My laptop is a tool I cannot do without. Not that I use it at home other than bedtime browsing but on the road, it’s #3 after air and food. My new laptop replaced a rock-solid Dell 700M that has been with me for 3 good years and never let me down. The n00b is not doing so well. An issue with the touchpad driver being digested and turned into liquid poo renders the laptop useless at random times where I suddenly have no pointer access and the keyboard suddenly goes nuts and takes every 5th keypress.
I rarely throw objects in anger but I have done. Since I’m at DEMO and responsible for some company stuff that can’t not get done, having the laptop get fussy with me stops me from working during this 72 hour marathon. Add to that the connectivity at our rental vacation house (op center!) is flaky as are the 2 wifi access points we brought. It’s a mutiny!
So, for now the laptop is working (only after 30 minutes of uninstalling and reinstalling drivers, hard rebooting and wall hitting). If it can manage to behave for the next 2 days I might not set it on fire. As things are going, I have a feeling I’ll be going home about 3lbs lighter and the Pacific might have one new bit of fake reef for fish to nest in.
I’m a watch nerd. Some people are happy to just know what time it is and since we all carry cell phones, some would argue that a watch is superfluous. I get that. Most of those same people are late for everything too.
My love of watches is more about design. The detail that goes into the face, bezel, hands, crown, movement and even the band amazes me. The chronographs don’t do a whole lot for me, I have no use for stop watches and a lot of the chronos have a second hand that stays still. I like the movement.
Back in Jr. High I had one of those Casio claculator watches. It was cool, it did stuff. When I was bored in class I’d fiddle with it and change the alarm tones or play their version of space invaders. Other than that most gadgety watches turned me off unless it did something cool. I’ve seen USB watches and some “data” enabled watches but the UI size just doesn’t lend itself to doing a whole lot so I wrote that stuff off and stuck to classig designs like Cartier, Omega and Breitling.
Recently a couple of watches have come out that have gadget potential.
Does a potential owner care if they sell the car the watch (which is only $30K) becomes useless unless it goes part and parcel? When you’re throwing around a quarter mil on a car, $30K might be a small blip on the radar.
Second, and I know it’s an old post but still relevant since it’s almost 60 years since the idea was hatched, is the watch phone. This is something a little closer to my heart on the tech side. I’m torn between my simple busted Razr (the screen is wonky) and an HTC T-Mobile Wing. I like the simplicity and size of the Razr but it’s pretty useless for anything else than phone use. The wing is nice but its freakin huge.
The quad band watch phone looks pretty straight forward. Does the contacts, hase regular phone features but it’s a goofy looking watch which will earn you l33t n3rd points or you’ll get your ass kicked for being a dork. After people ogle it.
Blaupunkt is known for making good head units. Not overly flashy (fast and furious) like other popular brands where if you just want functionality you have to deal with silly graphics. Blau, they’re more staid. I like that but they also didn’t make anything very progressive. Until now.
I’ve seen a few head units with USB support which is cool but the SD card is the de-facto standard for more mobile file use. I end up making CDs from MP3s (kind of backwards…) so i can play them in my car. I don’t have anywhere I can put my ipod in the car so it ends up sitting there docked on my desk for eternity. If only I could make use of those SD cards…
It also includes an iPod & USB port. Pure genius. What more could I ask for? Eh, not sure on that. Since I could use my 160GB USB drive with this, it’s effectively able to hold my whole MP3 collection.
What blows me away is it’s $150. I’d want to see how it handles scrolling through names and titles but for as cheap as it is, you cant be all too dissapointed even if the UI is lacking. Not that I’m saying it is.
My inbox is, well, plain. Don’t get me wrong Outlook 2007 is cool and it does the normal stuff but it’s very passive. In essence it’s just a filing system for the things that come to me. Google’s gmail was intended to be innovative but in the end it didn’t change the way we communicate. Or really, manage mail.
Most of the Outlook add-ins I’ve seen have been, to put it mildly, lame. Sadly, Xobni is not letting people download any more of their product right now so they can work out the first release bugs. I get that it’s pretty smart. But I didn’t get mine yet!!!
