Letterman’s Top Ten Reasons to Watch the new and final season of Battlestar Galactica.

Recession

A recession is a decline in a country’s gross domestic product (GDP), or negative real economic growth, for two or more successive quarters of a year. Many economists defer to the judgment of the business-cycle dating committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research regarding the exact dating of recessions.

The NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) has a looser framework for judging recessions:

A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. A recession begins just after the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends as the economy reaches its trough. Between trough and peak, the economy is in an expansion. Expansion is the normal state of the economy; most recessions are brief and they have been rare in recent decades.

A recession may involve simultaneous declines in coincident measures of overall economic activity such as employment, investment, and corporate profits. Recessions may be associated with falling prices (deflation), or, alternatively, sharply rising prices (inflation) in a process known as stagflation. A severe or long recession is referred to as an economic depression. A devastating breakdown of an economy (essentially, a severe depression, or a hyperinflation, depending on the circumstances) is called economic collapse. Newspaper columnist Sidney J. Harris distinguished terms this way: “a recession is when your neighbor loses his job; a depression is when you lose your job.”

Market-oriented economies are characterized by economic driving cycles, but actual recessions (declines in economic activity) do not always result in macroeconomic sub-financial declines in gross domestic product. There is much debate, sometimes ideologically motivated, as to whether government intervention smoothes the cycle, exaggerates it, or even creates it.

Source: Wikipedia

Goodby T-Mobile: “Rubbing it in!”

The following is part of an email that AT&T just sent me…...

AT&T Wi-FiSM network
will add 7,000+ Starbucks locations

Good news! Beginning this spring, as an AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet subscriber, you’ll soon be able to access Wi-Fi service from 7,000+ Starbucks locations nationwide.* So, in addition to more than 10,000 Wi-Fi hot spots available today, our network will grow to include complimentary access at Starbucks locations nationwide.

*Wi-Fi Offer: Free Basic Wi-Fi service available with AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet Express, Pro or Elite. 802.11 b/g enabled device required for Wi-Fi access. Service not available in all areas. Other restrictions apply. See www.attwifi.com for additional details and locations.

I’m so jazzed! An additonal $10 gives me coverage everywhere….Whoo-hoo!

MacWorld 08 after effects:

I just ordered two leather iPod cases from SenaCases.com with a 20% off code emailed too me from the Sena Rep. who was at the expo…....Flippin Sweet! I picked up the iPod 80 GB Dockable, and the iPod Nano 3rd Gen Ultra Slim Case. Both are black leather, tight fitting cases without belt-clips. I own the 6th Gen 80GB iPod Classic (Black) currently without it’s own case. I also use the 2nd Gen iPod Shuffle, but the battery life is really short after almost 2 years of constant use. I use the Shuffle to listen to podcast during my entire 8hr work day. I’ve put more hours on that little Mp3 player than all of my previous player combined. I’m looking forward to picking up a new Nano this summer. I own an old iPaq PDA with a Sena case on it. Although I no longer use the iPaq I will say that the Sena case that covers it is simply the best case ever made! That’s why I want to wrap all my gadgets in Sena. Now if only Sena would get off their ass and make a case for the Nintendo DS…Wink, wink!

Special thanks to:
Kris Scott
Sales & Marketing Manager
Sena Cases

Goodbye T-Mobile!

Now that a deal has been struck between Starbucks and AT&T which will allow existing AT&T DSL customers to access wi-fi hot-spots at any Starbucks coffee store, I’ll be cutting ties with T-Mobile and their $19.95 monthly fee. I’m a long time T-Mobile wi-fi hot-spot customer and use the service regularly both at work and at Starbucks (on my days off from work). But recently the wi-fi signal at work has gone south…...it SUCKS! I use to get full bars for signal strength from T-Mobile while at work, but now I can’t pick up the wi-fi signal to save my life. I continued to pay T-Mobile the $19.95 monthly fee to get service while at Starbucks on my days off….but not any more.

