Day 1 - Not bad but not as good as it gets

I spent yesterday working from home with more success than I had envisioned.  My family will still need some time to adapt to my being here during the day meaning I'm working.  Its a little tougher right now since its summer vacation for my kids and while they get it they don't really GET IT.  The same goes for my wife.  The only one who isn't going to understand is our dog who stays at my side and occasionally lays her head in my lap and looks at me with big brown eyes to say "play with me".

The first inconvenience I ran into was the lack of a snack machine when the munchies hit around mid-morning.  Its not that we don't have any munchies in the house, its that they are all huge bags and I'm horrible at portion control.  I resolved that at lunch time when I ran to the local Shoprite (grocery store) and picked up an assortment of snacks in the "100 calorie" size.  In the same trip I stopped at the library and picked up some CDs so I'd have something new playing in the background.  I suspect I'll be dropping in once or twice a week just to pick up something new and expand my listening tastes.

Technical issues:  At work I use a WYSE thin client with 2 monitors and I'm told that when I connect to the server farm at work from my home computer a dual monitor setup will allow me to spread my desktop over 2 monitors as well.  I've got a couple of LCD monitors connected to my Vista desktop via an ATI All-In-Wonder 2006 video card but I just can't get it to display both screens using the JAVA thin client software that emulates my WYSE thin client.  I have a  sneaking suspicion that it is related to how the video card treats the 2 monitor set-up.  On my WYSE terminal at work I can configure the monitors to act as a single large monitor (clicking the maximize icon in the top right corner of a window causes the window to fill both monitors) or as 2 monitors (clicking maximize causes the window to completely cover the monitor it is currently running on but not both).  My guess is that the ATI card treats my setup as 2 monitors and when the JAVA client starts it maximizes to a single screen.   I can't find a setting anywhere in the ATI configuration utility.  I use to love ATI products but have been less than happy ever since I bought a pair of these All-In-Wonder cards with the intent of using then under VISTA.  Even though they were advertised as being VISTA compatible (what a nasty phrase) and evidently were fully functional under the VISTA Betas only the video out works under the Gold (release) version of VISTA so I can't use the TV tuners or the other video inputs which is why I bought VISTA Ultimate.   I'll stop here before I go into a full fledged rant on "planned obsolescence" of functioning computer hardware.