Problem was, it was hard/difficult/impossible to edge any area that (a)the grass was lower than the sidewalk, so nothing “laid over” it to cut, or (b)there was no sidewalk to walk it along. I did the scissors/shears thing for a while, but as I recently hoed the back to give it a break betwixt grass & fence, I had much, much more area that fell into category (b).

I haven’t tried to yet. It’s raining. But I’m so happy already. I play tomorrow.



Movie for the night: Michael Clayton
I keep getting lucky with my Netflix Queue. Last week I got pushed ahead to see No Country for Old Men, which was a ‘Long Wait.’ This week, I get Michael Clayton, another well-received flick that was listed as a ‘Wait’ title.

Well at least I hope I’m getting lucky. I mean, I didn’t particularly care for No Country, so I’m trying to lower my expectations for Clooney’s outing here.



Edit:
Actually I should say that I did not break down and buy a week wacker; rather, I sent The Girl out to to get me one. So I caved and she bought. That’s more correct.



Edit:
Someone on the web pointed out to me a typo on my Miles Bio page yesterday. I was missing a period (oh no I’m late!) at the end of the first paragraph. I thanked this person, and they requested that I give them proper credit. So here it goes:

The random bob, a.r.c. Miles Bio Page Proofread & edited by Action Jaxan, WEE (Web Editor Extraordinaire). Real name redacted to protect the innocent.

Personally I just like having made up the 'WEE.' Makes me laugh every time. I imagine a wee little tyke going down a slide. WEE… How fun.

Oh and I also took the time to add some more pics, since I was there fixing typos. Added some to the Family Album, as well!

Peace.

Tags: Entertainment, Technology

First is its keyword structure. In iPhoto, each keyword is its own keyword and its own keyword only, whereas with Aperture, there’s a Hierarchy. So for illustration, say you have a Keyword called Redwoods. Redwoods are trees of course, and suppose you also have Trees as a keyword. So you put Redwoods under Trees, but Trees is already under Nature, which is itself under Outdoors. What this means is, when you apply the Keyword Redwoods to that shot you got of The General Sherman during your Summer vacation, that photo automatically inherits all the keywords above Redwoods. Make sense? See, this way when you go and search for Outdoors (or Nature or Trees for that matter), the shot of that magnificent General Sherman will pop up, even though you didn’t apply that keyword directly to that photo; since it was a Parent in the hierarchy of the keyword you did use (Redwoods), it’s applied automatically, or assumed.

Second, is the fact that I still do tend to tweak my photos. Yeah it’s not as much as when I was shooting RAW, but since this camera shoots a little more “full-frame,” instead of a more widescreen format, I find I like to spend some time cropping some pics here & there to add a little more ambiance to them. In iPhoto, when you edit a picture, the program keeps the original, but then creates a copy of the picture with the edits you made. This means, if you change the brightness of a picture, now you have two almost identical files, with two almost identical File Sizes, essentially doubling its drain on your Hard Drive space (if the original was 2MB, you make an edit and now you are taking up 4MB for the edited & original files).

Aperture doesn’t do this, it instead displays onscreen what the commands you input for edits will produce. In this way, the original file is kept, but no ‘duplicate’ is made, rather just the instructions for creating it, which take up far, far less room (orders of magnitude less).

So yes, iPhoto is more friendly by a smidgeon than Aperture (especially 1.5, the original version that I own), but it would also lead me to expanded disk usage, and I’d also have to be much more Johnny-on-the-spot with my keywording. Hey, maybe the next iteration of iPhoto will inherit the “non-destructive” editing of Aperture and the keyword hierarchy too, but until then I think I’ll be sticking with Aperture.

Peace.

Tags: Technology

I had created a blog entry and had a movie to go along with it, and went to post the combo to my site. BUT, I always, always double-check online after I finish to make sure everything shows up as I planned it. Well the movie would not play! I checked my work, everything seemed to be OK, and I could play the file locally on my drive, but getting there through the website wasn’t working for me. Hell, I could even play the movie off of my iDisk (where I host my site), but just not through the worldwide web!