AT&T DSL customers get FREE basic wi-fi service nation wide but at limited locations. McDonald’s, Coffee Bean & Tea coffee houses, Barnes & Noble Bookstores and a few other places that I don’t hang out at…..bummer. AT&T also offers a Premium wi-fi service for existing AT&T DSL customers for a price of $9.99. That’s a big drop from the $21.95 price tag they offered for the same service last year. The Premium service includes all of the basic locations but adds most major hotels and airports. I work at the airport which makes this a win-win situation for me. The cost of my wi-fi access will drop from $19.95mo with T-Mobile to $9.99mo with AT&T. Plus I’ll get a much better wi-fi signal from the more powerful WayPort wi-fi router which can be seen from miles around….ha ha. And (and, and, and) I get to keep going to Starbucks after I drop T-Mobile…..ha ha!

Bursting

So many of my hard drives are at capacity right now. My main c:drive is so full that my PC slows down to a crawl when running applications. And my Mp3 drive (which is a USB drive) is so full that I have to delete podcast just to download the latest episodes. Getting a bigger USB drive is a no-brainier, but buying a larger internal IDE (or EIDE) hard drive for an old and out of date PC is painful. My desktop PC is running a Intel Pentium 4 2.4Ghz processor, with 2GB SDRAM. My O/S is Windows XP Home with SP2 installed. The c:drive is only a 40GB drive, but it’s full of applications that I use regularly. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom saves much of it’s information to the c:drive and I’m sure that all of those RAW files have eaten away at my hard drive space. And the same goes for Photoshop Elements, Ulead VideoStudio 8 and a few others.

Stitched

Just for Leroy…..

Project 365+1 23 of 366

So far, I’m having fun on my Project 365+1. This photo only took 8 shots to get it correct. Then I did a shit-ton of post processing in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and Photoshop Elements. I was able to achieve the movie poster look I was going for. My first month is almost complete, here’s what I’ve done so far.

MBA

The new MacBook Air is a nice ultra portable laptop. Super super thin…I’m talking really thin! This new laptop weighs next to nothing, you won’t even feel it in your bag. In fact you might have to keep checking to make sure it’s still there….ha ha. The screen looks great, it’s super bright yet easy on the eyes. The keyboard is well designed and a breeze to type on.

I only have 2 complaints. First is the non-removable battery. Apple wants $125 to replace the battery, which you can have done at any Apple Retail Store. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before someone post a tutorial on how to replace the battery yourself, but like the Mac Mini…..you risk scratching up your laptop. And second is the lack of more USB ports.

Overall this is a sweet ultra portable. A bit on the pricey side but that’s how Apple rolls.

MacWorld 2008

After day 2 of MacWorld 2008 I believe I’ve had my fill of Apple, I’m not saying that I had a bad experience, I’m just on Apple-overload right now. Yesterday I sat in on a few presentations, and saw some cool stuff that the public may not of had the chance to see…...it was a fun day. Today started out with a bit of a snafu. The doors opened at 11:00am and the rush to get badges and badge holders was on! Several hundreds people flooded the only 2 booths that were set up to issue badges and badge holders to pre-registered attendees. Only having 2 booths to service all of these people was an extremely bad move on Moscone Center’s part. After almost an hour wait someone finally made the decision to let everyone into the exhibit hall’s main floor, but you had to at least have the correct pre-registration form with bar code….”come back and get your badge later!” I had my badge mailed to me weeks ago but I needed the holder to get into the hall. Yesterday they let me in without the holder (just a scan of my barcode)....go figure.

With the release of the new MacBook Air, the place was all a buzz. The newest laptop from Apple is a slick little device that’s both flat, thin, lite-weight and really really cool looking. With dozens on display, I got the chance to monkey around with one for about 30mins….longer than the average expo attendee….(ha ha I’m so special)!

