author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Hello. I'm pulling an all-nighter. Trust me when I say it's writing-related, just not a WIP I am at liberty to database and blue-box. (In case of style sheet change, read that as "[whatevercolor]-box," depending.) I'm on dinner break, or midnight snack break, or whatever, and wanted to report in.

Firstly, I have now in my possession the Averatec 3360 I was drooling over. Warranty Corp finally responded last week to the second round of buy-out approval, and Computer Renaissance finally received a new, salable machine to sell me Saturday. (They were in fact waiting on the restore disks that apparently don't come with these computers anymore, because the machine currently in their possession had been empty of OS. A brand new unit came in faster than the disks. (Well, brand new to them, anyway. These are refurbished machines.) They're still waiting on the disks. I hear that Averatec themselves are not very fun to deal with. Good thing for them that they sell such nice computers. Good thing for me I have someone else to deal with when I need service.)

Thus far, my impressions are positive. It's teeny tiny! I like teeny tiny! I have teeny tiny fingers, and I could do with less weight hanging off my shoulders. So. Four and a half pounds, 12.1" screen. The hard drive's an 80 gigger, as I said, although some 17 of those gigs are a recovery partition, which annoys me a little, but maybe when I get ahold of some recovery disks I can do a rebuild. If the recovery disks allow a rebuild that doesn't break off a 17 gig recovery partition. What else? OK. Centrino 1.6 thingie. I hear the Athlon in the 2250 would have been more powerful, but for my purposes, I can't tell the difference, and the Centrino's efficiency is good. I wanted to try it out at SkillJam, but for some stupid reason my account has been temporarily suspended and I can't. But preliminary tests with Bejewelled 2 at PopCap and Jewel Quest at Yahoo! demonstrate competitive refresh rates. Yay!

Centrino notwithstanding, I saw that many people online were unimpressed with this machine's battery life; I concur, and as soon as I finish with the thing I'm currently working on I'll devote some energy towards dealing with that. I hear that there are battery calibration techniques you can proceed through and power management applications you can install. Meanwhile, meh. No big deal. The world is full of electrical outlets. Some of them are even on Amtrak trains.

So my only real complaints have to do with the layout. First, there's the way they fit all the keyboard buttons on the smaller footprint. They opted not to shrink the keys, making this doubtless a more popular computer than the Compaq Aero Contura was among those with bigger hands. However, this meant they had to be clever about fitting the keys together. And what they did was, they moved the arrow keys inwards, and put the shift key and the backslash/pipe key outside of them. Sounds minor until you start typing with it. I keep putting my pinkie on the right-arrow when I'm going for the down-arrow.

Um. Probably a picture would help. I don't have time to deal with pictures at the moment. Later, then.

Second, the volume dial is on the front edge of the laptop. This means that when I lay on my back and prop the computer up on my knees, anytime I shift my butt a little I'm likely to move the dial with my belly and end up muting the music. Or blasting it.

It's kind of nice the way that there are no outlets and connectors on the back edge, though. Convenient. Still, having the USB ports all on the near end of the right edge means things can be a little awkward in right-handed mouse land.

Oh. Back on the positive end, this sucker's wireless capabilities are very impressive. I wrote my husband an instant message from the bus stop across 30th street from our home this afternoon. I was able to do this, because there was wireless signal at that bus stop. Wireless signal whose SSID looked very familiar. Wireless signal from our router, in fact. That's--what?--about 50 yards away? At least another twenty yards past our parking space, where I sometimes, sometimes not, got signal on the 5110H upon getting home from a long drive during which I was using my laptop for tunes. Yeah. Wow.

So, that much for the computer. Now for the mushrooms.

Take you a couple portabellas that are threatening to go bad unless you eat them, like, now. Wash 'em. Slice 'em up however you like.

Heat up a pan with a couple t'bls walnut oil, olive oil, whatever, something that can take a medium high heat. Throw in some minced garlic. After about a minute, take the garlic out. You want your oil garlic-flavored, not burnt-garlic-flavored.

Toss in the shrooms. Pile 'em in. Toss the garlic bits on top, so they'll steam instead of burn. Drizzle a little more oil on top.

Cover. Go away for about ten minutes.

Come back and splash some sherry on top. Cover again and go away. Five minutes or so.

Now for some fun. Sprinkle on a little flour, a little thyme, a little salt and white pepper. Stir 'em about until the flour's dissolved and you can smell the thyme nicely. Now, splash in a little heavy cream. Stir about some more and then let 'em simmer (low heat) for a few.

Voila! It's like cream of mushroom soup, without the soup!

Garnish with parmesan and serve alongside some veggies.

Eat up.

Now. Get back to work!