So I did a whole bunch of troubleshooting. It was very frustrating, I spent probably 6 hours trying to figure this out, removing plugins, reloading QuickTime, flushes caches, nothing seemed to alleviate the issue.

So this morning, I called Applecare. Hell, maybe they’ve seen it before, maybe they can point me in the right direction.

Turns out, no. They pretty much had me walk through all the steps I had already tried. With one important difference. I had checked all the accounts, all accounts on my machine behaved similarly, so I knew it was a system-wide issue. I pulled all the plugins out and that didn’t help. BUT, I had pulled all the plugins out of the plugins folder only. I DID NOT remove or even check the Quicktime Folder within my system library. Skipped it. Didn’t even think of it for whatever reason.

Well the tech had me open that folder, and I saw a file called “perinian.component” that didn’t jive with me. I checked a test machine that was working fine, and sure enough, it didn’t have this component installed. Bing! Removed the component, restarted machine, and wouldn’t you know it, suddenly the files were playing like they were supposed to. Sweet.

And that’s not all, either. Removing that component also made Safari – my browser of choice – much much faster, especially when loading multiple tabs. I have no idea quite why, as it doesn't make total sense that it would impact these things, but...? So if Safari seems sluggish, takes a long time to load pages, you have issues with avi files – like not playing at all, or only playing video with a white screen and no audio – then perhaps you have that component in your QuickTime folder as well. And perhaps you should trash it and restart.



What is it, anyway?
Well I had it in my folder because I just migrated my old machine to this new machine when I bought it back in November. It’s a Quicktime plugin that aids in the playback of certain files within Quicktime (at least it used to…)I had probably installed it long before, when QT couldn’t natively play as many avi codecs are it now supports, and the plugin was necessary to see/play certain files. Probably d/l’d I trying to support & play youtube videos, one of its more popular features (that it turns out I didn't ever use).

I’m pretty sure that anymore, it was just butting heads with QT over the files, and hence QT couldn’t figure out quite what to do with them. It’s probably an issue with compatibility with Leopard, the newest Apple OS, if nothing else.

A quick look around the intarwebs, and you can see that others have had problems, too. I just hadn't gotten that far along with my troubleshooting to have pinpointed perian yet.

Though now I have. Problem solved!

Peace.

Tags: Technology

Sadly, it only helped me to prove a point. Check out this page it linked to. See the weekly tips? For Leopard as I write this, there’s about 6 tips for Leopard. Now I’m no math whiz, but since leopard’s been out for 4 whole months, shouldn’t there be 16 tips of the week? Not 6? What the hell.

But it gets worse. Apple also recently released new MacBooks & MacBook Pros. Little speed bumps, not a bad update overall, except for one glaring shortfall: Apple’s laptops have been equipped with a remote for about the last two years. That’s great and all, I don’t use mine because it’s sort of useless to me, BUT –

They went from making it an included peripheral, to charging you an extra $19 for it with this iteration of their MacBook lineup.

Know what? F*ck you, Apple. F*ck your remote. F*ck your muther-f*cking remote control, no one really cares about it anyway. It’s got like 6 buttons, and most of them are completely useless anyway. I hope your remote burns in freaking fruit-hell. Not even sure if that exists, but damn I hope it does, just for your stupid $19 remote control. So it can rot there, alone. Maybe with a Zune for added punishment. What the hell were you thinking? Know how many you’re going to sell? 2. One for Steve Jobs, one for Walt Mossberg. That’s it. A**holes.

There, I feel a smidgeon better now.

Tags: Technology, hate

When their Tiger OS came out, one of the features it held was built-in support for RSS feeds in Safari. And by default, one of the RSS feeds was Apple Hot News. When this first debuted, it featured a lot of helpful hints, weekly tips and tricks, and other information to keep you up to speed on what was new in the Apple realm. And way back then, if you had iTunes going for you, once a week you got an email notifying you of their weekly free track. Wow, that’s awesome, right?

