> http://mobile.cnn.com/wml.ne/en/p/a/tech_main/ipods.cars.ap/1147/2.wml
>In The News
>Apparently there was a big hubub with Travelers in the news. Some agents were giving kickbacks to those that pointed their customers in the direction of Travelers instead of the competition. Whereas many businesses and individuals were paid more money then they would have paid otherwise if the insurance agent did their job and fit the individual to the company / plan. Travelers apologized but did not accept any wrongdoing, in that they did not condone the unacceptible behavior of these representatives.
>Whats Going Down?
> Friday night Jay came out with Heather.Nicole was at the Dave Matthew’s concert in Hartford, so it was just us 3. We went out to Boston Billiards for a while. I beat Jay quite a few times, which is unusual. I guess he hasn’t played in a while, which means we need to play pool more often! We then had 1 last drink then went back to the crib and chilled well into the night. We played some G-Cube, Chess, listened to music, and had some bonding time with Heather, filling her in on the background of our highschool…
>Anarchy Online Goes Free
>Anarchy online, a scifi MMORPG is now free until January 07.Download the client, free.Sign up, free.Play, free. Check out Anarchy Online! You’ll need BitTorrent to download it. It’s going well over 300k+ right now, 1 hour of download remaining. You may wonder what the catch is. They want more people on their servers. You don’t have to pay for the game, or pay a subscription, but they’re hoping people will have fun, and get into it, so they’ll buy the expansion packs. Those are all on special right now, like only a subscription fee for the first one, and no…
>Noooooooooooooo! My initial thoughts:Why would AMD do this? ATI makes some major crap! Their drivers and inefficiencies alone make me shake my head. I marveled at nVidia when they came on the scene. They picked up the slack that 3DFX left. I’m very sad and I hope they’ll be able to continue their products. With their purchase of 5 million worth of technology from RAMBUS in June AMD is up to something. They have everything they need to remove all bottlenecks. Further deliberation / reasoning:AMD makes processors, and can make bus recommendations to optimize performance.RAMBUS technology is RAM, memory controllers,…
>PC Additions
>Looking to add some retro flair to your PC? How about the (promised) increased sound quality of running your PC audio through a Vacuume Tube?Check out the Musketeer III from CoolerMaster. Not anxious about liquid cooling? Considering converting a mini fridge into a PC case? For the cost of said fridge, and the hours of labor involved, you can get a case with built in A/C.A/C case from SyTrin
>Someone went searching for Rachel Friedman-Siddiqi the other day. I hope they’ll leave a comment if they do another search. The post they found was from April 2004 but it didn’t have a comment. I’m wondering if there is anyone out there who knows where she went, or at least if anyone knew where she was prior to 2004, when she just disappeared one day after saying an unusual goodbye.
>Happy Quadcore
>I posted a link to a news story in the links above and it stirred thoughts on Moore’s Law. I ran accross something a year or so ago that said Moore’s Law would be disproved soon, that the evolution of chips were slowing down. It was harder and harder to get twice the speed out of chips. Since 1950 it’s been the computer industry’s goal to prove Moore right. They were getting nervous, then someone came up with the idea of doubling up on chip cores. They’ve managed to keep up with it by doing this. Dual core chips have…
>Correction: Alex Trebek is Not a Robot
>Since when is someone’s post on a blog front page news?Front page on Verizon brings you MSN, but front page.The guy from Jeopardy who won a gazillion billion dollars had a few things to say about Jeopardy. I think it’s really funny, thus the linkage.
>Crazy New Electric Car
>The world is abuzz (ha, electric, boogie woogie) from this new electric car 0 to 60 in about 3 secconds, top speed 130mph, over 6000 lithium-ion cells. Suck it Trebek.
>IPA is strong. I’m drinking Red Hook. The other night I had 2 and it was too much. I couldn’t focus, and since I tend to keep sipping I experienced drunk-like tendencies even before I finished my 2nd. I also haven’t been drinking every day. Or not as many. I can’t seem to win, too weak, too strong, too expensive… too bad (I like it so much).
