So Anyways

20 Questions

Thanks to lobster messiah, I've wasted most of my weekend already. This little gizmo he linked to is just blowing my mind.

Give it a try. See if you can stump the little bugger.

The Todd Pod

I gave in this weekend. I don't really know what came over me, but I had an almost uncontrollable urge (probably brought about by last week's news stories about iPod One) to buy an iPod, so I threw caution to the wind and did just that.

I've been using a crappy little 125MB player for awhile, and while I thought that was pretty cool, I really didn't see what the big deal was about MP3 players in general and especially about iPods. I mean, that old MP3 player held only about 30 songs, and I very quickly tired of hearing the same songs over and over again. With that limitation, I guess my enthusiasm for the technology in general was pretty tempered.

But, oh my gosh. What a difference 30GB makes!

We spent most of the weekend trying feverishly to feed that little white monster with enough music to satisfy its voracious appetite. A few weeks ago, I posted that I had <100MB of music files on my computer. As of last night, after the mad rush to feed the damn thing, I had 523 songs (1.4 days / 2GB) of music files on the computer and iPod. We were digging out old CD's we hadn't seen or heard or even thought of for years to load up.

The scary thing is, I still have 28GB to go. We still have lots of CD's to load, and I've bought a few songs on iTunes, but it's almost impossible to imagine I'll ever be able to fill it up.

The really cool thing now, though, is I can take advantage of Todd's Podcast reviews and Scott's Boogie Boogie Song of the Week!

Tech Support Without the Support

Just time for a quick whine this afternoon. Gotta leave early so I can shake Madeleine Albright's hand while drooling uncontrollably and getting all toungue tied.

I'm very annoyed today since I've been having computer difficulties all week at work. Nothing is working correctly. I have to re-start multiple times a day, each re-start is taking progressively longer and longer (it's now up to about 10 minutes), I can no longer remote-access the computer from home, and I have no "admin" rights on the damn thing and can't do anything about it.

So, instead of complaining about it, I decided to just call our IT support group and let them fix it. They advertise that they're just a phone call away and that practically every problem imaginable can be fixed via one simple phone call. That's a good thing considering our IT support group is actually a contract facility located hundreds of miles away.

Anyway, I call in and tell them all my symptoms. The first thing they suggest: defrag the hard drive. OK, fine. Reasonable suggestion. Only, I can't do it because I'm not an "admin" and don't have the rights. So, IT Support guy tells me that he'll have to submit a temporary authorization request so I can get rights. That can't be done until Monday at the earliest.

Whatever. So I'll live with the slow, sluggish response for a few more days. But what I really need - the ability to remote access - I need help with today. I explain to the phone guy that I need it. But first, I have to explain to him what "remote access" means (like, you sit somewhere else and use your computer to attach to and control my computer, dude). I also explain to him that when I try to attach to it, it can't be found on the network.

Once he understood what I was talking about, and I explained the correct software to use for remote access, he tries to connect. Guess what? He can't. My computer isn't visible on the network. Voila! That is the problem - the problem I just told him I was having.

After about half an hour of totally wasting my time and his, he said he'd have to send a real live human being over to see what was wrong. Hmmm. What a great idea.

In the meantime, I guess I have an excuse for not consuming my weekend with work. If I can't access my computer, which isn't working properly anyway, then I can't work from home...all the motivation I need to shut 'er down and not think about work again until Monday.

Have a great weekend!

If You're New

If you're new to the internet, you might want to check out this handy guide to how cyberspace differs from real life.

Podcasting

You'd think the fact that I'm an engineer would mean that I'm into all the latest techie-type stuff and I have my finger on the pulse of the digital nation, but that's just not true. I am part of the TiVolution, and I do have a blog (of sorts). But that's about as far as it goes. I don't have an iPod, I don't have satellite radio, and I don't podcast.

In fact, I admit, I had never even heard the term before today. Then I saw this article. Apparently podcasters create and swap audio files, much like traditional bloggers (like blogging is old enough to be referred to as 'traditional') create text (or html) files. I can just imagine what some of those audio files must sound like.

Unlike the couple in the article who records their pillow talk, I think when Ed jumps on the pocasting wagon (because he's always the early adopter in our house), I'm going to insist on no pillow talk recording. It'd just be too embarrassing, especially since it usually consists of:

Me:  What are you doing?
Ed: Sleeping.
Me: Fine.
Ed: What would you like to talk about?
Me: Nothing. I'm too tired.

Not exactly exciting to the average verbal voyeur out there surfing for some hot gay sex. When there is exciting talk, I'm not so sure I want the world listening to that either.

TiVo ToGo

TiVo is a really cool little box. It was one of those things that I thought was cool from the time I first heard of it, although it took us awhile to finally buy in. Once we did, though, I couldn't believe we had waited so long. As they say, it's changed the way we watch TV, and it feels like it's changed our lifestyle as well - all for the better, despite my usual bitching about having too much TiVo to watch.

Since the last two weeks have been pretty much free of any TV worth watching, it's given us a chance to clean up our list of "Now Showing" shows, so we're just down to a few movies that we can watch whenever. It probably won't be long till we're backed up again with 50 or 60 shows that need to be watched, and then I'll be stressing about when we're going to find time to watch all of them.

As cool as TiVo is, though, I'm not so sure their latest announcement is going to set the world abuzz - they're launching the "TiVo ToGo" service, which allows users to copy recorded shows onto home computers (and from there to DVD's). I just can't see how that's something I'm going to use much - we have a 55" TV. Why would I want to watch anything on a laptop or desktop monitor? Unless, of course, I'm flying on a 15 hour flight to Asia or something, which I don't do all that often.

I guess saving TV shows to a DVD has some appeal, but again, I don't see the point. Just leave it on the TiVo hard drive - there's plenty of space for a ton of shows. I mean, it's kind of cool, but it just doesn't seem to have much practical benefit to me.

Of course, this is coming from the person who, when first introduced to this new thing called the world wide web, thought that would never amount to much.