Well… except a few exceptions: Apple Store, Fry’s, Best Buy, etc. Otherwise, if I’m out to get something specific (it’s something I need) I can usually bear it. But…
For instance – my sunglasses broke this morning – the cheap fake Ray-Bans i’ve had since 8th grade – my favorite pair. Anyways, I was at Kohl’s tonight for some pants for work, and I saw the sunglasses rack. So, I start looking at them – and how does one shop for sunglasses? That’s right, you put them on and look at yourself in the mirror. You stand there and check yourself out in front of everyone else shopping around you… dumb.
I started work this week. It’ll be… interesting. It’s gonna be a little harder than last time, but I think it’ll be fun after I get into it.
Still haven’t seen Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (IMDB – Google – Official Site). Shocking, I know – I promise I’ll remedy that sometime this week/weekend. Anybody want to go? I’ll be going over to the Cinemark at Legacy in Plano on I-75 – DLP digital projection… ohh yeahh.
Plug in. Sia bene.
Just got back from the Hebron High School Spring Concert – and I must say – I was impressed. Props to y’all. And, it was good to see some familiar faces : )
I think I just saw the most pathetic thing ever. I was watching Jay Leno, and every night he has a musical guest that plays at the end of the show… I don’t know who these people were, but I couldn’t place the genre at first… but it was – country/rap. Country twang, country sound, country band setup, country clothes… with a rapper for the lead singer. What is the world coming to? At least there’s one good side to this – the guys in the dorm won’t have to pick country or rap, now they can listen to both.
I start work on Monday. Yay. And Boo. It’ll be fun, and I’m looking forward to it, but I will miss the ‘nothingness’ that has been my last two weeks at home.
I miss people. I still haven’t seen some people from the FBCC crowd, I’m really starting to miss people from my HSU crowd. This is not good.
Ok… so I know not everyone digs the “tech talk,” so here’s the warning: if you don’t like it, stop reading now, because here comes this week’s section.
- This week’s topic: Google
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So Google continues to impress me. It’s not the huge or flashy stuff – it’s the little things. One new such little thing is “personalized homepages,” which aren’t anything new to the world of the internet, but Google has added some unique innovations that make you wonder, “why hasn’t it always been like this?”
For instance, say you don’t like how the sections of your page are arranged? No silly going to another page to try and move it up and then over to a column on the left and up again – how does Google do it? It’s so simple – drag and drop.
Another little thing is Google’s ability to do movie research for you. Simply type “movie:” and then the name of a movie, current or old. Google will return a few results, along with links to reviews to movies that matched or closely matched the title. Click the main link for each movie, and you’ll get a page with more reviews, and Google’s “average rating” – averaged from the reviews it indexed. Type in your zip code here, and if it’s a current movie, Google will return a list of theaters in your area, along with showtimes, and links to purchase tickets online. All this is great – if you know (or closely know) the title of your movie – but here again, Google impresses me. If you type “movie:” and then a search string like “comedic love story” or “great action sequence,” Google will bring back movies that fit your criteria – in the same format it brings back results for current movies.
Google – thank you for paying attention to the little things that make me smile at your innovation.
Plug in. Sia bene.
I’m going to try to write less… and when I say that, I mean I’m going to try to not write so much per post – because it has the potential of being more interesting to the reader when it’s shorter and there are more posts, rather than there being these long entries posted like once a week. If you think or would prefer otherwise, just say so – it’s not that hard to leave a comment – yet so few of you do… thanks to those that do!
Also – new to the site:
The banner at the top should rotate now; when you refresh the page, you should get a different one. There’s 10 in all, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t shuffle some of the banners around to advertise movies, products, etc, so… have fun with that.
And now the week’s tech news:
- New version of iTunes (4.8) adds feature that allows adding videos to your library. (link)
Impact: Is Apple about to release a device that you would transfer videos to? A video iPod? Speculation abounds on this one.
- Though companies can wait and release products when they want to, everything has to go through the patent office (unless you just want people to rip off your design) and if it’s electronic, it has to be certified by the FCC – and since both of these agencies are public, all the patents and applications for certification are also public domain… yesterday, a new patent was discovered, filed by Apple Computer, for an “electronic device”… the figures show what would appear to be a tablet computer… link here.
Impact: If Apple does indeed come out with a tablet computer, it might be the product that finally makes that market come to life; last year tablet computers accounted for only 1.3% of all PC sales. However, Apple has filed for patents before that they never acted upon.
- Microsoft held a launch party in Los Angeles for the Xbox 360 last Saturday… and of course – pictures of the console and some hardware have been leaked. One picture (here) shows the console, a (wireless) controller, the Xbox Live headset, and the new camera-toy thing, another picture (here) shows a close up on the controller, and one (here) shows the media remote.
Impact: Admittedly, not much if you’re not a gamer, though supposedly this thing is supposed to help start closing the gap between the “media center pc” and the “gaming console.” Also – though the official hardware specs haven’t been released, some supposed specs have been leaked (here), and they’re fairly plausible – and impressive.
So much for the shorter post…
Plug in. Sia bene.
Well… I’m home. In good ‘ole C-town that is.
Stayed out real late last night listening to people play “ghost in the graveyard’ and ‘murder in the dark’ at Fort Awesome. I say listening because… I sat in Michael’s room and played around with their newfound Clearwire internet service… which I definitely found more entertaining. Sorry to the rest of you that I didn’t play, it was probably more fun listening to y’all bump around in the house and then to watch y’all stumble into the light of Michael’s room.
But then we (or at least I) said our goodbyes… and that was hard. I know it’s summer, but everybody’s got their own schedule, and… I’m really going to miss everybody. I’m not gonna list people and tell everybody how I’ll miss them, cause inevitably I’d forget someone and offend others… but y’all (and you know who you are) have made these semesters amazing. Period. Thank you.
So moving back to C-town wasn’t easy… parental units showed up a bit earlier than I thought they would, and I wasn’t totally packed, so they weren’t too happy… oh well. Parents rented a U-Haul trailer, and that worked out great. Only $16 to rent it for the one day, and that includes the optional insurance… much better than the who-knows-how-much-now-that-gas-prices-are-high-like-drugies-on-cocaine it would have cost to bring a second vehicle. We stopped at Betty Rose’s Little Brisket on our way out… why has nobody told me about this place? That was some gooood stuff – definitely going back.
Got in around 6 or so, I don’t remember because I definitely slept the whole way home. Getting my stuff in the house was easy; getting it “put away”… hmm. Not quite. You see… my room at home is smaller than my dorm room at HSU… this poses somewhat of a difficulty when it comes to moving back in. We’ll see how this goes.
So I don’t start work till May 23. What am I going to do with all this free time? If you guessed rebuild a motorcycle and work with Charles on some audio work, you guessed right… but if you want to be a part of this exciting(?) couple of weeks before I start work, give me a call… not that I won’t have a life once I start work, but it’ll certainly be easier to do stuff now – I think.
So I rambled a lot here… sorry ’bout that. I just kept typing and typing and, well, you get the picture.
