SupaKewl

First, before I start with the main topic of this post, do yourself a favor (by following these simple steps):

1. Use Firefox exclusively as your web browser (if you weren't already, and if so, why not?).
2. Install the Sage RSS reader extension.
3. In sage, add the following as a live bookmark: http://lifehacker.com/index.xml

Seriously, do this and you will benefit greatly. I often talk about new sites that are my favorites, but Lifehacker is far and away the best I have found in a long time. My last favorite, uneasysilence, I figured out appealed to my old, college, borderline-legal, hacker self. Lifehacker instead appeals to the current me who is always looking to simplify, make technology work for me rather than hinder me, and who likes well-designed and straightforward sites.

Using Firefox and Sage to view the site are just my way of prodding you to help yourself.

Okay, on to the story. Lifehacker had an article up today about messing with MSN messenger. I didn't think much of it at first, as almost everyone I care to IM with has switched to Google Talk. However, this site kicks tail. I really liked MSN messenger, other than the bloat and unneeded features it presented. Much like every cell phone introduced in the last 5 years. Thanks to this site, my MSN messenger window looks as follows: (sorry, no users are shown to protect the uninnocents)

I know what you're thinking. "Oh, that has to be 'shopped" or "He just downloaded an older version". Nope, this is the latest and greatest 7.5. Oh, it gets better when you see the message window (Again, user IDs have been removed):


Notice the lack of those stupid nudge, wink, and pack icons? Sweet.

If you want to trim it down even further, that is possible too. I just trimmed it to the point where I liked it. Now, I have a dilemma. Do I stick with Google Talk or switch back to MSN? It's nice to have the choice now at least.

If you are interested in trying this, click on the link I provided. The site is very messy, but all you really care about is the little download box on the top left. Download the latest MSN messenger, and the corresponding patch. Install Messenger, close it, and then run the patch. Happy trails.

Software sucks, it never works right 100% of the time

Okay, so this inflammatory title is aimed at those who think software is a completely rogue field of work. They argue that there are no standardized practices, no accrediting bodies, no unions and such. Basically all of the stuff that is in place for industries that are far beyond innovation, and are now simply jobs to be done, not created. They say that because of this software is completely unreliable, unlike other industries and products.

While I disagree with most of this and want to strangle those that say so, I do agree with some of their points. However, that alone would not interest me enough to write a blog post. What this is about, is that place where the average person spends 2.7 years of their life, the bathroom. Specifically, the place where you find yourself 20 minutes after eating Taco Bell.

The toilet has been around for centuries. Even the flushable toilet has been around longer than I care to imagine (I was too lazy to google for it after finding that 2.7 year factoid). So, if it has been around for so darn long, why aren't toilets perfect and foolproof? Who hasn't had to fix a broken flush lever, or something else in the tank? Is there anyone who hasn't had to do the old "jiggle the handle" routine to quiet a toilet that won't stop running? Why isn't every flush perfectly calculated, using the minimum amount of water to completely clear the bowl? Why don't I have sharks with fricking laser beams on their heads?

Moral: the next time you hear someone poke at software, tell them that they are full of crap.

"But each and every year we bust Christmas Carols"

I like free music. Who doesn't?

I was grabbing the latest free songs off iTunes today, and there happened to be a little hip-hop Christmas ditty, "All I Want for Christmas" by Dirty Boyz. Besides making me go listen to some classic Christmas hip-hop by Run, it reminded me of some other good, free Christmas music I found earlier.

That beautiful form of radio known as XM has been playing this awesome version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman by Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan. I was going to search a bit online to find where to buy it. In doing so, I found the CD that it is from, and it was just made this year. It also just so happened that the site I found it on featured 2 songs from the CD for free download. Yep, the one I wanted is one of them.

I might actually buy the whole album I think, but for now I was just happy to have that song for free. Very cool.

Cheney is a Dick

I normally stay away from politics here. Not because I can't take the heat, but because I find it generally disheartening and futile. This is a perfect example. The headline is essentially stolen from Uneasy Silence, where I saw this.

What more could the current administration do to make us respect them less?

Your Email is Trash

This was an idea we had a while ago, and I thought someone should make a Firefox extension to solve it. It turns out that Gmail had it solved all along, and I even knew about it.

Gmail has this slick feature where you can append "+" and anything else you want between your user name and the "@" sign. For example, floydpink+coolpeoplefrommyblog@gmail.com. This would go to my usual email address, but the TO: field would be exactly as above. This enables you to use labels to filter these messages wherever.

Now, I had used this in the past to send myself notes. It never dawned on me that it could be used to create disposable email addresses. With Gmail invites being so plentiful, I was trying to use multiple accounts to create disposable addresses. This is much better, as everything funnels to your primary account, yet you have virtually unlimited addresses. Now, when I am on a new site that wants me to register, and for some reason I don't just use BugMeNot, I can create a new email address such as floydpink+youlovespam.com@gmail.com. Then, I create a filter and/or label. From that point, I can see just how much Spam and email is generated by that one site.

Here is a link to the lifehacker post that enlightened me.

Dig This Groove

I finally got a new CD the other day that I had been eying for a while, and the only real surprise is why it took so long to get. Anyone paying attention to this blog out there has seen me discuss Gorillaz before. They should have also seen at least once a mention of Del The Funky Homosapien. His song "Mistadobalina" has been a favorite of mine for years, and I love his work with Gorillaz as well.

Well, after seeing rave reviews for one of Del's other albums, Deltron 3030, I finally picked it up. Fantastic sums it up. Anyone who digs the trip-hop sound of Gorillaz or just likes old school, intelligent rap should appreciate this CD.

Unfortunately, iTunes does not carry this. If it did, I would have recommended that if you only sample a few songs, make sure to grab "Madness" and Turbulence". Here is an iTunes link at least to Del's greatest hits prior to his work with Deltron (hopefully it works, unlike Ryan I have a very difficult time obtaining iTunes links).

Here is the Amazon link to Deltron 3030:

Right Here, Right Now

Ryan just updated his "five of the now", so I thought I would as well. I was lazier than him, and didn't try to find iTunes links for any of them. I did add some Amazon links.

1. Imani Coppola - Legend of a Cowgirl
2. Joaquin Phoenix - I Walk the Line
3. Cherry Bikini - Just F**k Me (Night Train to Paris Remix)
4. Rev Run - Mind on the Road
5. Primus - My Name is Mud

The first is a track I remember from early college and it still holds up well. I may have to find some more from her. As I said in a recent post, the movie "Walk the Line" was incredible, and the soundtrack is as well. I just purchased it and have enjoyed the entire thing. Both Joaquin and Reese did a fantastic job of capturing the sound of their characters.
Number three is a track I had for years, but had never actually heard. It is a bit offbeat, but hell, so am I.
The entire Distortion CD by Rev Run is nothing short spectacular. If I had been properly motivated I was going to write a CD review for it the day it came out. This track was the first single, and is still probably the best. The Joan Jett, "I Love Rock and Roll" sample fits perfectly with the energy of the song.
Finally, I went back to my high school, Beavis and Butthead loving days for the last track. I remember this from freshman year of high school, and it still is good for a laugh.

