sweasel.com

You point out a growing problem in the world today: Rat’s asses that aren’t given.

Fewer and fewer folk are giving these precious and valuable commodities to society. The poor are especially hard-hit – having no rat’s asses of their own, let alone to give.

So if you give a rat’s ass – thank you. If not, consider giving rat’s asses – and give generously.

I have the assorted parts of many small, innocent animals. I find one on the kitchen rug most mornings. I really, really hope the cats are doing that.

You haven’t enough monitors, there’s room for more
at the bottom of your keyboard. Who gives a rat’s ass?
Not me.

You should got a real job, instead.

Personally, I find living down a hole and eating worms is very fulfilling.

Then again, you don’t get three monitors.

Are those cups and saucers stacked up back there? On the little television thingy? And a Teletubbie clock? I got you beat for desk clutteryness though.

Good luck on the next round of revisions, and I hope they don’t decide to change everything at the last minute and go with a completely different style.

You forgot to mention the giant rubber rat on top of the monitor. You correctly identified everything else, though. I’m amazed it went this long without mention of my rat. I’m rather hurt. He came all the way from England and he’s an antique (well, he was bought in an antique store). Rather bizarrely, I’m told someone in IS has his absolute twin.

I read a survey many years ago — like, in the ’80s — the conclusion of which was that something stunning like 70% of all computer monitors at that time had a rubber rat on them. I happened to have a rubber rat on mine when I read it. I have had some variety of rubber rat (and occasionally a family of them) ever since, but I don’t think I’ll do better than this one.

The Teletubbies clock is set to British time, by the way. It seemed only right.

I think I’m suffering from monitor-envy.

But – I must admit – I, too, do not give a rat’s ass.

Yes I do.

What the eff do you do with three monitors? In my day a man had one monitor – only one! – and was grateful to have even that! And they only showed one color!

I bet one is hooked to a vid camera shoved somewhere…uh…vulgar.

One holds the thing I’m building, one holds the program that’s building the thing I’m building, and the third one is usually running episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

If you’ve never had multiple monitors, it’s really fun. WindowsXP got this right, at least. You can have up to eight — as many as you’ve got computer slots for video cards. In the regular video settings window, you have all these little boxes representing your monitors. You move them around until they match the size and arrangement of your monitors. Then the whole thing becomes one big giant Windows desktop. You grab things from one monitor and just mouse them over to another, like it’s one big contiguous surface. So you can run different programs in different windows, or different parts of the same program in different windows.

If you’ve got any old spare video cards and monitors lying around, try it.

I’m an R&D type myself, so I’d be your worst nightmare as far as “Gee, can we…?” type questions. Fun to see it from the other perspective.

The rat – of course! Sorry, I was going to say something about it but the Teletubbies kicked it out of my mind. I have a rubber alligator on my computer.

Ditto the multi-monitor recommendation. Our IT budget is handled by another department and they’ve seemingly got bags of money lying around. A few months ago they were like “Y’all want dual montitors for everyone? With 19 inch flat screens?” We said “Sure!” I wouldn’t dream of going back to just one again.

Oh, no! I have an old video card. I have an old 20″ Nokia tube monitor. I’m running XP. It’s Friday. Its raining outside. I’m retired. I have about 10% of a life.

I. Will. Resist.

BTW: If you’re watching MST3000 at work, you should get a raise. I loved that series the first 1-2 years. It was soooo stupid. And – at the time – such an original idea. I mean, who hasn’t sat with friends and made comments about some dumb flick on the tube? They commercialized it.

Ok – you win. Two monitors are friggin’ neat. I bet three are even better.

Damn it! I’m moving soon (I hope), and will now have to account for 2-3 monitors on my desk when I set my stuff up again. Guess I better get a bigger desk. Or some of those swinging arm mounts, maybe? Oy!

Argh! Its all Weasel’s fault. I cherished my ignorance.

Very important datum: if you ever go back to one monitor, move everything from your extra monitors onto your main monitor first. Otherwise, when you unhook the extras, all your stuff is lost in Neverland.

Some programs, like Photoshop, are designed to be well behaved with multiple monitors. You can pull the various floating tool bars right outside the main window and put them on an extra monitor. This is better than just maximizing it across two monitors — if the two are different aspect ratios, it’s messy. But I stranded my toolbars in the fourth dimension when my second monitor at home died.

Boy! am I glad I read Weasel this morning before cleaning up my PC tinker-mess….and removing the clunky 2nd monitor from my desk. I could have been doomed. Where is that paypal tip jar? Hmmm….

My Maroon Sense(tm) is not detecting it. Is it hiding in plain sight?