hardware

Product review: Acer One netbook

This refurbished Acer One netbook from Tiger Direct arrived just before I was hospitalized a month ago, so I haven’t had much chance to look at it until yesterday.  For the $230 I paid, it’s a darned impressive little computer.

It’s so light - two pounds with the 3-cell battery - that it just about disappears in my backpack.  The keyboard is dinky but not difficult to type on.  I’d hate to write a novel on it, but it’s fine for blogging, note-taking, and email.  Battery life seems to be about two hours, which is fine for meetings and casual use. But you’d want the 6-cell battery for extended use without the (very small) power adapter. 

The screen is bright and clear.  At 1024 x 600, there’s not a lot of room for superfluous junk. This is significant because it seems to ship with every toolbar known to man already enabled, leaving you about eight pixels for content.  As Edward Tufte said, “The scarcest computing resource is not CPU cycles or hard drive space, but screen real estate.”  So you’ll be turning off toolbars and hiding the Start bar and stuff like that.  And remember, the F11 key is your friend.

It came with Windows XP home, but with a 106gb hard drive, you just know I’ll be dual-booting it with possibly Ubuntu Netbook Remix or Moblin, which is optimized to work with the Intel Atom processor. 

It also has a gig of ram, an SD card reader and a multi-card reader.  The wireless works fine and it seems to handle going to sleep and waking up easily.  There’s a little switch in front for turning off the wireless, so you don’t waste power connecting when it isn’t needed.  It has an external VGA output for presentations, an RJ-45 Ethernet connection, headphone and mic jacks, and three, count ‘em three USB ports, all on the right and left sides. 

It took me a while to get the trial version of Microsoft Office uninstalled - who needs it? - and all my favorite apps installed.  These include: Firefox, Google Chrome, FileZilla, Notepad++, Open Office, Foxit Reader, McAfee Antivirus, JKDefrag, the Cisco VPN, our university drive mapping utilities, XnView and Picasa. It runs all of them OK, not blazing fast or anything but not objectionably slow either.

Some irritations: it’s too easy to accidentally brush the trackpad and misplace your cursor; I sure would like an option to auto-disable it when an external mouse is plugged in. The fan runs all the time, though there may be a bios setting for that.  You might want to get a shorter cord for the tiny power adapter. Is it a substitute for a Thinkpad X-301?  Well no, but at something like one-eighth the price, I can live with that.

Posted by George on 06/05/09 at 10:40 PM
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Man, that was weird

I just tried to log into a secured system, and my keyboard suddenly took an unscheduled vacation.  Only an occasional keystroke would ‘take’ and then it would produce the wrong character.  I restarted several times, with different keyboards, and couldn’t even enter my system login, or even get into BIOS setup on POST.  Then, it started working again.

Takeaway lesson: I have way too many keyboards lying around.  I still don’t know what the hell happened with the keyboard.

On an unrelated note (several thousand notes, actually) the awesome big-band jazz number that accompanies the extended credits sequence on the DVD Incredibles makes great cardio workout music.  Or, music to get speeding tickets by, if you prefer.

Posted by George on 08/25/08 at 09:43 PM
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A Macintosh keyboard for my PC

No secret my hands have been giving me trouble.  I needed a keyboard with a lighter touch and a lower profile and thought I’d try this one from Apple.
image

It was fifty bucks but I like it a lot. It plugs into the USb port, has an aluminum frame with large flat plastic keys, has a super-light touch, and the top surface of the ‘G’ key is only about 7mm above the table.  That’s really flat.  The Apple ‘Command’ key automatically becomes a ‘Window’ key when connected to a PC.  Seems to work OK in Linux also.  Have not tried customizing any of its functions though.

But it has a phantom NumLock key!  No big deal but did take me a few minutes to figure out.

Update:  I’ve been typing on it a couple days and although it has a light touch, my fingers are still bothering me.  Trouble is my hands are super-sensitive but I can’t seem to stop typing the way I learned back in high school.  On a huge Smith-Corona manual typewriter with 15mm key travel that you had to strike pretty hard if you wanted an impression on the paper.  Next step (and I have been trying to do this for a while) is to somehow re-train my typing to take advantage of the lighter touch.  Gotta stop pounding the keyboard, but how?

