OK, so the monthly public transportation experiment begins!

The rising cost of fuel, tolls and parking is costing me $90-$100 per week to go into work. In contrast, public transportation would only cost me around $40 for unlimited travel. That is a sizeable chunk of change!

In the past, I had used public transportation to come to school or work, but the overall cost at the time was more expensive than driving, and not as convenient! The train station was not near, busses took forever, and the cost was about the same as it is now. Back then I had no tolls (and when I did it was $2/day), gasoline was $20 to fill up for the week, and parking was $4/day for a grand total of $40-$50 per week. The speed/cost factor did not dictate a switch to public transport.

Now, on the other hand, it does. If this goes well, I may also trial it for the fall semester.

Tags: public, transportation, work

I gotta say that I am a teeny bit upset at the waste of bandwidth that is taking over the internet these days. Here are some of my least favorite bandwidth wasting types of activities:

You go to NBC, you click to see a small clip from Last Comic Standing, maybe 4 minutes in total length. Before you can see each mini clip, you HAVE to watch a 30 second add. Seriously?!

You go to a news site, and two thirds of the page is covered in ads. OK, I can deal with it (somewhat) if they are text ads, but those annoying animated GIFs (or worse flash animations) are distracting, annoying and taking up my bandwidth!

You go to that same news site, and they have a flash movie running of the recent (insert film name here) flick, in muted mode. Why do I need to see this? If I want to see a trailer of the movie, I’ll head over to quicktime.com and see it! I don’t want to have it wasting my screen real estate and my bandwidth!

These ads are getting annoying!

Tags: bandwidth, rant, ads, waste

I love doing things online. I love to order my pizza online, and pay online. I like to send off emails to contacts rather than calling. Recently I discovered that I like online classes (at least up to now)…but there are some times that you want some face-to-face interaction with people providing a service!

As was mentioned before, my water heater died. It wasn’t flooding the house or anything, so we looked at a few different models online, saw what people were saying about them, online, and tried to find a plumber, online (no customer ratings for plumbers in my areas online though).

We looked at Home Depot online and decided to tentatively go with them since they hire local contractors. We decided to NOT order online, so that we may speak to a Home Depot associate about it and arrange things face to face. After all, major home repairs do require more TLC than ordering a pizza!

We went to the store, saw the hot water heater, it was in stock. I go up to the service desk, smile, and tell the person at the desk that I wanted to purchase a hot water heater. She smiled back and said I could do it at home (online or phone), or I can do it in the store. OK, well, I was in the store, so I wanted to do it at the store!

She pointed to a phone, and said that I can pick up the headset, and I will be connected to the hotline. “Sorry, what?” I asked. I then reiterated that I wanted to buy a hot water heater that I just saw 30 seconds ago. She said that I had to do it over the phone. “What about installation?” I asked. She said that I could do that over the phone too!

Well why did I drive in here, I thought to myself, and why would no one at my local store take my credit card, charge me for the water heater of my choice, and then act as an intermediary between me and a contractor to get me a quote? Is it that hard?

I humored them, sat down for 3 minutes, fiddling with the system - none of the options were “buy a hot water heater” so I hit the button for a customer service representative. I was on hold for 30 seconds when I decided to give up, and go home. What kind of customer service is this?

Now I know that I like to do most things online, but I don’t want any misunderstandings when I am about to pay $800 or more to replace my heater! According to our research there are a number of complaints against Home Depot’s contractors, so I wanted a real person to explain to me, face to face, exactly what the costs are for this kind of job. I don’t want to purchase online, I don’t want to call someone, I just wanted an associate to ring me up, and help me get a quote and arrange for installation. Is that too much to ask in this i(nternet)Age?

