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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)
| 03/29/2004 08:56 |
| Here are this morning's Inbox stats: 544 New Messages 457 of them were caught by the Junk E-Mail filter 25 of them were Junk E-Mail that got through 57 of them were firewall notifications 5 of them were actual useful messages Tell me again why spamming is not a capital offense? |
| 03/26/2004 09:27 |
| Another beautiful spring morning in the Pacific Northwest... Here's the view outside my office window at 8:25am, Friday, March 26, 2004:
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| 03/20/2004 17:32 |
| Okay folks, we've got to put a stop to something right now: those idiotic oval stickers that induhviduals put on their cars to look like they've been to some exotic foreign country. It's especially trendy to have phony oval stickers with letters representing some ski resort, college/university, or other destination. These stickers actually serve a purpose in Europe, where people drive their cars from one country to another, but here in the U.S. they're mostly displayed on SUVs shuttling back and forth from Starbucks to the mall. It was somewhat amusing to see someone with a Volkswagen slap the big "D" on the bumper, like their car had actually been on the Autobahn at one point, but this whole phenomenon has gotten out of hand. Yes, you, loser frat boy with the DMB* sticker on your 1994 Nissan Pathfinder. The "Calvin peeing on *.*" stickers were pretty bad, but they seem to be going away. These oval stickers are spreading quickly, but I think we can nip them in the bud. * = Dave Mathews Band
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| 03/16/2004 18:21 |
| In Larry Stone's piece in Tuesday's Seattle Times, Mike Cameron said: "I wasn't crazy, deranged, like Cirillo. I can play at Safeco." |
| 03/14/2004 11:07 |
| I'm currently chatting with a friend from Arkansas. She never wears shoes, and she doesn't know how to read. She's afraid of us Northerners.....
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| 03/12/2004 20:21 |
| If you want a really crappy PC baseball game, look no further than MVP Baseball 2004. It looks okay visually, but the baseball intelligence of the game is lacking. Here are four examples of either poor programming, or lack of understanding of baseball: 1) With a runner on first, I hit a foul pop-up behind third base. The runner on first immediately takes off for second base. Even little leaguers would know better. The third baseman made the catch in foul territory, then threw to first for the easy double play. Since I seem to have little control over when a runner will decide to take an extra base, I've started making runners slide into every base. That seems to make them stop, even if it's odd to see someone slide into first base on a single to the outfield. 2) I hit a nice line drive single to center field, which the center fielder came up with cleanly. He threw to the cutoff man near second, and surprise, the batter wasn't stopping at first. The batter was out by about 5 steps at second base. Did the first base coach tell him to take an extra base or something? 3) My favorite was when a man on second stood there and watched while the batter hit a line drive that caromed off the wall in deep center field. What? Me? Run to third? Oh yeah.... 4) I hit a sinking liner to center field. The center fielder had to sprint straight in and make a shoestring catch. Oddly, the play-by-play announcer saw it differently, saying "that one falls in for a hit..." Heaven forbid a software company not just shove a title out to the shelves at a pre-determined date each year just because they can. "Well, jeez, we have to have a 2004 version. Just ship whatever you have done...." The scoreboards don't even work properly. At Safeco Field, the scoreboard will show the same number of hits as runs for the Mariners. For example, if I have 2 runs on 8 hits, the scoreboard will show 8 runs on 8 hits. Every time the M's get a hit, the scoreboard operator sees fit to award them a run. Embarrassing....
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| 03/10/2004 18:59 |
| John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University, offers the following: "Portion of the world population killed during the bloody 20th century by war; international and civil; or by genocide or by mass killings: a bit over one percent. Probability that an American will die in an automobile accident during that person's lifetime: a bit over one percent." |
| 03/07/2004 10:29 |
| Today I'm doing a side-by-side comparison of the Stinkpad T40 and the Dell Latitude D600. I'm not sure how I went so long without remembering the very laptop we use at our office, and that I've recommended to all of our docs for their use. It's one of Dell's business-class laptops, it's Centrino, and it has identical specs to the T40/41. No hard drive accelerometer, but I've never had a problem with dropping my laptops off of highway overpasses anyway. It does have better graphics, using the Radeon 9000 instead of the 7500. It's not industrial looking like the Thinkpad, in fact, it's pretty pleasant to look at, with a two-tone grey magnesium case. The screen is good, the keyboard is good, it's a fast machine, and Dell's price for a 2nd 256mb SODIMM is pretty reasonable. If I configure it the exact same way as that T41 special, even paying for a second battery to make it fair, it's still $10 cheaper. So in otherwords, price is a push. Neither of them has a firewire port, though, which is a bummer as far as my iPod is concerned. The T40 does seem to have better battery life.
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| 03/06/2004 17:13 |
| Well, I'm back from a reconnaissance mission, scouting out prospects for my new laptop computer. I'm leaning towards an IBM Thinkpad T41, but I wanted to feel like I considered every option. I went to the Apple store in Bellevue Square, partly to see what all the hype is about, but mainly to check out the iBooks and PowerBooks. They are wonderfully designed machines, great to touch and look at. As computing devices, I think I'll pass. They're slow, the keyboards aren't very good, and they're just plain overpriced for what you get. I didn't see anyone buying anything there at the Bellevue Apple store, and the Bellevue Square shopping center is tres, tres cher. I'm not sure how they're managing to pay their rent. After that, it was on to Fry's to check out the more reasonable selection. Unfortunately, all of the Sonys, Toshibas, Compaqs, Fujitsus, etc. were pretty forgettable. Plasticky, poorly designed, pieces of disposable electronics. I'm thinking the T41 is the machine for me....
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| 03/04/2004 22:35 |
| In his first spring training game this season, Mike Cameron crushed a home run and made a fine running catch in the outfield to take away an extra base hit. The only problem was that he did both of those things for the New York Mets instead of the Seattle Mariners. Great, just great. |
| 03/04/2004 19:25 |
| Here's a thought: why not start a boycott of companies who stand to profit from Spam? The companies whose products are advertised in all those unwanted emails should be made to suffer. I'll start the list right here: Gevalia Coffee Roxio Software Boca Java Let's all just boycott those companies until they get the message. Any others? |
| 03/02/2004 19:21 |
| Time for another "clean out the office" sale. AMD Athlon XP 1800 System Asus A7N266-VN nForce Motherboard 256mb RAM 40gb Western Digital Hard drive DVD-ROM drive CD-RW drive Integrated GeForce 2 graphics Realtek Dolby digital audio 10/100 network card v.92 modem 2 USB ports Antec SLK1600 Mini Tower case w/ 300watt power supply $300 Intel Celeron 1.8ghz System VIA P4PB-400 Motherboard 512mb RAM ATI 9200SE 64mb AGP Video Card 20gb Hard Drive DVD-ROM drive CD-RW drive 3 1/2" floppy drive Via 6 channel audio Via 10/100 network card V.92 modem 2 IEEE 1394 (FireWire ®) ports 4 USB ports Enlite 7237 Mid Tower case w/ 300watt power supply $400 Sony 200es 17" CRT Monitor $50, or free with either desktop PC above If interested, shoot me an email at wyzik@comcast.net
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