iPod Shuffle Battery Replacements

I came to a conclusion to my previous dilemma on how to best spend my gift certificates... Up until the last minute my intention was to purchase an iPod Shuffle... The problem was it came to my attention that their battery replacement program was far too expensive to cover a $150 iPod Shuffle... It wouldn't be such a bad deal on a full sized iPod, especially if you get their maintenance program which costs half the price of the battery replacement and covers two years...

So instead I went a very different route... I bought a 1 gig SD memory card for my RCA Lyra and a Macally FM transmitter... Ironically the transmitter was designed for an iPod but other than the iPod charger it comes with, it works just fine with other players... In fact I can highly recommend this transmitter... From the moment I took it out of the package, it has worked like a champ with no fuss... It comes with an AC adapter and a car adapter... Sound quality is excellent, though it's tricky at first to find a good empty frequency to broadcast on... Even then it didn't take too long to find one...

Now I can carry days worth of music with me and listen to it on the go... My next project on this will be to write a piece of software to synchronize my WinAmp play list with my player...

Who knew?

An interesting thing happened to me today on the way out of the bathroom... (You got to love stories that start out that way...) There I was at work minding my own business or actually finishing up my business as it were... I turned to head to the sink to wash up when the most amazing thing happened...

You know that feeling when time slows down and you see your life in slow motion? This was one of those times... One of our employees from another department was walking past me as I turned around... I began to step forwards towards the sink as they passed in front of me... I recall noting how brisk their pace was and wondering what the rush was... What happened next was the thing nightmares are made of... Just as they crossed my path perpendicular to me their hand raised to their mouth just in time to puke causing splatter to go to the right and left of them... The spray hit me from arm to foot... Needless to say after multiple washes, I was driving home to clean clothes...

When I woke up that morning I had no idea... In fact, my day was actually going pretty well up to that point... Funny old world.... Who would have known?

Firefox 1.0 Review

It's been a busy week so I haven't had much time to blog but I wanted to take a moment to talk about Firefox... I recently decided to give it a good look and have been running it for a week now... For those that don't know Firefox is an open source web browser that's getting high acclaim for how secure it is along with it's features...

The first thing people will notice when they run it is how similar it looks to Internet Explorer... On the surface they both are designed for the same thing so it's not surprising that they pretty much have the same basic feel... One of the key differences I'm particularly fond of in Firefox is the ability have multiple tabs open in the same window... This makes doing research on the web much easier as there aren't tons of windows to manage and I follow rabbit trails... Simply middle click a link and it will open on it's own tab in the back ground while you continue to read the original page... When your ready just switch tabs... Find something you like then right click it's tab and select "close all other tabs"...

Another nice feature is the powerful bookmarks manager... It will even allow you to use an RSS Feed as a bookmark source... When you do this the feeds contents will list as bookmarks within the RSS folder... Compatible sites will add a Live Bookmarks to the bottom of your browser for easy subscription too...

One shouldn't be fooled by the "limitations" of Firefox either... There are many interactive components that still aren't available for Firefox but it appears most of the ones that aren't are currently in development... For example Yahoo! hasn't made a Yahoo! Companion for Firefox yet but on their official site they provide a link to a third party developed version that works very well...

Firefox is also more resistant to spyware and popups... Add the functionality of some browser extensions like Adblock and life just gets better...

Here is a list of some of my favorite Firefox extensions:

• Adblock


• Tabbrowser Preferences


• Add Bookmark Here


• Linky


• ChromEdit


• Yahoo! Companion

If you haven't already, I'd recommend at least giving Firefox a try... Keep in mind the biggest benefit is the security of your system while surfing... Try it and enjoy...

To iPod or to DS?

They say you should be careful what you ask for because you just might get it... Well, I got it... I have always said how much I love gift certificates... In my mind their the perfect gift... Now that christmas is over I have a few to go use but this year there is a catch... Many of the banks that offer gift certificates now start charging on the balance after a specified period of time and this year it seems I have six months to figure out what I'm going to do with them before the banks start charging...

I've narrowed my interests down to two items so far... First is the Nintendo DS... I don't really need a mobile gaming unit very bad, but at the moment with three of us and two PC's, it would be nice to have a game to play while the PC's are tied up... I played around with a DS in the store the other day and I must say it was very impressive... The graphics were fast and high quality, the unit was a good size, and the display was easy to read... While I like the fact that it will play the old Game Boy Advanced games I really don't care for their quality and there aren't many DS games in production yet...

One of the down sides is there aren't many of the style of games I like to play for the DS... I'm really into adventure/action games and while Super Mario 64 DS is a very nice game and I'd love to play it, the Mario thing has just been overdone in my mind and there aren't any other titles currently in production that are similar... This may change at some point in the future but at the moment I find it a serious limitation...

My second option is an iPod... I have a small MP3 player currently but it's only designed to hold a very small amount of music and has a short battery life... When I first got it I wasn't sure I'd use an MP3 player that much but now between eMusic and registering WinAmp so I can burn and copy CD's to the PC I've decided I'd like to take the next step and get a high capacity digital jukebox... The leader in the market appears to be Apple with their iPod... It appears to be a very well rounded unit with a good following which is important when it comes to accessories...