Except that somewhere along the way, those emails stopped. And what’s more, somewhere along the same way, that RSS feed went from being full of useful, helpful information for mac owners, to basically just being a collection of Press Releases, touting how awesome Apple is, and why you should go and buy everything they’ve ever made.

Where before they’d show you how to make use of things like Spotlight, now we get to hear about how awesome to use the AppleTV is, and how we should totally buy one. Before you’d get a tale of how certain businesses put Apple products to work for them, now it’s all about how you should just buy the very next consumer device they unveil the product they just released so that you can buy the upgraded version as soon as that comes out, too.

I know they’re a business and they have things to sell, but at what cost? It seems to me they’re starting to more quickly erode the karma they have, that idea that Apple is more than a for-profit company, but a company with a mission and a vision, that being to provide efficient, intelligent computing devices that we don’t have to be sold on, we just desire as they are. I’ve been rooting for them. Now I wonder if I’ll just have to accept them. As in, they’re there, they make computers, and I use them. Ho-hum, now go away. They used to have helpful, informative RSS feeds, now you can’t tell the difference from their Apple Hot News feed from their Press Release feed which is just a crying shame.

Maybe I just can’t find the old one, you say? Nope. I tried to look up all of Apple’s RSS feeds. That’s all there is, folks.

Yeppers, Apple may have begun the process of selling themselves out. That sucks. Maybe I’ll get a Zune now instead of that iPod. HAHA, OK I’m not suicidal or anything, so yeah never mind that!

Peace.

Tags: Technology

As you may know by now, we’re engrained in the Organic Culture. We try to get organic whenever possible, with a 90% success rate. Yes it’s slightly more sometimes (slightly less others), but we eat 3 times a day and care about our health and the quality of the food we eat, so it’s worth it.

We also love Round Table Pizza. If you know me, you know this. No secret. Well, of course they use quality ingredients, that’s why it tastes better than Dominos or any other brand I’ve had. But do they use organic? Probably not. So we figured we’d remedy that situation the same way we remedied brownies, cookies, steak, and everything else: make it ourselves!

Because of course all you do is fling some dough around, put tomato sauce and cheese and pepperoni on it and cook, right?

WRONG WRONG WRONG! Talk about eating crap. WOW. This pizza blew. We figured we were failures in more ways than one, first being horrible pizza cooks, and also using the wrong crust recipe…

Well it turns out we were right, but it was sorta not our fault. Pizza’s involved! Found this thread whilst looking up the recipe for RTP’s crust. We had no idea that pizza-making was such an involved process. 14 pages in, and these guys still can’t get it right. And they seem to know what they’re talking about. Hell if I do. And if you know me, you know something right away: I’m too damn lazy to go through all that for a pizza that’ll last <10 minutes on my plate.

Obviously, Round Table has a customer for life.



Cast Away
Watched this movie last night after we got home from Denny’s (more on that later). Was tired, wanted an easy movie to watch that I could fall asleep through and not miss much, yet still be entertained whilst I was awake. I think it was a good choice.

It’s a good movie. I know it can be kinda boring in some senses, corny at times even (I have made FIRE! - shut up...), but it does a good job of focusing you on a certain select few issues/emotions, and staying with them. Such as, what is lonely? That is lonely. He was lonely. And what would it feel like to be him? I mean for me and possibly many others, the thought of being trapped on a tropical island? No problem, huh? But here we are, peaking in at the reality of it, and maybe it’s not all that great. I mean yeah, he was totally alone, but I can imagine being there with the one other person I’d want: Marisa Miller. OK OK, The Girl… Would we be OK? It’d surely be a nice vacation for a few weeks. But after that? Would we grow tired of it? Would we crave modern society? I just don’t know.

Especially considering that we’re two people who are actively considering not having kids. Would we keep that mentality when presented with life alone on a deserted island? Would we have kids to have company? To take care of us? To build a society? To form unions and Social Security?

