Good news for those of you interested in the new Treo 650.
I hear that it can survive being dropped from a height of 5 feet onto an ice road then slid across the parking lot into a a snowbank.
But that’s just rumor I heard of course.
ShaC: did i ever tell you about the old man?
ShaC: at the airport
Brian: no
Brian: welllll
Brian: maybe
ShaC: this was when i was like… 19
Brian: I can’t remember the story
ShaC: maybe almost 20
Brian: it has something to do with two bits
Brian: this is why you should blog this stuff
ShaC: i was picking up my gf at the airport and some old man w/ a cane came up to me and asked “how much is the phone booth these days? 2 bits?”
ShaC: and it was when they had just hiked the price to $0.25
Brian: no longer
Brian: ah
Brian: that was a while ago
ShaC: so i said “yeah.. it just went up.”
ShaC: the old man said thanks… then i realized, holy crap… how many people here would have actually known what he meant by 2 bits? let alone… the random ass 19yr old
Brian: he was lucky that day
ShaC: yeah. im sure if he hadnt received the right response he would have started swinging his cane violently
Brian: you all die!
Brian: ONCE A CENTURY HUMANITY IS TESTED
Great reference for past and present Canon cameras and lenses.
Web link of note: Canon Camera Museum
(At http://www.canon.com/camera-museum/)
NorCal is now one of my favorite brands (in case you want to buy me a tshirt)
Web link of note: Nor*Cal
(At http://www.nhs-inc.com/norcal/norcal.html)
I am absolutely amazed right now. Even though I haven’t been posting much over the last few months, I definitely don’t feel like I’ve been neglecting my blog. In fact, I’ve been paying attention to it almost every day. Why? Blog spammers. It’s 7:15p on Sunday night. I just had to remove about 12 spams about Viagra, Levitra, ummm Poker too I think. That would be 12 new spams since I last cleaned them out on Thursday.
I really don’t know what the solution to this will be. I suppose if I have a free moment this week I will hunt around for “solutions” and maybe even prod Brian into trying one.
Is my blog especially attractive to blog spammers for some reason? I can’t imagine what some of these larger blogs do in order to have open-comments (without registration). Maybe I need to hire day-laborers to babysit my blog and clean out spam.
Blog spammers, you know who you are… All I can say is if you post spam, it will be deleted promptly… damn yous!
On my way home from work I usually pass through Palo Alto. I take Lytton Ave and make a left onto Middlefield. It’s a pretty high traffic intersection so there are 2 lanes, 1 for left only, and 1 for left, right, or straight (aka bicuriously onward). Well I never see anyone make a left from the right lane… now I know why.
There were about 6 cars making the left from the left lane and zero in the right, so of course I zip over into the empty lane. As I’m whipping through the turn I think to myself, “wouldn’t it suck if this huge ass cherokee didn’t even both looking and tried to finish his turn in my lane…. OH SHIT!”
Guess what happened next. Luckily my breaks work great.
Now I know why people don’t use the right lane to make that left. It’s not because the don’t know they can, it’s because they know what will happen.
Apparently Gizmodo (as well as a couple other random sites) has posted information about www.allofmp3.com. Great… now the site is COMPLETELY swamped and down. SCREWED!
Anyone who knows me has heard me going on and on about All Of Mp3, they are a russian music site based out of Moscow. They offer incredibly cheap prices on digital music with a very large selection of American mainstream music. What makes them special?
Also for most of their catalog, bit rates are only available up to 384k. The are most likely re-encoding wav or aiff samples on the fly. It doesn’t producde the best quality later, but for the price… I’m sure for 99% of their customers it’s completely acceptable. What about that last 1%? For them there is OnlineEncodingExclusive. This is an encoding option available for a select few albums allowing you to have the albums encoded directly from a CD-DA quality source. This means that ideally it will come out exactly the same quality as if you bought the CD yourself then encoded it. The price jumps a bit if you select this option… but that’s okay since as I said earlier, price is hardly an option when compared to US CD and digital music prices.
One more downside… The song names and tags aren’t always quite right. Actually, I’d say at least 1 out of 10 songs will be either mispelled or have something else wrong with them causing import into your favorite music mgmt software to need a little guidance and massaging. Once again, for the price, probably worth it.
How is this possible so cheaply? I just don’t know. I’ve heard MANY different explanations ranging from licensing costs to rumors of the Russian Mafia (I doubt the latter). What I do know is that new music cd’s are ALOT cheaper in Russia. I’ve been told a new cd can be purchased for about 125 Rubles in Moscow, which comes out to ~$3 USD. AllOfMp3’s prices are a bit lower than that. I think for their OnlineEncodingExclusive price i’ve seen albums cost about $1.80.
Once again…
Pros:
“Please don’t tell me you are watching a special on Britney Spears…” Says my girly from the other room.
“No. I’m just watching MTV. I have no idea what’s on.” Says me, knowing she doesn’t believe me.
Of course.. it’s now the 5th straight Britney video in a row. I haven’t noticed if they are actually playing them in some sort of chronological order, but they just might be… I’m pretty distracted by other “stuff” ya know.
I’m not sure if tomorrow is the actual kick-off of her latest tour, but it’s her performance in Miami, which is going to be broadcast live on Showtime. I guess MTV is actually showing the top 10 Britney Videos. I think there have only really been like 12 total?!? I forget. I’m such a bad fan. I do however know the lyrics for every video they’ve shown so far… and that I proudly admit. I guess as a true fan I should check if there are new DVD’s out with her videos.
Speaking of which… does anyone know where to get the unedited version of the Toxic video? I haven’t seen it.
Usually lately I blame the station for sucking. Station playlists have gotten shorter and shorter with more repeats, which means you will hear that Top 40 song now maybe 3 or 4 times a day and rarely hear that older song you love. Okay fine, maybe that means pretty soon I will end up hearing Nirvana and Eminem on an oldies station…
Well, Sunday night the DJ just made it worse. I understand you have a short playlist to work with, but damn… You just can’t play The Darkness (glam rock) and follow it up with Jack Johnson. Seriously, that’s like playing Kiss and Dave Matthews.
It’s just, NOT RIGHT.
This morning, as I am walking out the door, I get a call from Brian asking if I want to get coffee. While talking on the phone I switch hands, grab the door, and close it… only to realize I left my house keys inside on my desk. Oops, at least I have my car keys and my shoes (more explanation on the shoes next week).
So while at work I randomly start wondering how long I’ve been with the company. I’m pretty bad at deleting email so I figure I probably have an email from my first day. Sure enough, the first email in my Inbox is there still and dated 3/17/04. Wow, it’s been exactly a year today! I yell over to my boss, “Hey I’ve been here for a whole year, and the company is still around and doing well! Knock on… oh shit I don’t have any wood to knock on!”
Coincidentally, the last time I locked myself out of my apartment was exactly a year ago on my first day working for Reasoning… In almost the same way.