I sat in on some cool seminar’s today (and yesterday). The best was the Adobe stage where I learned some useful trick for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. I’m ready to rock my installed version with all that I’ve learned. I missed out on a short presentation about iTunes done by a 3rd party application maker, but maybe tomorrow I’ll catch him. I didn’t see any real ground breaking products today, the expo was heavy on iPod cases and skins, MacBook cases and bags. There was also the usual lineup of vendors selling every kind of cable, connector, and dock one could think of.

I did have an issue with the wi-fi at MacWorld…...it didn’t work! Everyone who paid extra for the Enhanced Pass was left out in the cold. Bloggers and other media people scrambled all day to find a connection that worked. Even vendors who had special wi-fi sections next to their booths were shut-out. The expo’s wi-fi network would issue an IP address and allow you to connect to the network, but the log-in page was inaccessible. Now don’t tell anyone, but I was able to connect and get online. Only because I know some naughty tricks that would have surely gotten me kicked out of the joint. But hey!...I paid extra to be able to get online and blog….right? So if I gotta hack to get what I paid for, so be it. But this is still just between you and me….ok? I quitely sat in the corner of the enhanced badge holders “special room”, secretly connected to the internet while surrounded by several Mac users with MacBook’s and MacBook Pro’s…dead in the water. If I would have tipped my hand they would have cried foul, and I would have been outed as a Windows user who infiltrated the most sacred land there is for the Apple faithful….MacWorld.

There was swag everywhere, but not much in the way of useful stuff you could really use. Last year most vendors gave away iPod cases, Shuffle covers, mouse pads, cables, and other cool and useful things you could use. This time around the vendors gave away candy, stickers, pens, yoyo’s, and other trinkets of no use. I did get the Rep from Sena Case to give me a code to get a discount on a wicked-cool case for my 80GB iPod Classic. I’ll be buying one soon!. I also talked with him about Sena’s lack of support for the Nintendo DS Lite, the 1# hand-held gaming device in the world and how they still don’t have any cases for it….shame! They have cases for the Sony PSP who’s sales come nowhere near the DS.

I met Cali Lewis from Geek Brief TV! She does a video & audio podcast all about the latest in tech. She’s been doing her podcast for at least 2-3 years, and I’m glad to say that I was one of her earliest subscribers. She told me about what she was doing at the expo, and we also talked about our wi-fi connecting troubles. I didn’t offer her my wi-fi network hacking services which would have gotten her online long enough to upload her show, but I doubt she would have taken me up on my offer anyway…..Windows users gotta stay clean while undercover at MacWorld!

I didn’t take too many pictures this year, after all, once you’ve seen one iPod skin, you’ve seen them all. Unlike the iPod toilet paper holder from last year, I didn’t see any really stupid products this time around. Perhaps Apple is tightening the screws on vendors who put out crappy products which might tarnish the Apple brand.

MacWorld Expo 2008 won’t make me “switch” this year….maybe next time. I might buy a new iPod nano to replace my low battery life Shuffle, but that’s about it. I’ll be back next year, and the year after. Perhaps I’ll make this my new “must attend” event from now on. It’s a fun time, a great time, and something that every techie should do at least once.

Who Owns You (Narrated By George Carlin)

2007….end!

It was a wonderful Christmas 2007, The kids got the surprise of the lives when I dropped a brand spanken NEW Nintendo Wii on them the day before Christmas. Why a day early? Well my wife, kids, and mother-in-law were all leaving the country on a multi-day cruise late on Christmas day…Wow! So the kid got the BIG gift one day early in order to get some playing time in on the new console. In addition to all the other gifts they got a few extra Wii games. Mario Party 8, Lego Star Wars The Complete Saga, Super Mario Galaxy, and Backyard Football for the Game Cube. That’s enough to keep’em busy through summer.

So the house is staffed by just me and the cat, and I’ve been home sick for the past 3 days with a full on head & chest cold….nasty stuff! Today is New Years Eve, and it’s the first sunny day in a string of gloomy and over-cast days…I’ll have to get out and take some photos before the sun goes down on this final day of 2007.

