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I need to get back soon. I dislike being at home because I can't get anything done at all!

My replacement for my Stinkpad came in (and now all the money I earned from teaching in Korea is almost gone!) ... the wonderful Motion M1400 tablet PC (I've named her "Elisha"). The tablet experience is still something I'm having somewhat mixed feelings about ... but generally it's very positive. Unfortunately, the thing doesn't come with a CD-ROM drive, and the idiots who sent it out imaged it with WIndows XP Tablet PC Edition Evaluation Copy, so I had to order an external drive so I can reimage it with the real XP. And this is after I managed to get all my songs on my iPod onto my new computer. Argh!

One of the BIG flaws with it is there is no such thing as "handwriting training." Microsoft arrogantly assumes that their technology is so good it needs no training. Bzzt. I have horrendous chicken-scratch for writing, so I think I definitely need to 'train' it somehow. But honestly, it does work OK if you're using common words, but if you're using non-common words... good luck. I need to figure out how to disable the 'auto fix' feature; it thinks everything I write 'tabulas' I'm writing 'tabular' since 'tabulas' isn't a real word. This makes domain name inputting a real pain in the arse.

I'm eagerly awaiting my new external CD-ROM drive so I can install Microsoft OneNote; I've heard so many cool things about this product; apparently it can record a lecture while you take notes and compare the two (WHOA!). I can't wait to "test it out' by going to class ;)

Speaking of which, if you want to transfer songs from your iPod to your computer, use iPod Music Liberator. It is simply awesome and works SO easily. The $15 is a small fee, but I fully support small software developers and great products (which this is!). I managed to transfer all 12 odd gigs of music onto my new computer with ease!

I've felt that Tabulas has stalled a bit in growth and interest, so I decided to start singling out users who are free but are not going paid (for various reasons) and giving them free paid accounts. I'm hoping that enticing these social supernodes with free paid accounts will keep them here while moving some of their friends over here as well. 2.0 isn't too far off (I may actually let a few people test out what I've done so far and get some feedback) from being released, so that's good news. Let's hope Tabulas continues to grow... it does seem that roughly 900 people updated their journals within the past day, so that's good news.

If you know anyone who is a great blogger and deserves a paid account, please let me know.