Those in the know will recall that Canadians go to the polls on Monday January 23rd. I know that because I just visited to Elections Canada website to find out the date.

I also wanted to find out if my changed address affected my ability to vote, or at least if I had a new polling station, so I clicked on the link for the FAQ.

Buried within a list of possible questions I found the gem at the right.

If you’re interested the answer, in part, is:

Eating a ballot, not returning it or otherwise destroying or defacing it constitutes a serious breach of the Canada Elections Act. These rules are part of a system of unobtrusive checks and balances that are intended to protect the integrity of the voting process and Canadians’ trust in the integrity of the electoral system.

In all honesty I’m avoiding the election debates this time around. They seem at least as pointless as the stump speeches, and will offer me nothing of substance.

Do I really need to hear PM PM Jr make even more extravagant promises that both he and I know will never ever be fulfilled? Do I need to listen to Layton and Harper indulge in more tepid name calling?

No.

I might however enjoy a good game of Bingo. However humourless the socialists might be, I’ll give the NDP credit for a funny and insightful gag.

Thanks to Bill Doskoch’s CTV Election blog for this one.

Oh joy! I have my right mouse button back!!

For ages I have used only Logitech keyboards. I just like the feel of them, the relatively nice click of the keys. the angle. They work. Certainly they fit me MUCH better than the wierd Apple keyboards, and even odder Apple mice — what WAS with that hockey puck anyhow?

Last year I bit the bullet and bought a wireless keyboard and mouse, which is even nicer – no more cables!

Problem was that it has PS2 connectors, not USB. I’ll admit to feeling fearful about getting them to work with the Mac.

Well, I plugged the radio reciever for the Logitech into the PS2 to USB adapter, that into the powered USB hub, and that into the Powerbook.

Shazaam! It worked.

Now if I can figure out how to get my 17″ VGA LCD to look better I’ll be laughing!

Well, once I figure out how all of the Windows shift keys translate to the Mac ones…..

Hmm… one of the comments you hear repeatedly from followers of the Church of Mac is that their platform is superior to Windows because they never experience the dreaded “blue screen of death“.

That may be true, but boy oh boy when the Powerbook crashes it crashes BIG TIME. Locked up solid as a rock, no way to reboot except to hold the power button down until it goes black.

Unfortunately there is also no error message of any sort to offer a hint to what went wrong. I think it may have been networking issues (my wireless connection settings seemed to get nuked when it happened) but honestly I have no idea.

I don’t believe that I’ve lost anything critical yet, but I am getting a little bit nervous.

My other observation is that the G4 Powerbook with 512 megs of RAM can get a little draggy. I have yet to figure out just what slows it down, but initial observations suggest that it is not the number of applications open, but the amount of time that the machine is in operation.

Of course part of the problem may be that unlike a PC, closing the window on a project doesn’t shut down the actual program, just the content. If you’re like me you quickly find yourself with eight or ten apps all running at the same time, most of them doing nothing.

What it feels like to me is that, like a Windows box, the Mac accumulates some kind of cruft or other debris which eventually eats up cycles and slows you down. Rebooting seems to bring things back up to speed.

I am still having difficulty getting the Mac to default to use NeoOffice instead of MS Office when I double click some files. That’s a problem since the Office trial has expired and I really don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars to buy a retail copy.

Ergonomically I still very much miss the right mouse button, and find that I spend way too much time stretching my not small hands to reach various key combinations instead of just right clicking. It’s a nuisance, and may explain why in the past it has felt like Mac people move more slowly when working on their computers.

I have though come to like the dashboard widgets a lot, but am still undecided whether the animated Dock is better than a row of buttons a la Windows. The animation is starting to bug me and I may turn it off. Also some programs, like NeoOffice and Flock don’t play well with the Dock and the bottom of their windows can wind up under the dock.

I will though give Apple credit for doing “sleep” really well. Aside from regular reboots to get things speeded up I never turn of the Powerbook, just close the lid. That’s really nice.

Ok, I’ll give this a try.

1) “If you are using 10.4 use this guide.” Checked my version of OS X and changed to the right page and read:”Both computers should have their firewalls turned off, or have the relevant ports opened” Hmmmm.. would be nice if he told me which ports are “relevant.” I’ll just ignore that….

2)”Ensure all computers are on the same subnet” Check!

3)”Ensure that the Windows PC to have a user account with a username and a password and to know the shortname and password associated with the Mac.” Ok, I wish he had told just what “the shortname” is… this is starting to feel like trying to configure Linux using MAN pages…

Went to the Mac Help and searched on “what is my shortname?” Failure….
Ah… searched on just “shortname” and got two hits.
Went to System Preferences | Accounts and found out that my short User Name was “barryrueger”.

On the PC it’s “Barry Rueger”.

Now, I’m sure that one of these pages said that the two systems had to have the same User Names and passwords, but there’s no mention so I’ll ignore that right now.

Bingo! Now it works.

4) Setting up sharing on the Mac.

“Ensure that Personal File Sharing and Windows File Sharing are checked”
Again, I wish the guy had noted where those settings are found. Oh well, Check! and Check! again.

5) Setting up sharing on the PC

“Do not try and share the whole drive only share folders, trying to share a whole drive can result in unexpected errors.” Eh? What’s that? Yeesh what a pain. I really would rather just share the entire E drive, the one that hold all documents, seperate and apart from system and program files.

OK, rather than change the settings on 100 folders, I dragged them all into a new one called “Shared” and we’ll see if that works.

6) Ok, if this guy is to be believed this should all work now.
Finder -> Go -> Connect to Server Check!
Type in smb://IP Address of PC
Opened a command prompt window, typed in ipconfig, got the IP address for the PC and entered it… Check!

Clicked “connect” and watched the “Connecting to smb://192.168.1.100″ progress box. For a loooong time.

Ok, forget that…. let’s try the other direction. PC to Mac!

7) “My Network Places” Check!
“Add Network Place Wizard” Whoops… that’s XP, and I’ve got Windows 2000…

Ok, found the Win2K equivalent, and it wants the IP address for the Mac. Hmmm… where the heck is that found?
“Type in \\IP Address of Mac\Mac Username”
System Preferences | Network | TCP/IP
Check!

Hmm……

Interestingly I can bring up a Terminal window on the PC and ping the Mac, but can’t ping the PC from the Apple machine.

I just though was reminded that I was running ZoneAlarm on the PC, so let’s shut that down. Holey Moley! Suddenly the ping command goes wild on the Mac!

Yes, it works, and what’s more, it looks like you can share an entire drive, rather than individual folders.

OK, I’ve seen lots of error messages while using Windows machines, but never this one that popped up while using Thunderbird.

I had thought that all of my filters had moved over fine. I guess that I was wrong…

Oh well, I’m sure that it’ll get fixed in a month or so….

Little Richard is 73 years old today.

If you don’t know why that matters, well, you better find out. The man invented rock and roll, more or less, and wrote some of the best lyrics ever:

A-bop-bop, a-loo-mop, a-lop-bop-bop
Tutti Frutti, all rootie
Tutti Frutti, all rootie
Tutti Frutti, all rootie
Tutti Frutti, all rootie
Tutti Frutti, all rootie
A-bop-bop, a-loo-mop, a-lop-bop-bop

Thanks to the ever genial Mr. Lee, host of Bop Street, The Land of The Round Haircut, on KFAI Minneapolis, for reminding me of this important date.

Listen live on Monday afternoon, or check out the archives.