Update: Ryan informed me that once again, iTunes is the bomb. Here is a link to Cherry Bikini on iTMS.

Let's Get Pasted

I found a pretty cool site tonight. I find this guy's blog fairly interesting to read, but check out his paste page for a pretty cool idea.

Basically, it is a place to post code snippets, since some forums and lists frown upon actually including code inline in the post. This page handles it all pretty slick.

I Fear No Gear

I saw a really cool product posted on Engadget, and it is at WalMart of all places.

For under $200, you can have an in-dash CD/MP3 receiver that is XM-ready, has a 2" TFT-LCD, and also includes an SD slot for reading jpegs and mp3's. This thing finally does nearly everything I need in a car stereo. Now, I just need it to work with my car's steering wheel controls, and have an auxiliary input for when I still feel like using the ipod instead of a SD card for moving my music.

I Walk the Line

I took the plunge tonight and installed Firefox 1.5 RC3 on my laptop. The sad/interesting part is that it is even a big deal for me. I used to be Mr. Bleeding Edge, always running the latest version or unreleased beta of a product, just because.

Anymore though, I want my stuff to just work (JFW to those who know). I don't often have the time to dink around with things that aren't working as expected, or to simply play with the latest and greatest thing.

However, Firefox is my friend, and I knew that at RC3 stage, this thing should be solid. It is. I am very happy with it thus far.

Of course, one of the tricks is getting all of my favorite extensions to work. I still despise somewhat how Mozilla has handled extension installation in Firefox. Most I use have been updated (I will update my extensions page shortly), but there are those stubborn ones that have not. One of the most prevalent of these is AutoFill. I love this extension, and can't navigate around the web for long without missing it. I searched a bit and nobody seemed to have updated it. So, I did it. I will post this to some forums and hopefully get it more noticed, but until then, I'm decreeing it here.

The fixed version of AutoFill for Firefox 1.5 can be had here.


To finish (since I need to go to bed), I will add a movie plug once again. Go see "I Walk the Line" if you haven't yet. Fantastic movie that should pull in many awards. Yes, I am biased being a huge Johnny Cash fan, but I know many people who enjoyed this movie who would not have expected to do so. Oh, and Shannon's favorite artist, Shooter Jennings, makes an appearance as well :-)

Are you stealing?

I started this with a juicy title, because this is much more substantial than the previous blurbs for the day. This is a conversation that Ryan and I were having the other day, and I found this site that brought it back to mind.

The underlying issue is, are you essentially stealing by blocking advertising? This has become very relevant more recently with various technological innovations that block/remove commercials. One example from a few years ago was the commercial skip feature on ReplayTV's. This actually ended up being removed in later firmware (like mine) because of pressure from media groups. The web browsing world has something similar with the AdBlock extension for Firefox. Since this is perpetually one of the top five downloaded extensions, I would say people are using this in large numbers as well.

The site I linked to in the title and above has noticed the effect this has on their advertising revenue. They have created some code to check for this extension and display a message telling the user that it is bad.

Which brings up the question, is it bad? Do I have the right to block annoying advertising? I think the answer is absolutely, yes. Now, I'm smart enough to realize that nothing is free. The content that I am getting for free is likely subsidized by advertising. If everybody quits viewing the ads, the site doesn't make as much money, and I lose good content.

However, I maintain that blocking ads is fine. As long as people are blocking them conditionally, as I do, not simply grabbing a list and blocking every ad in site. I say this because I purposely do not block google ads. They are unobtrusive, targeted, and generally do not annoy me. Thus, I think with selective ad blocking I am essentially telling advertisers to create better ads or I will ignore them. The problem is that rather than doing that, most would rather simply find more ways to circumvent blocking techniques. So, it becomes an arms race. There will always be new ways to block the new ways to circumvent the old techniques of producing annoying advertising. How's that for a tongue/mind twister?

What this really points at is a complete shift in advertising in my mind. Move toward pay for content, rather than blast "free" content subsidized with advertising.

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company

In this day and age of Microsoft haters yelling to the skies about Monopolies (whether they are warranted in thinking that or even using the correct term is a different matter), who would have guessed that one of the largest monopoly breakups ever has essentially been undone.

Back in the eighties, the US decided that AT&T had far too much clout for a single company and issued the massive breakup. Now, somewhat under the radar, although not to anybody following the telecom industry, Ma Bell has essentially returned.

Here is the logo of our new telecom overlords:
This is basically a combination of the AT&T, Cingular, and SBC logos all rolled into one. The recognizable AT&T globe along with the AT&T name have been kept due to their continued strong worldwide presence. All of the work SBC had done to promote and switch to the Cingular name seems to have been for naught.

Here is a good link detailing this final step in the reanimation of a monster.

Here is a link showing some of the amazing and ridiculous steps that have occurred in the time line between the old AT&T and this new one.

What is and what should never be

So, I got to quote a badass Led Zeppelin song, and have the title be completely applicable to the topic. Who is the last company on Earth you would want to buy a portable music player (or DAP as Engadget likes to call them)? Anyone? If you said Packard Bell, we are in complete agreement. Why haven't they died yet?

See it here in all its patheticness.

Return of the Blurbs

Okay, so a while ago I promised a day of blurbs. I got busy and it didn't happen. Today I'm going to make up for it.

First item of the day (chosen completely at random): one of the best posts the onion has ever done. This applies to so much more than television, use this as reference or for fodder anytime some zealot is pushing their cause too much. It was primarily because of this that I stopped touting the fact that I did not have a cell phone (whoops, I guess I just broke that rule). I didn't want to fall into this category.

Here is the post.

Survey says....Sony Sucks.

Hey, most of us have known that for years.

Back to the more relevent point, here is a list of XCP protected CD's that you should send back to Sony or sacrifice in homage to stupidity. Here is an article on their plans for retribution.

Even more new blogger features

Well, as I was posting the last worthless post a few minutes ago, I noticed Blogger has a new feature. You can now moderate comments.

I don't know what I think about this. I guess it is good to add it as a feature, but I'm glad they default it to off, and I don't plan to use it.

I do already receive an email anytime somebody comments on my blog. However, I wouldn't want comments to be delayed because I am too lazy or busy to go read my email.

Ignore me - just testing some more Amazon goodness

Amazon has this associates program which is kind of cool. Nothing really innovative, but it pays you a percentage when somebody buys something thanks to a link of yours. They keep enhancing this in good ways though, making the links more and more useful. Today I am trying out their new hover feature that gives a better preview of the item.

Why am I doing this all here, instead of on one of my other pages? I'm lazy, and just in case you are interested. If not, I don't care, and I'm still lazy.



Unfortunately, blogger won't let me include javascript. Here was the javascript that would have added the new preview to this link:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/s/link-enhancer?tag=musingsonalmo-20">
</script>

Gorillaz on my Mind

Okay, so I actually stole the title from a Blade II Soundtrack collaboration by Redman and The Gorillaz.

However, this is very sweet. Thanks to the BBC, you can watch an entire live set of The Gorillaz performing the Demon Days album. Found once again by my favorite blog, Uneasy Silence.

