I know I posted a link to 5inch a while ago, but they have some really cool newish designs that I hadn’t seen until today. I wish that I had seen this one a month ago, it would have made for some really cool mixed cd gifts for friends.
Apple has released Mac OS X 10.2.3 via Software Update.
I need to switch to a different email application on my Mac OS X boxes. I used to use MSFT’s Entourage, but I switched over to Mail, which Apple ships with Mac OS X. I’m not happy with either at this point. I want something slimmer and more responsive. There’s a list of some other options over at Mac Net Journal, the problem is that I am so email intensive that it is quite an investment in time for me to test out new mail applications. I guess I will try the most recent version of Entourage since it has been updated. The things that I need most in an email client are:
- Support for multiple accounts.
- Strong filtering capabilities.
- Some kind of Spam filtering.
- Responsive Interface and mail browsing.
- Stability, good conformance with Mac OS X User Interface Conventions.
The WThRemix site is up. This is a contest that challenges entrants to redesign the W3C homepage so that it looks and works better while maintaining its standards based approach to design. I’ll be one of the fine judges for the contest, and I am currently seeking companies that would be willing to donate appropriate prizes. So go over there, read about it, and get involved.
I’m beginning to prepare myself to try and quit smoking again. I seem to have the best success in the first couple of months when I give myself some ramp up time, start working out every day without fail, and mentally prepare myself. I seem to have the worst success when alcohol is introduced into my bloodstream, which means I am bound to be the designated driver for a while. I’m thinking that January would be a good month to start. Not the cliche January first start because that actually might be too soon. I will be using the patch sans Zyban this time. It’s never the quitting process that fails, it’s the life as a quit addict that follows that I seem to have a hard time with. Well, we’ll see, won’t we.
My work on a top ten cd’s of the year list continues. I’m very glad for the fact that I can listen to everything easily. At least one CD that I didn’t really listen to that much has crept up in the rankings greatly as a result of the chance to listen to it again. My “off the top of my head list” would have been very different than the one I am going to end up with at the end of the year.
Recently seen on the bathroom wall of a Mexican lunch spot we hit weekly: “Broken Hearts are for Assholes."
I’ve had a wireless network in my house for a little over two years now, I bought one of the original Airport base stations when they were released. I’ve gotten very used to being able to compute from the living room, the bedroom, the kitchen and, of course, my office at home. For some reason, I rarely roam outside there areas, or leave the house to compute. This morning, I’ve been hanging out in a Starbucks near my house, using some of the minutes that I bought when I went to SXSW earlier this year. I don’t know why, but I seem to enjoy this more than my normal wireless at home. I like being around people, hanging out, drinking coffee and reading. This is bad in a way because this costs money based on how long I use it, and my access at home does not.
I’ve been making the transition to single life very slowly. It’s not easy getting over being in love with someone. At times, I feel like someone who has lost an arm or a leg must feel, there is something missing that is supposed to be there. As time goes by, and the reality that this is what it is sets in, I’m beginning to think about women in a way I haven’t thought them in eight years. Let me tell you secret about men, we fall in love way too easily. Now, I know what you are saying to yourself, that based on what you have seen, that is not true at all, that men don’t behave in a manner that would indicate that this is true at all. I would disagree completely. Men fall in love way too easily, and this makes our lives all that much more confusing than they should be.
I was thinking this morning that I want to make some top ten lists at the end of the year. In past years, when I wanted to make a top ten list of records, I would have to dig a bit. What came out this year? This year, I fired up iTunes, created a new smart playlist that filtered out anything that was not released this year. So for the next week, I can listen to nothing but the music I bought that came out this year. Imagine that, and the CD’s will sit in their drawer where they belong. I love technology.
Damn The Screen Savers, I want one of these for my next Linux machine.
Apple is now offering a Beck special edition iPod with Beck’s logo engraved on the back. Not sure why I would care to have his logo engraved on my iPod, but I guess someone must or they wouldn’t be doing the whole thing.
Why are you always more sore the second day after strenuous exercise?
A fairly large group of friends played Paintball yesterday in the Georgia woods. I’m a bit sore today, but I am rapidly becoming hooked on the game. I think it reminds me of playing a first person shooter video game, but with the added fun of hunting down and shooting my friends. I wouldn’t say I am particularly good at the game, but I think I would be a lot worse if not for Quake, Unreal and the like.
