Good job. That ought to convince a half dozen maroons that you weren’t acting like a spoiled brat.
Everyone makes an ass out of themselves form time to time. The best way to handle it is to step away from the situation - stop being angry, take your hat off and apologize.
I hate Sony. For too long has their proprietary shit machines have bummed me out. Everything, that is, except their consoles.
When the Wii and PS3 launched, I bought a Wii - because that was the sensible thing to do. I don’t need a $600 video game console with $50 games. Especially not when I just built a $1200 smoking fast desktop PC.
And yet, hooker killing in a game that might make me feel bad about it beckons mightily…
And if rt would just tell how the media streaming is, I could finally make a choice to abstain, or to plunge headlong into a fiery chasm of vicarious violence that offers an appalling look at myself in a world with slightly fewer consequences.
Update
Okay, so the PS3 doesn’t actually function as a network media streamer. Very disappointing.
If you want to stream media to the PS3, it looks like you have to run some app on *another* computer on your network to stream media that’s been selected in the app to the PS3.
Weak sauce, Sony - royal weak sauce.
Looks like a Mac mini is in my future.
(Well, either a mac mini or another soft-modded original xbox, which functions pretty damn well as a media streamer, with the exception of easy non-xbox remote setup…)
Oooh…. I want!
60 mpg and the ability to run biodiesel? Sounds damn good to me.
The best part of this news? It probably means that a mass-produced biodiesel-electric hybrid is right around the corner. I can’t wait!
But they’d be very, very wrong.
I feel like I’m eight. I *need* these toy guns. It might take me a while to rationalize spending $80 for them, but I will get a pair at some point.
I wonder how long I’ll have to play before I beat the high score…
Of course, these days I barely drink. I think I’ve been tipsy about once or twice in the few months, which may be par for some people, but is a significant shift for me. Nonetheless, I still cannot understand why a alcohol-detecting ignition interlock isn’t required on all new vehicles.
Seems so simple and logical, doesn’t it? Really, it’s just like a seat belt - but for other people. Why can’t we pass a law that makes sense for once?
I’m so used to seeing news crews interview people in airport security lines that I’m no longer surprised at all the bozos who are paving the way for a truly nasty Big Brother future with proclamations like “I don’t mind the lines, I’m for anything that makes us safer!”. Welcome to your nightly programming.
However, at least in the U.S., even those who accept flawed charades of “security measures” with open arms, facial recognition technology has been met with skepticism and reticence. People don’t like being watched *anonimously*. Even if you’re in love with safety and security, the chances are good that you prefer being monitored by uniformed police/security or by cameras monitored by police or security.
Once computers are involved with the decision making - people get a little uneasy.
However, the right propaganda can sell nearly anything to anyone. Even me. I’m constantly fighting the urge to irrationally switch to a Mac. And hell, Bush was elected twice!
So, uh… If I’ve sent you a text message in the last 24 hours, you’ve probably received it about 30 times today. Sorry.
Every time I turn my old and busted RAZR phone on, it starts resending everything in my outbox. Luclily, I cleared my outbox yesterday afternoon, but still - sorry. I’ll try to keep my phone off until I figure out how to prevent the text message hemorrhages.
[Update : 2:05 PM] Well, I fixed my phone - I think. Removing and reseating the SIM card several times while the phone was on (and charging) was probably not a good idea, but that course of action seems to have fixed things. Of course, I also made clear threats of replacing the RAZR with a Samsung, so that might have helped too. Anyways, I also realized that I’ve had this phone for almost two years to the day. In honor of that feat (which is none too small for a mobile, especially one that takes the abuse that I dish out), I will share it’s noble record of service with you. Since I’ve had the phone, I’ve made 12,621 minutes worth of phone calls and have spent a whopping 29,160 minutes of data time (no, I’m not a nerd AT ALL - what would give you that idea?). Thanks to that unlimited data plan, I’ve also transferred just over two gigs of data, which is pretty significant for a GPRS data connection. Oh yeah, I’m *that* hardcore.
Quite the awesome set of demonstration videos. I rarely use my blender, but now I feel inspired and want one of Blendtec’s super cool blenders My first order of business would be to blend my junkmail. Then my old checks. Then? Maybe some frozen chicken. I’d love an easy way to shred chicken - especially if it’s still frozen.
Portland is set to get a municipal wifi network. This is good. However, they turned to wifi scheisters MetroFi to provide it. And now, it seems that MetroFi has made a deal with Microsoft’s MSN for advertising and search services. Of course, I’m very much biased against MSN Internet services for various reasons - but to subject an entire city to pages that won’t load correctly in all modern and recent browsers is pretty short-sighted. I would have much preferred either a more civic-minded provider or at the very least, an operating system/browser agnostic advertising provider. And search? Microsoft? Who even makes that association?
Of course, very little of this is directly relevant to me, since the municipal wifi network will likely not cover my area of suburbia for many years, if ever, even though I’m only five minutes from downtown, very near I-5 and the Barbur transit center (which would be a good place for municipal wifi, don’t you think?). However, I still expected better of Portland.