Posted by George on 05/23/08 at 10:13 PM
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Wood-based computation technology

I wonder how large an Intel dual-core processor would be if you used this technology?  (Considerable expansion of the concept would be required)  If you ran Vista on it, how long would it take to redraw the screen?

(Hat tip to Greg Laden, a frequent finder of Very Cool Stuff.  And if you want to build your own marble computer, here’s more.  And there’s much more at WoodGears.  Sometimes it just astounds me how clever some people are.)

Posted by George on 05/10/08 at 11:59 AM
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Why I like SanDisk MP3 players

I don’t pirate music or other licensed content, but when I pay for something, I damn well expect it to stay paid for.  The thought of having to figure out a license scheme for music that I’ve bought and make sure it doesn’t get corrupted in the transfer from one device to another is… foreign to me.  At least.  So when I rip music from a CD, it goes to plain-vanilla mp3 format.  I am so not interested in any format that watches whether I fasten my ethical seat belt.

So as wondrous as iPod players are, their main format strikes me as a major annoyance waiting to happen.  Yes, I know they can handle plain mp3 files but there’s another problem: I don’t install software unless I’m forced to.  New digital camera?  The CD that came with it languishes in the box; it will never know the warm embrace of my computer’s drive.  This is because in my experience the software that comes with digital gadgets is usually awful, because it always tries to do your file management for you.  This is great (I suppose) until it fails and your files are a mess.  I have my own software and I’ll manage my own files, thank you very much.

OK, I realize most consumers are more trusting than that.

Anyway, here’s how it works for me: say I download a bunch of MP3 files from the Skeptic’s Guide Archive to listen to at the gym.  Then I plug in my SanDisk Sansa C250 (catch one for about $45 on sale) to my cheap Linux computer and a device window full of folders automatically pops up.  I double-click on the one marked “music” and now can see my .mp3 files.  Then I copy the files I just downloaded and paste them into that “music” folder.  Add 15 minutes charging on the USB port and I’m ready!  No special software needed.

Notes:

  • Yes, I know iPods can play plain mp3 files.  My cheap Sansa is also an FM radio and a voice recorder.  And it has a little screen to help me pick the mp3 I want to play.  The comparably priced “Shuffle” doesn’t do any of that.
  • Skeptic’s Guide podcasts are free.  Enjoy!
  • Sansa auto-recognizes perfectly well in Windows XP also.

Posted by George on 04/11/08 at 08:32 PM
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Quick review of MacBook Air

My son got his hands on a macBook Air and sends this brief review:

I’m using a friend’s MacBook Air.  This thing f*ing rocks!  The keyboard is great, the screen is crisp and bright.  I can lie on my back and hold it over my head, while still using it.  Of course, this is the one with the $1000 add-on of the 64GB HD.  A bit out of my price range, but Apple really did a great job on this thing.  It comes with a “manilla envelope” facsimile made out of vinyl-coated fabric. It fits inside quite nicely.  A little too cute…

Just in case you’re wondering what 2-lb laptop would be good for, it has lots of uses!  Seriously, I’ll make a prediction that five years from now nobody will buy a laptop that weighs more than three pounds and most will weigh half that.

Posted by George on 03/16/08 at 06:52 AM
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In which I do my damndest to win a free laptop contest

Don at Life Cycle Analysis is gunning to win a very nifty laptop.  The ThinkingBlog has a Big Giveaway Contest running through the 20th and the winning blogger gets a free Ruffbook ‘Tech’ laptop computer.  It’s an exceptionally tough laptop, with a water-resistant keyboard, magnesium frame, power-saving system, and everything you want if your laptop goes where you go.

He says: “If you are a “thinking” blogger, then you might be able to win a new Ruffbook Tech in the Big Giveaway running through December 20th. All that you have to do is write about this computer in your blog. Hurry up, though. I got here ahead of you, and I do play rough!”

OK Don, the really important question about any hardened laptop is; “How well does it keep up with the star of a cheesy disaster movie?”  The hero needs to be able to prevail in part by his courage and rugged good looks, and in part by his rugged, good-looking laptop.  That’s a shameless contest-entry post.  cool smirk

“Keep the pictures coming!  This stuff is pure gold!”

Jeff Wells knew what was coming; he really shouldn’t have stopped to take pictures.  But his journalist’s lizard-brain had fed the words “Top Story” to his frontal cortex, and he ran out onto the pier.  From there he snapped images of idiots standing where only minutes before had been eight feet of water.  Some people on shore were trying to warn them; he got pictures of them as well.

