From the desk of Mr. Walters

I'm sitting here sipping my coffee and eating a cheap danish, waiting for the keynote speaker. Laptops on the table are the rule rather than the exception. The woman to my right is video chatting with her 7 and 10 year-olds on her Mac book, while the woman to my left is checking email on her Blackberry. Bear in mind, these are the digital immigrants. We're all teachers and administrators in our 30's through 50's. If this is the norm for us, imagine what our students did before or during breakfast, this morning!

...and there was much rejoicing. After weeks of frustration, the first solution I had tried (typing "sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-intel" in the terminal) finally panned out.  I turned out that after installing the intel driver I had to manually edit my xorg.conf file, replacing the defaut "vesa" driver with the word "intel".  Below you can click on the thumbs to see my original 1024 x 768 layout and my new 1440 x 900 goodness.  Check out all of that desktop real estate I gained back!  Wide open spaces are wonderful, particularly when you're running a seperate OS on a virtual box!     Tune in next time for "The Noble Experiment, Part IV: The Perfect Desktop"

Okay, so I've been a little distracted lately, what with changing diapers and feeding and just plain enjoying the company of my 1-month-old son.  My distraction, however abruptly ended when, in one week, my Windoze Vista single-handedly: Destroyed my Flash Drive (not kidding... my Lexxar USB drive doesn't even open anymore.  It's just dead). Deleted files I was backing up to a CD on the CD and the HD because it "lost the connection" Wouln't record sound in Macromedia Captivate (perhaps the only program for which I keep windoze around).