Yahoo! 360° vs. Blogger

I finally got a Yahoo! 360° Beta account (with 100 invites, if you are interested). I thought I would do a comparison between Yahoo! 360° and Blogger. Yahoo! has some nice features, but is more focused on the FOAF functionality. It is less flexible as a blogging tool (I haven't figured out how to edit the template for example).

Maybe as Yahoo! 360° comes out of Beta they will expand that functionality more.

Update: You will need a Yahoo! 360 account to even view the blog. Let me know if you want an invite.

Hot Deal on JVC Noise Cancelation Headphones

This is a sweet deal on some JVC noise cancelation headphones. Normally $149.95, but on sale for $41.99 (with free super saver shipping from Amazon). I was looking at wireless headphones, but they get a lot of interferance. These alternatively have a 4.9 foot retractable cord so there is no cord to get snagged on things. Almost as good as wireless, but without the static.

Checking a few other sites online, Amazon is the best price, but no one I saw was charging the $149.95 with the highest I saw being $68.99.

Upgraded to ATI 9600SE

I've preferred NVidia video cards for a long time. Saturday at Boise Fragfest's Old Skool LAN they had five VisionTek Xtasy ATI 9600SE video cards as raffle prizes along with a whole lot of other stuff. I've been ready for a video card upgrade for a few years now. I was using a borrowed NVidia GeForce 3. I thought it would be really nice to win one of those video cards.

I went to the restroom during one of the prize drawings, but left my ticket with Matt, which was a good thing because he was there to claim one of the video cards for me. It was really exciting to get back to my computer and find the video card waiting for me.

It turned out they had enough prizes to go through the raffle tickets again. They were getting down to the last few prizes and I looked at what was left. They only thing they had left that I was interested in was another one of those video cards. Well it turned out to be the last prize they drew for, and wouldn't you know it, I won it too! I sold the second one to a friend of mine.

Overall I think it was a great investment for the $10 admission price.

The card has been a really nice upgrade. It comes with a lot of really impressive demos and a nice tweak utility. I may be converted to ATI now. I am really happy with this card.

3/29/2005 Update: I indicated I won the 9800SE instead of the 9600SE (Second sentence in the first paragraph). Wishful thinking I guess, but I am completely happy with the 9600SE.

Scare the Bad Bugs

The Dish install is taking a lot longer then expected. I wanted to be home for the install, so I am still here. Life is more interesting at home then at work, that is for sure.

TJ was out back and I could hear this yelling, so I stepped out to see what was up. I could see TJ over by the garden yelling at the dirt where he and his mom were planting strawberries earlier today. I asked him what he was doing.

"I am scaring the bad bugs away Daddy!"

I looked at the dirt, sure enough there were no bad bugs there. I guess it worked.

How will I know it stopped?

We have had our dryer for a long time and over time it was getting louder and louder until it was ridiculously noisy. It also seemed to take longer to dry the clothes and it seemed to get hotter. This seemed to be ironic that the dryer was hotter, but the clothes took longer to dry.

Well my wife Dawn wanted to get a new dryer. As a last ditch effort we found a retired gentleman that fixes dryers and was willing to come take a look at it. He replaced some rollers, added some grease, replaced a pulley, shortened the vent hose and cleared a clog from the exhaust. He said the long hose and the clogged exhaust was causing it to get hot and not dry as well.

Immediately the dryer was significantly quieter. When Dawn heard how quiet it was she said see could barely hear it, and then immediately said "How will I know it stopped?" I told her it beeps when it is done. She said "Yeah, that's right." It had been so noisy we never heard it beep.

The guy billed us $35 for parts, labor and the trip. We tipped him really well.

Dish Network

[Note: I wrote this a while ago, but just now got around to posting it.]

Dawn and I have talked about getting a Personal Video Recorder (PVR or Digital Video Recorder - DVR) like TiVo or Replay TV for quite some time now. I think it would be nice to catch the shows we like without the need to schedule our lives around the TV, or mess with the VCR. The thing is we don't watch much TV. Our children on the other hand watch quite a bit.