Latest Microsoft Build Tools for Free (for one year)

Okay, some will say I have sold my soul, because I am promoting development tools from Microsoft, intended to pull even more people to their side. Those people can stop reading now, I really don't care.

For everyone else, Microsoft has done something pretty cool today by releasing for free the express versions of all of their new 2005 development tools. These are the equivalents of the old favorites like Visual C++ 6 and others. I always have these at my disposal via MSDN at work, but this is cool because now I can have these tools for my own personal use at home. Very nice.

Here is a nice blog post describing how and a bit of why they are doing this.

Making Firefox Even More SupaCool

Okay, the screenshot below may turn out a little small, so use your imagination, or figure out how to make it bigger. This may be one of the best enhancements I have seen to Firefox yet. Someone has figured out how to view pages in IE, as a tab within Firefox. This is exactly what Netscape tried to do, but failed miserably in their new browser.



I found this through my new favorite blog, UNEASYsilence. It is an extension based upon the "View in IE" extension that I have used and loved for a very long time. Just like "View in IE" you can specify a whitelist of sites that will automatically be opened using IE, or you can simply right click and tell the site to open in IE, only now, it will open it in a new tab rather than a different browser. Sweet!

Here is why this is better than Netscape. First, it only opens sites that I have specified with IE. When they are opened in that fashion, a little icon down in the status bar changes from the Firefox icon to the IE icon. Now, here is the even better bart. The second you navigate to a different site it switches back to Firefox. That smacks Netscape on its candy ass. Netscape happily continues using the wretched security abyss that is IE.

All in all I am extremely happy with this. I think it is a very clever way to handle this specific type of task. Here is where you can obtain the extension. Note: if you are still running a 1.0x version (which I am), rather than 1.5 beta, there are two extensions you will need to install, rather than just one.

Hollow Weenie

Okay, following in Ryan's footsteps, I felt like posting some halloween pictures. We have kids and are lame though, so these are from a party from several years ago (2001 I think we determined today). Tough.

The first is the famed picture of Ryan as a fridge (and Dr. Pepper and a drunk viking for good measure):

The next shows several of the females (mostly) who were in attendence (Note: Julie, Ryan says your costumes are played out):
Next, yours truly and the better half:

Next, at a Halloween party, sometimes costumes migrate over time. Occaisionally, you end up with pseudo-lesbian porn (didn't see that coming, did you?)

Lastly, Dr. Pepper is joined by Jeannie, and the drunk viking makes another appearance:

Blurb Day

Okay, today is going to be a bunch of short and sweet (depending on your taste buds) posts.

First, is a newly announced piece of software. This software can take TiVo shows and automatically format them into the right format and size for the new ipod (the ipod video for those completely clueless, even though that isn't the actual name).

This is something we were just pondering the other day. Will this be the piece that pushes the big, unfriendly organizations (MPAA, RIAA, etc.) to try to crack down on Apple and the ipod? Does the combination of TiVo's brandname suddenly let them realize that people might take "free" shows off the air and start viewing them on their ipod, without paying in triplicate? The horrors!!!

Thermos full of wild turkey

Okay, I think it's time for a new song tag. For those not familiar, I will list five songs that I am currently listening to or enjoy, and then pick someone else to do the same, and so on.

So, here is my list (title/artist/album) in no particular order:

1. Black Bob - Kid Rock - Kid Rock
   
2. Daddy's Farm - Shooter Jennings - Put the O Back in Country
   
3. Do That There (Young Einstein Hoo-HooRemix) - Lyrics Born - Same !@#$ Different Day
4. Photograph - Nickelback - All the Right Reasons
   
5. Wake Up (feat. Jay-Z) - Missy Elliott - This is Not a Test!

Now, I tag Ryan and Shannon to do the same.

Word Y'all

My Name is Humpty

I discussed the other day with some people a "scam" that I really despise. I was reminded of this scam by a phone call a few weeks ago. Now, before I go any further, let me establish some background.

I hate having products or services pushed upon me. If I am interested in something, I will go find it myself. I don't need someone else to do my thinking and research for me. This is why advertising drives me nuts. Even more so, this is why we have a rule in our house that we never purchase anything over the phone or at the door. I despise most of those people for even attempting to do so. The lone exception is kids selling candy. One, because I like eating candy, and two, because I had to do it as a kid and know that it is difficult.

One last sidenote on this before I return to the main storyline. Quit sending kids door to door with magazine subscriptions. I know some company is making fat cash at their expense by not having to actually give out product, but it really sucks. Why would I buy a high-priced subscription, when I can get one for a fraction of the cost either directly from the magazine, online from somewhere like Amazon, or in the case of things like Maxim, have 10 years or so for free thanks to stupid Internet tricks?

Now, back to the scam. I get a call from Wells Fargo (aka Satan). We financed some furniture when the store had a no interest deal, and it happened to be Wells providing the financing, so of course now they think they are my buddy and can call me up at will. The chick on the phone was pimping a line of credit. First, I never want a line of credit. However, I was lazy this day and didn't feel like hanging up immediately, so I let her go on. She whipped out a very slick telemarketer (aka Asshole) trick where rather than asking if I was interested they simply verify your address. I knew she was doing this, but what the heck.

She then proceeded to tell me that they would send info, and if I was interested I could send it back. Yeah right. Instead of course, the second it came in the mail I was already approved and accepted. Now, on to my biggest gripe. The "line of credit" was simply a credit card. This is the second time I have run into this. We financed our TV a few years ago because there was a similar no-interest deal. That time, I asked if our financing would simply be through a financing company, or would it be a credit card. The jackass posing as a manager at the store said "Oh no, it's not a credit card." Two weeks later I had my new Mitsubishi Triple Diamond card in the mail. Meh.

So, you have seen here at least 4 scams/deceptions that are used by these people. All annoying, and all the more reason these people should be ignored and eliminated as often as possible.

That's all. Go watch My Name is Earl and you'll feel better again.

Jesus just left Chicago (and I saw his eyes...)

This is a lame post. Accept it. Love it. My blog was yelling at me because all his blog homies had been updated recently and he hadn't. It's not really my fault, I have had tons of ideas and wanted to post them. However, sick kids and other things lead me to either want to just sleep or watch TV instead.

On to the lame. I've told some people this idea before, but I thought I needed to air it to a (potentially) wider audience. If this doesn't exist already, I want to create it. There should be a place in Vegas that puts odds on when celebrity marriages will fail. I could have made a lot of money by now.

I'm convinced that pretty much any high-profile celebrity marriage will fail, because these people are retarded. I can't guarantee any specific time frame, but I can say correctly 95% of the time that a couple will be no longer at some point. Several recent examples include Kenny Chesney and that bad actress, Nick Lachey and one of the airhead Simpson sisters, and Paris^2.

Lame. All lame. I can't believe how fake of lives these people live. It seems to me that they must have a poor grasp on the line between fiction and reality. They believe they are simply acting in a movie 24/7. It's not just celebrities though. Shannon occasionally now watches this trainwreck on MTV called My Super Sweet 16. It is the worst example of spoiled kids I have seen in a long time, much worse even than Rich Girls.