My Exhibit hall pass for MacWorld 2008 came in the mail the other day. I’m excited about attending the conference in San Francisco….plus I’m on vacation that week too. I got a hotel for 3-days and 2-nights, and it’s only a few blocks from the Moscone Center…it’s gonna be fun! My pass includes access to the wi-fi network, so I’m planning on doing a bit of blogging from the floor. I’m also planning to take lots of photos in and around San Francisco, I just don’t get to SFO enough and the city makes for great pictures.

Thirteen Things

1. I’ve been gainfully employed since the 6th grade….(knock-on-wood).

2. I have the most incredible sense of hearing, and taste. It freaks people out!!

3. I use to love helping people with computer, but now I hate it because no one wants to learn.

4. At age 45 I still have all my wisdom teeth, and have never had a cavity…(knock-on-wood).

5. Women I don’t know ask if they can touch my bald head. Maybe I should open a booth and charge!

6. An Administration Official for Bill Clinton was my "Best Gal" at my wedding…Luv-Ya Amy.

7. I dream of owning a coffee shop with free WiFi, books, photos, art, and open mic nite.

8. As a kid I use to swim in public pools all the time, now the thought gives me the willies.

9. I fear that in the future my kids won’t have the same freedoms & rights that we have now.

10. I miss Frusen Glädjé ice cream. I loved it so….

11. Don’t laugh, but…..I’ve never been to Las Vegas. (There, I said it!)

12. I sometimes have to show my ID when buying beer. At age 45…that’s f**ked up!

13. I’ve have never once been unfaithful to my wife! But if sneaking an extra bowl of ice cream upstairs to eat while surfing the net is wrong, then I’m a cheating bastard!

Grand Opening!…BokehImage.com

Funny, I failed to realize that I’ve been doing it all along…..bokeh, that is. Bokeh is a Japanese word only recently (in the past few years) picked up by we Americans. It means blur, referring to the out-of-focus area in a photograph. I’ve become a big fan of bokeh images and photos surfacing all over flickr and the rest of the Internet. It’s not new, but I’ve just become very aware of how many people are shooting this kind of photo. Over the past 7-8 years, I used photoshop and other image editing applications to create larger amounts of blur (bokeh) in my photos. The photos were shot with my trusty point-n-shoot camera, the Canon S-500 Digital ELPH. The Canon S-500 can take decent portraits but it lack amount of blur I truly wanted….enter Photoshop.

I’m now shooting with a Pentax K10D along with lenses that will create wonderful amounts of bokeh right out of the camera. I may have found my calling….after all these years. To celebrate my new found joy I’ve created a new photoblog called BokehImage.com which will host the very best bokeh images I can create. The site is up and running right now, but with only a few images to start.

BokehImage.com is a collection of bokeh images as photographed by me. I’m not a professional photographer, just a guy with a camera…and a vision. The majority of these images will contain very little post processing, but only done to further enhance the visual quality of the image.

Dead drive

“Damm-it Jim, I’m a doctor not a computer repair man…..it’s dead Jim!”



My son’s hard drive die today. Just before I was about to install all of his monthly system updates (Windows Updates…”Patch-Tuesday”, latest version of iTunes, update virus definitions & scan system). When I turn on his computer to this morning the hard drive produced a continuous crunching sound…..it was horrible! It was one of my really old hard drives from back in the day (2002 I think), and only 40GB’s…they don’t even make 40GB any more. He only had a hand full of photos, a few songs bought from iTunes, and a couple of FireFox bookmarks so it’s no real loss.

My properties continue to grow.

Today marks the birth of another photoblog. Coming soon…..BokehImage.com

Why does my head hurt?