But as he snapped an image of the horizon he knew it was time to run.  Stuffing the camera into his backpack he turned away from the wave.  It occurred to him that the main difference between him and the sightseers was that if he survived, he would receive a journalism award…

Continued...

Posted by George on 12/16/07 at 02:30 PM
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OK, this is the phone for me

I like durable stuff, and I want one of these Casio ruggedized phones.  Thing is, I hardly ever use my cell phone anymore.  But it’s so damn cool!

Posted by George on 06/29/07 at 07:48 AM
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Her “new” $170 computer

Operation “swap-out MrsDoF’s computer” went very well yesterday as I decomissioned her 4-year-old generibox running Windows 2000 Professional and put in an IBM ThinkCentre mini tower running Windows XP professional.

Her computer desperately needed rebuilt which presented me with a couple options:  scrounge up an XP license, or install Ubuntu.  Having used the Uuu on my laptop for a while now (and less than enamored of it) I was pretty sure I didn’t want to have her navigating that learning curve.  And the time required for a reasonably secure XP rebuild meant she’d be computerless for several days at least - no thanks.

eBay to the rescue!  For $145 and $25 shipping, I got an off-lease IBM ThinkCentre P4 2.4ghz with 512 ram… including an XP license.  So I could take my sweet time and make a sweet build with all her favorite, familiar software.  I may pop some more ram into it later, though she says it is very fast and smooth already.

Her software includes OpenOffice, Firefox, Filezilla, Notepad++, and XnView, plus McAfee antivirus. I do lots of little tweaks and customizations to the OS and apps.

The ThinkCentre is a very well-built computer - it runs Windows with a solidity that you only get from a motherboard that is engineered several notches above average. It has so many USB-2 ports one would never need to purchase a hub. The power supply is excellent and the case is as solid as they come.  The case can be opened and serviced without tools and has a carry handle on the top front.  The front panel is securely mounted but there’s a latch to release it for vacuuming.  But I do have a few criticisms.

The plastic front of the computer slants backward a little.  I suppose this is intended to be stylish but it necessitates the CD/floppy drive cage is mounted in the case at a nonlevel angle.  This means you can’t install an extra hard drive in that cage - hard drive spindles need to be horizontal or vertical.  The hard drive is mounted vertically in the metal front of the case, which is fine, but there’s nowhere to mount a second hard drive, so we have a mini tower that can only hold one hard drive.  That’s just dumb.

Most of the USB ports are on the rear, but there are 2 on the front of the case.  OK, fine, except they’re recessed three quarters of an inch into a the channel at lower-right Still accessible, not as bad as the insane, downward-pointing USB ports on some Dell computers, but what’s so damn hard about making the USB ports flush with the front of the case?  Compaq, Dell, and IBM all try to hide them, which is just dumb.

The power button is flush with the front panel - sort of hard to find by touch alone, and when you push it in, you are in contact with very small-radius plastic corners.  I made this same criticism of an Apple notebook - what’s so damn hard about smoothing parts that come into contact with human fingers?  Style over ergonomics, which is dumb.

The keyboard and mouse were excellent but MrsDoF uses a Microsoft Natural Keyboard which worked fine with this box.  I will probably install some Linux distro on her old computer, stuff a giant hard drive into it, and put it downstairs as a backup server. 

All in all, the ThinkCentre is a very good computer for < $200.

Posted by George on 06/24/07 at 08:49 AM
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Idiocy in electronics packaging

You know how electronics’ stuff always comes with thin plastic film over its shiny parts?  This is to make sure they stay shiny until the consumer takes them home, where they can begin to look scratched-up and shabby.  By then, the item is sold so it does not matter.

Here we see a brand-new Gateway laptop with some of that plastic film on it.  The manufacturer has thoughtfully provided a hole in the film for the ventilator opening of the Core-Duo machine, so it won’t overheat on display.  But the hole is too small - covering 40% of the vent area.  Guess what?  The laptop overheated.  This is a non-trivial problem.

I have seen the plastic film still on 5-year-old consumer items, never removed by the consumer.  It is a simple fact of technology life that consumers do not usually buy a computer for the computer, but for the content they want to move into and out of the computer.  It may be hard for the designers and the company to understand but it is true.  They’re just not that focused on the hardware itself, or on the operating system that is so endlessly fascinating to geeks like us.