That's all for now. Enjoy the stench.

It's been a long time, long time...

I apologize for the lack of ambition that has led to no blog updates in a few weeks. I have plenty to say, I just haven't been using the old 'puter much at home lately.

In today's lesson, we learn how new media (aka the Internet) has changed how I want products delivered. In some cases, things have become so easy to obtain that we have become relatively spoiled, expecting that it should always be that easy. In this case, being spoiled is a good thing though.

Commerce should not be difficult. Although the last thing that most Americans need is a way to quickly indulge in something they desire, for those with a bit of self-control this is exactly how it should work.

Now, to get from the theoretical to the point. I think it might have been Ryan who said this first, "If it isn't on iTunes, it doesn't exist" (man, I bet Jobs would love to hear that). Much of my music purchases follow this belief. When I want a new song now, I either buy the CD somewhere like Best Buy, or I go purchase the individual song from iTunes. If neither of those work, I'm very likely to just decide it is too much work and look no further. Simplicity in shopping is good in my mind.

Very recently, I had to break this rule. First, we recently re-watched "The Big Bounce" after purchasing it. Fantastic movie, and it starts out with a great rendition of The Steve Miller Band classic "Rock n' Me". At first I thought it was by Sheryl Crow, but a quick google search proved that it was by an artist named Shayne Blue. I thought, "Great, I'll just search for her on iTunes and buy it." No dice. Shayne had made one CD with a group known as Theodore. They were not to be found either. I ended up purchasing her CD from CD Baby though, which was my first purchase through that fantastic site. If you haven't heard of them before, they are a great site, especially because they provide a way for smaller artists to make a fair share of CD sales. The CD turned out to be very good as well.

Next, I went in search of a song named "Unleashed" by a relatively unknown artist named Chris Classic. Again, no luck on iTunes. I found out about this after hearing it featured in a commercial for the incredibly sweet new Dodge Charger. The song was a mashup between "Hair of the Dog" by Nazareth, and a cool rap tune. A quick search of Google with nothing more than "charger commercial hair dog remake" gave me the artist and a history of the song. It is a mashup of an unreleased tune by Chris named "Live and Loose", with a remake of Nazareth of their own song, "Hair of the Dog." Unfortunately, although some press releases indicated the song was available on iTunes, it is not (as far as I can find). It is only available on Yahoo, which thanks to the taint that is WMA I refuse to touch. Thus, I am forced to wait, because it's not on iTunes, so it must not exist...


Finally, if you haven't seen the movie Crash yet, go watch it. Soon. It is one of the best movies I have seen in a very long time.


Updated Oct 23: The info I had was a bit wrong. It is by Chris Cook, not Chris Classic. The song is now on iTunes. Rock.

It's the end of the world as we know it

Not really. It is however the end of the road for my college days, as those of you who read the blog and watched the grad school hell counter countdown and then disappear probably noticed. Disregarding the 3 year break I took after graduating from Iowa, I have been in school constantly since 1984. Ugh.

That is all finished now. My MBA is now complete (pending 2 final grades) as of last night. I have absolutely no intention of ever getting another undergrad/masters/doctorate degree of any sort. I just don't enjoy school at all anymore. I find it all rather fake and stifling -- I would much rather be in the workplace working on real issues that are defined and have a purpose (most of the time).

So, it is time to party. There will be some form of BBQ shindig at our house in the very near future, invitations are being prepared tonight. I also plan to enjoy watching the Iowa Hawkeyes start off their next fantastic football season this Saturday. I will do all of this with no thoughts of what homework I have due that night, or how tired I am from staying up writing papers the night before. Sweet!

Update: Only pending 1 grade now...
Update #2: WooHoooo, all grades are in now. The 4.0 has been successfully maintained.

ICE

Generally this blog doesn't function as a community service (although I hope I am providing semi-stimulating information for others to read). However, I found this information to be very worthwhile.

For those of you who have a cellphone (everybody except me I think), this is something that could help save your life in case of an accident. It involves creating a addressbook/phonebook entry in your phone named ICE (In Case of Emergency). This is someone that should be contacted in an accident situation, and emergency personnel are being trained to look for the presence of this on your phone.

Here is the original post where I saw this.

Lick It Up (MP3 1)

Okay, time for another late night post. I've been writing a huge research paper off and on all day today, and I just can't write anymore. Time for something more fun.

I've had a sweet little companion keeping me awake while writing this paper tonight. My ultra cool wife got me a new electronic toy as a combination birthday/almost done with horribly annoying school present. She had considered getting me an iPod last year for Christmas, and I mentioned this year that it would be a good combination present, especially since they have free engraving right now.

I was fine with either a mini or the standard model. However, we decided that we really should get one of the color models. Now that the 30 GB photo model has been phased out, that left either the 20 or 60 GB color models. I decided that the $100 premium for the 60 GB just wasn't worth it. If it isn't already, my collection will no doubt expand past 60 GB. If I can't keep the entire thing on there, I doubt that I really need more than 20 GB, so that's what she got.

Here are some pictures. You can see the very cool engraving she added to the back:

So, of course I wasn't satisfied to stop there. I needed to keep it with me at all times, it was just too darn convenient. I don't have XM in the car, so this was a great alternative to crap radio or carting CD's around. Thus, I purchased an iTrip FM modulator. Fantastic design, and works very well. I also disliked how many scratches I was accumulating rather quickly. To stop this from happening, and to spice things up a bit I picked up an iSkin. Here are some photos with the iSkin:

I think it turned out pretty sweet and incredibly useful. Now, I'm working on getting my iTunes library all sorted out. Lots of playing with ID3 tags, some musicbrainz work, and some fun with the iTunes art importer. It's just too cool when all of the song data is right, and I can look at the album art in color on the iPod.

Lastly, if you were wondering why the (MP3 1) was in the title, this is the first of two posts I'm going to do about MP3 devices. I plan to post a review of the VR3, my previous MP3 toy, shortly.

There was a white haired man in Panera...

Okay, you're fried from working on a research paper all day, it's midnight, and you need to go to sleep because you're getting up at 6 AM. What should you do? Well, if you're insane like me, you write your first Firefox MyCroft search plugin.

That is the cool little search box that is installed by default with Firefox (which uses Apple's Sherlock technology spec BTW). In case you didn't realize, you can add a plethora (somewhere in the neighborhood of 3500) of different search engines to that box. I have always found it very useful and well done. Like other open source projects, I always want to write my own piece of the pie too.

So, I was searching for a country artist biography tonight, and ended up at CMT.com using their search form. I thought, "why don't I have this on my search bar?" After finding that there was no available plugin for that site, I felt it was time to make my own.

Here is a link to the plugin I created. Most of you will have no use for it. Some will be able to suggest how I could code it better. Either is fine by me.

Reality TV

So, I saw an example of a disturbing trend today. First, I occasionally complete online surveys because they sometimes pay me cash which is cool. Second, I don't like reality television in general. Not so much because of the genre itself, but because I find most of the shows lame. Finally, although I don't really have time to play video games anymore anyway, if I did I would be very disappointed with the gameplay of many games coming out lately.