First off, I’m a sucker for anything peppermint. That being said, I hadn’t tried Penguin Mints before this weekend. They’re simply caffeinated peppermints. Quite nice - I’ll be buying more. Also, much fun was had in Seattle - and I’m going to have to buy a copy of Swingerz Golf for the Gamecube.
In other news, after some hacking around and a few trips to the hardware store for parts, Ryan and I cobbled together a highly functional and very affordable solution to a hardware and installation problem for $OUR_PRODUCT that my company doesn’t currently provide - but should. I shall be taking my findings to the accessory team and making some suggestions.
In the middle of summer, I woke up smelling something plasticky burning. I had my cellphone plugged into my latop to charge, and my laptop pluggd into AC power. The computer was exceedingly hot and had shut down, but it was making a sort of half-beeping half-squawking sound. My cellphone was super hot and smelled like burning battery. In fact, it still does. The USB cable conencting it to my laptop was also very hot.
I unplugged everything, removed the batteries and went back to sleep. The next day, I discovered that the notebook battery didn’t work anymore. I tossed it into a “deal with alter” box and replaced it with my spare.
A few months later, Dell announces a battery recall. I checked the numbers on both of my batteries and *neither* was included in the recall. Oh well, I figured my battery had just died. After all, I use the heck out of it. On a whim this morning I ran the numbers form both of my batteries through the Dell website and found out that they’ve both been included in the updates to the recall list. Oh boy. I setup an excahnge for one battery, and when that’s taken care of, I’ll do the other.
Note to self: You bought five smoke detectors. Take them out of the freaking boxes and install them already.
Bullshit bank fees and shrinking “perks” suck. But they come from somewhere, right? Part of the problem is bullshit spending. I have no idea how RSA Security’s new voiceprint technology is supposed to help with telephone banking security.
The inconveniences and social engineering end-run hacks are immediately apparent to even a casual thinker.
Click “Read On” for just a bit of my casual thinking.
After all, it’s been nearly two years since I overpaid 500+% for a cellphone. My RAZR is still going stong, but has very crappy reception at my house, a tiny amount of memory for text messges and pictures, and it is *not* an ipod. The battery life is pretty weak these days, but I don’t fault the phone - the battery is limited in size and I’ve used the hell out of it.
(Also, this is a warning sign. A warning sign of something bad. I’m not sure what, but it can’t be good. If you spend too much time taking pictures of electronics in a small room, take heed.)
Okay, the actual story is the launching of Engadget’s redesigned site. It’s cool. It’s got a bunch of new features ( a laundry list, really). I like them all. And that’s saying a lot.
One feature stands out. Dynamic page-widening. No, not like the page widening crap you used to find on Slashdot or K5 - instead it’s page widening only in the sense that it no longer discriminates against every sensible (and lucky) user in the world with a screen resoultion greater than 800×600. That’s right! Despite design-weenies everywhere talking about how now is the time to start moving from SVGA (800×600) designs to XGA (1024×768), Engadget has leapfrogged into the future, simply by not blinding me with a vast expanse of stark white or tiny tiled site logos as filler on either side of a narrow column of content. Now, Engadget may not be the first site to do this, but they’re the first that I’m aware of. I hope this trend catches on.
Yes, I know the irony of posting this on a personal blog that I haven’t even bothered to adjust for browsers at a decent resolution… But I don’t blog for a living, I blog in little chunks of time that I find throughout the day. In fact, I haven’t made any changes to this blog since it the first post, other than asking my benevolent admin to install a theme for me. Anyways, go Engadget!!
Oh man, I want an iTV. Apple has done it with this one. if they get the HDCP right (a pity that it’s necessary at all), and can stream HD over a wireless link, I can see this being more profitable than than Macbooks.
At $299, it’s easily cheap enough for anyone with a high def display and a decent AV receiver. And the movie sales that Apple has announced are cheap enough to be an often purchased item. In addition, once you get one well designed and highly branded item into a home, you have a much better chance of sneaking more of your products in.
Batteries. I use fewer disposable batteries than I ever have. My laptops, cellphone, ipod and cameras all use rechargeable LiIon batteries.
But… I use disposable batteries for wireless game controllers, a portable radio, flashlights, remote controls, miscellaneous handheld games/toys and other sundry stuffs.
I find that I need replacements often enough to justify buying them at costco in giant packs. The big packs of batteries will sit in the “battery drawer” and take up space until a few months pass and it’s time to buy more batteries.
Another genuine “Why didn’t I think of that?” moment. As I’m currently reading a number of books online (some serialized, some not), this trick of flipping a pdf (or other text document) and the notebook sideways is quite a good idea. I find it surprisingly odd that I haven’t tied this yet, as I’m constantly swiveling around my lovely Samsung LCD (at work) to better accommodate the task of the moment.
Go wave power! Go!!
According to the above post at Treehugger, Reedsport Oregon is slated to to be the location for a power plant driven by waves and tides!
Way to go Oregon!! Suck our smug voltage, Washington!!!