Tags: home improvement, water, heater, customer, service

Who remembers Alone in the Dark? No! No! Not that awful Uwe Bohl film! The DOS (and subsequent Mac Port) Alone in the Dark! I bought the game back in 1995 (or was it 1996?) I still have the CD-ROM somewhere with my antique software holdings. I remember playing the game on my Performa 635CD on lazy summer afternoons. The video bellow shows how choppy the graphics were, but there was nothing scarier at the time than having a zombie come after you and you have no place to run and hide!

Maybe I should get DOSBOX to get reacquainted with this game…

Tags: video, video games, games, entertainment, DOS, macintosh, classic, system7

I’ve been hearing about Patapon on the 1Up Yours podcast for a while now, so I decided to do a YouTube search to see a bit of the gameplay. Every review I’ve seen gives the game thumbs up, and on Amazon it’s only $20. Seeing the video on YouTube made their silly little pata-pata-pata-pon song stick in a mental loop (I think I’ve been rick rolled).

Here is some wiki information on the game: CLICK

Also, the amazon product page if you are interested: Patapon




Tags: video, games, video games, patapon, PSP

OK, so the television season has been over for a few weeks and we’ve now found out which shows have been orphaned, in other words cancelled. Here are four shows that I wish would get picked up by another television station:


Jericho: Network: CBS. Post nuclear USA. If you haven’t seen it, you should! It’s a season and a half of great suspense. The end of the second season leaves us with the Eastern state alliance (remnants of the ‘old’ USA), the Independent State of Texas, and the Western alliance (run by corporate interests who instigated the attack). I would be interested to see what happens next! Aren’t you?

Moonlight: Network: CBS. It follows a relatively young vampire (80 year’s old? I think). In any case, he is a private detective, has a fling with a girl he saved from the crazy vamp that turned him, so in essence he is like Angel. Good show.


New Amsterdam: Network: FOX. The show follows a Dutch man who has lived in NYC since it was a Dutch colony who’s been given eternal life, until he finds his soul mate, at which point they can live until death do them part. It’s a good show, it shows him being frustrated at not dying, seeing his kids die, and former loved ones, and he longs to just grow old with that someone special. I personally want to find out if he ever finds that special someone.


Aliens in America: Network: CW. My final pick follows a Pakistani exchange student in Wisconsin. The strength of the show is not only showcasing the cultural differences and similarities between Americans and Pakistanis - or non Americans (alien #1), but also the awkwardness of being in high school – the clicks, the classes, the popularity contests (alien #2). The show also does a good job at showing the hypocrisy of human nature (smoking cigarettes when you are not supposed to, saying that you are a good Christian but hating going to church, and so on). The show tanked in ratings and I really wonder why. I wish someone else would pick it up


There are two other shows that got the can, Cavemen and Carpoolers. I never tuned in specifically to see these shows, but I did enjoy watching them two or three in a row on ABC’s website. I really liked both of the shows and wish that they would resurrect them as regular 20 minute sitcom episodes, but available online and on DVD only.

Tags: entertainment, cancellation, television, annoying

OK for those who don’t read (or speak) Greek, the show is called “Greece’s Children”, it’s sort of slang for the young people that are military service. The show is about these slackers who serve in the Greek Air Force, their commander, the local snitch, and of course the General that comes in on surprise inspection visits.

The show is of course a comedy staring Yannis Bezos (not related to Jeff Bezos of Amazon, as far as I know), who also starts in a few other classic television favorites of mine. This is a series that I would buy on DVD, unfortunately Greek series on DVD are something that have not caught on in Greece.

Tags: Greek, television, comedy

…but I don’t know exactly what to do!

I need to do some RapidWeaver cleaning out. I’ve got some obsolete themes from the RapidWeaver 3.1 era that I downloaded a while back, and that have been orphaned by their creators. I like the themes, and I wanted to update them for rapidweaver 3.6 and 4.0 and redistribute them (for free of course), but I simply have not had the time.

I think my quest will start with pulling these themes out of my rapidweaver folder so that I no longer get the obsolete themes warning, and them slowly decide which themes I may want to use in the future, and which ones I probably won’t. I think I need to create a visual catalog of each theme, that way I can safely put them out to pasture, but still keep them the catalog around in case I need to pull them out of retirement.

