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For those of you with tight space requirements for your monitors, switching to LCDs from the traditional type has been quite a boon. But have you ever considered a Rackmount lcd? I can imagine that some of the time space is at a premium so you might want to install such a device.

Other times, I can’t help thinking that they’d make a wonderful stowaway computer for that extra privacy! You slip it under your drawer, in a cupboard or on a busy desk. They are however pretty pricy.

What other reasons can you buy a rackmount pc?… I’m still enthused with my Asus EBox 202. That’s pretty small.

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I’ve been switching out some of my domains to NameCheap recently. I was struggling with two of my former hosting companies and decided that the best advice was really to separate all hosting from all domains.

You can point the domains anywhere you want when you do this; and you can escape from a lousy hoster if you discover problems. Normally the process is pretty quick. In fact, I’ve noted that most domains can be switched within 24-48 hours. Just enough time to keep you out of trouble if your host turns out to be the host-from-hell.

Now, if I can just find a domain name reseller…

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When I first came to Taiwan, I was horrified by the sheer lack of safety equipment that people wore when they were doing dangerous jobs. Didn’t they know? I would see workers doing arc welding WITHOUT any safety glasses, workers on jobsites without even basic helmets, riders on motorcycles without helmets, … the list went on and on.

While it could be said that having safety equipment makes you take unnecessary risks, not having it exposes you to dangers that could otherwise be mitigated. So… it’s still sad to see people who could otherwise be safe.

Last week, on the way home, I saw an old man in the dark riding a motorbike with no lights, no helmet, and no light clothing. He was lucky he wasn’t killed. Unfortunately, this is all too common in Taiwan.

This accident is quite common…

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Once a year, I have to go to the bank (or seven eleven) to pay the premium on my insurance. It comes in at the same time as the rates for my car insurance. This of course raises the obvious questions: why do some insurance rates stay the same while the other change so much on a year to year basis? I have no idea why this is: but each year we pay a different amount, and the variance is quite large on the car insurance. We’ve paid anything from US$150 to nearly US$900 for the same policy from the same insurance company.

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I’ve been pretty busy today. I finally managed to figure out how I was going to show my photographs on the Internet: Thanks to Picasa, FileZilla, and ZenPhoto.

Visit my photoblog at http://fotomyfoto.com and see what I have there! Over 4,500 photos, some great, some good, and some pretty awful!

Enjoy the screenshot. Check out the images

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At school, we’ve all been working very hard on making our own notebooks and communication books for the children, after using those made by other publishers for years. We used a local print shop which was able to turn more than passable first editions of these books quickly and cheaply.

Unfortunately, I used my Cruzer Stick when I went to the copy shop. Little did I know that everyone was using those cheap memory sticks. When I came back and stuck the stick back in my pc, there were nine viruses or spywares or other nasties on the stick. Yikes! I’m going to make CDs next time. It’s a bit wasteful, but at least it prevents infections. I’ll just use my sticks on my own clean PCs from now on. If I have to use another machine, I’ll likely just reformat the whole stick (or throw it away?).

. This photo was taken by itselea.

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Kingston DataTraveler 8 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive DTI/8GB

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My good photo buddy, Craig, has been running a great little site showing his considerable photographic talent at CraigFergusonImages Dot Com. On the last day of the year he started giving away a free calendar for the month of January! It’s absolutely beautiful.

I’ve included a sneak preview but you’ll have to visit his blog to check out the full photograph and get the download. It is stunning on my desktop. I know it will be on yours. Craig, when are you going to start selling digital downloads of your photographs?

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Next week, life gets a little tougher for smokers in Taiwan. On January 11th, a new law will make it much harder for smokers to smoke anywhere where there are more than a couple of people.

Of course, you may have considered it about time! I know I have. But figure this: Why on earth do people keep smoking? It’s becoming more expensive, fewer places accept any smoking, your life is shorter, your less healthy during it, and it’s much more expensive to purchase certain kinds of life insurance or health-related insurance products. I don’t know if smoker life insurance is really cheaper or not.

Since smoking affects not just those who smoke but those who stand nearby, it seems only right to me that smokers should pay more and more for their habit. It will offset the health care costs of treating all the illnesses caused by smoking: asthma, lung cancer, throat cancer, etc.. of those who smoke as well as those who are secondhand smokers.

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Well, Christmas is just a few days away now, and it seems that many people are holding off Christmas shopping until just before and even (perhaps!) after the festive holiday. Why? Because they are all out looking for a best buy or great deal that they can save big on.

And this season, with retailers’ chasing customers for all their worth, the bargains and sales are already to be found before the Christmas season even got underway! It seems many wary customers are paranoid that they will find what they bought on sale at even cheaper prices in just a few days!

