I think it might be related to a recent change in my ‘diet,’ actually. See I wanted to try a newer creatine product to help my lifting. This stuff was supposed to be more potent, aid more in uptake by the body. Well it might be working too good.

See, creatine essentially works by helping your muscles hold more water. This helps weightlifters because it basically gives their muscles the reserves necessary to get that “one more rep” out, and really tear down the muscle fibers more, so that the rebuilding process has more to do. More rebuilding, more mass! Well I think that my headache – that has now lasted 3 days straight – might be a function of dehydration in the parts of my body that are not muscle. Yesterday, not only did I have the headache, but I also had aching in my hamstrings. I started to think it might be dehydration and began drinking a lot of water, which by the beginning of the evening had helped to alleviate the headache and hamstring aching.

But I can only drink so much water at work, and when I got home I started feeling depleted again. The kicker was when I crawled in bed, I got a shiver and started… uh, shivering? Well anyway, my abs flexed, and they flexed hard, so hard in fact that they cramped up and I couldn’t get them to release for a few seconds. And at that point, I realized that for sure, I do not have enough water in my body.



Off the stuff
So I am going to stop taking the creatine, at least for a little while. See if it’s the X-factor or not. I think so, but I like to test. I’ll be drinking lots of water today, no creatine, try to drown the cramps & headache in wa-wa. I think it’s going to work.



The last straw, Clinton?
Clinton wonders why people defected to Obama. Well let’s see… Might playing up the gas tax break for Summer – which serves no real purpose and is against almost everything else we deem important, like the environment and the attempt to break our oil habit – be a hint?

I’m proud of Obama for his stance. He’s right in that realistically, it won’t solve any real problems. It would save me a whopping $100 over those 3 months. Meanwhile, it just might aid in putting more pollutants into the atmosphere, and really just give the gas manufacturers more reason to raise prices as they see fit.

All this fronting & maxing… it’s politics. Obama has gained a backing because he doesn’t want to play politics as usual, and a lot of people respect that. I respect that. This may be the final straw for me.

OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT!

Peace.

Tags: Politics

I had a dull throbbing in my head all day yesterday. We cancelled our workout for the day, because the throbbing headache was afflicting us both. Well we were turning into bumps on a log – or a couch, as it were – and I wanted to get us out of that little slump we found ourselves in. So…



Dogs HO!
… we got ourselves up and ready and took the dogs out to the dunes. It’s fun there, because I can go off-roading a little, and the dogs can play in the sand and the water. It’s on the peninsula of the bay, which is rather narrow, so you’re not more than ¼-mile from the bayside to the beachside, so there’s plenty of options for fun times.

It took some convincing. Mostly me convincing The Girl, but we made it up and out, around 2:15 or so. Spent the better part of two hours there.



Nice weather we’re having
Been nice the last few days. Not hot, not cold, just in between. Yesterday it was overcast most of the day, but it wasn’t cold, even at the peninsula. Of course after we got home and took a nap, it cleared right up and was nice & sunny too. Go figure.

Of course it’s supposed to rain today & tomorrow. I am neither pleased nor displeased by this, just mentioning it. Two days of it. Then back to the same ol’ overcast & sunny days for a while.



A week from Today: Ass-kicking training
I start my jujutsu classes next Tuesday. :-) (that’s me smiling). I am happy about this. I am excited and a lil’ nervous, too. I haven’t really done anything like this before, save for a two-week trial when I was like 4 years old or something. I don’t think that counts. No one fears me when I tell them I took karate for two weeks when I was four and achieved white-belt status.

So I need to stop in and pay. And I guess pick out a suit. Oh sh!t there’s another downside to this, too.

You see, I “go commando.” It’s very liberating, as it were. Been doing it for years, so don’t act shocked, and uh, don’t get that weird look on your face that I can tell you have right now. It’s not like they’re going to jump out and grab you just because they’re not in tightie-whities or anything, OK? They’re still safely under wraps, so get over it.

However with all the tussling and stuff I’m going to be doing? I might have to go to the other extreme. That’s right, spandex. Ew. The boys are squirming just thinking about. It’s gross. Ew.



