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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)
| 04/29/2006 15:23 |
| After the Expedia/Tokyo Hilton adventure of last fall, I figured that Travelocity was the better alternative to Expedia. Wellll..... I woke up a couple of Saturday mornings ago (April Fools Day, ironically) to a Fare Alert bulletin saying that Travelocity had a special sale on hotels in Japan, with rates as low as $3. I clicked over to Travelocity and did a couple of searches, and found availability at hotels in both Osaka and Tokyo, so I booked a couple rooms that would make for a nice two-week trip in December. Sound familiar? Anyway, the prices indicated were between 100-300JPY, which led me to believe either it was a rockin' sale, or someone somewhere forget to move a decimal point. Nevertheless, I made reservations, and waited. As it turned out, the pricing issue had been around for a few weeks, with various people booking and travelling on those rates. Travelocity had gained notariety for honoring an airfare price mistake on trips to Fiji a couple of years' ago, so I figured at the very least I would get an interesting story out of this one. Well, after insisting that the "Travelocity Guarantee" would make everything right, Travelocity chose the sleazy route and cancelled the reservations, offering a mostly useless coupon towards the purchase of future travel packages with them. Ugh. Some guarantee. Anyway, the whole post-mortem is here at FlyerTalk.com. |
| 04/29/2006 11:49 |
| My latest TV addiction is Corner Gas, a Canadian show about a gas station in rural Saskatchewan. It's well-written, funny, and unlike anything else. I've gotten hold of all the episodes via BitTorrent, since it's not on TV here in the US, and I've been watching my way through all three seasons.
|
| 04/29/2006 11:30 |
| All of my trip pics have been added to the Photo Album, along with pictures from our Amtrak trip to Portland, and pictures of my new gadgets. |
| 04/29/2006 08:57 |
| We're home from our trip, a little jet lagged but generally in good shape. Nothing makes a return home better than new gadgetry, and I had both a new cellphone and a new work laptop waiting for me. I upgraded my Blackberry 7290 to an 8700g, which has a better screen, speakerphone, and a faster processor. It's very sweet. Also, my Dell Latitude D610 has been replaced by a D620, which is lighter, has a higher capacity battery, higher resolution screen, and an Intel Core (Centrino) Duo processor. The battery is good for over 8 hours, which is amazing on a 4.5 pound laptop. So, yes, I'm very pleased. Excellent. New home laptop before we left, and new work laptop when I got home....
|
| 04/16/2006 13:14 |
| After walking around our neighborhood and down the Champs Elysees, we went to a cafe for dinner. While we were eating, a girl walked by with her French bulldog. The dog sat down in front of the cafe and refused to move, so the girl gave up and came in for a cup of coffee. We talked for a while, and met Maurice the bulldog. Maurice was clearly starved for attention, since his owner Nihan works all day long and leaves him cooped up all day long. Poor Maurice! Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile. |
| 04/16/2006 05:54 |
| So, the alternate version of the London lingerie shop sign says "At it like rabbits, baby.". Maybe the other one was some hoodlum's idea of a joke.... Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile. |
| 04/16/2006 04:35 |
| We've just boarded the Eurostar heading for Paris. We're armed with sandwiches, drinks, and chips, and we'll be in Paris soon. Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile. |
| 04/16/2006 01:37 |
| Anyway, as I was going to say.... We went to Yo Sushi for dinner last night. I can't decide if I like the sushi or the conveyor belt more. We're now showering, packing, and heading for the train station. Paris here we come.... Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile. |
| 04/16/2006 01:32 |
| Holy crap. I was coming into the kitchen here to sit and type a few emails, and I cracked my head on a low doorway. I didn't think anything of it, but it's bleeding, and I found a clump of skin and hair that was scraped clean off. Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile. |
| 04/15/2006 09:32 |
| We've just finished touring the British Museum, and now it's breaktime at the Starbucks right across the street. This morning we tried to visit Westminster Abbey, but the line ran around the block, so we moved on. All these tourists! Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile. |
| 04/13/2006 13:12 |
| Seen in the window of a lingerie shop in London: A tit like a rabbit's baby. Huh? Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile. |
| 04/12/2006 17:55 |
| We're at the airport, eating at Anthony's, waiting for our flight..... Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile. |
| 04/09/2006 16:11 |
| That didn't last long. The TeraStation revealed itself to be a flawed product, and now I see why Fry's had big rebates on them. They don't really work with Mac OS X, even though the box says they do. They do, as long as your path and filenames don't exceed 32 characters, and don't contain any punctuation. Also, when trying to upgrade the firmware in my TeraStation, the existing firmware got corrupted and the box kept locking up. There must be a better way to add storage to a home network, and I took the TeraStation back to Fry's. Ah well.... |
| 04/08/2006 15:46 |
| Among the fun challenges of laptop ownership is finding just the right bag/case/sleeve to protect the laptop. I'm partial to more minimal stuff like neoprene sleeves. I have a Tucano Second Skin sleeve for my work laptop, a Dell Latitude D610. I actually use the Second Skin made for the 14" iBook, and it fits perfectly. For the new MacBook Pro, I've ordered the Bitolithic Sleeve, all the way from Australia. They include a screen protector sheet, and a little pouch for the AC adapter. Should be nice....
|
| 04/08/2006 15:38 |
| I was waiting (im)patiently for Apple to release a 12" MacBook Pro, and I began to hear reports that there wasn't going to be one. Once Apple released Boot Camp, which allows you to dual-boot between OS X and Windows, I figured the time was as good as it would get to pull the trigger. I've put my Inspiron 6000 up for sale, and ordered a 15" MacBook Pro. I ordered the 1.83gHz CPU, 512mb RAM, 80gb HD, etc. etc..... and it is very, very impressive. I added an additional 1gb SODIMM from Fry's, and used the Boot Camp utility to get WindowsXP installed so that I can still run MS Streets & Trips and MS Autoroute... Most of the time, I'll be running OS X, since most of my fiddling is with Firefox, media players, and so forth.... I also recently added a 1TB Buffalo TeraStation network-attached storage box to hold music, movies, pictures, and other stuff, so a majority of the content that I view on the MBP will be streamed from there. Really, I could probably function without my WinXP desktop machine and my WinXP server, relying solely on the MBP and the TeraStation... hmm..... |
