That's a shame. I used to watch him all the time when I was a kid.

XM's '60s on 6 is giving La Crosse, WI, their "Six Gun Salute" as city of the day today, in honor of Mr. Wizard having grown up there.

Any wealthy Atari video game fans out there? Sotheby's is auctioning off the following:

An extensive archive of original marketing materials (as detailed below) from the "Golden Age" of Atari, ca. 1981 to 1983, comprising more than 2,000 items of widely varying sizes and formats, including manuscript memorandum, internal specification guidelines, original sketches, blue lines, mechanicals, proofs, color separations (including acetates), and screen diagrams; the archive is mostly related to marketing materials for Atari games and game consoles, especially boxes and manuals, but includes some early design and graphic work for specific game characters and components; the archive contains mostly English-language materials, but proofs and mechanicals for cartons and manuals in French, German, Spanish, and Italian are also present. The whole archive organized into approximately 135 large file folders for graphic materials.

The value is estimated at 150,000—250,000 USD.

Phone shopping again.

I am beginning to understand that what I want doesn't exist. Well, beginning to accept it. It's always been obvious.

I like the form factor of the HTC s710. I hate that it runs Windows, but that's the biggest thing I have to get over. But the phone keypad in one orientation, keyboard in another is lovely. And they're smaller than the ones I'd seen before.

In avoiding Windows my choices are Palm (don't love the Treos), Blackberry (don't play well with Mac, right?), and Linux (I know they exist, somewhere), right? I mean, if I want a hardware keyboard, right?

My main issue about the HTCs if I get over the Windows snottiness is that I hear they're slow--my friend who replaced her Razr with one says it's slower, and that's not good. I also have a friend who's using one temporarily to replace a previous iteration of the HTC smartphone, and he says it's slower than its predecessor too. He loves the latest version of the OS, but the speed is such that he's not going to hang on to it.

So that's why I balk there. Any suggestions from those in the know? I don't ask for much (else)--I want a keyboard a step up from a number pad, I want a camera, I need Bluetooth (if it can handle more than one Bluetooth device, that would be some spicy gravy). Everything else will probably be okay, if it's small and fast. Carrier doesn't even matter--my Cingular contract is just about over.

It looks like Blackberry support on Mac OS X isn't as bad as it used to be. There's a Missing Sync for it, anyway (http://www.missingsync.com ). I love Missing Sync for my Treo, so that could be good. Look into that? The only reason I haven't switched to a blackberry is a personal love for touch-screens, so if you're not caring about that, BB might be the way to go.

That looks cool, Gris. Thanks. I was spoiled by the simplicity of iSync, but I can see the appeal of that.

Do you OS X-using Buffistas use the Dashboard?

It's the quickest way for me to pull up a dictionary, unit conversion, t hits F13 and, um, calculator. When I need them at work, that is. I'm not sure I ever use Dashboard at home, unless I hit the key by accident with my big fat sausage fingers.

t edit Also, I am having MASSIVE Leopard-oost.

I absolutely hated the iSync integration with Palm. Missing Sync is much better for my needs.

I use the Dashboard every day for dictionary, weather, and checking my stocks. And the translation is uber-useful when my old spanish tutor IMs me. I also like the TV Forecast widget, which tells me when my favorite shows have a new episode, the calendar widget is much faster than iCal for basic date-checking, weather radar is fun, and the calculator is useful for short calculations.

In other words: yes. I use it a lot.

I've got Dashboard running a couple other things, too -- there's a widget that will print out envelopes so I don't have to struggle with getting a template working in one of my word-processing programs, a To-Do List that checks with my iCal, a GMail mail list, a widget that tells me how many songs and other statistics are in my iTunes.

The TV Forecast thingie is something that I should get....

I also have a Tetris widget and Sudoku widget, but as far as my employer knows, I never use them....

And I have the Daily Comics widget, which lets you select from a list of comic strips and editorial cartoons, and it grabs them all every day and you can flip through them like a slide show.

Oooh! And the Simpsons quote widget, which just sits up in the top right corner, so that whenever I activate Dashboard, I get a new quote. (I don't go to Dashboard *just* for a Simpsons quote.) (Really!)