I mention this because I recently unpacked a brand-new Apple iMac from the box.  The packaging was so perfect, and so well thought out, that it just boggled the mind.  It was impressively designed to get the product smoothly from the box to the desktop ready to work - no detail was overlooked.  One might think it is a heedless waste to pay that much attention to packaging, until you think about idiot packaging design mistakes like this.  The devil really is in the details.

Posted by George on 06/05/07 at 03:45 PM
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Drying out soaked electronics

Yesterday I was working on a bicycle in extremely pleasant weather, using my small digital camera as a digital notetaker while disassembling a complex hub.  I went inside to send an email about it to my son, and whoosh! an Illinois downpour struck.  Water thundered down out of the sky, soaking everything in sight, including my camera.

Continued...

Posted by George on 06/04/07 at 07:39 AM
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Minor victory through procrastination

Digital projectors are funny beasts.  They get a video signal from a computer or other device, and display it on a small LCD screen behind the lens.  The screen is illuminated by a ferocious gas bulb, xenon, I think, which projects the image on a screen.  In operation, they get hot and always have cooling fans, air filters that need to be cleaned, etc.

We had one in a classroom that kept dropping the image to garish colors and static.  It was an intermittent problem, the hardest to diagnose, but we had it nailed down to the projector itself and not anywhere on the signal path.  I took the projector down off the ceiling and ran it on my desk, reproducing the problem about 1 cycle out of 10.  Sanyo issued an RMA (Returned Materials Authorization) and I shipped it to them for warranty repair.

Three days later they called back, leaving a message on my desk phone.  They “ran it for two days” and “couldn’t find any problem” but it “needed to be cleaned” for which they wanted to charge us. (“cleaning” consists of blowing out the projector with compressed air, by the way)

The “we plugged it in and the problem didn’t happen” school of diagnostics only pisses me off.  Obviously they didn’t cycle it enough times to reproduce the problem.  Admittedly it can be time-consuming, and diagnostics can be difficult.  I used to inspect circuit boards with a magnifying glass to find evidence of component heating, or gently touch IC chips with my fingertips while the board was live (got a few blisters that way over the years but a really hot chip without a heat sink is indicative).  Sometimes I’d cool components with compressed air (in the old days, we used freon) to spot thermal intermittent faults. I’d look for wobbly fans, clogged air filters, pinched wires, delaminated circuit traces, leaky caps, or cracked solder joints.  Seldom had to go as far as signal-tracing.  Finding the problem does take time.

Disgusted, I didn’t return the call right away.  I waited two days and called back.  Much shuffling of papers and querying of co-workers ensued.

“Oh, they tested it for two more days, and the picture went all green and full of static.  They traced it down to a faulty IC.  We’ve repaired it and cleaned it under warranty, and it’s on its way.”

Yeah!

Posted by George on 04/05/07 at 05:43 AM
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Apple computer review part one: hardware

Update: My review of the operating system, OS-X, is up.

You know those magazine reviews that claim to review “Mac Vs. PC”?  The ones where they have a bunch of benchmark tests and comparable programs under “laboratory” conditions conducted by people who are stone-cold experts in both platforms?  This isn’t one of those reviews.  I’ve made my living repairing and supporting Windows™ computers for well over a decade and always hated Macintosh computers.  And I’ve struggled with Linux so the only useful thing about this review might be addressing; “Is there hope for platform migration?” (which is another way of phrasing “Can an old dog learn new tricks?”)

First I got a day-long briefing at Apple’s expense in their fabulous Chicago office on the something-somethingth floor of some big building there.  (My bad memory provides them with far more disclosure protection than the NDA I signed) They covered the basics of the OS-X interface, integration into Windows environments, and the iLife suite of goodies that comes with every Mac now.  And they promised to loan me a Mac - any model I wanted for a whole month. 

I’m a laptop person.  Sure, I have an office but I really think of my office as three pounds of carbon fibre composite and titanium that is my Thinkpad X40.  It goes everywhere I go and takes a pounding from my insane bicycle riding, when I’m not wearing the matte-finish keys to a high gloss.  So I chose the closest thing, a Macbook.

