Links
Photo Album
Administration
Journal
Travel
E-Mail Me!
My Stuff
I recently upgraded to a
Blackberry 8700g.
Email, cellphone, web
access, and PDA all-in-one.
I love Canon digicams.
I had an S330, then an S230,
now an SD400. They're solidly
made, they take great pictures,
and they're ultra-portable.
I've gone back to the dark
side. I once again have an iPod.
This time it's a 60gb iPod Photo.
The Dell Latitude D620
is my current work laptop.
It's a cleanly designed
Centrino Duo machine with
amazing battery
life and a nice screen.
My home laptop is a
15" Apple MacBook Pro
dual-booting both Mac OS X
and Windows XP. Hooray for
Boot Camp!
I recently upgraded to a 20"
Dell 2001fp LCD. It has great
image quality, and convenient
USB ports on the side.
My current PC is
a P4 system based on an Intel
D915GAG motherboard in an Antec
Sonata II case. 200gb Seagate
SATA hard drive, nVidia GeForce
6600GT video card, SB Live 5.1,
and NEC DVD-RW drive.
Just like with digicams,
I like Canon inkjet printers. My
i860 is quiet, fast, and produces
first-class color prints.
Not much to say here.
If you're an aviation enthusiast
and you have a fast PC,
go buy FS2004 now.
If you get hooked on
flight sims like I did, you'll want
a good flight controller. The
CH Products Flight Sim Yoke USB
is probably the best all-around
flight controller out there.
It ain't cheap, though....
My Current Reading List
Eastward to Tartary:
Travels in the Balkans,
the Middle East, and
the Caucasus
by Robert D. Kaplan
Falling Off the Map
by Pico Iyer
Great Bridge: The Epic
Story of the Building of
the Brooklyn Bridge
by David McCullough
The Polish Way: A Thousand
Year History of the Poles and
Their Culture
by Adam Zamoyski
Best of Europe 2006
by Rick Steves
2008
October (2 entries)August (1 entry)
June (1 entry)
May (2 entries)
February (2 entries)
2007
July (1 entry)June (7 entries)
April (5 entries)
February (4 entries)
January (11 entries)
2006
December (5 entries)November (3 entries)
October (10 entries)
September (6 entries)
August (4 entries)
July (7 entries)
June (5 entries)
May (7 entries)
April (15 entries)
March (9 entries)
February (7 entries)
January (15 entries)
2005
December (4 entries)November (6 entries)
October (15 entries)
September (4 entries)
August (9 entries)
July (18 entries)
June (10 entries)
May (12 entries)
April (19 entries)
March (18 entries)
February (10 entries)
January (20 entries)
2004
December (9 entries)November (21 entries)
October (9 entries)
September (15 entries)
August (7 entries)
July (7 entries)
June (8 entries)
May (10 entries)
April (5 entries)
March (12 entries)
February (18 entries)
January (9 entries)
| 02/29/2004 22:06 |
| I have three complete "extra" PCs at home now. That's about 3 more than I really need. Probably a sign of obsessive compulsive behavior, huh? |
| 02/29/2004 14:16 |
| A couple of Friday evenings ago, my wife and I went up to Fry's in Renton, WA to check stuff out. There in the parking lot, I saw four other Acura TSXs. Keep in mind, Acura only sold 15,000 of them nationwide last year. The realization that I had was the clearly Acura markets the TSX to the sort of person who would go to Fry's on a Friday night....
|
| 02/26/2004 20:30 |
| I'm finally starting to get in the mood for baseball season. Spring training started, and I'd kept up with the big baseball stories, such as Barry Bonds and his 'roid rage-induced response to Turk Wendell, A-Rod and his move to the Yankees, etc. I hadn't been checking on the Mariners much yet. They didn't really do much in the offseason to merit much attention. Well, except for unloading Jeff Cirillo.... The big Mariners news at our office today is that Freddy Garcia is getting married. A co-worker friend has the serious hots for Freddy, and she's pretty bummed that he's off the market. Tough break! Do you suppose Ichiro is on steroids? I mean, look at him, he's huge!!! Heh heh...
|
| 02/24/2004 17:58 |
| I think I finally "get" Wi-Fi. I've had a Wi-Fi network at home for over a year, but mainly because I wanted to play with wireless technology. It was cool, but I wasn't really taking advantage of what Wi-Fi can really do. Well, today, I get home from work, my feet are a little tired from a lot of walking, I don't feel like sitting at my desk in my home office, and I'd just like to relax. There are still some websites I'd like to read though. Enter Wi-Fi. With my laptop, laying comfortably on the couch in the living room, listening to sports talk radio (A-Rod and Derek Jeter, steroids, Clinton Portis for Champ Bailey, etc.), I can surf the 'net comfortably. Thanks to Linksys and Comcast. Ahhh....
