First things first...here is a view from my hotel room in San Juan, Puerto Rico. If I have to do work from my hotel room - I must admit it's nice to have a great view while I'm doing it!
So while you're gazing at this lovely picture of the PR coastline - how about a few setvar tips to help out your AutoCAD world?
ZOOMFACTOR - Would you like more control over the mouse wheel movement when it comes to Zooming? Any number between 3 and 100 is valid - the higher the number, the more you'll notice a change when you scroll the wheel.
XREFNOTIFY - AutoCAD 2004 added the nice feature of XREF notification - letting you know when someone has updated an external reference you have attached to your current drawing. XREFFNOTIFY let's you control this feature and let's you say a polite "no thanks" to this new feature. Setting it to 0 turns off the notification altogether. Setting it to 1 will disable the balloon but keep the icon notification on the status bar. Setting it to 2 displays a balloon, icon notification and fireworks (ok - well not the fireworks).
XREFTYPE - If you prefer using overlayed XREFs to attached, you can change the setting for XREFTYPE to 1. This will change the default setting to Overlay (you can still specify Attached of course).
OSNAPZ - if you're using 3D AutoCAD (which I assume means you're taking lots of aspirin) - you know that AutoCAD snaps to the elevation of the object selected when you use your object snaps. If you'd prefer AutoCAD to substitute the current elevation instead you can set OSNAPZ to 1.
So there are a few system variables you might find useful - have a fabulous weekend!