Big Sur travelogue

Ahhh. We had a wonderful time in Big Sur. We stayed at Ventana - a luxurious inn near Big Sur village. It's where we honeymooned 10 years ago and it was just as we remembered it. Quiet, romantic, cozy, and comfortable. Saturday we had brunch at the new Café Kevah at Nepenthe. Nepenthe, for those who don't know, is a Big Sur institution. Orson Welles bought the property for Rita Hayworth for $167 during the war but they never returned. Since 1949 it has been a restaurant and hangout serving a famous hamburger around the open phoenix decorated fireplace. Check out their webcam for an idea of how lovely the view is. But our best meal was Saturday night at Sierra Mar, the restaurant at the Post Ranch Inn across the street from Ventana. First of all, the view is remarkable. The Post Ranch Inn is built on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. We sat in a corner of the restaurant that feels like it's flying high out over the ocean then watched the sun set as we ate one of the best meals we've ever had. (If you look at the picture of the restaurant on their webpage, you can see where we sat. It's the table for two in the center of the picture at the very back.) We've decided to stay at the Post Ranch Inn for my birthday this year! I can't wait to go back.

Help from the Third Geek

Raymond Angel writes: Hiya Leo, As you know lots of Windows ME users can't get into real dos mode. Thats why I created a disk last night that will let ME users get into DOS mode. I have full details online at... http://www.thirdgeek.com/tools/medisk.shtml Thanks, Raymond Cool tool. Thanks, Ray. On a related note, I've been getting e-mail about a program called WinFix that claims to make Windows more reliable. Sounds unlikely, but I'm getting a copy to try. I'll report back. Meanwhile, they do have some excellent advice on their web page for improving all-around Windows stability. That, at least, is right on.

Download My Love

Someone suggested that with his new look, Marty should join a boy band. As some of you remember, we created a boy band for the old Call for Help (I'm calling it Call for Help Classic). We aired their video once and managment informed us it was never to air again. Maybe if you listen to the MP3 of the song you'll understand why! Speaking of one shot appearances, Monday's show aired only once. In a weird combination of errors, neither the master nor the backup tape of the show was mode. So we had nothing to re-air. We decided that the Pentium IV 1.7 Ghz benchmarks were important enough that we repeated the segment last night. Bottom line: with current software the 1.7 is no faster than the 1.4 Ghz P4 and the current AMD Athlon 1.3 smokes 'em both. That may change when P4 optimized software comes out, but we don't recommend a P4 at this time. Especially since it requires the dead-end RAMBUS memory. When P4s work with standard DDR-RAM and P4 optimized software starts appearing, then it might be a good choice. But that's at least six months off.

Take My Daughter... please

It's Take Your Daughter To Work day and Abby and her best friend, Bianca, have joined me today. You'll see glimpses of them on both TechLive and The Screen Savers. Maybe more if I can sneak them in. Incidentally, we've cut way back on the financial news during my 90 minutes on TechLive. I'm really liking it much better. Much more time for tech info. What do you think?

TechTV press

Interesting article about TechTV on TelecomClick today. The "cable insider" sounds like he's a little bitter, to me, but it's otherwise fairly accurate. Well except for the part about Paul Allen sending e-mail to the show hosts daily. He's never sent even one e-mail to me. But, Paul, if you're reading this, it's leo@leoville.com.