On Chrome OS netbooks the caps lock key has been replaced by a search button that opens a new tab. After bashing on the search button a bunch of times I used one of the new tabs to search for information about my problem. The solution is simple. Press both shift keys at the same time to activate and deactivate caps lock.

“We are very pleased with VMware’s demonstrated ability to work with the open source community. Open Virtual Machine Tools streamlines the process of providing ISVs with an edition of Ubuntu optimized for virtual appliances that follows the JeOS concept of ‘Just Enough Operating System’ and allows us to provide end users of the Ubuntu operating system with a compelling out-of-the-box experience. We look forward to the debut of Open Virtual Machine Tools within a future release of Ubuntu.”

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu project

VMware’s move to open source will prove to be important in making more efficient virtual machines and getting more people to use virtualization products.

via VMworld 2007 Press Release

Today I realized I had done something incredibly stupid. About 9 months ago Apple initiated a worldwide battery recall. I bought one of the 15″ Macbook Pro’s when they first became available in February of 2006. My original battery had just begun to have problems. It would only hold a charge to about 40%. So the timing of this recall was just about perfect.

I filled out the form, and within a few days I had my brand new battery. You were supposed to send back your old battery, but I didn’t. I was curious to see what would happen. I never got charged for it, so I went ahead and kept my original battery. I figured having an extra would come in handy, even if it would only hold half a charge.

Flash forward 9 months later, and it wasn’t that handy to have an extra semi-functional battery. The battery had been stashed away in my old school backpack for the better part of 8 months. Today I found it while cleaning out my room. This is what it looks like now.

The moral of the story is that if Apple is recalling these batteries, it’s probably for a good reason.

Becka’s mom has a food dehydrator. We were able to get the internal temperature at a constant 150 degrees fahrenheit. I was hoping the hot, dry air would fix the phone.

For most of the drying we had the phone open on its front or back, with the lid on the dehydrator. But at the end I left it open with the phone on its side.

For about 4 hours we let the phone dry out. Then we took it out and put the battery back in and turned it back on. It booted up fine and everything seemed to be working. The screen was not damaged and displayed everything properly. However, a few buttons did not work. The round “ok” button and numbers 5, 7 and 9 didn’t respond when you pressed them.

Unfortunately my experiment in drying out a phone was a failure. Luckily I pay for the insurance so we were able to get it replaced for fifty dollars.

I love my mac.

In our previous attempts, it would only allow one-to-one video chats. The option to add a person to the chat was grayed out. We discovered that the key to being able to do multi user video chats was that you had to have the “multiple video camera icon” () next to your name. At first only Tyler had it, but then it showed up on Dylan’s as well. But for everything we tried, it wouldn’t show up on mine. Then all of a sudden last night mine displayed the icon and we were able to video conference. It seems that iChat detects your bandwidth and only shows the multiple person video chat as an option if you have a fast enough connection.