Just don’t know. I guess I’ll have to crash a plane to find out for sure. But it’s an interesting internal debate, and I think processing the reality of it could probably make a lot of so-called loners realize they’re not that into being alone after all.

It’s a good movie. And I didn’t even touch on how it points out all we take for granted, and how far removed we are from all that survives us. Another day perhaps.



Capitalism at its… Best?
Recently decided that I could use a larger iPod, say a nano or something of that nature. Nothing outrageous, just something with a screen (my Shuffle has none) and thus the ability to easily navigate more than one playlist, and play the music I’m in the mood for when I'm in the mood for it.

The brand new nanos are a little bigger than I care for, and they place an emphasis on the screen I don’t care for either (thanks, I have a 52” HDTV for watching movies, thank you very much). So the older, 2nd-gen. nanos seemed like a good fit.

Until, that is, I tried to price them out. They’re not made any more, so limited supply, coupled with their apparent appeal, and you have older equipment that is 300% more expensive than the current-gen. Amazing. Yeah, sorry, but I’m not paying $450 for an iPod. It better… well, it better do unspeakable things for me for that much coin, if you are pickin’ up what I’m throwin’ down, as the kids say these days.

I could get one of them iPod Touches for that much money! Sh!t! Maybe I will!

Probably not.

Peace.

Tags: Entertainment, earth conditions

As featured on ABC, apparently “legginess” is a trait whose desirability cuts both ways. So women prefer men with longer legs as well as vice versa.

So that’s why I can’t keep the girls off me. Now I know!



Atkins, you’re a genius
Studies prove that protein makes you feel less hungry.

Now I’m not saying a diet high in meats only is ideal. People seem to think that since I agree with statements like this I must simply despise fruits & veggies. Nope. I believe in a balanced diet, and also I believe that vegetarians are nucking futs!. Seriously, we’re supposed to eat meat. Our digestive systems, dentation, & organs are all designed to have meat. We eat meat. Get over it, and have a cow. For breakfast, lunch or dinner.

And also I despise fruits & veggies a little. OK just kidding. I love fruit. :-)



Starting to see room for improvement
At my work, I am starting to see where they could really stand to streamline certain things, and make the whole process more efficient. This of course, is what I’m best at: finding ways to make things more efficient.

And tt should come as no surprise to any of you that most of this efficiency gain revolves around switching to Macs.

But yes it’s actually true. I watched the Store Manager show me how she reviews orders for just cigarettes, which is only 100 upc’s of the 30,000 we carry, and modifies what the system automatically orders (which is always too much). Using this antiquated DOS-based system we have, it took her 20 minutes to perform a 3-minute task. All because there was no mouse and the system/program was designed to be futuristic in the 1930’s or something.

Time to get with the program and get a Mac, eh? Methinks, methinks. Less time spent pressing an arrow key over & over and more time actually managing the store seems like a good thing. But hey, what do I know? I’m just a genius.

Hey Atkins, wanna hang out sometime? Oh right, I forgot..

Peace.

Tags: Technology

MACBOOK AIR
No it’s not the Michael Jordan Edition with the “Air-ness” logo instead of an Apple, it’s Apple’s latest, smallest, most ultra-portable laptop ever. Ever.

For all it’s coolness, I just don’t see it. And I don’t mean that I can’t see it literally, but that I can’t see it being a worthwhile purchase. No optical drive (that means no CD’s, DVD’s, etc). Non-replaceable battery. Only an 80GB hard drive. Slower processor than what’s otherwise available. For me (and I am guessing many others), losing less than ½” in thickness and two pounds of weight over the MacBook “Normal” (is that what it’s called now?) just doesn’t compute, what with all you lose. Faster processor. Larger hard drive. Optical drive (yay DVD’s!). Plus, for the privilege of having Apple remove all the nicer stuff, they’ll let you pay them an extra $500? Seems like a sore deal all around to me.