Having said all that, here is my trend. I see video games starting to become essentially interactive reality tv. Here is a sample question from a survey I took today:

We want to know about your interest in features for future football video games. These future football games might include sports simulation or life simulation games, role-playing games, arcade games, or other types of games. How appealing would each of the following features be in future NFL football video games?

	1 Not at all appealing	2	3	4	5 Very appealing
Design players' homes
Choreograph cheerleaders
Add female players
Be involved in the lives of players' wives
Design players' fitness programs
Get involved in the players' personal lives
Choose players' cars
Design players' uniforms
Control players' romantic interests
Control players' nightlife

Okay, that is truly scary. None of that crap appeals to me. If I want to play a football game, I want the damn game to start and get to cracking skulls and throwing passes. I don't want to take the quarterback's mistress and her younger sister out for a ménage à trois.

Lame. Give me Super Mario 3 anyday.

That's right, I'm Brody. What's it to ya?

Mostly I just needed a spot to store this picture, but I figured he deserved a post either way.

Legend of Zelda 2

Tonight's next edition of Ye' Old Blog is all about the links.

The first is to a new blog of Shannon's to supplement her jewelry site. It is at http://peaceofmindjewelrygallery.blogspot.com. It's new, so there may be lots of changes yet, but it is ready for viewing.

Link #2 is courtesy of Ian. A good post to send to all of the people who have been failed by the computer industry thus far. These are the people constantly coming to you with problems because these devices just aren't simple or reliable enough. This stuff is probably worthy of its own page that could be updated as we think of additional ideas.

"Peeling the years away and we can't relive it"

Had to include a tribute to REO Speedwagon as my title, from my favorite song of theirs no less. I saw the live on Thursday night and it was a fantastic concert. Even if you don't respect their music, you have to give props to them for having played and toured continuously for close to 30 years. No breakups, reunions, changed band members, just the original lineup consistently playing tunes.

Now to the good stuff. I have discussed the idea of software updating with others on numerous occasions. I know Ryan, for one, is very dissapointed with the current trend of almost all applications suddenly having their own method of checking for and installing updated versions. He would like to see one standard mechanism available in the OS for all to use, and I agree.

I was thinking of that a bit tonight, and came up with another idea. Not only would like I like to see this added as a common feature in the OS utilized by all (or most), but I think it could be used to improve software backup/restore as well. One of the things I love about having almost eliminated pay software from my computer is the reduced number of backups and copies of programs I have to keep around. I have switched to almost entirely open source, freeware, or stuff I have written myself. The beauty of the open source and freeware stuff is that it is generally widely available and archived via the Internet. Rather than keeping copies of everything, I can just go download them all if I was forced to reinstall.

Now, here's where I came up with my idea. If this centralized software update facility existed, it would be cool if it could essentially keep an up-to-date restore image for your PC at all times as well. You could periodically burn off a CD with all OS, driver, and software updates in use on the PC. A cool option would be to choose between full downloads or simply a list. In my case, I would be perfectly happy with a list of software. If I wanted to restore, I could simply pop in this CD and it would use the software update mechanism to grab and install all of the packages. The other option would be to maintain a full copy of the most recent version of everything. This would be useful if you had a slow connection, wanted to be more mobile with the installation, or simply wanted it to be quicker -- none of these really matter to me.

This whole process could be extended to include configuration for all apps as well. That could all but eliminate any bring up time when installing on a new PC.

An additional piece that would improve all of this would be a modified installer for the OS (are you listening Microsoft?). The installer should install enough basics of the system to enable network connectivity, limited to some approved locations, and the software update mechanism. This shell OS could then grab any critical OS updates before finishing the OS install. This would eliminate the problem of unpatched machines being infected with malware almost instantly upon connection to the network.

Some of this is a ways off yet, although none is technically all that challenging. Most of it could actually be pulled off very quickly today. I would love to give it a try if I had the free time -- I will hopefully leave that to someone out there who finds this interesting and does have the time.

"Ahh, it'll take a little time, might take a little crime to come undone..."

I held off as long as I could, because I think this issue has already received far too much attention, but I just couldn't keep from throwing a post up here about it.

I am referring to the whole hubbabaloo concerning Rockstar Games and the 'Hot Coffee' hack [NSFW] to their Grand Theft Auto 3 game, and the recent announcement today by the ESRB.

On the boards I read the voice of reason seems to be peeking through, but I'm not so sure about the general public. Good old Senator Clinton (among many others) has latched onto this with all her might. It is obviously the most pressing issue she could be facing right now. I mean, it's not like there are any other issues facing this country, right?

Let's step back and get a good perspective on this. A game was produced where the objective is to steal property, cause serious injury or death to other humans, generally disregard all laws and personal rights. Oh yeah, and you can beat anyone or anything with a giant purple dildo. That's all cool, ESRB gives it a nice M 17+ rating. However, the second we see some pixalized, partially clothed, completely uninteractive sexual activity in the game, it suddenly needs to be AdultOnly and banned.

I will concede the moot points of some that this is the correct action of the ESRB given their rating system. Yes, sexual activity in a game would constitute an AO rating. That's where I stop agreeing though. First, this was a hack put out by some third-parties who found some unused code in the game and created a patch to access the videos. Let me repeat, for the deaf senators in the room: Rockstar games did not intend this to ever be accessed. As someone who writes code for a living I know all about various corporate decisions that result in all kinds of commented out and inactive code being in a final product. Yes, not cool or allowed for a government, mission-critical application, but perfectly acceptable for a recreational end-user application.

Now, the next and more relevant point. This is the part that has been discussed to death on places I frequent, but since it obviously hasn't sunk in with the American public I will post it again. Why should sexual activity be considered adult-only, but not extreme and pointless violence? One is required if we wish the human race to continue, generally is pretty enjoyable, and doesn't appear to damage others in most cases. The other has no actual benefit. I'm not saying we need to ban violence because that is ridiculous, just get our priorities in line. Nipple slips are not the end of the world, neither is a little sex. The only reason we feel otherwise is years of twisted viewpoints being pushed down.

Leave the game alone. Hilary, quit wasting taxpayer money and go sit on your husband's face. BooYah!

Partly Crappy, chance of rain

Just a short post, and a question. Why does Blogger's spellcheck and search (or lack thereof) sucks so much?

I wanted to find a certain blog the other day, and only remembered part of the name. Blogger gave me no way to search for this. The only search ability was to search a specific blog. Even that just takes me to google.com and does a "site:" search. Other sites have cleanly integrated Google searches, why can't a Google subsidiary manage this?

Their spellcheck is equally or even more pathetic. Okay, wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that it might know words such as blog, given the nature of the site? Then, I had typed "abou" and it didn't even think to suggest "about", and in fact asked me if I was really sure before allowing me to change it. Just an example, but a good example of how badly it works. Come on Google, you were able to pull off a moon-mapping site, but you can't integrate some search and spellcheck?

Try this for fun - spellcheck something with an apostrophe in it. Yeah, cool huh? A little later I realized I was dumb for even using Blogger's check. I have spellbound installed for Firefox, use that and everything's cool, everything's smooth.

