As mentioned previously, I’ve been mostly happy with my Thinkpad laptop, with the obvious exception of the occasional Microsoft-induced breakage. The modifier ‘mostly’ is used advisedly because there are two issues I’ve not yet fixed. The first problem is easily solvable, with the proper application of cash that I’d rather not spend: the battery has run itself down to the point that it can only hold 16% of its original capacity. This after barely 20 months of use. Let’s just say that it doesn’t exactly encourage mobile computing.

The more serious issue cropping up now and again is that under heavy load, the machine simply overheats and is forced to suspend itself. While I’m grateful that the power manager is smart enough not to simply keep on going and crash, I’m quite unimpressed that Lenovo couldn’t be bothered to design a cooling system that was actually capable of keeping the CPU temperature below 100C under normal circumstances. Even with the fan manually set to maximum speed, rapid edits of files in Lightroom quickly push temperatures to the shutoff threshold.

I don’t have anything terribly original to say about the current meltdown, but the near-constant revelations of mismanagement and outright fraud suggest that a great many people belong in jail or somewhere less pleasant. That there have been basically no prosecutions, punishments, or even confiscations of ill-gotten gains is unsurprising but still discouraging. Americans have always been depressingly well-behaved when it comes to respecting the property and persons of the upper class. More peasants with pitchforks, please!

Winter is effectively over here in New York. Temperatures are up to the point that the few remaining snow patches will be completely gone in the next few days. And the forecast for the next few weeks says they’ll only be going up. Spring on the other hand is taking its sweet time coming back, and the trees and grass look just as dead as they have for the last three months.

Finally, I’m suffering the usual ’embarassment of riches’ with regard to photos – too many hundreds of shots that I’ve not had a chance to properly sort through, select out the promising ones, and do a quick editing pass over before posting. I was sort of hoping this’d be the year of fewer better shots, but thusfar that’s not exactly happening. Sooner or later I do expect lack of patience and hard disk space to kick in though.