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)
| 08/31/2005 19:54 |
| It's buffet night. Not that it's a regular event or anything. There are clearly some "regulars" here though. Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile. |
| 08/29/2005 13:46 |
| It would appear that there is at least one world leader who is a bigger jerk than W. At least, according to this story at MSNBC. "More than 50,000 bare-breasted virgins vied to become the King of Swaziland’s 13th wife on Monday in a ceremony which critics say ill befits a country with the world’s highest HIV/AIDS rate."
|
| 08/27/2005 23:40 |
| So after all my griping and moaning about the horrible videotape that I watched, I got "the phone call" from the research firm conducting the study. As it turns out, the whole thing was something of a scam. They asked a couple perfunctory questions about the TV show itself, then they zeroed in on the commercials that were on the tape. Yes, it turns out they were testing commercials, not the pathetic 8-year-old sitcom after all. Well, as I hardly remembered the commercials, most of my answers were snarky versions of "neither agree nor disagree" or "neither like nor dislike" and so on. They had me put the tape back in (which involved hauling out the VCR again) and re-watch a certain commercial before answering more questions. "What did you like about the commercial? What did you dislike about the commercial?" After all that, who knows if I'll win anything. One thing is for sure, though: I will never buy a single PowerBar or PowerBar product as long as I live. If I'm staggering across the frozen wastes of Antarctica, starving and nearly blind, and I come across a cache of PowerBars, I'll ignore them and stumble onward to certain death. |
| 08/24/2005 20:45 |
| Last week I got a call from a television viewing research group, and they wanted to send us a videotape of a potential new show that we are supposed to watch and answer questions about. I watched that tape tonight. Holy crap it was bad. It appeared to be a really bad sitcom from about 1997, about three divorced dads who have kids. It was like Full House but without the benefit of the nice urban scenery shots when they come back from commercials. There was a kindergarten teacher who I think was played by one of the Golden Girls, only she had a phony German accent. The kids said things that kids would never say, and the dads were moronic stereotypes. The theme song was so bad that even third world pop radio stations wouldn't play it. I wanted to gouge my eyes out, or at least run screaming from the house. Surely no network is considering putting this show on the air.... Or maybe it was on the air once, because in the credits it said "Copyright 1997"... The show was so bad I began to wonder if maybe the whole thing was a ruse, and the tape has subliminal messages, or there's an surveillance device inside the tape or something. The show had commercials, and it came with instructions not to rewind or fast forward at any time. By watching the show and agreeing to be interviewed by telephone the next day, we're entered into a drawing for prizes. There were two booklets that had these weird prize surveys, and I'm guessing if we happen to "win" the prizes, that they will be grocery gift baskets. Each question was about a particular grocery item (peanut butter, canned tuna, batteries, scouring pads) and you had to pick your preferred brand. Network television executives are pathetic and/or clueless. Watching that show, it made me realize what it must be like to be an idiot. There wasn't a moment in that show were I so much as smiled even faintly. No laughs, no giggles, no chuckles, no grins. I'm trying to envision being someone who would look forward to watching that show, or who would Tivo it ("Ooh, "Dads" is recording.... Sweet!") but I just can't.
|
| 08/23/2005 16:00 |
| ...from a thread over at Slashdot:
|
| 08/21/2005 14:54 |
| Here's an interesting graph that comes from The Economist, via www.johannorberg.net:
|
| 08/20/2005 08:29 |
| I upgraded digital cameras (again) this week, and I now have a Canon SD400. It's impressively small, with 5mp resolution and a big 2-inch screen on the back. Anyway, I vowed to actually read the manual for this one, and I discovered a fun feature that is almost an easter egg, really. If you hold down the function button, the camera will show a digital clock on the display screen. Then, if you give the camera a good shake, it will change the background color. It must be using the camera's motion/orientation sensor to trigger the color change. It's kind of a silly thing, but it is amusing....
|
| 08/18/2005 10:52 |
| Can you believe I have to stare at this thing sitting outside my window?
|
| 08/08/2005 22:36 |
| Want to know what summer on a Pacific Northwest beach is like? This picture ought to do the trick; it was taken this past weekend near Long Beach, WA....
|