Watched “An Inconvenient Truth” last night
Not going to bother reviewing the thing. It’s a documentary, and if you have been anywhere but under a rock the past 2 years, you know what it’s about. Al Gore? Global Warming? ‘Nuff said.

Anyway, he makes a compelling case. Not that he’s really making it so much as he’s explaining it in ‘real terms’ for people. It’s one thing to hear scientists use big words, it’s quite another to see graphs about the damage we’ve done and be hit with the realities of what our future will hold for us at the current rates. None of this came as a shock to me, I have known for quite some time. But I could see others who aren’t as ‘in the know’ about this stuff as me being quite surprised by some of the factoids presented.

One of the things I was happy to see was the mention of it really more than anything being a function of our exploding population. It’s not mentioned enough I feel, and I think that a lot of the issues we face could be dealt with if we just started to control the population better. I mean, in an extreme sort of example… if there were 1,000 people on earth, would it really matter if we drove 1mpg cars around? The earth’s systems would be more than able to accommodate that sort of usage. But 7 billion people? Things get a little tighter then. I mean, it’s still the same earth with the same capacity for resources, but now you’ve got a lot more mouths to worry about, and a lot more butts putting waste out into the same limited space. It’s a big issue is what I’m saying.

So if you have not seen it, I would recommend watching it. It’s long and feels longer than it really is due to the nature of the material, but it’s not really boring. Just educational.

Peace.

Tags: Technology, Animals

He can put some surfers to shame ;-)

Anyway, check it out. It’s the one that shows him running across the beach. Titled “Miles swimming @ the Beach.” So yeah, check it out.

Peace.

Tags: Animals

So I popped in a fully-charged battery into the camera today. It opened. Not without struggling and at least an attempt or two. And the first time it opened it got ‘stuck’ closing. But now it seems to work fine. Go figure.



Uh, Maybe Not
Well actually maybe this is something we should watch. We took the dogs out to the Delta today, and whilst there, The Girl’s camera acted up. She pulled it out and turned it on and it… you guessed it: had a lens error. Hers though, rectified itself on the spot a moment later.

But still.

Tags: Technology, Animals

So I made it through the “marathon workout” session I had planned. It wasn’t that bad once I got going actually, not as bad as I had imagined it might be. Sh!t I might actually try to incorporate it into my regular routine; sure it takes an extra hour of actual workout labor, but it frees up a little bit of “frictional” time it takes to get ready and then get “un-ready” after I finish for the second of the two workouts, so it actually saves me time if I can get away with it.

Problem is, there’s not really any I can combine except for the ones I combined for this. So it would save me a day. But still, even if I don’t do it often, it’s nice to know that I can schedule it and get away with it.



Almost didn’t Attempt it
I almost didn’t even attempt the “marathon workout.” I didn’t feel too good when I got home. Felt that maybe afer all I would have to push it all back; perhaps I was still too sick to get into it this hard this fast. Well I took a small nap outside in the sun, and then decided to go ahead and try. What the hey, I figured, I could quit if I started feeling worse.

Luckily I started feeling better instead. Yes!



Note on being sick
I have been not 100% since I started feeling crap-tastic® last week around this time, but the last few days have been kinda weird: my sinuses are draining, and suddenly I notice that one of my top-right teeth kind of hurts me when I run/jog/bounce. I am not sure what’s going on, I think it could be related to the cold… I think the sinus cavity drains over the roots of the top row of teeth, right? I think that maybe I’m just backed up right around there. Hopefully it drains OK and everything is Jake.

Because I really don’t want to go to the dentist for jack sh!t. Really.



I was actually without internet @ The Girl’s work
It was a rare occasion, but I sat so far away from the source of their “free wi-fi” that I simply didn’t get a strong-enough signal to get online.

Which meant no “mobile porn.” Damn.



People-watching doesn’t seem to be working for me
Every time I think that I’m beginning to be something worthwhile physically, I look around and see tons of guys far beyond me. This is frustrating. Especially seeing as how I just got through with a “marathon workout” session (see above, and see yesterday’s post). Dang it, it just seems that after so much hard work, I’d be further along than this. Not that I’m a nothin’ mind you, but I’m definitely not quite a something either. I’m in this funky in-betwixt area, where I’m so glad I’m not what I was, yet not really much closer to what I want.