The other dilemma is the whole 2.0 thing. I’ve created accounts on various 2.0 sites, and I am debating whether or not to create links on this page, and if I do create links, what is the best design to do this?

Gotta think about it…

Tags: rapidweaver, website, dilemma

Over the past few weeks I’ve been debating the purchase of a new laptop. No, my PowerBook G4 is still chugging along, but there is something to be said about doing your homework and research on your sofa, wirelessly, rather than being tethered to an Ethernet cable near your router.

I’ve been looking at the Eee PC, and the ubuntu subnotebooks because my N800 experiences this far have been quite positive and I am willing to give linux a try (again). No, I am not giving up on the Mac, but spending $1700 on a tricked out MacBook is quite a lot compared to spending that money on a $500 subnotebook. My needs are simple: web browsing, office applications, IM, video (youtube, divx, etc) and RapidWeaver! I can’t see myself going back to another website creation tool having used rapidweaver for the past few years, and unfortunately it’s only a Mac product.

I am keeping my fingers crossed for a Mac subnotebook for the masses. The MacBook Air is nice, but I don’t want a second computer, and I don’t want to spend more than $700.

Tags: rapidweaver, macintosh, eeePC, asus, linux

Painting is going slower than I had anticipated.

On the plus side, I am done (or almost done) with sanding most of the re hard-to-remove paint off most of the wall. Now the hard part starts: using a heat gun and a scraper to remove pain off the door, door molding and window molding. Hopefully the weather this weekend will be sunny and I can get (most) of this done. I am looking forward to the cleanup, and the painting, so we can use our deck.

Tags: home improvement, painting, slow

Back in the days of DOS and Windows 3.1 I witnessed the heyday of Shareware on disk. Even though I owned a Mac, I could not resist deals when I went into the Staples that was next door to my dad’s garage. I saw prepackaged disks with games such as Wolfenstein for $5 (if I recall correctly). My dad and I used to visit friends with Intel 386 machines, so I always brought along the shareware that I bought at Staples.

One of these titles (and the only one that I really remember) was Wolfenstein 3D. This game was something else! I think that Wolfenstein 3D was my first FPS, and in a dark room it scared the living daylights out of me.

Here is a quick video of the game play of Wolfenstein 3D:

Tags: entertainment, video, games, video games, wolfenstein, DOS

Well, this is the end of my second week of online classes. Thus far things seem to be going well, I enjoy the forum interactions with my classmates, but not having that face to face contact, sometimes I get the sense that some of my classmates are a-holes. They probably aren’t, but when you just read text, you tend to read into things, and often your mood at the time you are reading what they wrote colors your perception of what is written. If for example you are tired, and therefore irritable, chances are that you will have a more negative view of what is written compared to when you are rested.

The one thing that I don’t like as much with online classes is that the class materials are released one week at a time, which means that I don’t have the opportunity to do what I normally do: front load the semester with all the reading, and most of the assignments, and then cruise through the last quarter of the semester with just maintenance work.

Tags: online, classes, school

Yes, I will be breaking the chain or rather the mesh!

The volume of chain emails that I get has gone down as people have matured in their email use, but I still get four or five chain mails per week. I realize that most people who send these emails our are doing so because they care about the subject, but simply clicking forward, without cleaning up the list of 100+ other recipients is simply unwieldy!

I am all for a good cause, but if it’s hard to read, it goes in the dumpster.

Tags: chain, email, argh, annoying

I am surprised at how many people do not know of The Tick. The Tick is a comic book, that became an animated series, and then became a live action television show with Patrick Warburton (also known as Putty from Seinfeld). The series takes place in “the city” where anyone can become a superhero, provided that they get their superhero’s license. The tick is superhuman strong, but doesn’t remember much of his past, and is so into fighting crime that he sounds developmentally challenged when interacting with non-hero types.