They also have a new unit coming out later this month which falls more into my price range I'm considering called the iPod Shuffle... While this doesn't have nearly the capacity or features of it's bigger brother, many of the accessories I'm interested in are already in production and available... It also has the ability to double as a memory stick which, working with computers as much as I do could come in handy...

It is my goal to eventually be able to take my music with me from car to office to home in one compact tool... It is possible that the iPod Shuffle could help with this...

My mind isn't made up yet and the iPod Shuffle doesn't hit stores till later this month so there is no rush... Which ever way I go I'll report back here with a review of the product I end up purchasing...

Random Acts of Manure

Interesting thing happened to me on the way home last week...

To better understand this article you need to understand what my daily commute is like... I drive 45 minutes each way to and from work... It's a long drive and my work is at the base of the mountains so it's a very pretty drive too... I'm also the type of person who can't just leave work at work... Often on my drive my mind is multitasking on work problems or private projects... Many of my better ideas have come to me while I was driving down the road with the stereo cranked up as loud as I can handle it...

So there I was, one evening last week, driving down the road with my mind focused on other issues... Traffic wasn't busy at all... In fact when the event (oh the humanity of the situation) occurred, there weren't any cars to be seen either in front of me or behind me... I was startled from my thoughts by a loud thump on my windshield... The most inexplicable item in the list of items that could attach themselves to your windshield was just inches from my nose...

A fist sized glob of manure had fallen from the sky and splattered on my windshield... To think, when I got in the car to drive home I thought it was going to be just another drive home... Nope this day I had the attention of the powers that be and they were feeling mischievous... It is going to be a good year to be sure...

Say cheese!

Family Portrait

It's that time of the year... Family picture time... We had a special request do get it done early this year... This is for a present for Lori's grandfather as a gift... He's turning 90 this year...

It was allot of fun doing this with the timer on the digital camera... Even Millie (the dog) managed to behave long enough to get a good picture... If I get the time I plan to touch it up in a photo editor before sending it off...

Grateful Bread?!

Grateful Bread

Some times strange things just happen... Turns out this was one of those weeks...

I was helping Lori get Quinns lunch together this weekend and the task at hand was a peanut butter and jelly sandwitch... As you may know, sometimes the jar/bottle has just enough in it that you can't quite throw it away... This being one of those days, there was so little jelly in the jar that you couldn't even scrape it out with a knife... Instead I held the jar upside down and shook...

You can imagine my surprise when I was done... I had put the jar down and went to get a new jar... When I came back I stopped in my tracks and called Lori over, "Honey, do you see what I see?"... As she looked at the plate she started laughing, "A gummy bear!"...

I just had to get the camera and share...

Great Expectations 2005

So here we are getting ready to start a new year... A lot has happened this last year and there are even greater things to expect for this coming year...

Probably the most important event I'm expecting is the birth of my new daughter... I can't express how excited I am... Tara is expected to arrive mid April which as it happens is the same month as my wife and first son's birthday... So far everything has been going without a hitch... The ultrasound wasn't 100% certain she'd be a she but it was close enough we're going for it...

Related to this is my parents coming out to visit round the time the baby is due... You have to understand my relationship with my parents... We've become the best of friends... I enjoy just "hanging out" with them... I have a few restaurants I can't wait to take them too when they do get out here...

I've also started a new game this year... World of Warcraft by Blizzard... This one is a bit different than previous MMRPG's I've played in that Lori and Quinn are playing it with me... We're already having a blast helping each other out and leveling our characters in the game...

Another exciting thing I have to look forward to this year is my new motorcycle... This will be my first "real" bike... First step is to get my license and I hope to get scheduled into the class some time in the next couple months... I've got my eyes on a Suzuki Boulevard C50... If all plays out well I'll be able to get it sometime in June or July...

I signed up with eMusic late last year too... For those that may not know eMusic is a downloadable music service with independent artists... I'm only a couple months into using the service and I have a whole year of new music to explore ahead of me... Already in the few months since I've started I've learned about some amazing artists (many of which I'll be talking bout on this blog)...

And finally with Christmas past us I'm already looking forward to next Christmas... It's my favorite time of the year... If all goes well I hope to get more of my gift buying done well before December... And with some luck I might even be able to formulate some sort of a wish list (I can never think of anything I want when asked)...

2005 should be a good year...

The World of Blog

Ok, so here I am traveling the world of blogs... You got to keep in mind I'm new to this... Not new to the internet and what it has to offer, but new to blogs... I've found an incredible variety of subjects, many of which I hadn't realized could be made into a blog...

This leaves me with the question of what sort of blog I want to do... I'm thinking it will be all over the place... If you find my content boring then don't read it... If you like it or even want to participate in the conversation then feel free to comment...

What does this mean as far as what type of content you'll find here? Well anything that interests me (this is about my thoughts after all)... You'll find postings about music, movies, human nature, online games, computers, programming, and motorcycles...

All that said, let's begin...

Interesting Photo

Interesting Photo

While I was digging around on my PC testing out the Blogger features I came across this photo... No idea where it came from but I love the presentation...

Welcome

Well here is my first posting... I'm still trying to figure out how all this works so please bare with me...