What do I want? The body on the front of the product packaging for "The Perfect Pushup." Which I see daily. And am irritated by daily.



Sign of the Apocalypse
OK Reno, NV has been rocked by over 100 “aftershocks” over the course of a two-month period. Or since Friday. Hard to tell for sure as the editorial staff at the end of that link sorta sucks.

And furthermore, some of the “aftershocks” have been more powerful than the original quake. So the officials are warning Reno to brace for the worst, because contrary to everything they know – much like every related occurrence thus far – they think that maybe these are “preshocks” or something.

What’s kind of amusing is that is everyone’s fear when they feel an earthquake: everyone is then wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, waiting with their luggage packed so that they can flee when the next, larger, earth-destroying quake comes in a few minutes. Which hasn’t happened thus far that we know of in history, but yet which the officials are warning Reno to do. And hey, I agree – crap guys, this May be the beginning of the apocalypse. Duck.

Peace.

Tags: earth conditions

My luck with Canon Digital Cameras has been less than stellar recently, I would say.

Last time – not all that long ago, either – it was a Canon SD870 that saw fit to severely underexpose all images when at 80% zoom or more, regardless of actual lighting conditions (like, say, outdoors on a bright sunny day). This time it’s at least not a software problem, but a mechanical problem: the lens seems to be “stuck shut.” When I try to turn it on, the lens tries to extend out, and fails.

I say “at least” in reference to the hardware failure because that’s easier to troubleshoot; the software failure leaves the “techs” on the other end to question whether you are ‘doing it right,’ with ‘it’ ranging from “turning on the power” to “do you even know what the hell a camera is?” Yes I do, dumbass, probably better with them than you. But I digress. This makes it a simple “oh ok well the mechanism appears to be broken, please send in for warranty repair.” OK I can do that.

What’s really weird about it is that I had the camera out, took some pics, put it away and walked around for a bit, maybe a whole 2 minutes, before a chance for a ‘Miles Movie’ presented itself and I pulled it back out. I am not sure if I by chance had anything to do with its demise, as I pulled it out and hit the on button, then was holding the zoom function down as it was starting up. Could that have confused it or jammed the mechanical mechanism? I don’t think so, but maybe if two gears are fighting to go different directions when they shouldn’t be…

Anyway, a call is to be placed on Monday. Wish me luck.



Tomorrow’s Workout: A marathon affair
It’s going to be some 3 hours. Really. See I had planned to do my shoulders today and my biceps & triceps tomorrow with a day off on Sunday, but I’m so sore today from my chest & back workout yesterday, that the whole shoulder thing was not close to a possibility this evening. Clearly. I could not even feint the appearance of a full range of motion today.

One option was to move everything back a day, but that binds other things from Sunday on forward, and moving them back further means more than two days for some stuff, making my workout routine far too spaced for my liking. So the other option was to combine things that I could get away with, and just lengthen the hell out of the schedule. I opted for this as tomorrow I have nothing going on after work, save for dinner @ The Girl’s work, so even though I never ever do it, I’m going to go the marathon workout route.

I expect it will run anywhere from 2-½ hours to 3 hours long. Wish me luck.

Luckily I have the next day off, for my workouts anyway. Still gotta get up and go to work though, so it’s not like it’ll be a cakewalk of a day still. And I wanted to take the dogs out when I got home too, so we’ll see how it goes.

Peace.

Tags: Gym, Technology

Avoid Wheat flour at all costs. Remind The Girl to avoid wheat flour at all costs.

See it happened like this: She wanted to try something new, something healthier than our bleached (yet still 100%-Organic), white, plain ol’ flour. Fine I said, how bad can it be? They’re derivatives of one another. Go for it. This was two days ago. This morning before I had to go to work, I figured we could have pancakes that she would make for me (see how that works?). So “we” got hard at work making them and getting them ready.

