Ask and ye shall receive. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and a Mac Mini shall find its way onto your desk.

My former desktop got conscripted as the new blogging server after I, err, dropped the computer intended for that use. A replacement Dell desktop arrived last week, and I was supposed to meet Anna to set it up with all the stuff I need.

In the middle of telling my research supervisor about a number of fun Mac OS X applications he could try out, I realized that the department had perfectly usable Mac Mini just wasting away, unloved.

They were thrilled to find someone who wanted to use a Mac, and that worked out very well for everyone involved. Now I have a pretty computer I can use to play around with Onlife, Quicksilver, Textpander, and other fun things.

Apparently it was a first-gen Mac Mini without built-in Bluetooth (duh!), so the wireless keyboard we bought from the campus computer shop didn't work out of the box.

iCal and Microsoft Entourage were less thrilling than I thought. I liked iCal's color-coding and promptly set up four different calendars. Microsoft Entourage allowed me to drag-and-drop tasks onto my calendar, but didn't really link them.

I guess if I really want a good calendar application, I'll have to write it myself. Must learn AJAX.

Essential things I installed right away: Firefox, <nop>AquaEmacs, <nop>NeoOfficeJ.

After receiving so many helpful and caring comments regarding my breathing post (eat well, get plenty of rest, etc.), and seeing wonderful well-thought discussion over at Clair's blog, I finally got motivated enough to hack dynamic comments into Planner.

Haloscan made it a piece of cake! Search for the segment on "Permalinks and comments" in ../emacs/planner-config.el to see the actual code.

So please introduce yourself in the comments to this entry, and see who else reads this blog! =) Who are you? What are you interested in? How did you find out about this blog? (How on earth do you put up with my rambling? =) )