>Gothic 3
>I wonder if I am into Role Playing again. I think I am, and I was back when Bard’s Tale and The Summoning were around, but it was nothing special. Now role playing really involves playing a role, 1st person, with swords. I like the way it’s evolved. I just saw the trailer for Gothic 3 and it looks pretty good. I’m more enamored of the screenshots. The trailer is somewhat long and very drawn out. One pic in particular with the rhinos looks especially good. Each rhino is the same model but is lit depending where they are in…
>Back Home
>I arrived home yesterday from a very long vacation, distance wise. We drive over 800 miles driving up to Newport Maine over to St Johnsbury Vt then back home. It was a long drive, but really nice going over the white mountains. The place in Maine was very cool – basic cabin on a lake. It’s amazing some of the places up there… and most of them seasonal. I would never drive 10 hours weekly to go up to my vacation spot. But it’s certainly the place to take a couple weeks off. The original plan was to go up…
>Hiking
>We went hiking today up at “The Notch” in S Hadley, a bit N from Mt Tom.See it in Google Earth! I’ve been working off this post for the week. Adding thumbnails, pictures, and finally the google earth shortcut. It looks pretty tall. I’m definitely up for hiking from Mt Hitchcock onward to Barre Mt. We ended up going to the top and going down and around the right side of the mountain. It was a good hike, and we saw a very unusual item. Apparently it’s owned by Amherst College, but it screams “Underground Missle Silo”. I’m guessing it’s…
>Battlefield 2
>Anyone play Battlefield 2? Or at least have a copy lying around? I’ve got 2 computers here so anyone is welcome to come play here, or if you’ve got your own copy you should get on XFire so we can play. Justin and I have been playing regularly, just popping on, and joining whatever game the other is playing. You can see what server they’re on, and if not you can at least ask the IP address since the chat tool works even within the game.
>Blumchen Videos
>I found some videos that I had long lost.Pearl Jam – EvolutionTori Amos – Raspberry Swirl… and of course Blumchen. I went through this phase in 1998 where I really liked German techno. At the time Blumchen was the vocal equivalent of Happy Hardcore. It was crazy, thumping, happy, wonderful music. I loved it. I even ordered a CD from germany that came with a free (S) shirt! I still have it to this day. Here are the videos I dug up. They were in Real Audio and I converted them to 3GP so there’s some compression issues, but they’re…
>Personal Responsibility
> I’ve woken up sick almost every day this week. I think I got a cold from air conditioning, going from hot to cold to hot again shocks the system. In addition I wake up with a sore throat in the morning, and it never quite wears off. It gets lesser as the day wears on, but the next morning it’s back. I haven’t taken a day off this week due to my own sense of responsibility. There’s multiple projects, meetings, and happenings that just can’t happen without me being here, and delaying them isn’t something we can do.It’s friday…
>iMac = Dead
>My Mac died! Just as I’m preaching to people about having a Mac “because it just works — when I want to do something, I can always count on my Mac to just work”. Hard drives don’t always “just work” however. This particular HD was an 80 gig, and apparently has got some nice chunks all accross it. I blame the power. When we had the A/C in the bedroom it was going out all the time. It would be sleeping and the power would go out. Where I’m sure it could recover from such a thing 25, even 50…
>Rumplebum
> I got the Kyle XY Pilot from iTunes. I watched it on TV, but grab it from iTunes cause it’s free. The first episode is essentially the pilot cut down to half an hour w/ commercials. It was a good show, reminded me of the old days when there was entertainment for the whole family. Fitting that it’s on ABC Family then… check it out, it’s not too corny 😉 -*-*-*-*-*-* I have a large box of old computer parts I rescued from my Dad’s. I threw out the 10bT networking cards, cords, and pieces that had no matching…
>Spoke Too Soon
>It’s OK! VISTA was not the culprit. I use a 3.5″ floppy 1 time in like 6 months, and I drop my brain. The NTLDR was there, but I forgot to eject the floppy! It wasn’t a normal disk error. It was far more cryptic then usual. So all is well and VISTA is reinstalling. I may have an extra entry on the boot menu, but I’ll figure out how to edit this new one just like the old boot.ini that was so mysterious when it first came about. I was going to indicate why I needed to reinstall VISTA,…
>Reinstalling Vista
>As I sit and wait for Vista B2 to reinstall I was browsing around. I actually found this deal the other day:I think I’m finally ready for XBox 360. It’s like $130 for the Hard Drive, HD cable, another cordless controller, battery charger for the controllers, and 2 games! In addition those “two games” are Burnout and Battlefield 2! I don’t have $530 to spend, nor do I have the $2500 to $3300 it would take to get a TV worth playing it on, but I can drool. My CD came in on Monday: Pendulum: Hold Your Colourand it’s fantastic.…
>Announcement
>I don’t think I have made an official announcement as of yet. It started with wanting to wait until I had told everyone in person, or at least called people where that wasn’t possible. I never actually put up anything official, however. I’ve told everyone already, so it’s no big surprise, but now maybe the Brazilian on Orkut will calm down (just KIDDING Nicole!) *ahem* as I was saying… I am happy to announce that I have found the woman that makes my life easy, a woman that is on my level, whom loves me as I love her: just…
>Best song I’ve ever heard: Pendulum – Hold Your Colour This isn’t it but it was the best I could find. Not on itunes, but there’s a free track available @ Download.com Pendulum – Sounds of Life It’s an import, so it’s hard to find. I guess they’re not that big, but I’ve heard of DogsOnAcid.com before… I bought their CD from Buy.com for $13. It was going to be $23 if FYE ordered it, and it was $22 at Amazon and everywhere else.