We should have known almost immediately – and thinking back, we kinda did – that they were going to taste like crap as we were cooking them. They just didn’t cook the same, you know? They looked like crap. Like, literally. Like someone had a “runny day” over the skillet or something, which was not aided by the fact that we put chocolate chips in them. Anyway. We sit down to eat them and sure enough they taste as bad or worse than they look. It was like eating stale, past-its-prime sawdust or something. It was bad.

What was worse that The Girl informed me she had had worse. I couldn’t believe such a thing existed and demanded she tell me where the hell she’d had pancakes worse than these. Turns out?

She had eaten wheat flour pancakes recently at a restaurant with some friends. Which really makes me wonder… if she’s had wheat flour pancakes before, and knew they sucked, why would she decide we need wheat flour for our pancakes? I do not have an answer to this question.

Color me perplexed.

Sigh. I know where Zoey gets it, I guess ;-)



A Good Onion
I have known about it for some time, but I rarely make time to stop by and take a gander at all the wonderful “news” items they have available.

I am referring to The Onion News Network. Check out the videos. They’re a riot. Especially nuggets like this one. And This one. And so on; you get it.

Peace.

Tags: women, Entertainment

As a good american, I’m sure you have one of them charcoal fire-starting devices. You know, “the chimney” as I call it and probably many others. Well I always manage to still have a hard time getting it to light. Not sure if it’s the location or what, but for whatever reason the newspaper snuffs itself out. The instructions say to insert two newspaper pages crumpled up, but if I do that many it just goes out, and if I do less then I am really just going to stand there lighting newspaper forever.

Well one day I was out of newspaper but didn’t want to go get some just to start this one BBQ adventure. So I reached around the corner and grabbed a brown grocery bag that I had saved. Well it turns out that – at least for me – the brown paper bag works quite a bit better. It seems to light better and stay lit, which is important to the cause.

So anyway here’s the exact routine: I rip a a full-sized bag in half. I then crumple and insert into the bottom, and light. I walk away, put away the charcoal bag and otherwise occupy myself for a minute. Then I go and crumple the leftover half of the bag, and insert it into where the first half used to be, before it burned itself out of existence. I usually don’t need to use the lighter or matches again, as there’s enough ember from the first half that I can just blow and get it to flame and catch the new half-bag on fire as well. At this point I go away, and check back in a few just to make sure that the bottom-level coals are indeed white, signaling that they have indeed caught flame and are going to do the rest for me.

I have no idea why it works better. Maybe it burns hotter I’m not sure, but it does the job faster and better than newspaper. Newspaper just snuffs itself out every time I try it.

So next time you need to light the barbie, and you don’t want to babysit the chimney and the newspaper, try the good ol’ brown paper bag. Works wonders for me.



Grab life by the tail
I have been trying for the last few weeks to force upon myself a “no mouse” policy. However, I think that as of today that policy is over. I prefer the mouse.

But nevertheless the experience has been good. I have made myself more productive on the trackpad than I was previously, and I am more likely to reach for it now. But still, I’m more effective with mouse-in-hand than hand-on-pad.

Yet getting back on the mouse today and doing some unofficial tests, I found that for the most part, I spent less time fumbling when I had the mouse; I can just get right to the place I want to be, faster and more precisely than a trackpad can afford. I like this level of exactness. So when the place I’ll be will have room for a mouse? I’ll mouse it. But I will no longer sweat not having it, nor will I bother to try and take it with me when it might prove an inconvenience. Basically, if I’m at my lair and in “my spot,” it’s there. If I’m not there, it’s no big deal.



Zoey: Irritatingly dumb
I call Zoey “The Dumb One” because it’s a funny-yet-accurate assessment of her critical thinking abilities. Don’t get me wrong, she’s very cute and very lovable and has quite the personality on her. But she’s dumb. This is how dumb she is:

OK so I’ve had the 4Runner for the better part of 3 years now. In that time, we’ve gone everywhere from the mountains & Deserts of So Cal to the Mountains & Beaches of Nor Cal. This whole time, not a problem we’ve had, we get ready, they get excited, we open the back and they jump right up. Crap, since we got up here, keeping them out of the back whilst I get it ready for them has been a real challenge (not an issue any longer with the addition of my $200 floor mats). All of that ended recently, however. At least for Zoey.

