Author: Marcus

Enter these codes in the website haveityourway.com for free songs. Windows Media format.

1. 45721ZMF6L86
2. 45353KHS568K
3. 4573362F6944

First come, first serve. If you get them, please post a comment saying so so others won’t try to download them to find they’ve already been used.

As a first time lawn-mower buyer I have some advice to pass on. If you’re going to buy a mower, make sure it has two features:
1. Self propulsion
2. A motor bigger (much bigger if possible) than 5 horsepower.

I bought a Craftsman mower with a Honda engine. From my research, Honda engines are the best and craftsman bodies aren’t great but aren’t bad. The price was right ($250).

My new lawn tool has one of the two necessities – it’s self propelled. I’ve heard too many people skimp in that department, justifying it by the excercise they’ll get or the small size of their lawns. I’m of the opinion that when it’s 100 degrees outside, I don’t want to excercise, I just want to cut the grass and money I spent at the beginning of the summer (or a couple summers ago) becomes a much smaller concern.

I figured that my medium sized yard would pose no problems for a small engine. I was wrong. Five horsepower is not enough to let your lawn go for two weeks… at least not here in Virginia where it’s so humid that the lawn is almost never dry. Mowing every week it does fine, but let one weekend pass where I’m out of town or more inclined to read a novel on the front porch and I can count on stopping every row to clear out grass or restart the mower.

Take this bit of advice for what it’s worth. Get a mower that will last (a Honda), one that moves itself and one that has some guts. You won’t regret it.

I’m in the car on the way home from a business meeting in Philadelphia. One of my friends (Mark) let me borrow his 12″ 867mhz Powerbook and I’m officially sold on it. I?ve only had it for 2 days so far, but I’ve absolutely loved every minute of it. The size is perfect. I’ve used it twice to watch movies with my wife in bed–the screen is great and the battery lasts through a full DVD with plenty left for browsing sites about the movie afterwards. In the morning I used it to do some studying (again from bed?notice that theme) before work. It has built in wireless which connected effortlessly to my LAN.

The keyboard is great. It has very good tactile feedback, it?s also very quiet. I’m not a huge fan of the tiny arrow keys, but since I?m not much of a gamer, it doesn?t bother me too much. The trackpad is alright I’m absolutely not a fan of the one button concept?especially on a laptop, where you can?t just unplug it nad replace it with a two button mouse, but it?s something I can deal with.

Probably the best thing about it though is the feel. It feels solid, well built and stable. With the screen up I can hold it at pretty much any angle (no, Mark, I didn?t try this 🙂 ) without it moving or jiggling at all. The metal case is nice.. it looks aharp (and has gotten quite a few comments). It does NOT have color coded ports all over the sides and back, instead there are a few ports on the left hand side that hardly are noticable. The fan is quiet, the slot loading DVD drive has worked perfectly. There?s even a little button on the battery on the bottom that has five lights that indicate the charge level before you even open the cover of the laptop. Once you do open it, there?s no waiting for it to boot up. To put it to sleep you close the screen, to wake it up you open it. It?s almost like having a PDA that comes on instantly. I just chedked the uptime ? 10 days. A laptop which has been carried around extensively with an uptime of 10 days.

One of the nicest things about the size is that it?s actually conducive to carrying around. I rarely ever took my previous laptop off the desk because it was such a production. By the time I?d unplugged everything and packed it up it took too long, was too big and heavy with too short a battery life to make it worth it. Not the case with this laptop.

Just as an example. In the time it?s taken me to write this entry I?ve been watching the Truman Show on DVD, had the laptop asleep for about 3 hours before I started using it, worked on a spreadsheet for about 15 minutes before starting to write this and the battery is still at 80%. Nice.