I saw a Polaroid camera on the page of one of my flickr contacts. I was inspired to comment that I too have an old Polaroid Spectra camera. I went into my office closet and pulled it out just to have look at it….it’s been a long time. I noticed that just after the word “Spectra” on the front of the camera, were the letters “QPS”. I’m guessing the “PS” stands for Polaroid Spectra, but what does the “Q” stand for? Well, after opening the camera and looking at the lens I was able to determine that the “Q” stood for “Quintic”....well done!

Ok, so what the fuck does “Quintic” mean? My oldest and most trusted friend Google gave me the answer.

Quintic:
A polynomial having a degree of 5.

Ok, I’m still lost!

Polynomial:
An algebraic expression consisting of one or more summed terms, each term consisting of a constant multiplier and one or more variables raised to integral powers. For example, x2 − 5x + 6 and 2p3q + y are polynomials. Also called multinomial. Thank you Answers.com….but I’m still lost.

Multinomial:
An algebraic expression containing more than one term (cf., binomial). The term is also used to refer to a polynomial. Thanks Mathworld.Wolfram.com, but didn’t we pass this tree once already?

Ok, now I remember why my head hurts…..I hate algebra!

Status

My grass is still not yet planted – My wall mounted LCD screen ROCKS! – I’m having trouble sticking to one DS game until completion – I’m tired of upgrading to the latest version of Wordpress – My new iPod Classic is feels smooth to the touch – I can’t wait for Mac World Expo 2008 – I need more Mexican food in my life – My beer isn’t cold enough – I hardly watch TV anymore….yeah! – The 4gb Zune looks cool – Everyone loves my glasses – $20 worth of gas gets me nowhere – I ditched cream cheese for butter – I need a 50mm lens – My hearing is unbelievably great…”I heard that” – I’m taking more photos now – I’m loving flickr even more – My house will never be completely dust free – My old laptop is too slow for video streaming – I need a steel lunch box – I’m worried about the future.

Media Center…up & runnung.

Watching The Lab with Leo Laporte. It was downloaded last night along with many other video podcast. It’s like TechTV…...reinvented! All of the downloaded show will run back-to-back. Here’s a partial list of the video podcast I’m subscribed to:

1. The Lab with Leo Laporte
2. DLTV
3. Cnet TV
Buzz Report, Cnet Top 5, Quick Tips, Cnet Mailbag, Insider Secrets, Prize Fight, The Queue, Crave
4. Revision3
Diggnation, InDigital, InFected, Systm, Tekzilla, TheBroken, The Totally Rad Show
5. Webb Alert
6. Mahalo Daily
7. Ask A Ninja
8. Tiki Bar TV

My “Cheap-ass” media center is complete!

My old 19” LCD display is now mounted on the wall behind me and it looks great! My old Compaq Armada E500 laptop is on the floor under the desk running the show. I also took my Ignitek iCruiser 430 iPod speaker/docking system and integrated it into the system. Now I have decent sound, and still a place to quickly charge my iPod’s.

The applications on the laptop still the same as indicated in my previous post, but I added VLC Media Player to the line-up for good measure. The laptop is no longer hard-wired into my home network, but has gone wireless. I found my old Belkin 802.11B PCMCIA wifi card, plugged it in and it worked! It’s slow at only 4.3-11Mbit/s, but I’m mostly streaming audio so it will do. All of my subscribed video podcast are downloaded over-night for viewing later directly from the hard drive.

Miro and Joost are a couple of memory hogs, as my laptop only has a little over 700MB of RAM. Half of my system RAM is eaten up by XP, so I may have to come up with another mix of apps and O/S before it’s all said and done.

Skulls and Candy

I would like to thanks Kimber for the BestBuy gift card for my birthday. It was used to grab my 2nd and final pair of SkullCandy headphones. Now I have 2 pair to cover both home use and work. Originally I had planned to combine the gift card with cash towards the purchase of an iPod. But after some online discussions about which iPod to get, and when….I decided to use the card to get the SkullCandy Lowrider Headphones. I bought them online at BestBuy.com then picked them up in the store 1hr later…....Awesome!

