- Windows XP automatic MTU path discovery is utter crap. Firefox kept failing to submit forms while on a specific Wi-Fi network of ours until I (after reinstalling it) noticed some weird traffic and pegged my Wi-Fi MTU at 1500. After that, everything worked fine. Now I get the chance to update all my extensions in one day...
- There is a lot more to mod_proxy than you might want to take in after a whole day of running around and getting things done. As usual, the real voodoo is done with mod_rewrite, which can, in a pinch, help you turn an otherwise vanilla Apache into a filtering WAP 2.0 gateway.
- PDAs are obsolete, as far as I'm concerned. A small (paper) notebook has infinite battery life, infinite resolution, and an excellent user interface, plus a choice of arbitrarily colorful pointing devices. The only drawback is that it doesn't chime to warn you of meetings, but as someone pointed out when I bought three, you can use RAID on it. If you must.
- E-mail is overrated. I managed to accomplish more by working outside my corporate network and not checking mail (which I couldn't anyway, not from that network) than by succumbing to the twitch reflex of clicking on Outlook popups. They're going to be turned off, and stay off.
- The little notes on CD covers that read "copy protected" are merely amusing for anyone that has a Linux box nearby. Still, it's weird to think that I just bought a CD that will I probably never listen to directly - it's gone straight into my closet, and the tracks are now in The Great Shuffle Dance inside my iPod.
On top of the day's stress. Word ate one of the whitepapers I was writing. Three hours of work down the bit drain.
In a nutshell, Apple was right: life is random. Work, doubly so.