Not to take away from its innovation, however. I mean, technically? C’mon! It’s a half-inch thin! Runs for 5 hours on a charge with wireless ON! Weighs three whole pounds! Comes equipped with software to allow you to control optical drives on other machines on the same network! It’s amazing! And I’m glad Apple released it, as it will drive innovation in everything else. We’ll see some of this tech, some of that same R&D come to other lines as well. And for that, I’m very happy.


ITUNES MOVIE RENTALS
About damn time. Too bad they’re overpriced. Look, you’re getting less than a DVD or less than an HD-DVD or BD disc if you try their HD content. Yet you’re paying about the same as you would at a video rental shop, but with more restrictions?

Let’s put this in perspective:

They are competing with Blockbuster, Netflix, and any other similar competitor. If you rent a movie one at a time from any of them, it’ll run you on average about $4-5. The new iTunes movie rentals are no different. Same cost.

On the side of convenience, iTunes wins. Hey, it’ll never be checked out when you get there, guaranteed. Compare to the rental shop, that you have to drive to in order to check and see what they have, and hope it’s not checked out once you actually get there. Netflix? Well kiss spontaneity goodbye, huh? You better have what you want picked out a week or so in advance. But of course, Netflix has no late fees, you can keep it as long as you want it, and watch it however many times you want to when it's in your possession. iTunes? Well, you have only 30 days to view it (better than the store, worse than the Netflix), but once you Do start watching it, you only have 24 hours to actually do so, then it's gone. Oops, accidentally hit Play when you didn't want to watch it until tomorrow evening? You're screwed, sorry. Oh and don't try to rent any new releases within 30 days of wide release. They won't be on iTunes until 30 days after the DVD has gone on sale. So we see that here is where iTunes excels, if you only care about a "need something right now, I don't care what" kind of night. Otherwise, it still loses to the entrenched veterans.

Content. Well, here iTunes loses. The question is how bad, and the answer depends on how much you inlcude in the argument. If we restrict it to just what material is actually viewable, then it loses quite handily, as there’s more room on disc than what they are going to send you, and you get special features, etc. But if we include everything, then it loses handily times 10. If you are still on a Standard Def TV doing DVD’s, now you only get stereo as opposed to Dolby Surround on the disc. But in reality, you're not losing as much as some... If you are in the new Millenium like me and are watching HD content, you’re limited to 720p which is inferior in quality to 1080p, what is otherwise available on Blu-Ray discs, and you don’t get the same high-quality audio options, either.

So in the end, you pay the same price, gain a debatable amount of convenience or lose a lot of convenience or both, and lose quality of content. To me, that’s the recipe for a loser. I’m sorry, but if you want me to shell out the same amount of money (oh yeah, you have to buy the Apple TV too, at the minimum of $229), you either have to up the convenience factor that I already have going, or up the quality factor I already have going, or both. You can’t charge me the same or more, then take away quality and give in return a minimal amount of convenience or none really at all. Sorry, I’ll wait out the Microwaved Burrito and opt for the slow-cooked steak on this one, guys. Especially if they’re the same cost, am I right?


Apple TV
Ah, the Apple TV. Tied closely to the aforementioned iTunes rentals, I give it a thumbs down. No DVR? What? Still? Still can’t play discs? No slot? Can’t output anything above 720p resolution? What?

Wait, what’s that? It’s the same exact Apple TV from last year, but with a new software interface? Yeah OK you lost last year, you lose again. What. The. Hell.

I want 1080p, full audio quality, I want cheaper rentals for everything and TV shows included, and DVR functionality. I want it to be a cable/Blu-Ray replacement, not an overpriced kiddy toy. It’s too expensive for what it offers, and honestly if they gave me what I wanted, I’d say that they could justify a $150 price hike on it. It’d be worth it then. But not now, not even at the “low” price of $229. Not with that content.

Such great potential. Such lousy execution. Sigh. Get it right next go around, Apple.


