Home Office

Home offices have been springing up in every room of the house - even sharing the living room, as families increasingly find togetherness around the computer. Now, with the advent of the affordable PC, there's even more of a push to find accommodations for the technology. "The $500-and-under-PC this Christmas will open up the market like never before for less-affluent people who haven't bought one," said Ray Allegrezza, editor of SoHo Today, the small-office/home-office furniture journal.

The chairwoman of the township's Planning Board denied yesterday that she violated ethical standards by working out of her home while the board revised a municipal ordinance regulating home offices. With Township Committee elections less than three weeks away, the local governing body is asking a state agency to determine whether Nancy Myers, a Democratic candidate for one of two open committee seats, should be penalized. Two Republican committee members and a Cinnaminson resident say they believe there is a conflict of interest.

It just snaps together?" I asked the salesman, pointing at the floor model of a simple plastic desk, just big enough to hold a computer and keyboard, a cup of coffee, a sweet roll, some note paper and a telephone - the tools of my trade. "Right," the salesman said. "Just snap it together or unsnap it to take it apart. " "It doesn't have bolts, screws or anything like that?" "Oh, no, it's real easy the way they make these things nowadays. Sell lots of them. " Real easy.

Francis R. Coyne, 80, a lawyer and former executive at what is now the Magee Rehabilitation unit of Jefferson Health Systems, died Friday, May 25, of kidney failure at his home in Drexel Hill. Mr. Coyne was executive vice president at Magee from 1978 to 1992, chief operating officer there from 1980 to 1992, and director of development from 1990 to 1992, his son Francis R. Jr. said in a Tuesday phone interview. "He was an advocate of patients' rights and the Americans With Disabilities Act," his son said.

The e-mail arrived in the late afternoon of March 30. The subject line read: INVITATION. It looked like spam and I was about to delete it, but something caught my eye in the preview window. A seal of some sort. The White House. Like any registered voter, I receive e-mails all the time from Barack, Michelle, Joe, and Jill. This was different. I wasn't being asked to donate or host a gathering in my home. I was invited to their home, for a signing of the JOBS Act. I reacted in a manner consistent with the maturity and grace I have cultivated in my 43 years of life.

When did fact checking get so sexy? I arrived home the other night to catch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert going on about the rising class of sharpshooters who aim to separate substance from spin. The factcheckstapo, Colbert called them, as he dismissed those who balked at a few things Paul Ryan told the GOP convention in Tampa. Stewart, for his part, accused the entire Fourth Estate of falling down on the essential job. "When did fact checking and journalism go their separate ways?"

Sometimes, when guests step inside the Washington Square condominium of Gail Caskey Winkler and her husband, Roger Moss, there's a classic double-take moment. Past the typical 1960s architecture in the building's public spaces, a sudden sense of grandeur grabs you - all the way from antiquity forward. In the vestibule, a classic black-and-white patterned floor of marble and granite, rests a first-century B.C. amphora, a carrying vessel that looks its age. But on a wall nearby is an unmistakably modern steel sculpture.

WOULDN'T it be great to have Wi-Fi wireless Internet connectivity everywhere for our gadgets? Someday maybe we will - if big guns like Google and Comcast and forward-thinking municipalities ever decide to build hot spots to totally blanket the town. But at the moment, we can make do with freedom-breeding, Wi-Fi signal-spreading devices such as the D-Link DAP-1320 Wireless Range Extender and Novatel's aptly named MiFi Liberate mobile hot spot.   Plug 'n' Play Designed for home use, the tiny D-Link plug-in booster does a pretty decent job of extending the signal range of your current wireless router, which improves the speed and stability of signal reception at "fringe" zones far removed from the wireless router.

Interior designer Steven Weixler had long lived in spacious pre-World War II apartments when he decided to buy a small one-bedroom apartment in a newer building in Philadelphia. The two main rooms of the 850-square-foot apartment, the bedroom and living room, were not only tiny, but the biggest window and a balcony were located in the bedroom. The arrangement didn't suit Weixler's furniture, particularly his favorite large oil painting and a valuable English Regency table. "I didn't want to give them up or to cram them into small rooms," Weixler said.

The Warminster Township Zoning Hearing Board has granted a request by psychologist Robert J. Berchick to build a single-family home and office at Street Road and School House Lane. In approving an exception and a front-yard variance at a meeting Wednesday night, the board stipulated that Berchick must build at least 50 feet from the curb line and 40 feet from the School House Lane right-of-way. Berchick, who plans to move to Warminster from Bensalem, said the entrance to his office would face Street Road and the entrance to his home would face School House Lane.