It’s a rare case I sign up for the “email me when you update something” list but after seeing the video demo I’m pumped to put this in my Outlook.
Still, the point of there being trillions of stars and humans expecting we’re completely alone in a space 78 billion light years across sounds a little silly. Still, I’m not about to go to UFO meetings. I’m just not convinced that in all this space, we’re completely alone.
And if we do meet some aliens, I hope they’re not mad about all those Alien movies and just want to kick Segourney’s butt.
I’ve always loved my toys. Since I was a little kid, tools and shiny things = goodness. Last week I bought a set of wheels for my car from eBay. I usually have a good experience with eBay and the people who sold me the wheels and tires have a good rating so when i go them and they were nice I was pleased. Then i drove the car and my teeth almost came out. I seemed to have a seriously out of balance wheel.
I went down to trusty Discount Tire which is a great business with a bummer of a name since it sounds so down-market. It’s actually the best tire store around for normal tire stuff. They have some serious expensive gear for balancing and road speed balancing (they press the wheel up to another rotating wheel and spin it to get microscopic balance and tire positioning issues worked out).
The guy comes out of the bay and tells me that the drivers front is bent. Like so bad he wanted me to come and see it shake the machine. Lame. But for $130 they send it to San Antonio and use a secret process to make the wheel true again. He told me that no one is allowed in the truing room and that the process is all very hush hush and no one, not even employees can see it. Just one or two guys who know the wheel voodoo. Kooky but if they can do it, great.
He comes back 10 minutes later, the right one is also bent. Then the back two. All 4 wheels are bent. Crap. $520 to fix wheels I just got.
I called the shop that sold me the wheels and I was ready to go completely crazy and make all sorts of threats of lawsuits and eBay complaints. They said they’d schedule a pickup for monday and refund the money. Just like that. Wow. Love these guys. I said I wanted to keep the wheels if they would just pay for the wheel fixing. They agreed to $300 in repairs so I’m now hunting down some local contacts. Looks like this will end well after all.
Most stories that “predict” the future end up being embarrassing only a few years later. This one on the other hand is damn close to reality. In fact, nothing it mentions are not common and completely doable. In fact the desk they use is frighteningly similar to my own… Creepy.
Too many knobs. My only issue. They didn’t foresee a world with less knobs.
Before the computer, ownership was relatively straight forward (barring movie / music rights). You buy something, use it, get bored, sell it. The original manufacturer of that object had no rights to tell you what you could do with it.
Software started off on the wrong foot assuming that like toilet paper, once you’ve used it it cannot be passed on, it’s yours and if you didnt need it anymore it died with you. Why? That’s not logical! Sure, you could keep a copy and sell it but that’s assuming people are thieving jerks and are happy to steal. No one argued too much and software publishers came down on this for a while and it seems odd to me that this didn’t come to a head sooner.
If company A buys company B. Company A gets all the desks, chairs, employees, carpeting, HVAC, computers AND software. I’ve been part of many M&As and spoken to all of the major software makers, I’ve NEVER been told that we now have to re-buy everything. Or anything for that matter. The licenses just transfered to us. Simple as that. So, I have to ask, how is this different? And how enforceable are the EULAS (that no one ever reads) that are included with software?
I always liked the Cayenne in spite of purist cries about blasphemy and brand deviation blah blah blah. The Cayenne is a cool car and people like it. I think it’s a little tall in stance and like the custom ones where the suspension is kicked down. People in Stuttgart are listening.
The new 2008 GTS model is a serious nod to making their SUV more sporty. Sure, it’s lower but using PASM and the steel springs like on the 911, they might be serious here. Oh, wait, a manual transmission is standard with tiptronic as an option? And it uses the turbo body styling without having to pay 60K more for the actual turbo (which is not all that necessary, truth be told)? I love these guys.
I’m also happy about the color. The titanium edition of the Cayenne was the only real red one they were making and then they ended that line. Bummer. But, the GTS, it’s one of those cars that we all want them to make and they decide not to. But then they did. I love Porsche debuts, they rarely leave me wanting.
