WiFly
Not sure if anyone else is a reader of Robert X. Cringley, but he writes some neat stuff. He’s a big fan of the Linksys WRT54G and the community-developed firmware, especially the Sveasoft stuff. This week, Cringley writes about WiFlying– essentially surfing the web on WiFi from his plane up to 100 miles away from his roof-mounted antenna, as well as doing some war-flying.
Our Newest iPod Accessory
Hey All, Serena and I just took delivery of our new 330i. I’ll post a review later. If anyone in Pyslentdom is looking, there are great deals right now. We got ours for $900 under invoice! Ask for Grace at BMW of San Francisco!
Don't write "B O B" on barf bags!
The headline to this story doesn’t quite convey the stupidity of the whole thing. Someone wrote “B O B” on an air-sickness bag, and the crew interpreted it as a bomb threat! After turning the plane around, dumping fuel and surrounding the runway with firetrucks the passengers and crew were interviewed, and the incident was then classified it as a hoax. Of course, it’s not a hoax, as no one tried to convey a threat; it was simply a severe, illogical overreaction to an innocuous item. After all, if someone wanted to actually make an overt bomb threat, I bet they could think of better ways to do it.
John Kerry's Stand on the Issues
I’m watching the Sox-Yankees slugfest tonight on ESPN (commercial-free!), and John Kerry was out there to watch the game and throw out the first pitch. It’s the top of the fifth, and ESPN is interviewing Senator Kerry. And Jon Miller asked him a tough question– did you think Grady “#*@$#!” Little should have taken out Pedro? Kerry responded that he was throwing stuff at the TV and yelling. So ya, he thinks Little was a dope, too.
They also asked him about a few other controversial baseball subjects. He’s against the DH, he thinks the Pete Rose in the HoF is a difficult call. And he’s against steroids. Maybe I’ll grab the interview segment and post it.
Update: Apparently, I wasn’t the only on to notice.
Anyone see a Ballpark Around Here?
You can’t tell from the T3’s screen, but we took this picture on our way to a Giants game for Serena’s company outing. We were putting the GPS thru it’s paces. Looks good so far– Giants up 2-0.
For some things in life…
Off to Texas tomorrow for a quick business trip. I’ve already started packing, and I’ve put together a list.
DirecTV DVR by TiVo: $99
Turbonet Networking Card for TiVo: $79
25′ Ethernet Cord: $10
#500
As Jake pointed out yesterday, this is the 500th post to the Board! I’m sure someone will follow with a more exact analysis, but roughly:
— 20 months
— 500 posts = 25 posts/month, almost 1 per day
— about 2.5 comments per post, average
I don’t know how to celebrate — maybe we need some sort of commemorative photomosaic — that’s how the big boys do it, I hear…
Less exciting Apple gadget
As Mike can attest to, my original Power Mac keyboard broke today during the middle of an iChat. Since I didn’t really have many options, I drove to Fry’s and bought the new Apple keyboard, which is quite an improvement over the old one. For example, there are 8 extra (full-size) function keys, a backspace key, and full-size keys for arrows and page up & down. There are 2 downsides: 1) no more power button on the keyboard– no idea why they took that off; 2) the cord is way too short. It barely reaches to the front of my computer (I take it these keyboards were introduced after the innovation of in-front USB ports), which means I can’t even use the slide-out keyboard draw (don’t really use it anyways, though). Of course, since there’ no power button, I could just plug into a hub.
Here’s a picture of it, held as far away from the iSight as I could get it.
New iPod Monday
Courtesy of Engadget (via the RSS feed on Pyslent), it looks like Newsweek let the cat out of the bag on the new iPod. This is very reminiscent of the time Time posted all the details about the new iMac the day before Jobs’ “surprise” announcement. No details yet.
BTW, this is post #498; not sure if that includes deleted posts. How many blogs actually survive to 500?
Super Size Me — See It!
I know there are summer blockbusters (Spider Man 2) and documentaries (Fahrenheit 9/11) out there that are getting a lot of press — but last night we went to see Super Size Me, which is billed as “A Film Of Epic Proportions.” And it was.
When it first came out, we thought it sounded interesting, but were a little reluctant to spend $20 to hear that McDonald’s food was bad for us, a fact our mothers had already instilled in us. So last night, bored, we saw it was still playing in our local second-run theater, and decided to head over (after, appropriately, gorging ourselves on barbecue).
The movie was REALLY good. I can’t stress this enough — it was totally entertaining, even though of course we already knew the punch line. Morgan Spurlock, the guy who made the film, enlists the help of medical professionals before taking on the experiment of eating only food served from McDonald’s every day for a month — within which he must eat every item on the menu at least once, and will eat 3 meals a day. Spurlock isn’t repulsive like Michael Moore often can be, and comes across as a normal guy — somebody you might know (not that I know anybody who would eat only McDonald’s every day for a month — or do I?). And the point isn’t how bad McDonald’s is — it’s how bad America’s eating habits are, and McDonald’s is simply the biggest manifestation of that. And it isn’t that McDonald’s is evil — it’s that they’re a company beholden to their stockholders, making money through marketing.
Seeing the movie is really making me reconsider the types of food I eat — which I think is the goal of the movie. Even though I haven’t really been eating much fast food lately, it made me never want to eat it again — or at least VERY rarely. Despite the fact that you think it might be a downer of a movie, or that you might not want the nutritional information of McDonald’s shoved down your throat, go see it. Even though it’s sad, you’ll enjoy it. And of course, wonder if you could eat only McD’s for 30 days…