Tricky FLEXLM aw.dat setting for Maya 2008

I was setting up the aw.dat file by putting the Ethernet address in it,but the license application refused it. Turns out it's because I put in the address shown on "FlexLM license utilities", and it includes all three of my Ethernet addresses: one for my physical network card, while two for my VMWare virtual network card. Removing the virtual ones and put in only the the Ethernet address of my physical network card solved the problem.

Learning SketchUp 6 thru tutorial videos from SketchUp 5

It's very nice for Google to put up tons of videos for people to learn SketchUp. The problem, though, was that while the training videos are in version 5, the latest version is version 6, and there some UI difference between the two versions. For instance, the Display Setting feature become Styles. The color of line is now being set in Style setting instead of under the Window menu. No biggy, but cost me some time to find it out.

Photoshop CS3 with Wacom, problem solved

I installed Photoshop CS3 Extended and found Wacom working OK. So it's just the portable version that screwed up.

Photoshop CS3 with Wacom

Photoshop CS3 doesn't do pressure sensitive on my Wacom tablet! Could it be caused by the fact that I am using a Portable version?

CSS and Firework CS3 ... Sigh

Firework CS3 continuously having trouble running properly on my machine. After using it for a while, the left column of tool set will got all frozen for no good reason. I got so fed up that I quited using CS3 and using Firework MX 2004 instead. But MX 2004 has it's own problem:

• It doesn't provide as rich button transparency and shadow effect.
• It does not work with Aero class engine, forcing the UI to rollback to basic rendering.

On a totally different issue, I was being tortured by CSS for the last 24 hours. I need to keep fight and fight in order to get the result I want. sigh.