Hardware description:

Apple finally made a laptop that didn’t look like a Fisher-Price toy, and it’s about time.  The Macbook was full-sized (and about 7 lbs with the adaptor) with a big, gorgeous screen and a full-sized keyboard.  They even moved the keyboard locator dits to the same location as the PC, on the F and J keys.  (Apples used to have them on the D and K keys, I think, which drove me nuts.  Whenever I heard “Think different” I always wanted to add; “... just for the sake of being different”)

All the cable connections were on the left side of the Macbook.  This is fine unless you are left-handed or unless like me, you got used to using a mouse with your left hand when you broke your right shoulder, and never went back.  I would have appreciated at least a USB connection on the right side of the laptop. 

Farthest left in this picture is the power connector, a clever bit of which Apple makes a big deal.  It does not insert into the laptop, it just sticks onto the side with magnetic force.  That way, if someone trips on your power cord in a coffee shop, the connector just releases instead of pulling your pride and joy off onto the floor.  I like it a lot except for one thing; the magnet is so strong that I had trouble disconnecting it without pulling on the cord, which makes me uncomfortable.  I finally got to tilting the connector up or down to break the connection without damaging the cord, but most people will just yank the cord so you’ll see a lot of these break.  All because Apple didn’t put any gripping surface on the connector block.

Next is the RJ-45 Ethernet connector (gigabit speed! This puppy is future-ready.) I would have liked a little lip around the opening for tactile location. 

Then a digital video output.  This is fine, if you are one of the tiny minority of users who connect your laptop to a digital projector or monitor; the rest of us would prefer a plain old DB15 SVGA so we don’t have to carry around (and keep track of) a digital adapter dongle.  Many times I have had presenters come to our college toting a Macbook and ask; “You wouldn’t have an adapter, would you?  I left mine back at the hotel.”

Then a firewire, and a couple USB ports, and the mic and earphone ports.  Will someone please tell Steve Jobs that there’s a color-coding convention for those last two?  It’s green for earphone, red for microphone.

On the right-hand side of the Macbook is a skinny slot for CD’s and DVD’s.  Having no flimsy tray is a real plus - you just stick the disk into the slot like a car player.  Very nice, and although I wonder if it makes the drive vulnerable to dust, you can expect all laptops to start doing it this way soon.

Nowhere on the Macbook will you find a PCMCIA slot.  Apparently that’s passe’ due to accessories now coming with USB connectors.  Expect PC notebooks to stop having them soon. Rest In Peace, PCMCIA.

Nothing on the front of the Macbook but featureless plastic.  On the back is the screen hinges and speaker grilles.  That seems odd until you realize the clever engineers at Apple are bouncing the sound off the screen itself.  The sound itself is surprisingly good though obviously you’ll want to use headphones if you’re doing serious media work.

By the way, the screen won’t open all the way flat - Apple has decided for you what the maximum opening should be.  Great, unless you like to work in unconventional positions for some reason, plus it’s an invitation to a broken hinge.  Think different, Steve.

The keyboard keys are perfectly flat rectangles.  They have a fairly noticeable collapse force for tactile “make” feedback but the flat surface is annoying.  I prefer dished keys.  No doubt Apple will have some long-winded explanation of why flat keys are better but I didn’t find it suitable for long periods of typing.

The front edge of the open laptop is an uncomfortably sharp edge.  Granted my hands are a bit sensitive but I found it annoying.  If it were my laptop, I’d be rounding off the plastic with a small block plane.

There are no hardware controls for sound, and the power button is difficult to detect by touch alone. Tactile cues, Steve, tactile cues!

This is a recurring theme in all the Apple hardware I looked at; ergonomics is consistently sacrificed to visual esthetics.  I can imagine the designers at Apple standing this book up on edge like a black monolith and gathering around it holding hands and humming the theme from 2001, A Space Odyssey. 

As with all laptops, the built-in pointing device is pretty useless.  I tried it and my hands were in serious pain in nothing flat.  You will probably want to use an external optical mouse as I wound up doing.  (Enter tirade about Apple’s refusal to make real two-button mice here.  Yes, I know their new mouse has ESP or something but there’s no tactile feedback from spooky sensors.  Just give me a damn button I can click, OK Steve?)

The screen is just sensational.  it is bright and crisp without being garish and was a joy to use for editing photographs.  It did a great job of presenting text clearly so reading long documents was easy.

