{"id":1197,"date":"2003-05-18T19:11:33","date_gmt":"2003-05-19T09:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/05\/19\/almost-perfect\/"},"modified":"2019-12-05T09:04:31","modified_gmt":"2019-12-05T17:04:31","slug":"almost-perfect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2003\/05\/18\/almost-perfect\/","title":{"rendered":"Almost perfect"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:14652,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.logitech.com\\\/index.cfm?page=products\\\/details&amp;CRID=6&amp;CONTENTID=5006&amp;countryid=19&amp;languageid=1&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20050623074120\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.logitech.com\\\/index.cfm?page=products\\\/details&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.logitech.com\\\/index.cfm?page=products\\\/details&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:14653,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.microsoft.com\\\/hardware\\\/keyboard\\\/ok_info.asp&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>My current workspace here at home has been a bit cramped for a while. I&#8217;ve got two computers under my desk (one Mac and one PC), and three 17\\&#8221; monitors on my desk (two for the Mac, one for the PC). It&#8217;s a nice workspace, but when you factor in two keyboards and two trackballs, it leaves very little actual deskspace left over.<\/p>\n<p>This weekend, I picked up a new trackball for my Mac (a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.logitech.com\/index.cfm?page=products\/details&amp;CRID=6&amp;CONTENTID=5006&amp;countryid=19&amp;languageid=1\" title=\"Logitech > Trackballs > Cordless Optical TrackMan\u00ae&#8221;>Logitech Cordless Optical TrackMan\u00ae<\/a>, which I was a little unsure of at first, but I&#8217;m rapidly starting to like more and more), then came home and started playing with cords. I&#8217;d had a USB switchbox for a while, but as it only has one input port and four output ports (for sharing one device among multiple workstations), I&#8217;d been using it to connect my printer to both computers. While crawling around plugging and unplugging wires, though, I realized that theoretically, I should be able to plug my four port USB hub into the input port on the switch, allowing the switch to control four devices, instead of one. I wasn&#8217;t sure if it would work, but it seemed worth a shot.<\/p>\n<p>End result? It works great! I now have my keyboard (a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/hardware\/keyboard\/ok_info.asp\" title=\"Microsoft Keyboard | Office Keyboard\">Microsoft Office Keyboard<\/a> that I got free from work), my trackball, and my printer all plugged into the USB hub, switchable between both of my computers. Far more manageable, and I&#8217;ve got a lot more desk space available (of course, that means I&#8217;ll just have that many more soda cans strewn across my desk, but that&#8217;s beside the point&#8230;).<\/p>\n<p>The only oddball glitch is that, for some odd reason, the Mac will occasionally forget about all the devices after I switch over to the PC and then switch back to the Mac. I&#8217;m not sure why this is, and was afraid I was going to have to go back to two sets of keyboards and trackballs. Then I discovered that as long as I leave the old Mac keyboard plugged in (sitting vertically on the floor, leaning against the Mac&#8217;s case), then when the Mac doesn&#8217;t respond to the keyboard or trackball that are on the switch, all I have to do it tap a key on the old keyboard with my toe, and suddenly everything on the switch starts responding again. It&#8217;s a little odd &#8212; and not quite a perfect solution, but hey, it works.<\/p>\n<p>This babble brought to you courtesy of the fact that as I&#8217;ve been posting rather sporadically for the past week, I need some filler posts on the main page so that my site doesn&#8217;t look too tweaky. ;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This babble brought to you courtesy of the fact that as I&#8217;ve been posting rather sporadically for the past week, I need some filler posts on the main page so that my site doesn&#8217;t look too tweaky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2039,2043],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-1197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple","category-personal","tag-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}