IPHONE 1.1.3
The iPhone is great in concept, it really is. Again though, not for me. I have a laptop, and when I want to compute, I’d rather work on a full keyboard and have a mouse, as well as a 14” or so screen rather than a 2.5” or so screen, and real horsepower. Call me crazy.

Anyway, the 1.1.3 update added some good functionality. However, it should be mentioned that it was functionality that was sorely missing in the original release. Should have been there from the get-go, but at least now it is there. This is good, even if late (and luckily, not that kind of late, ha ha).

Unless you’re an iPod Touch owner. They want to gouge you $20 for the same additions. Yikes. I’m not going there…. Sorry for ya.


TIME CAPSULE
An addition to go along with Time Machine, Time Capsule allows you to back up your Leopard-Equipped Mac Wirelessly. It was pulled from the features list shortly before Leopard was released, but now apparently it’s back in!

I’m on board for this. I’ll be putting down money for the Big One. Yes indeed. Well worth it, it could be cheaper, but it’s not and it’s still reasonably priced considering all it has and that it’s a one-trick pony that is going to be covered by Apple because it’s their baby. Buy one now. No joke. If you have Leopard, buy one yesterday.

I’m buying mine in a few weeks :-). So much for taking one’s own advice. Hey, gotta make sure the January finances are looking alright, no?




This concludes our Emergency Macworld Blogging
That was fun. Yes I still love me my Apple MacBook. Yes I still think their OS implementation is right most of the way. It’s better than the alternatives, even if it’s not perfect. Hey, they haven’t hired me to do consulting, so that’s the price, apparently.

But criticism is what’s going to keep them moving forward. If everyone drank the koolaid, there wouldn’t be much reason to innovate, huh? And that’s what it’s about: they release some good stuff, it’s not quite perfect, we tell them why not, they make it what we want. Such is the circle, when it works right. Let’s keep the circle going around.

I want my Full-HD Apple TV sooner rather than later, after all.

Peace.

Tags: Technology

But the black isn’t without fault. Yes, it hides the dirt discoloration, but it shows grease spots. It’s a more matte finish, as you probably know if you own one and want to clean it :-), and as such greasy fingers leave shiny spots that don’t come off all too well. The outside edges where I close it and the palm rests (and the keys, too) all started to look rather shiny, and I felt a good cleaning was in order.

I came from an old PowerBook G4, which were aluminum. Those were easy, I just got some hot water and a soft cloth, and went to town alternately cleaning & drying the surface. But since this plastic was absorbing the grease & since water & grease don’t mix (science is fun!), something needed to be devised. You may have read elsewhere online about people cleaning it with the Magic Eraser. Now I don’t know exactly what’s in it, but I know enough to know that if I don’t know what’s in it – or more precisely if they don’t want to tell me what’s in it – I don’t want it rubbing up against my high-priced electronics. Call me crazy, I know, but it’s just not worth it in my estimation.

Anyway, something was devised. So without further ado, here’s how random bob, a.r.c. Keeps his machines clean.


MATTE EXTERIOR
As an owner of a Wireless Mighty Mouse, I have seen on the web multiple ways to clean the scroll ball on the top. Many have had it gunk up on them (myself included), and one solution I came across was to douse the whole thing into a solution of Ethanol or 91% Isopropyl Alcohol. Well it got me thinking that since that works so well at attacking oils and drying them out, why wouldn’t that work on the oil/grease spots my fingers were leaving on the shell?

Turns out it does work. It’s not a miracle cure and it won’t evaporate set-in stains or anything, but if you start to see shiny spotting on the matte case, put some 91% Isopropyl Alcohol (Rubbing Alcohol) on a soft cloth and lightly polish the area. I find that then going over that area with a dry portion of a soft cloth works better than just wet-rubbing then air-drying.