Sadly, the live action TV series only lasted for a season, but it was a good one! It is available on Hulu (and on DVD). The animates series is not on Hulu, but both seasons are available on DVD.

Here is the first episode on hulu:

Tags: television, amazon, DVD, hulu, tick, entertainment, comedy

A few weeks ago I saw Apple’s new promotion. Get a new Mac, get a free 8GB iPod Touch! The offer is for college students, but since I am a graduate student, the offer still stands for me.

OK, I thought to myself, an iPod touch is a nice little web browsing device, I can put on it my most listened to music and podcasts, and use my older, four year old, iPod for more heavy duty tasks (such as outdoor entertainment while doing yard work). I also thought, OK, maybe this is an opportunity to get a MacBook. We’ll leave the MacBook rant for another time, this one is solely for the free iPod Touch.

The iPod is indeed free, but the caveat is that you need to buy it ($300), and then submit rebate forms in order to get that $300 back. Seriously, WTF? Just give me a free iPod touch, with the purchase of MacBook, and let’s forego the filling out of forms, getting receipt copies, mailing them to a rebate center, waiting six to eight weeks to get a check, and then deposit that check. My purchase is going to be electronic anyway, so why not let those internet electrons do all the work and save me from paying $300 that is just going to come back to me anyway!

I know that there are people out there that neglect to fill out their forms, so that is profit for Apple, but let’s get serious now!

Tags: ipod, touch, macintosh, apple, deals, opinion

Garnet VM beta 2 was released last week for the Nokia Internet Tablets. I decided to give it a try and see what’s new since beta 1. I do not have that many apps for palm since I was never really a user of the palm platform. I have the local commuter rail map and schedule application, google maps, and some freeware games that I downloaded a while back to test the virtual machine.

The first thing I did was to check the hotsync. As you know, the N800 does not come with a PIM suite, and I would really love to sync my mac with the addressbook, calendar, and notes of the garnet VM PIM apps. Nope, you can still only sync over the air, not over cable, so that leaves iSync out of the picture.

The second thing I checked was the control panel. I wanted to see if there are any changes (or improvements) there. Nope, same old stuff. I know that the VM allows you to use the N800’s wifi connection, so google maps just works, but what about Bluetooth? Can I send and receive stuff using the VM?

The last thing I checked, and it wasn’t there, was the inclusion of new apps. When someone gets a palm PDA, there are usually a number of useful apps such as blazer, versamail, and documents-to-go. I know that the N800 comes with a web browser and a mail client, but why not package those in with the VM (at least as alternatives)

I look forward to beta 3, maybe things will improve

Tags: garnetVM, Nokia, N800, sync, PIM

OK...
I am not a happy camper!

My car made weird sounds when I turned the steering wheel. I took it to my local place for an oil change (regular maintenance) and asked them to look into it. They told me that the steering column was leaking power steering fluid and it will need to be replaced by the dealer. I am not upset that its leaking, after all my car is 8 years old, so some major maintenance is expected at some point. I am upset because in mid-february I paid close to $1000 for a new steering column at the dealer because the old was leaking.

So... they charged me for something they did not do, or the parts the put in were bad. I don't see anyway that my day to day driving could cause this damage, because it's the same route I have taken to work for the last four years! I filled up my power steering fluid and I will be going back to the dealer soon...

The other thing that went this past week was my hot water heater! Well, it was 14 years old, so it was expected...it's just an inopportune time.

Salavabitsch!

Tags: home improvement, plumbing, car, beetle, #@!?!@#

Back in the day, when I had an SNES (version 2), and five games, one of those five games was Inspector Gadget. I got the game because I really liked the cartoon when I was growing up. The game, from what I remember, did not disappoint (mind you I was 12 at the time).

I never really got an opportunity to finish the game (a mix of family issues, eventual theft of my SNES and associated games, and relocation to the US), but when the golden age of emulation started, it was one of the first games I played on an emulator, and my response to it was a bit different. I don’t know if I had changed, if it just felt different playing it on a computer monitor than a television, or if using a keyboard instead of an SNES game pad was a turn off.