I haven’t had Internet access for the last three days due to a glitch with Earthlink. I’ve actually had material for your perusal, so it was kind of annoying. However, it was just as well, my brother has been visiting Atlanta from his normal Winter home in sunny Manhattan, and it was nice to spend time with him without the distraction for both of us of the Internet. This did not prevent us from dabbling in the distraction of my Xbox and the time sucking game known as Halo.
A picture of the new me is here. It’s largish, so dialup users beware. It’s cold and rainy here in Atlanta today, but we did not get the expected major ice storm last night. As I understand it, North Carolina was hit pretty heavily though.
I went to see Aimee Mann last night with my brother Chris who is in town visiting from New York. What a great show, she played everything that I really wanted to hear, and they sounded great. Her music has meant a real lot to me over the last couple of years, appealing to the distressed romantic in me through some very rough relationship waters. I doubt very much that I would have come through my situations as well without her music. Her band sounded tight and she has some really talented musicians playing with her. My brother is also friends with Aimee’s guitar player and producer, Michael Lockwood. After the show, we got to hang out a bit before they hit the road for tonight’s date in North Carolina. He’s a really nice guy, down to Earth, and also a Mac and technology savvy person. If you have a chance to see her, I assure you that you won’t be dissapointed one bit.
Oh, sorry to dissapoint everyone on the short hair picture front. I’ll try to take care of that tonight.
There are some things that I did yesterday that I cannot do today. I cannot grab my ponytail, or even put my hair up in a ponytail. I cannot swish my hair back and forth behind my head. I cannot put my hair down and act crazy because it is now always down. I find this liberating.
I did it, I cut my hair, after almost ten years of wearing my hair below my shoulders. It’s weird, I look at the guy in the mirror and I don’t recognize him. At least twice today so far, people haven’t recognized me. I’ll try to get a picture up to go with this post when I get home from the office.
Pretty uninteresting week so far. I had a good weekend. Not much else to add. I’m working on a few different things in my spare time, and trying to log a few extra hours at work this week to make up for the two days off. Not getting paid for the holidays is the one thing about being an independent consultant that I am still not quite used to. Having said that, the benefits of being independent have outweighed the negatives. I like leaving work at the office, not feeling compelled to work a ton of extra hours without additional pay, and the fact that the current office is less than a mile from my house is a big plus.
I am loving my hiptop more and more the longer I have it. Unfortunately, in the basement office I have been given where I am currently consulting, I can’t get it onto the network. Elsewhere, I have found it useful to be able to send email, especially reminders to myself, from wherever I happen to be. I’ve also found that the ability to AIM people from things like meetings is both useful and a pleasant distraction during boring lectures. I haven’t explored bloggin with it, and I’m not sure that I would write my best entries that way either. Finally, being able to check things on the Web from wherever I am is a useful tool that has already settled one argument very quickly.
Well, today is Friday. This week has just flown by on me. Notable music this week included the new Audioslave cd that I had been waiting for. As a longtime Soundgarden and Rage Against the Machine fan, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect from the cd, and I haven’t been dissapointed at all. The songs tend to be a mixed bag, with some sounding to me like they were written by Chris Cornell and others sounding as if they were Rage songs that he was just singing over. Only once in the whole time that I have been listening to the cd have I thought that a song sounded like Zach should have been rapping over it rather than Cornell singing over it. Some of the other artists that I have been listening to quite a bit these days are Neko Case, who’s dark brand of alt-country I can’t get enough of, and matt pond PA, who are playing here this weekend. The surprise of the week is how much I love the new Pearl Jam CD. I hadn’t completely written them off, but I have to admit that while I like their music, I’ve never been their biggest fan. The new CD is different somehow, and I have been listening to it quite a bit while working this week. It may also be that, in my emotional post-breakup emotional condition, that this type of music appeals to me more.
So, my hiptop just stopped working over the weekend. It wouldn’t connect to the network for either phone or data. It kept telling me its sim wasn’t ready. So I took the sim out and put it back in, and reset the device. Still no luck, I did the same thing again, no dice. I started to get frustrated, and finally, I went to the T-Mobile store where I bought it yesterday. They tried the same things I had already done because I clearly couldn’t know how to do such things properly. They then told me to call customer care because I would need to request a replacement device. So I called customer care, and they informed me that someone had made a mistake on their end that had knocked all of the hiptops off of the network. So, if your hiptop is not currently working, all you need to do is find someone else with a T-Mobile phone, put your sim card in their phone, wait for a text message, and then put the card back in your hiptop. I’m annoyed that T-Mobile doesn’t have better communication with their retail outlets about problems like this.
Well, so much for the rumored AMD/Apple thing. This Infoworld article is the only one that I have found so far that mentions the keynote from today.