ASUS Zen

That was fast! delivered this morning, picked it up from the office at lunch time, and am using it now.
Cons:
heavier than expected
uses a dongle for wired ethernet connection
no scroll function on the touchpad
The "a" key may be intermittent.

Pros:
Very pretty
faster than greased tachyons
sharp display

Time to get back to work, will pound on this more later.

I don't think about it much

but I grew up with only one grandfather. My father's father died when my father was a teenager. He was Russian, a handyman plumber/roofer/carpenter. I gather he was fairly serious. My mother's father owned a shoe store, was born in the US of Polish parents, and had quite a sense of humor. I don't think the two ever met.

I wonder how much different I would have been with that other influence in my life. The one grandfather I did know shaped a lot of my attitudes, encouraged my sense of humor and practical joking, made me not self-conscious about being bald and toothless.

Back to the Depot

The Asus Zen is a FAIL. The deal-breaker was it doesn't type all the keys I hit, especially the "a". I sat in front of a simple text file and pounded in some of our favorite patriotic phrases about the sunshine soldier and the summer patriot and when in the course of human events, and half the a's were missing. If I typed really slowly (10 wpm) they would all be there. Also a PITA is the home and end keys require holding down the Fn key. And the touchpad doesn't scroll.

I wanted to test it with a bluetooth mouse, and I know I have one around here somewhere but cannot find it.

Moot point, though, the main part of the computer is the keyboard, and if that doesn't work for me it's a show-stopper.

To make life even more interesting, the return terms said I needed to wipe all my stuff, and you can't test the machine without setting up a Windows account, so I did the F9- factory reset, which is supposed to reload the machine into its virgin state from a partition on the drive, but it just kept coming up with a "starting windows for the first time" message and then rebooting. From the split-second display of an error dialog, it seems the reset partition is missing a few crucial pieces, and the machine needs a recovery disc, which they did not include, so I'll let that be their headache.

Also points against it is it is too heavy for a thin book, and the cover is difficult to pry open.

The Toshiba ought to be here Friday or Saturday, and Office Depot's RMA email said they want to pick up the package from me Friday between 8:30 am and 5 pm, but that's not going to happen so I'll call and see if I can just drop it at an Office Depot store.

White House

Today was the 70th anniversary of the first showing of Casablanca, and several theaters held a special showing of a "making of" piece and a restored-by-Turner (no, not colorized) print. I went to the Cinemark in Mountain View, got there 15 minutes before show time and there was no trouble getting a ticket and a good seat. People wandered in for the next 45 minutes, and by the time the film was over it was 3/4 full.

I had never seen the movie all the way through. Certainly not on the big screen. I had seen lots of clips from it, and bits on late night TV interrupted by commercials and bedtime.

It was well worth the special trip, and then some. The cinematography is stunning, every frame of it. Ditto Ingrid Bergman. Makeup is fantastic. Costumes were too except there was one blouse Ingrid wears which seemed out of character. And what a great cast. I had no idea what a superb actor Dooley Wilson (Sam) was. There's a line in Sunset Boulevard which fits him "With one look you'll know all you need to know". Looks, gestures, voice, body language, he was the whole package. In real life he did not play the piano, for the film he mimicked a pianist who sat behind the camera. That's acting.

Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre are all great. And except for Bergman were all playing well out of their comfort zone. Character performances by Curt Bois  as the slimey but charming Pickpocket, S.Z. Sakall as Carl, the Maitre de'. Madeleine Lebeau as Rick's very pretty sometimes girlfriend grabs the most face time in the singing of La Marseillaise. Corinna Mura as the cabaret singer shows off a great soprano voice.

Directed by Michael Curtiz, who did a phenomenal job with what could easily have been a tawdry mess + circus acts. The score by Max Steiner was just right most of the time - now and then there was a gratuitous splash of La Marseillaise and Deutschland Uber Alles, but not enough to want to throw your shoe at the screen. Arthur Edeson  was robbed by not getting the Cinematography Oscar, as was Owen Marks  for film editing. Bogart and Rains were the only actors nominated, but did not win. This was more of a full-cast effort, no one role was really Oscar material. And of course the film won Best Picture and Best Screenplay.

From the "making of" piece it was clear that the script changed constantly, which is amazing, considering all the classic lines which are in it. And there were three possible endings, which were not written until the last minute. I like the one they chose. Especially the last line, which I had not realized the full significance of until finally seeing the 30 seconds of dialog which precedes it.
 
Worth full price.