It takes a nation of millions to make us dumb

Apologies to PE for the title, they've been a majority of my listening the past few days. If you don't own any of their stuff, go get some (Sorry, I suck at amazon links).

I was taking a quick break from homework and sick kids and read something on Engadget that, without warning, ticked me off a bit.

The article was a review of peerflix, a service I think is at least an interesting idea. The basic premise is that you "trade" your movies with others, kind of like a cross between netflix and ebay. There is a $1 transaction fee and shipping involved in each trade, so really it is like purchasing used movies for $1.60, since you do not return these movies, you technically own them.
I heard about this service a while back and thought it was interesting, but would have preferred it were simply created as a user community, trading for free. The idea of the company siphoning profits ala eBay didn't seem necessary here. However, I can see where fraud and such would make a user-driven community of any worthwhile size somewhat difficult. I wouldn't be confident that peerflix had completely addresses those issues though either.

Back to the point, the article starts out by questioning why anyone would buy a DVD rather than rent them. I hate this logic, this isn't the first time I have encountered it. I don't personally understand why people would want to go hunting or fishing, having no real interest in it, yet I understand there are people who do and I let them do their thing. I do happen to watch movies that I like several times, making it much cheaper to simply own the movie, especially when I have rarely paid over $15 for the movie.

After slamming movie purchasers, the author goes on to debate the potential copyright issues with the service. This would be a legitimate discussion, but he misses any valid points. Instead, he comes up with this gem:

"Fleeting consumption makes DVDs an excellent content source with which to start. The Peerflix terms of service discourages swapping pirated DVDs, noting plainly that 'users may not illegally copy DVDsÂ' and that 'as a User, you acknowledge and agree that you have valid title and ownership rights to any DVDs that you make available.'

But avast ye maties, Peerflix can'’t prevent DVD copiers from keeping their pirated version and selling the original. Besides, once you've '“traded' a DVD, you gain title to the one you receive, and making a copy technically falls under fair use. Peerflix may be trafficking in legal physical product, but the fluidity of media it could create raises new questions around what is ownership."

I hate this ridiculous argument also. He states Peerflix can't prevent people from violating copyright after executing a trade. That's right, and it also isn't any of Peerflix's business at that point. Moot point.

Next, you have the steaming pile that is the second quoted paragraph above. "Making a copy technically falls under fair use" -- sure, as long as you don't get rid of the original. Otherwise, it's a copyright violation, and again has nothing to do with Peerflix. Stupid, circular, redundant logic.

The article goes on to state how this could really "kick into gear" if they started doing this with CD's. Huh? Why are CD's different? Because the RIAA is a 900 lb. whore? Sorry, I don't see the difference.

I'm finished ranting, so here is my summary take on this. Peerflix is a less-expensive and potentially larger selection version of the used CD/DVD/video game stores that exist on ever corner strip-mall across the country. The rules are no different because this is online, learn what logic is and apply it, rather than writing worthless drivel about something partially technology related on a gadget blog.

All PR, no Teeth

Yesterday, Google announced a Firefox version of their Google toolbar. I was an avid user of their Internet Explorer version of the toolbar when I formerly used that software abomination. In fact, the loss of the toolbar was one of the last remaining things keeping me from switching to Firefox.

Unlike some, I utilized most of the features that came with the toolbar, as opposed to simply using it for searching. I found the form auto-fill to be the greatest creation ever, including the ability to save credit card info. The display of search words was also fantastic.

Once I switched to Firefox, I ended up finding googlebar, combined with Autofill and Spellbound to be an adequate substitute. The latest beta development version is even better, with gmail notifier added, as well as some nice localization support for maps and such. I do not have any use for the pagerank feature, but if I did there is an extension for that as well.

Now, back to the announcement. I was very excited to hear that Google had an official version of their toolbar ready. I installed it and gave it a try. However, I ended up being less than impressed. In my opinion, it just simply isn't ready for prime-time yet, and I think they need to put some additional effort into development. I think if they waited this long to release their own, they should at least attempt to support all of the features of the IE version, and why not pick up some of the cool additions that the googlebar had implemented?

My first annoyance was the lack of separator bars in the toolbar, or any ability to add my own. The icons all seemed to run together. The gmail icon was there, but it did not include notification of new messages, making it mostly useless. The form-fill is included, but for some bizarre reason (probably privacy related) it does not handle credit card info. Also, the drop-down list available from the Google image itself was nearly useless, as opposed to the very useful list when clicking the "g" for the googlebar. Finally, the translation feature was horrible. You have to specify one language that will be translated, and it worked very poorly. There are numerous better translators available as extensions for Firefox.

The only feature I found somewhat interesting was the AutoLink features that linkifies street addresses, shipping information, etc. This is really cool and I would like to see it incorporated into googlebar or a separate extension. Should be fairly trivial to implement these using Google's published API's.

In the end, I uninstalled the Google toolbar and went back to the googlebar. You are probably thoroughly bored with this whole discussion by this point also. I will say in Google's defense that they still list this toolbar as beta (hey, isn't everything Google a beta?) Also, I like the fact that they kept a link to the googlebar right on their main toolbar site. It is small, but at least they acknowledge its existence.

Now, let's see if Google puts in the extra effort, or if the googlebar team instead polishes the few remaining edges and removes any need for me to use the official version.

Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Ahhh, a weight has been lifted. Several actually. My angry post the other night was the result of too much work, l33t hax0rs, and school work. Now, all three are gone for the time being.

I caught up on my work and things have stabilized from a task viewpoint. The script kiddies have been eradicated for the time being, we still have to work a bit to make sure we keep them out, and I just turned in my freaking 18 page research paper for one of my classes. That comes after I wrote 4 other 5-8 page papers last night. Very nice to be free of the burden.

<tangent>
Type 'leet' into Google. You will instantly get a slew of supposed "leet-speak" translators. Type in elite hacker and see what you get back. Lame.
</tangent>

Now, let's try out this new Blogger image hosting stuff. This was one of the things I found really disappointing about Blogger when I first started, among other things (Another tangent first, why isn't there a "search this blog" feature, so when I want to find one of my old stories I can do so without going to Google and knowing some magic. Someone with more skillz and time let me know if you find out how to do this easily).
Okay, that's not too shabby. Google seems to have it right. Works great in Firefox, and I have the option of either uploading or pointing to an external image myself. I would like to see the size option have more clarification though.

Last, go check out Ryan's post for tonight. I know I link to him below, but I agree completely with this post so I want to make sure you go there.

Now, I need to go splurge on some iTunes. The mother of those three really, really ridiculously good looking kids up there gave me a $20 GC to iTunes the other day to cheer me up. It worked. I think I might have to pick up some Lyrics Born.

Ready to Buy?Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.

Whoops, I clicked the sign-in button. That's my one click for the day.

Ever have a day(week?) that sucked more than any other before, and you had no idea how you would get everything done? Yeah, me too.

Ever decided that script kiddies should be drawn and quartered, and that we should all abandon computers and go live in the woods again? Yep, me again.