I still like the game. The game play wasn’t bad, and the aesthetics were in line with what I consider Inspector Gadget aesthetics to be. All things considered, it wasn’t a bad platformer.

This game video will give you a sense of how the game looked and played.

Tags: video, games, video games, SNES

OK, so this is my second week in my online class experiment. This is the first time ever that I am taking online classes and I have to say that thus far I like it. It reminds me a lot of my ‘early days’ on the internet, where I spent a ton of time in Yahoo! Chat and in various forums (such as macosx.com and howardforums.com), except instead of reading about the newest apple product, or the newest Nokia, Motorola or Ericsson phone and then offering up an informed opinion, the topics are more academic and there is homework to hand in on top of the forum postings and chat sessions.

We’ll see how the rest of the summer goes, but I am feeling positive (maybe I will do more online classes in the future)

Tags: classes, school

I was out last weekend and I found a good deal on jPod by Douglas Coupland.

If you recall, I had heard the audiobook, and since I got a good deal on it, I decided to ‘splurge’ and get it. I am glad I did. The audiobook was quite funny, but the book looks even funnier, and the way it is set up makes you appreciate the humor even more.

I definitely recommend it! Amazon has it for about $15 new - I bought it for $13 at a used bookstore.

Tags: books, jpod, deals

Back in 1995, there was an interesting FOX show called Space: Above and Beyond. It was a great show, about fighting off alien invaders called the ‘chigs’. What made this show interesting (beyond the sci-fi nature of it) were the various societal conflicts between the ‘invitros’, humans bred to fight the battles of ‘natural’ humans, and who are treated as second class citizens, except when they join the USMC.

There are also cyborgs that were made before invitros for the same purpose, but they revolted and they are still around. I guess the lesson is if you are not man enough to fight your own wars, don’t expect others to do it for you. The show was promising, but it was plagued by bad programming decisions on the part of FOX. It didn’t have a regular night, it kept being shifted from time slot to time slot, and it kept being postponed for baseball or hockey games. In the end, it was cancelled after one season due to low ratings.

The show is unavailable on Hulu, but rather cheap on amazon.com

The show might remind you of Startship Troopers, but just remember: it predates Starship Troopers and it is actually better than that movie!

Tags: SAAB, television, DVD, shows, FOX

Well, I spent most of my computing weekend trying to get my PowerBook G4 updated to leopard. My first attempt was to just do a straight update. I did this because I felt a bit lazy. Well that seemed to work, initially, but I could not do safe boot (and as you may remember, safe boot is the only way my mac works these days). This took two to three hours start to finish.

My second attempt was to do an archive an install. A lot of message boards kept saying that people had the same problems as I did (on well functioning computers), and an archive and install solved their problems. This process took a couple of hours start to finish and still did not solve my problem! I still could not boot in safe boot mode.

I then ended up putting my mac aside while I contemplated my next move...

Finally I decided to go back to Tiger. I reinstalled it in an hour or so, and restored my data from my .Mac backups. With the exception of having to register some apps, nothing was lost in the botched upgrade process. I guess I won't be using rapidweaver 4 anytime soon...

Tags: leopard, tiger, macintosh, macos, updates, frustration, rapidweaver

Well, rapidweaver, the wonderful piece of software that I use to maintain this website, is now in version 4.0 and it is only leopard compatible! I tried it out on the family computer (a Mac Mini running Leopard), and it looks GREAT!

The one fly in the ointment is that my “development” machine is my decrepit PowerBook G4 that runs Tiger. I know that it can run Leopard, but since I can only boot it into safe mode, I did not bother upgrading it. Now I am having second thoughts. This weekend may be a “upgrade this old mac” type of weekend so that I can play with the new RW!

For those interested in RW, check it out here:

Tags: software, rapidweaver, updates