Just a Memo

For those that have a laptop and a work-station or desktop PC/Mac, we are often faced with the question of how to fit and work on both on our tiny little desks (but that’s probably just me). Anyways, if you haven’t heard of Synergy:

Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It’s intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s).

… it’s a dang useful tool. I have recently tried this on my MacBook Pro (as the client) to work along my work Mac 24″ and my new rig at home (as the server).

If you are on an OS X system, you won’t need to install the original Synergy package, but might want to consider stepping in to the GUI version of it called, SyneryKM:

SynergyKM is a GUI wrapper around the synergy command line tool that lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems without special hardware.

Here are the steps I would take; at least making your main Mac the server, and your MacBook+ the client:

1. Download and install SyneryKM to both machines. The install should put Synergy in your “System Preferences”.
2. Clicking on it to open it up, select the appropriate behavior:
   1. To make the machine the server, click on the option with “Share my keyboard and mouse.”
   2. To make the machine a client, click on the option with “Connect to a shared keyboard and mouse”.

   It should be intuitive enough.

3. Now the next step is to setup the display configuration on “the server” machine. Click on the “Server Configuration” tab. You would then Add each of the machine; you may either use their computer name(s)
4. In “the client” machine(s), you are instead clicking on the “Client Configuration” tab. Enter either the Server IP or hostname of “the server” machine.
5. Last but not least, you just need “Turn Synergy On” and that should do it.

Note: if you have upgraded to at least Leopard v10.5.2, you will need to make sure than “Enable Bonjour” option is turned off. There seems to be a problem that causes SynergyKM to not work correctly with it enabled in this version of Leopard.

Anyways, I’ll see if I can write up the steps to getting your PC/Windows machine working when I get a chance later. For now, soak in the glory of using just a keyboard and a mouse to control your machines.

After a few weeks off from work to visit and experience Japan with an awesome bunch of friends, things have picked up both at work and at home. Don’t you just like it when you come back to work and you receive over 400 emails? Besides trying to find the time to do laundry and processing the photos I’ve taken from the trip, I’m still trying to not think about Japan too much. But when you very much enjoyed an experience, it’s hard not to reminisce and reply all the fun stuff that you did. The thing I miss the most would probably be the food. Oh man… the food!

Anyways, besides trying to process and upload photos, clean my room, do laundry, etc. I’m trying to get ready in selling or transitioning my Accord to Gabby. Its lease is up early December. I didn’t know what to do, whether to buy it out from Honda, return it or get a new car/SUV. I’ve taken great care of it and vice-versa. So what better way to let go of it than to have someone you know take over. This way, you feel at ease seeing something sentimental be taken care of by someone who appreciates it. Well, I hope things go as plan so I may get a new one soon–I’m thinking of the Pilot. What you think? See me rollin’ in one?

I think it’s a good investment if I get one as I don’t drive that much during the weekdays so I save on gas and mileage. That, and I’ll be able to go up the mountain a bit easier this upcoming season, which I hope will be a good one. Anyways, time to do some catching up. I’ll leave you with a blessing that my aunt (from Norwalk) sent me this morning:

May today there be peace within.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love
that has been given to you….
May you be content knowing you are a child of God…
Let His presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom
to sing, dance, praise and love.
It is there for each and every one of us.

God Bless You All!

Oh the things you find while Blingo-ing. Since it’s that time of year again for the Super Bowl, with it comes: the backyard-BBQ parties, the trash-talking between teams, the millions-of-dollars-worth of bets, funny & creative commercials and last but not least, the office Super Bowl Pool. A couple of friends and I have been doing this for the past couple of years now. Too bad, no one wanted to do it this year. Don’t know why?

Meanwhile, having the feeling of just trying to get into the spirit of the Super Bowl (even though the teams weren’t my pick from the start of the season), I asked around MA to see if we are doing one this year. Turns out there wasn’t even one for last year’s. So, I just volunteered not remembering how John-John facilitated it.

Anyways, with a call to J2 and some Blingo-ing, I found some templates. The best one I found was through:

Num Sum. Easy, Sharable Web Spreadsheets. Keep your records, lists and spreadsheets in one place online. Easily slice, dice and share with others.

It’s FREE. You have the ability to share with friends and family that don’t even have an account but with they just won’t be able to update the sheet directly and save it. You may also interact with a group or team, and share a sheet for collaboration. It’s a nice, FREE and great web app.

Other observations that I found while studying and using Num Sum was it’s homepage layout. It strikes simplistic similarities with the very-outstanding Basecamp in its early days. Why not, right? Why not follow something that has done very well in performance.

So, after spending some time to get everyone to join in on the fun, I managed to get a 10×10 (100 squares) Pool filled out . The pot is big–$500. It’s $5 per square and you get $75 for the First, Second/Half and the Third. Then a humongous sum of $275 for the Fourth/Final, no OT. I was getting worried Wednesday night (after sending the email on Monday morning about the Pool), that only half of the Pool was taken. But alas, everyone came through to chip in for a couple of squares and complete it eventually.

After having individuals pick from a sombrero (literally, the one from Chevy’s), I got the following numbers (Steelers/Seahawks): 5/1, 3/5, 5/4 and 4/7. The 5s might be hard to get but there is very great hope on the jewel “4/7″ combo: 14 & 7, 24 & 7 and 24 & 17 to name a few. I can’t wait. This should be a fun way for MA to do something together. Good times.

Update
Here’s the complete Pool. Ain’t it colorful? Damn skippy, it took a while trying to get the same background-color when someone wanted to add a square. I hope Num Sum adds the feature to do some kind of eyedropper tool to just pick the same color, font-style, size or what have you.

…album link

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I had the opportunity to chat with James to plan our shindig to see the Flickr staff at the Apple Store in the city (SF). Here’s the highlight of it:

james: alright..i’m gonna get ready to go
me: aite… what you have to do? put clothes on? haha
me: bastard
james: yeah

Just goes to show, sometimes “working” is plain “freedom”.