A couple of weeks ago, I was getting everything prepped to go, got them around back, and was trying to get them to calm down before allowing them to jump in. Well as I was getting Miles to sit down (he’s really excitable, as you probably know). Out of the corner of my eye, I see Zoey break from her sit and try to jump in. Well the problem is that she missed. She missed, and fell. And then started yelping like… well, like someone kicked her I guess, which was amusing to a degree at the time, but has created issues that really just bug the living sh!t out of me now.

She won’t jump into the 4Runner anymore. She won’t do it. Which means that on occasion, if we’re parked in a less-than-stellar spot, it becomes dangerous because she wiggles and cowers and hides…. Anywhere. And it’s annoying as hell because I have to pick her dumbass up and throw her in myself, which if she’s wet and smelly means I too am now wet & smelly.

What the hell? I mean, this isn’t rocket science, you know? It’s jumping into a car. And, uh, let’s not forget that we’ve done it successfully for…. 3 YEARS! 3 years! So what, we throw away 3 years-worth of success because we failed once? And didn’t even have a bump or bruise to show for it? OK fine. But yes, that makes you unequivocally dumb. Zoey, the Dumb & Irritating One. Oh my. How Frustrated I have become.

Peace.

Tags: Animals, Technology

Most people view their email from a website. They log on to yahoo or maybe hotmail if they're kinda retarded or if they’re more informed, maybe gmail, and then view from their web browser. But there’s a better way. If you have an email client, which you probably do – Outlook on Windows (why are you on Windows, though?), or Mail on the Mac – and your email provider has POP or IMAP access as an option, why not just set up the mail client to log in to your account for you? This way, you save the steps of having to navigate to a website, log in, then find your inboxes or whatnot. Now, you simply start your client up, and it’s all there! Easy as pie. What’s more, you don’t’ have to ever actually quit your mail client; leave it running, and periodically it will check for new mail for you and inform you of its arrival, which is nice.

This is especially useful if you have more than one email address you access. For instance, I have at least seven email addresses I access daily, each serving a different function. I have one that serves this site, one that only friends and family know of, one that’s a throw-away from web forms, one that is for “work” and… well you get it. Anyway, I start up Mail, and it takes care of getting all my emails for me, every 15 or so minutes.

There’s a catch, though. You see, there’s two different ways that you can have your mail accessed, and the two behave quite differently. They each have benefits & drawbacks, so if you have the choice it might come down to being informed. How are they different?


POST OFFICE PROTOCOL (POP)
POP works essentially by downloading your email to your machine. Your email client logs in, queries the email server, and downloads your email for viewing. This means that you will have a local copy of each and every email on your machine.


INTERNET MESSAGE ACCESS PROTOCOL (IMAP)
IMAP is different. With IMAP enabled, when you start your client, it again queries the server, but this time instead of downloading the message from the server, it is essentially just acting as a window to the messages. When you view an IMAP email, you’re peering through a window into the email server, where the email really is.


PROS AND CONS
The upside of the IMAP setup is that you are not wasting disk space on your machine with emails. So depending on how many emails you have, this could save a lot of disk space. Another positive is that should your computer crash or otherwise be incapacitated, your emails are still safe on the email server. And also, you have the ability to keep your emails synced across machines. The downside is that since you're just viewing the emails, if you are away from the internet you will be unable to download any attachments or sometimes, even view old messages. The other less-likely downside – though it did happen at least once recently that I’m aware of – is that if the email server crashes & burns, you could potentially lose all of your email data with it.

POP has almost equal and opposite pros and cons. POP means storing your emails locally on your machine, but that means that you are able to access them at all times, regardless of whether or not you have an internet connection. Also, though you have the chance of losing all your emails if your hard drive goes kaput, if you are backing up regularly – like you should be – you’re insulated from this as well. And you never have to worry about those who serve your email losing it themselves!

This comes to a head for me because recently, one of the main channels I use for email access – google’s gmail – added in the option of doing either POP or IMAP; usually you get one or the other.

