'll check the liquor store and all the Thai restaurants!

I've been thinking about getting a recumbent bicycle for years. Now that I've been having numbness in my hands from relatively short rides on my mountain bike (and I really need to ride more, not less!) it's time to get one.

Last weekend I drove an hour-plus to the nearest bike store I could find with recumbents. They had exactly one left: a Bachetta with 26-inch wheels front and back. I took it out for a test-ride.

I found that the machine isn't merely difficult for me to get started on (that's one hell of a leg-lift just to put feet on pedals) but it's positively unsafe. At steering angles necessary for low-speed maneuvering, my heels struck the front tire. This is the sort of thing which is likely to cause a spill, and I won't have it.

What I think I need is one of the low-wheelers, and someone with them in stock. Someone please wish me the luck to find a store which carries Rans or the like someplace not too far away.

Unlike last night, which was punctuated by a power outage (and the sound of the short which produced it - really something to hear a 120 Hz buzz from an arc two blocks away!) tonight is really quiet.

It's just me, the cat, and the hum of the HD and cooling fan.

Do you think I'm getting anywhere with my projects or work? Hah! I'm compulsively web-surfing.

(No, last night's outage didn't take me down. I've got a 105 AH battery on the UPS. My cable connection went down (local amps powered by the grid), but I had computer, and light, and everything else I really needed.)

Update 10:23 AM: I'm treated to a bunch of robins outside my window. Not a bad thing.

I bought a few toys to give as gifts, and I ran into some trouble with the one I'm testing. Maybe you can help.

I bought a toy digital camera (says it's also a webcam). Unfortunately, when I plug it into my Mandriva system, the auto-mounter doesn't know what to do with it; it's there on the USB bus but it is not recognized as a filesystem.

The unit is made by "Jeilin Technology Corp., Ltd" and has ID 0979:0224. How can I mount this thing to look at it? I can't use the provided driver software - and I doubt that I'd want to.

If these things can't be made to work without funky drivers, I don't think I want to subject anyone else to them.