MATTE INTERIOR / KEYS
The same solution seems to work OK on the inside as well. The palm rests and the trackpad seem to respond quite well to the alcohol solution and promptly come clean with a little bit of cleaning/polishing. (Hint: turn the computer OFF before attempting to clean the inside portion) The keys, however, are not the same type of material. And though I was able to get them to clean up a little, it’s still rather apparent where my fingers rest most often, as well as which thumb I use to press space bar :-). So don’t expect perfection on the keys is what I’m getting at, though you can expect to see a little bit of general cleanliness all around.


THE SCREEN
So of course since the alcohol trick works so well everywhere else, you should go ahead and get with that program here too, right?

Stop right there. The alcohol will NOT work so well on your shiny screen. Instead of streak-free clean, you will see a foggy mess. I can attest from experience on this, you want to avoid alcohol on the screen. It’s not that it necessarily damages it, but what I think happens is it dries so fast that you don’t have a chance to polish away any grime; instead it just dries in place in a cloudy formation.

No, rather, the best way to clean the screen I find is the same way I used to clean the screen on my PowerBook: Clean, hot water and a soft (very soft), non-abrasive cloth. I like to use an old T-shirt – spots without logos or seams – or other similar cloth. But you want to make sure it’s soft, as scratching the screen is not something you want to do, as that mistake will stare you in the face every time you use your computer.

The trick is to dip the cloth into the hot water, then immediately start polishing – lightly– the entire screen surface. Since you’re not putting much water on the screen, it’s going to get cold fast, so it’s important to move with some amount of haste to make sure that the heat has a chance to work on the grime. Re-dip the cloth as necessary to keep it warm. Then, grab a dry spot and go back over it in a polishing motion to pick up the moisture, and polish any remaining residue away.


CLEANING REGIMEN
After a little practice, you’ll find you can get through the cleaning process, inside & out, in well under 15 minutes. Some may ask whether it’s a good idea to use a drying agent such as alcohol on the plastic parts of the computer. I understand the concern, but the way I look at it, is that we’re not doing this at excessive intervals & it’s just to rid our machine of the overly-built-up amounts it has amassed. It’s still going to be getting a daily dose

I turn my computer off at two-week intervals and take the 10-15 minutes necessary to clean it. To some of you this may seem a bit absurd, but I like to look at it as an investment on a future return. I recently sold my 3 year-old PowerBook for $1100. You read that right, it’s not a typo. And not only that, but the person buying it didn’t even feel a bit ripped off over the deal.

I can pull this off because of the cleaning regimen I put into action. It’s not much to ask, it doesn’t take that much time, your computer will look like it’s worth every penny for the lifetime it spends with you, then when it comes time to upgrade, you can count on getting a little something back for you efforts. The sale of my PowerBook covered all but the upgraded component costs of acquiring a new machine. Think about that. I have a brand new machine I didn't pay for in all essence. Think. About. That.

Peace.

Want to know how to properly clean your black MacBook? Here’s the easy How-To steps to cleaning your new Apple Black MacBook, from the matte exterior and interior to the glossy screen.

Tags: Technology

Problem: My wish list is a list I keep for the sake of keeping tabs on things I want to eventually get for myself. You’ll also see on there, Large Screen 1080p LCD’s, expensive camera equipment, and… Blu-Ray Players. Which is to say that I don’t currently have a blu-ray player, making the gift sort of a good doorstop.

When they told me that they had gotten something off of my Wish List, my very first reaction as “I hope it’s not something that requires something else off the list to be useful.” They didn’t quite get what I was saying at first, then it dawned on them. What good is a DVD player without DVD’s, right? And what good is a DVD without the player, as well? They rely on each other for usefulness.

Well I guess they missed the fact that there were Blu-Ray players on my list, meaning that the disc would be without use until I got one of those dang player thingies.

Enter Saturday.

We were doing OK this month financially, despite Christmas, and figured we could afford the cost of a player. None of the local shops had the player we wanted (which was priced at about $400), that being the Sony model which has gotten rave reviews. I didn’t want to pay essentially the same price for a player from another brand that wasn’t reviewed as well (cough cough, Toshiba cough cough). But I also wanted to have it in time for their stay with us, so we could get down in HD in their honor (sort of).

