CherryPal Update

A late Merry Christmas to everyone who reads my blog. I have to admit that the blog has not been the top of my list the past few days.

I am still testing my CherryPal switching software around and trying to see if I can find a combination of software that makes it run faster. It has been stable no matter what I have done to it so far. The biggest hangup for the company so far has been in getting enough product for the number of orders. I am enjoying volunteering my time to take support calls and help other users. I am relearning Linux while I am at it.

The only down side it that it has distracted from my drawing. I am still working at it. One of the challenges on Carol's Drawing Club is to draw our favorite childhood toy. Mine was my teddy bear and I still have it. It thought drawing a teddy bear would be easy, but it is turning out to be a lot harder than I thought. It may be because the old bear still means a lot to me. Also he is really greeting threadbare in laces and that makes the drawing sort of the same as drawing and elderly person with a lot of character in their face. The picture at the top is of the drawing as it is right now.

CherryPal News

Things move fast in the computer world and start ups probably move as fast or faster than anythign else. I am joining the CherryPal team to see if I can get support running smoother and make information more available to everyone who needs it. I am exceited that this is the direction of computing in the future. My son wants to know what purpose there is in a computer like this. I have photos today. The 1st is the complete setup with computer, mouse, keyboard, the USB hub on top of the computer and the monitor. That is the whole works at the moment. There are also photos of the front and back of the computer. It is not vaporware and it does actually work. Mine has been running since it arrived on December 5th. That means 10 straight days and it has only been shut down to change periphials. For most people this is more than enough computer for everyday use and for me it is now the one computer in the house that is always on.

Green Computing

Several months ago I signed a contract to test a new type of computer and to write about how it works and my experiences with it. I received mine last week and it has been up and running ever since. I was in such a rush to set it up that I forgot to take pictures first. The name of the computer is CherrryPal and you can see photos at http://www.cherrypal.com. It is 5.5" wide, 3.5" deep and 1" thick. That is the complete computer. It has video, sound, 2 USB ports, wired networking and wireless networking. You need a monitor, USB mouse and keyboard plus some kind of network connection. Mine was on the Internet as soon as I plugged in the cat 5 network cable. The wireless network took a bit longer because I had to configure the security settings I use on my wireless network. I am writing my blog on it tonight and I have been able to get my email and connect to Yahoo, MSN and AOL messengers. In other words it is a fully capable Internet computer right out of the box. I did find that two USB ports are not always enough. I added a powered external USB hub. Powered because the CherryPal is a very low power device. I have connected to all the other computers on our in house network and can see and read files from any network drive. It will also recognize any USB drive that is plugged into the hub. I will be posting more as I try different devices and different software. It is running a version of Ubuntu Linux which will be new to Windows users, but the email and browser work virtually the same. It really is a working GREEN computer using less than 6 watts of power except for the monitor. I works better than I expected.

My wife and I are trying to make a new start and I removed the previous post. There won't be any new news here either.

A couple of new works

Here are a couple of ATCs (Artist Trading Cards) which I recently finished as a birthday present for a friend. They are 3 1/2 by 2 1/2 inches. They are very small and it is different trying to draw this size and still get enough detail.

I want to apologize to my wife for mistakenly writing that it would take several months to find out if I could get an apartment when it should have read a couple of weeks. By now it is down to a couple of days.. I do not what she may be saying about me but I stick to what I said and I will not say anything bad about her here now or ever. I also will not go into te whys of what happened to us.

Starting Over -Again

Removed