@Kevin Purdy: Heh, so do you use the Ubuntu at all?

@cc: Yeah, I'm disappointed because these laptops are such great workhorses. I guess they make great replacement desktops or something (or not - I can't quite do any meaningful gaming on mine).

I still lock my check-ins out of habit. It's a deterrent to opportunists, anyhow. And I don't check-in anything I don't want to lose. Easy.

Nice writeup! Always good to know how other people are rocking their tech. How are you finding the battery life on your thinkpad? I'm using the T60 14" myself, and am running out of time on my 2nd battery already. It's almost 5 years old.

I always want to disconnect to write, but I'm too dependent on dictionary.com to give it up...

@thracianii: but "not very interesting" might be the key to getting work done!

@Teknophilia: I think with the right account, like gmail, you probably only need one, and then separate everything by filtering, tagging, folders, etc.

@Mr.Gawn: IMHO, and at an objective level, no. It's already provided for you to use at school, which means that you have the resources you need to fulfil the needs of your particular education.

Put on more clothes instead of turning up the heat.

@Adversar: Just because you're a techie who's smarter than 99% of the random people on the Internet doesn't mean the site has to cater solely to knowledge you don't already have. What articles like these do is they help to educate the rest of the 99% of the Internet who don't already know, and because of this lack of…

@wjglenn: I concur! Life is much more complex than the minimalist blank space. There's so much emphasis on the minimalist-this and the minimalist-that now it's quite hard to remember what the point of this entire minimalist movement was, except maybe to look cool.

@AlphaGeek: Law of averages? Maybe a higher percentage of Mac users compared to other OS users like to take photos of their space and hardware and show them off to the public!

@Conn09: or Linux!

@slevine001: Did you know that life is 100% fatal?

I expect a reply to an email generally within a week. Academics need to categorise their days. When I'm done teaching for the week, I start doing my writing and other creative work. My email responses generally correspond to what I'm working on. I have a general expectation that others do the same.

will it start to smell like what you've been cooking, though? Coz... y'know, I love bacon and all, but having that bacon cooking smell everytime I light a candle isn't the best. Plus, residue on your walls/furniture/you? Maybe best not used indoors.

@Pikminiman: that's when you get to say, "hey, were you raised in a barn?"

To be honest, I think the most effective way to diet is to stop thinking about it as a "diet" - ie. a temporary thing you do in order to lose weight. Think of your diet as a natural, lifestyle thing. Like putting on clothes everyday, or brushing your teeth, or walking out the door to get to work. You can slowly…

My question this week is.. what's that cat doing to that snowman?

mmm, mince pie.