Facebook is scary...

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Facebook scares me almost as much as google. I went into my suggested friends list. Like at least 1/4 of the people in there I've had no online connection with, ever. Yet somehow FB knows that ten years ago this guy was my mortgage guy, or 15 years ago this guy did some cabling on my network or something. I wonder who's list I show up on?

Long time no type...

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So I got this new laptop this past week. I got an Apple Macbook Pro 17" 2.4GHz laptop. Let's just say it's just awesome. I pretty much haven't touched my iMac since I got it. Yeah, it's for work, but what does that really mean. Well it means I have The Sims2 and World of Warcraft on it. That's what it means. :) Anyway, here's a quick peek at it.... 
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Bad things at good times...

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So nearly the worse thing just happened. Luckily it happened at a pretty good time. My iPod is dead, well at least severely wounded. The right, or next key has stopped working. This means no next song, no games, or no using anything that need to go to the right. Normally this isn't the end of world, I just bite the bullet and go buy another. But let me say this, not counting my normal monthly bills, over the past 7 weeks I have spent $12,000. That is correct. It's not a typo, that's twelve thousand dollars. I don't need another few hundred dollars tacked on that.

Now the good part. One, I own an FM radio for my iPod. So at least I can plug that in, and at least for skipping to the next song I can use the radio to skip forward. The other good thing is I did include the cost of my soon to be iPhone in that $12,000 number. With a new iPhone I will have all the functionality of my old nano so at that point the broken nano will become a "moo" point. (Thanks Joey) I suppose I can limp along for another week with a half dead iPod knowing the iPhone is coming...

It's your turn to buy me something...

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Ever wondered what you could buy me? Come on, I know you have. Well here is your answer... The Harmony 1000  I mean, doesn't everybody need a $500 remote control. How does one get along with out this remote control is my question. Eh, maybe after I finish my surround sound I can do splurge on this... we'll see....   Oh BTW, I now am the proud owner of iflyjet.com It was only a matter of time. :)

Still Undecided…

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Like everything else in my life, I'm still undecided about this whole Windows Vista thing. I installed it on my work computer last week. I installed Windows Vista Ultimate and am trying to duplicate my previous windows setup with all my cool networking tools on it. I wasn't completely dumb about it, I set it up to dual boot back to my old XP installation just in case.

I do have to say, that it's pretty. It looks very good. I am using aero which of course adds to the "Pretty" factor. A few of the windows have been cleaned up and are a little easier to navigate and understand then in previous versions. I do think I like the new "start" menu much better. In older version when you open the start menu, if you had many folders and many icons in those folders you will get this situation where you would have to scroll your menu and if you had a small resolution it may actually run off the end of the screen. With the new "start" menu it incorporates your recently used programs as well as a start menu that eliminates that need to have the menu cascading across your screen. They have also re-worked the file system structure. It's more Unix/Linux/Mac like. They got rid of the "Documents and Settings" folder and replaced it with "Users".

On the other hand there are a few things I don't really like about it. UAC (User Account Control) is horrible. Don't get me wrong, it's a great idea. I whole heartedly believe that any program that is going to modify the system should have to ask for permissions before doing so. But with Vista UAC is asked for EVERY SINGLE ACTION I do. Have you seen the Mac commercial with the windows guy having to say Accept like 15 times, that's not an exaggeration. That's pretty much fact. This isn't COMPLETELY Microsoft's fault, but some rest on the software companies. For so long they just expected to have admin right so they wrote their software so it would function only with admin rights. They had admin rights due to Microsoft's short sighted outlook on security. Now that they are tightening the noose so to speak, all these programs are still expecting to be able to do what they please. Thus a thousand freakin popup's asking for permission. I'll be totally honest, I had to turn mine off. I don't suggest that for others, but for the security conscience, it's the only way to go.

There are of course other things that I like and don't like about Vista. Too many to go into here. For now I'm still in the Mac camp but I reserve the right to change my mind if MS pulls something outta their asses and makes this a usable yet safe operating system.

P. S. Get well Grandpa!

Thank you SBC, ummm I mean AT&T…

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I don't know who did what but what ever it is, I'm really happy about it. Last week I noticed that my DSL seemed much faster than normal. I did some speed test and found that I was getting about 1.2-1.3 Mb or 160KB download. Now that's nothing compaired to cable, but previously I was getting about 600Kb or 75KB of download. Over 1Mb isn't bad for a place that can't even get call waiting caller ID. When I first moved here I couldn't even get call waiting so I guess this is moving up. So it's been over a week and still the speed is hanging in there. Maybe someday we'll get some real speed out here. Then again, maybe not.