I went back to amazon, and I found a killer (killer!) deal on the player I wanted. Overnight shipping was affordable. There was no tax. It came with a movie. A really really, really really sucky movie (Spiderman 3), but what the heck, right? It’s a good deal, and actually ended up cheaper than what we were prepared to spend. Yes, for all that, including the shipping, we only paid $350. Yikes, that was a smoking deal.

Kinda funny, actually, as the “normal” box without the free spiderman movie was $400. So now I know exactly how much Spiderman 3 sucks; they have to pay you $100 to watch it. Wow. That’s a sh!tty movie. I’ll be donating it to charity later today.

Because that’s when my Blu-Ray player arrives. Joy to me. Merry Consumer-mas after all!

Peace. And a happy New Year.

Tags: Entertainment, Technology

Have a Mighty Mouse? Don’t try this at home
I have one of them fancy-schmancy Apple Wireless Mighty Mice. I like it actually, simple yet elegant solution to mousing that it is. But the ‘revolutionary’ scroll ball mechanism they use has a tendency to get gunked up. I’m an oily (some say greasy) Italian, so mine got there eventually. I usually just turned it over and ran it really fast across the sofa or something. This worked well, up until a handful of days ago. Then for some reason, the gunk became too much for my lil’ scroll ball to overcome, even with the help of the sofa.

I went to the internet looking for answers. Kinda like moses & the mountain, only I’m not jewish and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t god that responded. And if it was? Well he gives some bad advice, his holiness.

I read this hint about how a simple cleaning solution was to pour high-percentage alcohol down into the unit with it unplugged, then let it dry. The alcohol evaporates quickly, and as it does you don’t have to worry about it sitting around and shorting things out when you plug it back in later.

Now while this may be true, I can tell you from personal experience that it will likely make a small irritation a major one. I went from having an intermittent non-scroll issue to an intermittent scroll issue, coupled with a middle-click function that no longer worked. Gawdammit.

Well the mouse cost me about $50 and I had no intention of going back to a mouse not as full-featured, nor shelling out an additional $50 for a new mouse. At least until I completely broke this one. So then naturally, I got busy seeing if I could thoroughly break my currently broken unit completely, or fix it, whichever came first.

After finding a video on youtube (geez, that place again), I learnt how to get under this mouse’s skin. After that, it was trying to track down my particular issue, which at first I thought might actually be a short circuit somewhere, damn the luck. Fortunately for me, after about 10 minutes of examination, I found the culprit: corrosion. Yes, though the alcohol had dried fast enough to prevent any shorts, it managed to corrode the contact patch of the middle-click function so that attempts to use it resulted in nothing. Sweet.

Taking the thing apart really isn’t that difficult. The hard part really is the first step, getting the grey ring pried off without A) stabbing yourself silly with a very sharp razor edge – which I almost succeeded at, and/or B) snapping the grey ring while prying it off, which miraculously I managed to avoid entirely.

Bottom line? Don’t shortcut it, it’s not worth it. You’ll end up taking it apart anyways, so just start there if you must, and clean it all properly, huh?



Fannie Mae’s Brother takes a Dump
The Federally-backed program, Freddie Mac, posts a $2-BILLION loss. So that housing slump? Looks like it’s gonna continue for a minute or two longer.

Good. Maybe someday I’ll actually be able to afford to buy a house without having to have kids. So I can sell them. Cuz, uh, that’s what I’d do.



Have I mentioned Michael Vick Sucks? Good.
So uh, yeah, Michael Vick went to jail already or something. Phew! Now my dogs can go out safely again.

My only remaining question is this: When does Clinton Portis go on trial? Surely being that dumb and ignorant is a felony, no?



Recently Downloaded: Daft Punk
After having watched too many videos on youtube with people dancing to Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, and also hating how