Anyway, I have been using their email access via POP. I prefer POP, because the way I see it, my emails are MY emails, I don’t want to “rent” them from an email provider. Yes it means storing my emails locally, but in this age the space they take up is so miniscule as to be rather unimportant, archives and all. And with gmail’s almost-limitless server space, you can actually get the benefits of the IMAP experience – having your email on the server. If you initiate a POP email account and specify that you want the email server to keep a copy of all emails on the server, they will be there regardless of whether local catastrophe hits your machine.

Anyway, long story short I prefer POP. All of the arguments I see in favor of IMAP usually revolve around the data security & synchronized machines arguments; but if you don’t delete the messages from the server if you do POP, then you can actually achieve almost the same results, but with the added benefits of being able to “own” your messages, and/or access already-downloaded content whenever you want, internet access or no.

I really don’t see the benefit of IMAP, outside of businesses being able to control/regulate/read through all the emails of their employees at any time in a local manner. If that doesn’t pertain to you, then really it’s more a question of whether you’d rather rent, or own?

I prefer ownership.

Peace.

Tags: Technology

Yesterday our trust iPod Nano died. It was a first-generation model, white, with a custom inscription. We mourn the loss. Mostly me though.

I was working a few nights ago, but I noticed on the way home the battery was running low, so I took it in to charge it. Yesterday I grabbed it on the way out the door, and sadly I noticed that it would not respond to any button commands. I tried to recharge it. I tried to reload the software. No dice. It does not want to recognize any button presses.

Sucky. Because my antenna is and has always been busted on the 4Runner, so the signal I get is lousy at best. That and even if it did magically get decent signal, there’s not much in the way of radio worth hollering about around here.

Sigh. May finally be time to look into a new iPod. Sad.



Clinton Wins Penn
I really wish that people would wise up. What are you voting for? Did you decide who to vote for based on looks? Did someone talk a good game?

No I’m not saying that Obama is a bad contender. I’m actually more referring to the fact that recently it was polled as such to reveal that McCain is about even in the race to the White House with the Democratic candidates.

Seriously America, where have you been the last eight years? Been around long? Not sure if you noticed, but nothing good has come from our “war” in Iraq. Al Queda is now a presence where it was not prior, and gas? Oh yeah, while our servicemen die, our prices for gas go to $4 a gallon. Nice.

I need to convince the area I call home to secede. We could be our own country. Or maybe convince us and everyone in between to just join Canada. I would not be opposed.

Peace.

Tags: Politics, hate

What’s most suitable for the average user? Should you opt for the desktop or the laptop equivalent? The difficult part is deciding what is an equivalent for your needs. This is a case for Apple’s machines because they don’t have actual equivalents. Their bottom-tier desktops – the Mini – is not the equivalent of the MacBook, their bottom-tier laptops, at least not in whole. Their top of the line Mini is probably close to their bottom-rung MacBook though, and from the MacBook it’s quite a jump to the next most powerful machine, the iMac, Apple’s flagship consumer desktop machine. From there it jumps to the iMac lineup, and then you have on the laptop side you go to the MacBook Pros, which then leads back to the desktop side, with Apple’s pro-grade Mac Pro machines – towers not built for the average joe, but rather for video editing houses & big-production businesses.

There’s lots of blur about what’s “equivalent” and what’s not. If you’re looking at a Mini you’d probably also take a gander at the MacBook as an alternative, but then again if you were looking at the low-end iMac you might also look at the MacBook too. And if you were looking at a top-level iMac you might eye the MacBook Pro models, so it all really depends on your pocketbook and what your preferences are. But we’re not going to weigh the individual machines here, we’re just going to sort of gloss over some basic fundamentals of what type of machine may be more suitable to the average user. And although it’s framed around Macs, the basic idea of “laptop or desktop” applies equally well if you’re on Windows, though really you shouldn’t be, get with the times people :-)

Anyway. There’s going to be tradeoffs. Some of them are going to be easily spotted on the specs page comparisons, others are not, and you have to be careful to weigh all of them. To start, yes desktops will always be faster & roomier. This is a “well duh” sort of idea, as it stands to reason that with more internal room in the case, there’s more room for higher-powered hardware – faster CPU’s & GPU’s, and more spacious, larger Hard Drives. This comes at a cost mind you, as typically these also require more power consumption. So even though you may pay less for the desktop with a slightly faster CPU rating, you’re going to be paying more with every hour that goes by, as it sucks down more power to fuel that machine.