With the laptop closed, there are few clues to which long edge is the hinge, and which edge opens.  It was like an overly symmetrical door that you keep running into because there’s no push-plate.  I finally put a piece of electrical tape along the hinge side on top to provide a tactile cue.  If you turn it round so the Apple logo appears upside-down to you before opening it, that is the correct orientation.

There is no lid latch; instead the lid is held closed by a pair of strong embedded magnets.  Here you see a small pair of pliers held up on the corner of the screen by the magnetic force.  These magnets are nifty unless you work in an industrial setting where there might be iron filings; admittedly that would not be a common problem.  (I prefer the lid-lip on my X-40.  When the lid is closed, it becomes one mechanical piece with the base so external force cannot act upon the latch). 

The body of the laptop is polycarbonate plastic. This is really good stuff (think of those tumblers they use in restaurants) but not as rigid as I’d like.  Granted I’m used to one of the most durable laptops on the market but I’d like to see Apple make an enhanced-durability model.  Aside from that observation, the quality of the hardware is absolutely first-rate and that extends to all the Apple hardware I’ve looked at.  There are no accidental details on anything Apple makes, even if they didn’t have the foresight to hire me as a consultant. 

I didn’t measure the battery life but I did run it dry a few times and that almost never happens with my Thinkpad (for which I don’t even bother to carry an adapter). 

To some extent this is an operating-system observation, but speed-wise this puppy is fast on the Decrepit-speed benchmark.  Subjectively it is way ahead of the Windows-running core-duo laptops I have used.  It also boots up faster, and goes in-and-out of sleep mode, faster than any Windows laptop I have used including core-duo.  If you don’t like waiting around for your hardware, you probably will like the Macbook.

The Macbook comes with a little remote control (which closely resembles an iPod Shuffle)  for giving presentations.  Neato.

The wireless connection is also worthy of note, but again that is an operating-system thing because the most important thing about it is the interface (it’s the same protocol we all know). 

Well I’m out of time, I’ve got to go to the gym.  There’s lots of interesting stuff to say about OS-X, the new Apple operating system.  I’ll put that in my next post, which should be tomorrow evening.  Tonight it’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail at the local theater.

Posted by George on 03/24/07 at 02:27 PM
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Mac vs PC… the coffee shop poll

I am sitting in a coffee shop that is way hipper than I will ever be, and when i got up to refill my POCoC (plain old cup of coffee) I looked around at the laptops.  There were ten, of which eight were Apples. 

What it means, I don’t know.  Tomorrow is the last day for this loaner MacBook that I have been carrying around, and then I will begin to write my 3-way comparison.  But at least in this coffee shop, the smart-aleck Mac guy is kicking the PC guy’s ass.

Posted by George on 03/04/07 at 02:29 PM
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Mac on loan, part one


I have a MacBook on loan from Apple Computer; here it is beside my ThinkPad X40.  My first impressions: 1) Wireless networking easier to use than any laptop I have ever seen.  2) “Intuitive” means “whatever you are accustomed to using.”  It took me 15 minutes to figure out how to open a new tab in Safari, and I still can’t open a blank one. 3) The keyboard is very high quality but flat keys seem odd to me.  4) Despite quite sophisticated power management the battery life is nowhere near that of my X40.  4) The screen is fantastic.  5) Would it kill Apple to make a real right and left button for me to click on? 6) You have to use a dongle to hook up an external monitor. 7) Though a distinct improvement on earlier MacBooks, it doesn’t strike me as being that durable 8)  It enters and recovers from “sleep mode” very smoothly 9) It is really, really fast. 

In other news, I got SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 10 installed on my ThinkPad X23.  My first impressions: 1) It is easy to use, 2) except for the wireless which I haven’t got working yet, 3) it comes with a TON of very well-designed software.  BTW I much prefer OpenOffice to MS Office.  3) The screen looks nicer than with Windows - SUSE apparently has some very good video drivers.  4) It is faster than Windows XP on the same machine.  And of course 5) it has a better command line than XP.  (I miss my programmable text editor, though.  Will have to find a *nix version of Notepad++  and hopefully an Apple version too)

So I have 3 operating systems for the next month.  I will definitely write a huge head-to-head comparison ‘round the beginning of March.

Posted by George on 01/26/07 at 06:20 PM
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