mjm wired :: Stuff

Telling More Than Time

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 21:36:33 -0400

Back when the whole "Metro" craze was going on (it did end right?), I remember being told that having a nice watch on your wrist was a "requirement". Of course the implication was that women would be looking out for that. I really did not pay attention back then.

Later I remember someone showing me their imitation Rolex they bought for a couple hundred bucks (I think it was $1200?). Of course the real watch would be in the ten's of thousands (40 grand?), so it was a deal? Even then I didn't pay attention.

Eventually I got a nice time piece of my own, and suddenly I had the uncontrollable urge to look at everyone's wrist. I had to know what brand or style of watch they were wearing. Whether it suited them, whether it was pricey, did it match their style? But the worst habit I developed was that I would try to analyze to see if it showed something about their character.

So I was in New York last year. Everyone who's walked through the streets near Time Square has seen all the peddlers selling their bootleg DVD's, their glamorous purses or best: their luxury watches. I would hope most people know that they're knock-offs. Anyways I did approach one such fellow and gazed into his suitcase on a stand. There were all sorts of imitation Rolex's, Citizen's, Movado's and Breitling's - terrible looking in my opinion and obviously fake. But the best part of it was that I really got to see what type of watch the peddler was wearing: a $15 Casio plastic LCD watch.

I wonder what that shows?

Cellular Frustration

Tue, 18 Oct 2005 17:35:20 -0400

I've been doing some research about switching my wireless provider so when it comes to the end of my current contract I can seemlessly carry over to my new provider. So in preparation I called and verified what the process is. For any cellular/wireless provider "porting" is the term for switching your number from one provider to the next. In the technical section, I read that porting wireless-to-wireless should technically only take 2-3 hours. However it is fairly typical for it to take 1 to 2 days. The only exception is that porting a landline to wireless can take 1 to 2 weeks.

So 2 days before my contract it over I sign up for my new service and make it so the new flip-phone should arrive the day after my service ends. Now when I check the status it says the porting will take 5 days. How wonderful. So I then think back to listening to all the service reps. One said that its very simple and if I purchased with them, they'd make it seemless with no days of lost service. One rep told me that I'm better off taking an extra month with my current provider and just waste the money, to make it easier. And the last one, which I foolishly beleived, well, she laid out a nice plan without any hiccups. Well, hiccup, hiccup, hiccup.

So if Verizon has the best consumer satisfaction, and if Sprint has the best nationwide coverage and if T-Mobile has the most anytime minutes -- well some of them have to have the worst of something. Man cell phone companies really suck, but realistically I don't talk much anyways so I'm better to lose service for a few days rather than paying twice for one month.

I Think I Found my MP3 Player

Tue, 21 Jun 2005 17:10:00 -0400

I've been holding out on an MP3 player for over a year now. My biggest frustration with things like the iPod is that they have bad battery life and support few sound formats, and their compatibility is mediocre. ... So if I were to list my requirements they would be:

* Play MP3, WMA, Ogg - (I ripped most of my CD's to Ogg format)
* 10-15 hour battery life - (iPod does 6?)
* Can act as a removable USB2 hard drive in all OS's (really windows and linux)
* FM Radio receiver - (I don't understand why this is not more common?)
* Voice recorder - (VERY nice, but not required)

So I could barely beleive it, when someone showed me the iAudio X5. It has all that AND more. So now I just have to do my research and get it. The (nearly) impossible has happened, I think I found my MP3 player!

Design Flaws

Tue, 17 May 2005 21:29:28 -0400

A coworker recently setup a Comcast Digital Video Recorder (DVR), which is basically a mini-computer recording TV onto a hard-drive much like a VCR. He listed an amazing and convenient feature set which almost impressed me. I asked him one simple question: Must it be left on 24/7? Answer: Yes. He admitted that he didn't like that part either.

This brings up my frustration with many similar new gagdets, appliances and most software. Either no one conceived that such a basic feature (turning it off) was a good idea or their design approach forced them to remove that option entirely. Either way I see it as a design flaw. I know many people might disagree with that assertion but I see it more apparent now than ever before.

I've sampled many free software applications on the internet that perform DVR-like capabilities (think similar to Windows Media Center) and most of them also expect you to keep your system on continuously (with 24/7 high speed internet connection). When I ask if there is some way to have such a feature, I get such resistence: "Why would you do that?" or "You don't want that!". Ack. The best would be: "Keeping it on isn't a big deal. Power costs aren't that much". Yeah, right!!! ... To a similar extent I see many free software projects with what I would call similar design flaws. Question: How do I reduce memory usage? Answer: Add a stick of memory. Memory is cheap. Question: How do I reduce disk consumption? Answer: Buy a bigger harddrive. Disk space is cheap. ... I cannot express how annoying such responses are. Did the answer the question? Could they?

The days of intelligent design are numbered while the end of bad assumptions is no where in sight. One of the many reasons why I'm more inclined to do things myself rather than rely on the flawed decisions of others.

Webpad for Sale

Tue, 25 Jan 2005 20:34:52 -0500

I normally don't like to post advertisement on my blog, but I need to get this done. Anyways, I'm selling my brother's internet webpad. He owes me big for this. In any event, I crafted a progear webpad page for it.

I would appreciate if any readers take a look and see if they or someone they might know would be interested. If anybody knows of some good forums I could post, that would help too. I already did the Yahoo Group. The price is not fixed and I am reasonable. If I don't get much response, then I will probably have to go to Ebay or something.

>> ProGear Webpad

A Little Power Boost

Wed, 08 Oct 2003 18:19:43 -0400

I finally upgraded my 2 year old computer. Basically I just swapped out the motherboard, cpu and memory. Inspite of the influence from the Intel camp (you know who you are), I went with AMD ... again. (The 2.4Ghz P4 did look *very* nice). Anyways, its an Athlon XP 2500+, with 512MB of PC2700 memory. All things considered, it doesn't feel much faster. Although I really haven't used it much. So now my brother gets the 1133Mhz chip. Also I can put the old motherboard into the BlackBox with his 850Mhz chip replacing the old P3 500Mhz. I'm trying to dump my SB Live! card and use the uber-powerful onboard sound but its a little trippy in Linux. Yeah, I'm a hardware geek. Oh well, back to more important things.