Synergy is a marvelous piece of software that allows you to share one set of a keyboard and a mouse between multiple computers on your desktop. Thanks to Ingo and Francisco, the dudes at work. Synergy allows you to do a simple and amazing trick: you just move your mouse from one screen to the other, and the keyboard follows it of course, nevermind that the screens actually belong to different physical machines. It works on all popular platforms: windows, linux, mac, and you can interconnect them too...

My standard setup consists of one desktop and one laptop, both at work and at home, and I use them for different tasks, so I have to switch between them all the time. It is no big deal but it is annoying to have two mice, and to reach over the desktop keyboard for the laptop. Well, now I don't have to.

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Swiss consulate in Chicago does not stop to amaze me. It is hands down the best state office I have ever been to. (The other end of the spectrum is constantly being challenged by INS and California DMV that fight mercilessly to be worth the title of the most godawful shack of bureaucracy in the world). Now, when you call or visit the Swiss consulate in Chicago, you actually talk to people who are genuinely nice, and it is totally believable that they make an effort to help you, and ...prepare yourself!... they treat your case personally, and even that is not all - they make exceptions and they do things that they do not have to do to help you. Now, can you believe that, especially those of you who have ever been to the visa section of the fabled US consulate?