So everyone is holding on to the big part of whatever Christmas shopping money they have. And, to some extent, that includes me! My business has allocated some money for shopping for presents, but I’ve only found presents for some of the staff. I have no idea what to spend my NT$2000 on yet!

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Interested in joining? Living in Taiwan… Forumosa.

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This video features the ExpressGate functions of the new EBox 202 PC from Asus.

We purchased this nice little puter for our school because of three concerns: we needed to replace our aging server, the original was very noisy; and since the machine was on all day, we needed something frugal with power. Incidentally, the footprint is a benefit! We managed to save a lot of desk space. We’re now considering replacing at least two other PCs with these devices.

And there’s a hidden bonus: the Asus Eee EBOX202 is also a wirelessly enabled box. So we’d be able to pull up a huge amount of annoying cables in our office, to my wife’s delight!

ASUS Eee Box PC (1.6 GHz Intel Atom Processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, Linux EZOS) Black

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The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging

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Looking for the magic weight loss pill? I know I have, but there isn’t one. I keep telling myself the truth, and yet somehow my waistline seems to keep expanding! If there were a magic pill to help one lose weight, I’d surely be the first person to take.

The unglamorous truth is: losing weight requires focus, energy, action, plans, time and money. Oh, and a powerful sense of motivation! If there were a pill for these I’d take them too.

We’ve used the HP LaserJet printer (series model 1020) for about 2 years now, and it’s really proved to be a very reliable (if expensive) laserjet. It costs about 88c to print a page and the cartridges don’t seem to last forever. In fact, with the regular pounding we’re giving our machine, we’re averaging one a month. We’ve recently switched to recycled cartridges that shave 50% off the price of the unit, but even so we’re still having to swap the cartridge every four or five weeks. So I’m now looking for a bigger machine that can print upto 5000 pages per cycle. At least, it will be easier to maintain and perhaps a little cheaper to run. Suggestions?

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DID you hear about the store that sells new husbands that just opened in New York City It’s frankly, where a woman may go to choose a husband. Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates.

You may visit the store ONLY ONCE! There are six floors and the attributes of the men increase as the shopper ascends the flights. There is, however, a catch: you may choose any man from a particular floor, or you may choose to go up a floor, but you cannot go back down except to exit the building!

So an interested woman goes to the Husband Store to find a husband. On the first floor the sign on the door reads:

Floor 1 - These men have jobs, and quite a nice selection too.

The second floor sign reads:

Floor 2 - These men have jobs and love kids.

The third floor sign reads:

Floor 3 - These men have jobs, love kids, and are extremely good looking.

“Wow,” she thinks, but feels compelled to keep going.

She goes to the fourth floor and sign reads:

Floor 4 - These men have jobs, love kids, are drop-dead good looking and still find a way to help with the housework. “Oh, mercy me!” she exclaims, “I can hardly stand it”

Still, she goes to the fifth floor and sign reads:

Floor 5 - These men have jobs, love kids, are drop-dead gorgeous, help with the housework, and have a strong romantic streak.

She is so tempted to stay, but she goes to the sixth floor and the sign reads:

Floor 6 - You are visitor 313,456,013 to this floor.

There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please. Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store and show yourself out.

A few weeks later….

A New Wives store opened across the street. The first floor has wives that love sex. The second floor has wives that love sex and can cook. The third through sixth floors have never been visited.

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Enjoy this video. Updating is quite easy!

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I was chatting with my wife today. She used to be an agent for a well-known insurance company in Taiwan, selling health insurance, and term life insurance. It always amuses me how she managed to do that job! Her numeracy skills aren’t the best, and so much of that job requires an understanding of the commission rates, premiums, life expectancies…. She laughed yesterday when I pointed out something so simple that she didn’t calculate. I guess some people just do not have a ‘head for’ numbers. She’s not interested in the numbers side of things… it makes running a business quite hard!

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Don’t you wish you had a good suspension on your car or bike? If you’re on the mountain roads of Taiwan, you’ll enjoy the scenery. But the road: not so much. There are lots of holes, stones, poor repairs, uneven patches, etc.. A lot of these are enough to throw even a competent rider off his bike.

I know … on more than one occasion, I found myself scraping myself off the road wondering how I landed there.  Some decent coilovers would have been the answer but apparently even those can be quite difficult to get right! I would need someone who is qualified and able to maintain that kind of suspension system!

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Tired of traditional curtains? I like variety and find the drapes that most houses have a little monotonous. It is nice to spice up the living room or study or hallway with bamboo shades which can function equally well in the daytime and at night to manage the lighting environment in your house. When I was checking the PayLessDecor, I was surprised to find so many different kinds of materials used for shades, I had only thought there were one or two! Was I wrong?

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