The whole melting thing is bumming me out. Ice caps ARE melting and nothing Faux News shills can spew could possibly unmelt the ice. It’s a weird form of denial, it’s all melting, it is, no doubt. Where ice was, it’s now not. As we know from a G&T sitting on the table, the ice doesn’t evaporate, it goes into the water. Watery G&Ts suck, NYC under water sucks a whole lot more. And the bears, that’s a huge bummer. Well except for the seals, they’re freaking thrilled. In a few decades their only predators will be great whites and orcas. And for that matter, polar bears are very nasty. I’ve seen a few YouTube videos where bears (with clown hats) just up and clock some unsuspecting people. Brutal. Still, once there are no more bears, thats it.
Will we fix this before the US is made up of the rocky mountains and not much else?
Do we need any more proof that education in this country is not currently a priority?
“I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and The Iraq everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the US should help the US or should help South Africa and should help The Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for our children.”
So, let me get this straight… This is tough because getting the facts out of some of these Mac fan-boy sites is harder than getting un-spun facts from Sean Hannity.
It’s an iPod with 8GB, a browser, WiFi, Cal, Contacts, and all the movie and media playing stuff. And it’s $300. Hold on a second, I know what this is! I’ve had a few of these. Crap, what’s it called. Oh, I know, it’s a PDA! Not a WAN PDA that uses a carrier’s EDGE or GPRS signal like a Smartphone (see smartphone). No, it’s not a phone either. Oh, right the $500 iPhone… So, I don’t get it. This is a unich iPhone?
This is so odd. I’m having a hard time figuring this out. I can get a 160GB iPod video for $350, or for $50 less, i get a slightly bigger screen, a nice UI but lose 152GB of storage space.
Ok people. For 5 bills I want a phone, the whole 160GB of space, WiFi, bluetooth, java, flash and ajax support (why not a REAL browser like they advertise in their ad?) the ability to add video codecs for divx / xvid, WMV WMA support (why the hell not?) and whatever else is on the sad-fanboy list that all the maniacs put together after they waited LOTR style overnight for and ended up being disappointed when the phone actually didn’t have the stuff it didn’t list as features. Shocker.
I’d actually buy it if the Touch was just 160GB instead of the weenie 16GB. That’s silly. 16GB? My HD eats that much when i format it.
is rooted in the fact that I know nothing about it. I have no clue. I do have friends that have opted to make babies and they seem to be surviving. Some even like their kids in spite of all the poop, screaming, crying, etc. Go figure. I’d probably like a baby, I guess there is a little switch in my head that’s set to off right now and once I see my kid, it flips on and suddenly I don’t mind poop. Or waking up before 7am.
Then i see this and I revert to not wanting to have anything to do with it.
Growing up in NYC in the 70′s I’m no stranger to colorful language. It was nice to see this cool new channel, HBO where they had movies that used words people really used like shit and even, if I was allowed to stay up past 10, I might even hear someone say fuck. Which was a word I could use as long as it was in the house and only family was around. It ruined it for me… No taboo, no interest. There were a few words that I knew which were a no-no regardless of the place or audience. Those were saved for special occasions where my friends would exchange new bad words with each other and then argue about what exactly they meant or what body part it actually was. I was more often wrong than right.
I remember how much of a big deal it was when certain TV taboos were broken and how religious and “moral authorities” would immediately talk of the nearing 4 horsemen and the end of days. And time marched on and more taboos were broken like seeing that guy’s ugly bare ass on NYPD blue or some girl-girl kiss on Rosanne. Eh, I was never interested in that stuff, nor did it impress me. As if no one ever saw butt before. Very pedestrian. Which is why it was never on my radar. But when you see them all compiled, it’s an interesting review of how TV has changed from the days of The Honeymooners and Lucy to Deadwood, The Wire and network shows.
While this is a good list, I think it missed a few ground-breaking moments for TV. I also take issue with crediting Tom Green with anything. That guy is just a human oddity. Not clever.
Being a guy, I never got the whole doll thing. And sure, if some kids (assuming that’s girls for the most part) wanted a doll, it would only have to sort of look like a baby to suffice. I won’t go into how weird it is to give a fake baby to a small child but I digress. So, I knew that some dolls were somewhat realistic, but this is just silly. And gross. And disturbing.
Entries (RSS)