The SkullCandy Lowrider headphones produce a great sound with plenty of bass from the 40mm drivers. They fit over the ear and are really light-weight. They also fold down to fit inside my backpack or computer bag. The SkullCandy GI DJ Stereo Headphones offer comfort for home listing with a large over-the-ear style. The GI DJ’s produce plenty of bass from the 40mm drivers, and includes a nice long cord which allows me freedom to move around the my home office while grinding out the hit’s.

Put me down for one. 80GB iPod Classic (Black)

I promised myself that I would wait until next summer to replace my old 4th Gen 20GB iPod Photo with the new iPod Classic. But now I’m starting to wonder about the fate of the iPod Classic….the last hard drive based iPod left in the line-up. If I wait too long Apple might pull the iPod Classic from the line up by next summer in favor of a slightly higher capacity iPod Touch…..say 32GB’s. I also believe that Apple might also pull the 8GB iPod Touch as well, in favor of a new line up of the 16GB, and a 32GB iPod Touch. All of this is fine and dandy, but none of the iPod Touch devices (or 4-8GB nano’s) can match the storage of even the smallest iPod Classic at 80GB’s.

My 20GB iPod Photo is lacking in both storage and features. Holly-crap even the nano now has video and is out pacing my old iPod! There’s that old Country-Western Kenny Rogers lyric: “You got to know when to hold’em, know when to fold’em, Know when to walk away and know when to run.”.

1. If I wait, Apple could discontinue the iPod Classic and I could loose my chance to upgrade to an iPod with a much higher capacity than my 20GB iPod

2. If I buy now, I break my promise to wait for all the new upgrades to the new line up of iPods that may (or may not) happen next summer 2008.

I went back to my local Apple store yesterday to put my hands on both the nano, and the Classic for yet the third time. They both feel great, work well (with the latest firmware updates). I could see myself replacing my Shuffle as the battery on the little guy can’t hold a charge as long as it use to. I work 10Hr days, and run the Shuffle for the full work day so the 8-4GB nano would make a great little replacement. The Classic simply felt great! Super thin and sleek with awesome resolution and smooth video playback. A shit-ton of storage compared to my 20GB iPod, I could put my entire library on that puppy…....I’m digg’in it!

So here’s what I’ve done. I’ve passed on the 4-8GB nano. I’m going to wait until summer to replace my 2nd Gen Shuffle, the battery should be good-and-dead by then…..ha ha! This morning I whipped out my credit card and smacked Apple for a 80GB Classic….Black! Having a corporate discount helps take the sting off a little, but it’s still less than what I paid for my 20GB iPod Photo a few years ago. And speaking of my old 20GB iPod, it should serve well as a 20GB backup hard drive when switched over to “disk mode”. Or perhaps a storage device for photos transferred from my Pentax K10D’s SD card using a little SD-to-iPod card reader which use to be sold by Apple. I might find one on eBay….maybe!

Waiting to be Touched!

Apple as well as other Mp3 player manufacturers are always slow to roll out high capacity models, it could be 2-3 years before we see the iPod Touch reach 80GB’s or 160GB’s with internal flash ROM chips. I want to replace my old (and out dated) Compaq iPaq H2215 Pocket PC PDA, but with a much better device than the current offerings in the PDA market today. The iPod Touch might make the perfect replacement, as Apple is now allowing 3rd party apps development for the iPhone and iPod Touch…..cool!

I’m willing to wait for a more robust iPod Touch with higher storage….duh, but better features like an SD card slot, built-in camera, internal MIC, and more. The music and video playback, and whicked-cool design makes it a PDA w/benefits. So with that being said…..I’m going to replace my Pocket PC PDA with the iPod Touch in whatever higher capacity it emerges as this summer 2008. Pennies savings….starts NOW!

Rusty Dump Truck

Yet another rusty dump truck found for sale on the side of the road. This time in Morgan Hill, CA just outside a farmers home sitting on the gravel driveway. See the other photos at DigitalDred.com