The spec page comparisons are easy to see; you can see technically what you’re going to get for your money. Laptop A is going to give you 2.4ghz, Desktop B gives you 2.6ghz, etc. You can see that. But what about the stuff not on the sheet? How valuable is it to be able to use a “computer” away from a desk? I have been laptop-only for 4 years now; I know what a desk looks like because I pile things on it to file later. That’s it. It’s one of those things that you don’t realize how valuable it is until you try it for a couple of weeks then try to go without it again. It’s nice to sit comfortably and do my work (or whatever you call it anymore). It’s nice to be able to take my computer with me and work while I eat at a café somewhere. Or how nice it is to be able to sit outside in the shade and get my work done, not confined to a single space when something needs to be done.


It’s very liberating, actually. You don’t realize how useful a computer can be, or even how well you can integrate its usefulness into other areas of your life until you have the ability to take it with you everywhere. Mobile address book. Mobile internet access (and thus mobile shop ‘n compare!). Mobile typewriter. Mobile data store. That information that’s sitting there somewhere in your documents folder that you need right now? With a laptop, it can be at your fingertips no matter where you go. And it doesn’t stop there, either. I use mine as a remote control for my music. My computer stores all my music and it plays through my stereo system wirelessly. So when I want to change a song, I reach over and change the song. Washing dishes? Not a problem, just reach over and hit “next.” Hell you may not want to read this, but I can type up or research what it is I am curious about while on the john (the lower-case, figurative john. You get it, right? Oh come on. It’s a toilet folks).

You do give up some power, and usually some screen size too. Not only that, but typically you give up some hard drive space as well. You lose on the spec sheet war. But the thing is, especially with today’s advanced computers & internals, how much does that really impact you? Most of us – including me anymore – do not do much more than mail, documents, pictures, and watching videos. Oh and the internet thing, too. That does not require a fast processor, nor a gaming-centric GPU. Of course if you are a gamer, then of course you need to look at what specifically will support your habit – er, addiction – er, uh, hobby, but those that require the top of the line rarely realize that they’re not the norm, they are the fringe.

I can say that because I have been the fringe, I have needed the higher-powered machines in the past, and I have also seen the improvements technology has made in a short time, seen it erase the needs for higher-powered machines, and also been victim of the desire to have better than I need.

I used to shoot RAW images until not so long ago. It was fun, and it required better programs and hardware than the typical consumer-level stuff. I shopped around when it was time to get new hardware as mine was aging and showing it, and I made the mistake of thinking that I would again need “Higher-level” equipment. This of course would cost me, but I was shooting RAW, dammit! Anyway, my significant other got a consumer machine for herself – a MacBook – as she did not have the same needs I did. Well I played with hers since it was there, and it turned out that today’s bottom-end was more than enough to run the higher-end needs of just a year ago. So take it from me, unless you’re doing serious video editing (think Pixar) or messing around with 14 megapixel images in Photoshop, or manipulating Gene decoding in a Harvard Medical Lab somewhere, don’t fool yourself into thinking you need the 800lb gorilla.

Weigh your options. Think about how much space you need on the machine. Think about how much a desktop weighs you down, in the sense that the seat you select for your desk is the one your butt will be planted in whenever you need to compute. Think about that especially hard, as that’s the biggest of the specs not listed on a sheet.

