Three Machines in Three Weeks

So, have gone from a 1 Ghz Sony Vaio U70 (with 512 megs of RAM) to a 1 Ghz Thinkpad (with 1 Gig of RAM) to a 2Ghz Core Duo (with 2 Gigs of Ram) in the past three weeks at work. What is most interesting, is that I now have a machine at work that is more powerful than the machine I have at home. It has been years since that has been the case.

No complaints on the new machine so far (IBM Thinkpad T60p if you're curious), but we'll see how it performs when I travel to Chicago next week. Will be a lot more of a pain to get in and out of a carry-on than the Sony Vaio, but should be a lot easier to use since it has a much larger display and a built-in keyboard. The Vaio crammed a lot of functionality into a small package, but reading a 5" display and fooling around with a USB keyboard on your lap is no fun.

Tivo scheduling is settling down now that I've dealt with some of the series conflicts. One easy "fix" was removing "30 Rock" from the season pass. I didn't have a single laugh for the whole half hour, and I have to wonder if I'm really the only one. I like Tina Fey, but I didn't care for anything I saw on there. Makes room for "Jericho", which is getting a bit more interesting every week. Not sure that if I were a "Lost" fan that I would be willing to deal with two dramatic mysteries - but I didn't get into "Lost" early, and now would be hopelessly behind the curve.

Anywho, hope you have a great weekend planned!

PS3 and Zune prove Sony and Microsoft just don't get it

OK, not to be controversial or anything, but the more I learn about Sony's upcoming PS3 and Microsoft's Zune, the more I'm convinced these two companies have lost touch with their customers.

On the PS3 side, maybe it's all the time I've been spending with the PSP - a great piece of hardware handicapped by Sony's inability to give up any control of the device to a person actually willing to pay to own one. However, hearing about the PS3's issues with overheating (remind anyone of the XBOX 360 last year?), and the huge price for features that most people have no need for (what Blu-Ray exclusive movie do you want that badly?), leads me to believe that Sony felt that whatever they came up with, people would be willing to buy. I know they work with EA, and would think a little of the 3DO experience might have been transmitted at some point...

For the Zune, as Penny Arcade has so adroitly pointed out, Microsoft seems to have the same problem. You can use the Wi-Fi to share songs on a time limited basis, for a play limited number of times (evidently they couldn't decide which of those to use, and so decided to choose both), and that's it. The most obvious REAL uses a person would have for Wi-Fi on such a device aren't supported, and there's even a question of whether your current music library if you drank the Microsoft koolaid on an earlier device will still be supported. Maybe if they gave the devices away that might be a reasonable restriction - but to pay $250 for the privilege?

Fortunately, my kids have watched enough of Penn & Teller's Bullshit to recognize a con game when they see one, and the only Video Game accessory they're asking for this year is a Wii. I suspect I will have to indulge them in a unit :-)

Wrapping up - watched the third episode of Jericho last night. Things are definately getting interesting, but I need to see if someone caught a screen capture of the map from the satellite feed so I can avoid having to freeze frame the show on Tivo to get it myself...

Believe it or not - I wasn't paid to write this

OK, today is the day I've been waiting for about two weeks for. It's the day of the Monopoly promotion at McDonald's. You see, I happen to get lunch from McD's most weekdays, and my favorite sandwich there is the Crispy Chicken Ranch BLT Sandwich. That happens to be one of their premium Chicken selections. During this period, then, by ordering what I usually do I get two additional chances to win something (I've already won some prints from Snapfish), and I get some Best Buy Bucks. If the odds are like last year, I'll get a $5 ticket about once a week. Add that in with the $1 ticket you're guaranteed to get with the chicken sandwich, and lunch gets much cheaper during the contest period.

So I'm easily amused...

The other pointer I'd like to give is to check out CBS' new series "The Class". You can even watch the episodes you miss on their Innertube service. So that unlike yesterday, I actually can share what I like with y'all :-) The first two episodes were ok, but this week is the one that convinced me to add a Season Pass for this to my Tivo. Of course, I already had Studio 60 for the Sunset Strip on a Season Pass, so my Monday night recording list is filling up. Hopefully by the time new episodes of Anthony Bourdain's series start airing, these two will be in reruns.

And that's it for today.

Another month, another post

Some weeks are diamonds, some weeks are coal... :-)

On the PSP front, I had an interesting hiccup when I went from version 2.80 to version 2.81 of the Sony firmware. Seems that it gets much more picky about the MP4 format used by tools such as PSP Video 9, and so I had to make sure I was using one of the SP profiles (wish I understood what the difference was between SP and AVC, but that's for another time I guess), and that I was using the 768K encoding option. End result HAS to be put in the 100MNV001 folder and not the new "VIDEOS" folder if it is to be played successfully. Took me a while to parse all that out, but it seems to work now.

On the Tivo front, there's not much new happening. I didn't get one of the Series 2 DTs because they don't offer the lifetime option for the Tivo service. I didn't get a Series 3 because they're very expensive, and they don't support TivoToGo or GoBack functionality. Which is really a bummer because it means that if either of my current machines dies in a way I can't fix, then I'm going to have to go to a non-Tivo solution even though Tivo USED to have the best solution. Maybe there will be an iTV in my future after all...

Finally, have been enjoying quite a few of Corwin's more recent music selections. He has the advantage of having more time than I do to find newer bands. In any case, one album he found that I've been particularly enjoying is by a group called "The Cardiacs" and their album "A Little Man and a House and the Whole World Window". Unfortunately, unless you have a well stocked Used CD store near you, you're probably not going to be able to enjoy this yourself. Sorry about that.

So, that's it for now. Hope to be back again a bit sooner :-)