That's all. Beer is calling.

"Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not."

Okay, Shannon tagged me to list my 6 favorite songs. I'm not sure if this is ever, or currently, but my mind can't possibly figure out how to do it for all-time. I will stick to current. These are in no particular order, and may change completely if you ask me again in a week.


1. Big and Rich - Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)
2. Toby Keith - HonkeyTonk U
3. Public Enemy - Give It Up (Dirty Drums in Memphis Remix)
4. Revis - Caught in the Rain
5. Wyclef and Eve - Your Love (L.O.V.E. Reggae Mix)
6. Del the Funky Homosapien - Mista Dobalina

Yeah, this is mainly a group of songs I have had on heavy rotation in iTunes while I do homework late at night.

Okay, tag you're it. List your favorite songs.

"Are you cool man? Like, how?"

I love when I find a new cool piece of technology. It is rare anymore, I have an RSS feed to engadget that you would expect to be chock full of this type of stuff, but it seems they mostly have a Treo and Hello Kitty fetish.

I was pleasantly surprised today to read the feed and see a device that is truly innovative and versatile. The product is the VR3 MP3 FM modulator. It is primarily sold through WalMart, although it is sold out right now so I had to find an alternate outlet.

The basic functionality of being an FM modulator is nothing interesting. Nor is the MP3 playback capability really. I'm pretty sure within a month new babies will be born with both of these features as prevalent as they have become.

Here's what is cool about this device. First, it is powered from your cigarette lighter. You know, that worthless thing used by morons killing themselves too slowly, but otherwise pointless for the most part. Next, it has USB host in it, and uses USB drives to hold the music. This is very flexible and very sweet. I have 1 or 2 flash drives that I no longer use, so this gives them new life. It also means you decide exactly how much space this player will have, depending on what form factor you wish to use. 1 GB flash drives are nearly free after rebate now, which would give the same capacity as the larger iPod shuffle. Otherwise, you could go all out and slap a USB hard drive on that bad boy.

Speaking of iPod shuffles, this is where we thought of a few more cool uses for this product. Why not stick the iPod shuffle in here, and have this be the FM modulator? Better yet, this is now essentially a car charger for the shuffle as well. Pop your music on, use this to listen in the car and recharge, and then take the shuffle with you and avoid human interaction the rest of the day.

My car just happens to have a lighter outlet in a spot where these controls will be very readily available, and is just out of the way enough not to be bumping it all the time. I'm anxious to get this and try it out.

I'm THX certified. I didn't even know you could do that in an alley...

Satan uses Intel processor, and now so does Apple. That's the idea you would get from some Apple fanboys after today's announcement that Apple will be transitioning away from IBM PowerPC processors to Intel x86 flavors.

I think this has gone much too far into a religious crusade. The POWER line, currently made by IBM for Apple, just hasn't been funded or focused enough to keep up. They have fallen behind in releasing new processor features, getting quantities ramped up, etc. With Motorola selling off their PowerPC business a few years ago, the writing was on the wall. Good for Apple hedging their bets all along by keeping OSX running on x86 as well as PPC. That's a great deal of extra work, but it paid off for them now.

I have had a love-hate relationship with Apple for a number of years. I started out on Apple's, and they really got me into computers. After the Apple IIGS though, I tried desperately not to touch an Apple for about the next 10 years. I chose to learn all the true nuts and bolts on everything from 8088's on up to the latest hyperthreaded Dell's. However, Apple snuck up on me and the rest of the world while we were distracted by something inefficient and shiny. Jobs came back with a vengeance and realized that people shouldn't care about what their computers were, or how they worked. They wanted them now to be an appliance, and one that just worked.

This is a perfect example of why they made this switch. Who really cares what processor the latest Powerbook will be running? As long as it does what the person needs. Heck, after an initial transition the developers don't really even care. It's just a different compiler, with some different flags. I've built on dozens of OS's and libraries, it's not all that difficult with semi-portable code. All of the lowest, non-portable code should be already done given that Apple has a version of the OS already running on these processors.

At this point I feel obliged to include a quote from Engadget. "So, i don't know a whole lot about the technical stuff.... but i own a powerbook...what does the switch mean to me?" Absolutely nothing you drooling idiot. You already bought your device, it's not going to quit working because they switched. When was the last time you compiled code...yeah I thought so. I hereby create a new term, derds. A derd is a wannabe-nerd who hangs out on tech sites voicing their opinion without the slightest bit of common-sense or knowledge.

Back to the matter at hand, several interesting possibilities come out of all of this. First, Apple has announced they will have tools to allow apps to run on either platform. That's really cool if they pull it off, processor emulation is always a sweet trick. I'm guessing it will not be optimal for one of the two platforms, and will probably not make use of processor extensions such as Altivec, SSE, etc. Still cool though.

Next, the dawn of a cheap Dell running OSX, or a slick mac mini running XP Media Center edition are upon us. Even if Apple tries to protect either of these interests in software, it is a simple mod chip or software patch away from working. Good for the consumer, questionable outcome for Apple.

Having thrown a bunch of stuff out here that will probably put non-techies to sleep, and may or may not be interesting, I will now throw my own opinion in. I definitely prefer PowerPC architecture. Lots of ooey, gooey registers, low power usage per performance, big-endian byte-ordering the way the programming gods intended, etc. However, I perfectly see the business reasons for Apple to switch. I can only hope now that they push Intel to become more power and heat-efficient in future designs. I will just have to deal with the pain that is little-endian some more.

Finally, just because I said I would, here is a direct quote from me: "I consider any motherboard not made by Apple or Dell to be a knock-off." I don't build computers anymore, and frankly just don't care. Suck it fanboys.

I've got a spaceship, fully equipped...

Sleaziness. It's pretty much ubiquitous in business. Usually I can let it slide, as just being how companies compete in a capitalistic marketplace. However, sometimes I see something that strikes me as maybe going to far (or at the very least just seems surprising).

I posted yesterday about Netflix's victory over WalMart. It appears that Blockbuster did not want to take this lying down. Check out this link for a current promotion being run by Blockbuster.

That's pretty hardcore. It's also interesting since I did in fact just cancel my Netflix account. However, the incentives offered by them aren't enough greater than the overall feeling of sleaziness I get to get me to bite on this offer.

The sound of world domination

Ask and ye shall receive. I have been asking for Google to begin consolidating their services. They aren't perfect yet, as they haven't absorbed Blogger or tied Adsense/Gmail/Google logins all together. However, they now allow for a personalized homepage.

Go to http://www.google.com/ig and try it out for yourself. The rearranging on the fly function is freakin' sweet. I'd take it off some sweet jumps.

Yahoo, it's a good thing you have your new music service. That might be the last saving grace keeping you from sliding further toward irrelevancy.

Speaking of irrelevancy, who would have thought that Netflix would outlast the 200-lb. T-Rex that is Wal Mart. Next up, Blockbuster.

Quoth the raven - or some other dude

This is pretty much a useless post. I've just found some quotes I found interesting or funny over the past few days and wanted to keep them somewhere. I says to myself, "Hey, self, you've got one of them blog things, post it there."