It would be my recommendation that for most people, a laptop is more than powerful enough. And though you give up some “power,” it’s like getting the Accord instead of the Mustang – yeah it’s less powerful, but if you’re only doing 55mph, will you even notice the power you give up? Probably not. The hard drive can be upgraded easily – most times before you order it – meaning that you can more than likely get room to grow for many years out of it, if not just a plain excess of space! Though you give up some spec sheet stuff, you gain all the intangibles that a desktop unit cannot grant. Mobility. Lower power consumption. Accessibility (tied to mobility). Convenience. Couple this with the fact that price differentiation between the two has fallen; it used to be that a laptop was two to three times more than a “comparable” desktop machine, especially in the windows world, and they were also far less reliable. However the growing pains of the mobile computing revolution seem to have settled; most come with multi-year warranties, and pricing has fallen as such to be close to in-line with desktop machines. Yes you give up a little, but remember all you stand to gain.

I say this as I post from a laptop of my own, of course. Maybe I’m biased? Hey, maybe it means something that I have done it, and chosen to do it not just once, but twice, with my own money. It might mean something.

Peace.

Tags: Technology

Tags: Technology

So yeah watched Across the Universe last night. It was… well, it was… like an art school project gone horribly wrong. Yes, remind me next time to avoid like the plague any and all arthouse flicks. Wow what a horrible movie. Dammit I cannot stand musicals!

I’m not sure what they were thinking. I mean, it takes a lot of effort to ruin a story like they did. The actual plot wasn’t that bad, but then they incorporate all these damn singing sequences that really detract from the point of everything else, because it’s so damn corny. Sorry, I’m not a West Side Story kinda guy; groups of people break out spontaneously into song and dance and I break into a wild frenzy in which someone – perhaps multiple retarded singers/dancers – must die, that’s just the way it is.

And they damn near ruined the entire Beatles Catalogue as well. Few if any of the voices and performances were worth listening to. I would have preferred just listening to a CD of it all and being done with it.

Do not watch this movie. Do not believe the hype that it’s “visually stunning” or “a storytelling masterpiece;” it’s absolute crap I can attest. A real, honest-to-goodness F-minus.



This is why Republicans suck
Mccain has been busy in the campaign trail simplifying the issues in such a way as to prey on the fears of the constituents to get elected. This is not right. It is not right to say that if we withdraw “Al Queda will have won,” because you’re implying that we are fighting Al Queda, and that they are the reason we got involved.

Little-known fact (read the above-linked article), but there was no Al Queda presence in Iraq until after we invaded in 2003. So in all reality, if “Al Queda wins” it’s because we went there in the first place; the republicans don’t want to admit this of course, because it was their idea and they're wholly responsible for the threats they have created there.

So they continue to frame it in such a way as to imply that we’re the heroes doing god’s work. Oh yeah, it’s the modern-day Crusades folks, don’t be fooled by the smoke and mirrors.


Safe to say that I hate republicans like I hate musicals…

Peace.


Across the universe review - Worst Movie Ever?

Tags: Politics, hate

I worked my arse of last night at work (of all places to do such a thing), and started feeling rather run-down as the night progressed. I hoped it was just that the long day had taken its toll on me, as I had gotten up early to take the dogs out, then gotten home and began a vigorous shoulder workout, then cleaned myself up to go to work and dog myself there, too.

Secretly though, I feared I was getting what The Girl was giving to me. B*tch.

She had started to feel ill a few days ago, and I tried to keep my distance. But I’m a man, and nature calls us on occasion, sick or not. Damn my lover ways, next thing I know I’m sick too. What a way to ruin a weekend off. Damn that woman; she’s such a giver.



Across the… the… LIVING ROOM!
Since The Girl is not feeling all that well, she decided to get her shift covered tonight. Since I’m off too and not feeling all that great myself, we’re going to sit back, relax, eat ice cream and watch a movie. On the agenda? Across the Universe. The reviews have been all over the map, with some calling it a masterpiece, and it looks a little odd. What the heck though, right? Netflix is workin’ OK, so I figure that we’ll put it on the queue, and see what happens. Maybe it'll be the next Shawshank.

I’ll be sure to report back to all the people that don’t read my blog anyway so you won’t know how the movie is.



More Proof The Mighty Dollar owns our Gov’t
Here’s a nice link to a blog post on the cosumerist that summarizes the state of personal taxes and corporate taxes now, years past, and into the future.

Hey these are figures BY the government; I’m not making this sh!t up.

Peace.

Tags: Politics, Entertainment