Dosboy's Bits and Bytes

I'm sure this won't be my first Bluetooth Blues post, so I'm designating it "Part I". Here I sit, having just realized a couple of hours ago that Salling Clicker has a Windows version. I've heard great things about it on MacOS for years, and have obviously been living in a hole since they're at version 3.01. At any rate, I got very excited. However, my excitement soon subsided. You see, I have two active Bluetooth computers. One of them is running Vista and the other running XP Pro. Salling Clicker doesn't support Vista. No problem, I have an XP box. Well, I've installed the Bluesoleil stack on there to try it out with the Wiimote (which works beautifully, but that's the topic of another post). Unfortunately, Salling Clicker also does not currently support the Bluesoleil stack. So, what do I do? My options as I see them are:

1. Uninstall Bluesoleil and fall back on the MS stack. In turn, lose the ability to use the Wiimote, but gain the ability to use Salling Clicker.
2. Stick with the Bluesoleil stack and the Wiimote. This means waiting for the next release of Salling Clicker, which according to google has been in beta since November.
3. Install the Widcomm stack on my XP box. Unfortunately, it's a Bluetake dongle on that box which shipped with the Toshiba stack, so it would mean buying a new dongle or hacking the Widcomm stack to work. Overall a very unappealing option.

All in all, this is just a taste of all things Bluetooth. I've been dealing with stupid issues like these for years, as have my friends. I guess since I haven't really used Bluetooth as more than a "dumb user" for a year or two I figured things might have stabilized. I guess not.

*For anyone that might be offended by my "dumb user" comment (assuming anyone other than my sister is reading this), it's not a personal slight on anyone. I often like to use my technology in a manner pretending that it's the first time I've ever seen such a device, trying to emulate the common user's experience. I employ the label "dumb" because I act, well, dumb. I see how far I can get using a piece of tech before I have to resort to looking in the manual or drawing on my technical know-how. This is strange. I'm defending myself to "the web", a mass anonymous audience, most of whom will never ever read this. And yet I feel compelled to write a disclaimer of sorts. Huh. Well, I think I need to rid myself of this habit, and maybe just add an all-encompassing disclaimer somewhere. Writing a diatribe like this every time I say something that might be construed as offensive is gonna get old real fast.