Here goes:

• "There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't." - (Original Author Unknown).
  
• "The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced. The arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance." (Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 B.C.)
• And to tie in with the title quote, an old quote I have always liked: "Is all that we see or seem, But a dream within a dream?" (Edgar Allen Poe, 1827)

Okay, getting away from quotes. Did I ever mention that Subway sucks. I mean they hoover it. So much so, they've gone from suck to blow. Subway used to be one of my favorite quick and cheap places to eat. Over the years they became a bit less affordable. I let that slide. Strike 2 was when they decided to no longer carry milk as an option. This sucked because my son only drank milk at the time, not their freakin' juice boxes. Strike 3, as mentioned by someone, was when they made the switch from Pepsi to Coke. This really pissed me off, as they had the best fountain Dew on the planet. I suddenly ate there much less often, and never again ordered a combo. Why bother, when I would just get a glass full of ass Coke. After that, they also dropped my favorite bread, Parmesan Oregano. Eh, I barely cared because I was already annoyed with them.

However, today they really dropped the ball. I stopped in to get some sammiches for our lunch. After paying, I asked for my stamps (as I've been forced to do hundreds of other times.) Imagine my surprise when she states, "Oh, we stopped doing that." What??? That was one of the defining traits of Subway. Are you tired of taking my money? Apparently, as you now leave me very little reason to want to eat there. Famous Dave's, when will you get here???

The Torque converter's running low on Torque (UAB1)

Been busy with school so it has been a while since the last post here. Anybody still reading? Ah, that is the magic that is RSS. Time lapse is really irrelevant.

Anyway, this week off of school has allowed my brain to resume normal, free thinking rather than stuffy, pointless thinking. This led to me coming up with some new software/hardware that I need to create.

You'll see a new acronym in the title. Similar to the Ultimate Box (UB) topics that I have talked about and will continue to talk about in the future, but this one is actually the Ultimate Accessory Box. Specifically, a box that is going to sit on the nightstand/dresser in our bedroom.

This started one day with me wanting a few things early in the morning, and looking across my desk at work and seeing a small, simple touchscreen device not being utilized. This nifty device, made by my company about 6 years ago or so, runs a 32-bit flavor of Windows. Given that this piece of hardware is free, and that I can actually attempt to mangle together software for that platform, I thought I might give it a go.

Here are the current features I intend to have in this box:

1. Large Clock. This is the primary function of the device, as it will be replacing our alarm clock. This screen will be maximized whenever nothing else is occurring on the box. It needs to be large, and legible from across the room in the middle of the night. The colors should be such that they are readable, but not so bright they keep us awake all night.
2. The next obligatory feature, if this is replacing our alarm clock, would of course be alarm functionality. In addition to being able to set multiple alarm periods for each day, there should be a customizable alert for each one. This could be any audio file I feel like supporting. It should be a specified file, or a random selection. The choices of audio I have in mind currently would be MP3, AAC, iTunes playlist, xmradio.com stream.
   
   <Whine>It doesn't play ogg? I won't use it.</Whine> --> Me beating the hell out of the slashdotter saying that drivel.
   
3. Next, one of the first features I wanted to add is a weather forecast. I want to know what the current temperature is, as well as the daily inaccurately projected forecast. I plan to simply tap into the same interface to the Weather Channel used by forecast fox. Eventually, I would like to add a serial interface to a thermometer outside my house to give a more accurate temperature for my specific location.
4. Another important one to add, school cancellation notices. These are going to be scraped from web feeds produced by the local television channels. I had a system for this in place last year, but it required me coming downstairs to one of the other computers. The neighbors would probably appreciate if I stayed in the bedroom to check this, since I want to do it before I start getting ready in the morning. I would like to actually tie this into the wakeup sound, giving me instant notification. Something like this would be a good choice I feel.
5. Next, there needs to be a convenient little pop-up app listing important or useful phone numbers. This box is sitting right next to our phone, so it would be handy many times early in the morning/late at night to have this. It would be even cooler if this just interfaced to some central location with all of our contacts, talking some universal contact protocol, right guys?
   
6. Finally, to go with the last point, there needs to be a memo application for jotting down phone messages. Until I get Asterix setup in our house, we still translate phone messages the old fashioned way.
7. Later, if I can figure out how, it would be nice to make use of a microphone to implement voice activated features. Yell at the thing to tell you the time, snooze the alarm, etc. Nice and geeky, yeah.

Okay, that's my thoughts. What would you add?

Boy, I autostick you where the sun don't shine

First, some background. We traded our 2 older kids and the Pontiac Montanta for a Chrysler Pacifica for the day (the day before Easter that is, although I also drove it again last week). The kids are spending the night and coming back for Easter. This allowed me to drive a Pacifica for the first time. I had ridden in it and thought it was a very roomy and versatile vehicle, that drove very well, but I had never driven it.

There are many interior things that I think Chrysler did right, and others where I think they flopped. One that they definately did right was finally having express-down feature on all windows, not just the driver's. How hard was that? They countered that though by having RDS on their radios, but no way to cycle through the RDS data. Lame. Much worse is their retarded lack of steering wheel radio controls, choosing to place cruise control there instead. Plus, their cruise must be turned on everytime you restart the car. Poor design all around on these fronts.

Anyway, the biggest thing I was interested in was the AutoStick feature. I had wanted to try this out since it was introduced back in the late 90's. It seemed like something fun to try, but I had my doubts about its usefulness. It seemed mostly like a gadget for middle-aged guys who bought an automatic for practicality, but wanted to pretend they had a manual transmission still. My dad himself said it was pretty much junk.

After driving it for a bit, I still think it is a bit silly. However, I cleared up a few misconceptions that I had, and now can see where it might be fun occaisionally. If it truly doesn't add much to the transmission cost, then it might not be bad to have around, especially since you never really have to use it.

The autostick definately gives you more get up and go quicker. As with a manual, there is no sitting around in too high of a gear, and having to mash the pedal to downshift. When I was in first, I could spool up the engine immediately. The AWD in the Pacifica would likely make this feature even more fun jumping off the line.

One misconception I had was that the autostick would actually shift for you if you revved it too high in a gear. Not true I found out as I blew up the engine (no, not really). Actually though, I didn find that it will not shift until redline. This seems like a perfectly adequate compromise. As Josh points out, really the only way to improve on that is to have user-settable shift points.

Downshifting is handled pretty slick, with the computer at some point shifting you down to a sane gear automatically. Nice for not having to shift down after slowing for a light. On the other hand, shifting down works as exactly as expected, providing passing power while on the highway, as well as very smooth engine breaking at a stop.

The shifting was very smooth and crisp in my opinion when driving spirited, and very sluggish when trolling around town. Perfectly acceptable, as I would expect the full automatic to be used while cruising town anyway.

Overall, I am very satisfied with autostick now, and find it quite enjoyable. I would not pay extra for it, but it is a nice addition for free by Chrysler. Coupled with 17" wheels on the Pacifica, a few quick mods to the suspension and possibly a supercharger, and you have a "crossover" vehicle that will cause a few surprises at the track or a stoplight.