|
| 02/23/2004 17:22 |
| My new Acura TSX has voice-activated navigation. Simply put, you can give the car various voice commands in order to find your way to different locations. You're limited to certain specific commands like "Find nearest Italian restaurant" or "find nearest hospital," but it's still pretty cool. My uncle isn't much of a technophile; he's more of an antiquarian. He asked me to let him try the voice-activation. I pressed the button, and he said "Find nearest whorehouse." Surprisingly, the system did a search and returned the names of several local hotels. Hmm... does it know something that we don't? |
| 02/16/2004 23:27 |
| Oh the irony of the pizza icon. With my wife out of town, I didn't feel like cooking dinner, so I called an area pizza place. Let's call it "Pizza House" for sake of anonymity. When I called, they informed me that they were out of pepperoni. Out of pepperoni? What's next, McDonald's running out of hamburgers? Anyway, they also found it appropriate to tell me that their computers were down, so they would "pass a note" to the pizza cooks to make sure they got the order. Right there, the warning light should have gone off. I waited the prescribed amount of time, then drove over to "Pizza House." There was a line of about 6 people trying valiantly to give "Pizza House" money in exchange for pizza. For some reason, the "Pizza House" employees were having a hard time taking money from their customers because their computers were "down." Orders were lost and some orders came out incorrect. When I finally got to the front of the line, I was assured that my pizza was halfway through the oven, and it would emerge triumphantly soon. I waited a couple more minutes, then was informed that my pizza was lost. Lost? Lost like "the Columbia and its astronauts are lost," or lost like "where'd we put that pizza?" They quickly assembled another one, and put it into the oven. Feeling thoroughly defeated. I sat patiently and waited. The overworked (overworked? She's just making pizza!) girl behind the counter credited me back the cost of my pizza, so at least it wasn't costing me anything. As I sat waiting for my replacement pizza, I was really starting to get kind of freaked out by the whole experience. Just then, some kind of regional manager guy came in and did a spot inspection of the kitchen/pizza making area. For some reason, it appeared they were going to pass with no problems. Stay in school kids. Don't end up making pizza for minimum wage at "Pizza House."
|
| 02/16/2004 12:30 |
| Out in Aberdeen, WA, this morning, I saw a black BMW 323ci with a Dale Earnhardt "3" sticker in the back window. Didn't realize Nascar fans would drive "one a' them foreign cars." Especially a German one. Teutonic rednecks? |
| 02/14/2004 18:00 |
| Workin' on the travel section of the site. Hotels, restaurants, and much more to come. Mmmm... restaurants...
|
| 02/13/2004 18:15 |
| I was talking to the voice/data wiring contractor for our new building today, and we were talking about 1000ft. spools of CAT6 cable. He mentioned that he was buying 85 spools of cable to use in wiring our building. Yep, 85,000 feet, or 17 miles. Damn. |
| 02/10/2004 22:44 |
| Is there a better smell than the smell of a brand new motherboard? Whatever it is they use to "wash" printed circuit boards leaves behind a distinctive smell. When you rip open the ESD bag and pull out a motherboard, video card, or whatever component, you recognize that smell right away. It's the smell of technology.... |
| 02/10/2004 20:38 |
| I'm cooking two burritos in the microwave, and they require turn-overage every 30 seconds. Clearly what the world needs is a microwave that can automagically rotate foodstuffs through all 360 degrees of the X, Y, and Z axes. I'm not sure how it would handle a bowl of soup, though.
|
| 02/09/2004 12:36 |
| I was thinking about the pizza picture I'm using as an icon for the administration section of my site. Can you tell it's lunchtime? Anyway, the one culinary constant with all of my travels has been pizza. Everywhere I've been, there is always pizza. If you're ever in some strange foreign place, you can bet that there will always be a pizza place. The quality may vary, and the interpretation fo what pizza really is may vary, but you'll always find it. Indian food is starting to be the same way, too, it seems.... |
| 02/06/2004 18:17 |
| I just finished reading Neil Peart's latest book, The Ghost Rider. In it he talks about dealing with the deaths of his daughter and wife, who passed away within a year of each other. He found solitude in riding his BMW motorcycle all over North America--something like 35,000 miles in two years. It's not exactly a feel-good book, but his examination of human conditions is fascinating. Not as uplifting has The Masked Rider, his story of bicycling across West Africa, but worth the read nonetheless. |
| 02/05/2004 19:32 |
| Heh heh... Found another funny baseball injury over at Fire Bavasi. John Vander Wal tore his ACL shovelling snow. Well, I mean, it's not that it's funny in a "ha ha" sort of way. It's funny in a peculiar or odd sort of way. |
| 02/04/2004 16:53 |
| My mom has been trying to put together a trip to Italy for a couple of years now, but for various reasons has had to postpone, reschedule, cancel, and just generally not go several times. She called today to ask me what I thought about going in the springtime instead of fall. I told her it was a great idea; she should go as soon as possible. She's concerned about it being too cold, but I reminded her that Kristi and I spent a great Christmas/New Years in Venice and Florence a few years ago, and a great Christmas in Rome a year or so after that. The clinching evidence was when I sent her to my online photo album to take a look at pictures from our trip to Italy last March/April. There were many pictures of myself, my wife, my father, and my sister having a good time in nice weather. (And most importantly not freezing to death.) Is there anything the Internet can't do? |
| 02/02/2004 10:06 |
| Wardrobe malfunction? Thank god she had the foresight to wear a star-shaped nipple medallion! That was a close one! |
| 02/01/2004 18:34 |
| "...where's the Any key?..."
|
| 02/01/2004 15:11 |
| Huzzah! The first entry of February. On BBC5, they're talking about the Super Bowl, referring to things like "the pitch" (the field), "the touch line" (the goal line), and "the goal" (the goal posts). It's pretty interesting how excited the British sports reporters are about the game. The BBC has a crew in Houston (they pronounce it "HOW-stun"), but they don't get to stream their broadcast over the Internet. That would have been fun to listen to, but since I can't listen to it, I'll pass on the Super Bowl this year. |