The amount of TV our kids watch actually isn't out of hand. Actually our oldest is getting to be a great reader, so he is getting more into books. The big issue though is what they are watching. Don't know if you have watched children's television in a while, but there is a very large variety of programming. Some is appropriate for our children's age, while a lot is aimed at older kids. Unfotunately my son thinks this latter group is pretty cool.

The other major concern we have about my sons TV viewing is the commercials. He tends to believe them and wants us to buy their products.

Dawn and I were watching Enterprise the other night (about the only thing I do watch on TV) and an ad for a local Dish Network company came on touting a deal for $31.99 that included a free DVR upgrade. We got to talking about the fact that the satelite tuners usually have really good parental controls so we could limit our kids to age appropriate shows.

The next day the company that had the commercial called the house, which was rather surprising since we are on the nationa no call list. Dawn asked them a few questions and the guy had no clue. She figured he was an out sourced telemarketer.

Since I like to research thing I went out to Dish Networks web site to look at the system they were selling. It is unfortunate that ReplyTV took out the automatic TV skip feature of their units. The system they are offering does offer the 30 second skip, which should work really well to remove some of the commercials my son watches. He is a pro with the DVD remote.

I called the company with the ad later and they were telling me things that didn't agree with what I read on the web site. It was quite obvious that they were just clueless. I then called Anything Wireless.

They were able to answer most my questions, and if they didn't know the answer he said so. I set up a time to come down a take a look at the new 522, which has DVR and two tuners integrated.

Before we had a chance to get in and look at it we get a coupon in the mail for a free TV with activation from Anything wireless. Glad we didn't already sign up.

We finally got in to look at it. Seems like a pretty nice setup. You can lock channels or block based on raitings and content. The ratings are movie ratings (PG, PG-13, R), not TV ratings, so most TV shows wouldgo through as unrated. It lets you block based on content for TV shows. When you see a show rating it has a letter (V, L, etc.) for content. This blocking is referred to as the V (for Violence) chip.

They will be installing this Wednessday. [Which they are doing right now!]

Free GMail Invites

I have GMail invites free for the taking. I would appreciate an incoming link, but just asking nicely would be good enough. I'll need your email address to send you the invite.

Non-Blind Mice

This is a story about some mice. Five mice. Three with tails, and two without. None of them are blind. The tailless ones did not loose their tails in to a farmer's wife with a carving knife, they were actually born that way. I suspect a happy ending too.

My Logitech optical mouse is finally wearing out. It is a fist generation optical mouse. I got it from my mother for Christmas of 1999, so it has put in a good 4 years of heavy service. It still tracks good, but the right mouse button has gotten flaky, and this weekend the left button has started to flake out too.

Once you use an optical mouse, specifically Logitech ones, it is hard to go back to using anything else. When I started my job I had a Microsoft Optical IntelliMouse. It was torture to use. I had not used a Microsoft mouse since moving to my Logitech and I guess I just couldn't handle the downgrade.

Luckily my boss saved me with a MX700. I asked for an MX500, which is the corded version of the same mouse, but the MX700 was on sale for a little bit more, so he got it for me. I wasn't going to complain. The MX700 is a work of beauty. Very comfortable, lots of well placed buttons, and the cursor glides like silk.

From what I have read, the new MX1000 Laser Mouse is a major improvement on the MX700. I am not sure how they get so much battery life out when they are using a laser, but the idea that I could set it on stun and take out an intruder is really appealing.

I may stick with the MX510 instead of the MX1000 just to save money. The MX510 is a slightly upgraded version of the MX500 and comes in colors. It is marketed as a gaming mouse. I'd probably go with red over blue since I like red better, and it is oddly cheaper as well.

FedEx Stories

I had a similar experience with FedEx as Allen. I was ordering a new motherboard through mail order. It was shipped via FedEx Super Saver (I think it was) which takes 3 days. This was towards the end of November a few years back. Well, I was eagerly tracking it via the tracking site (a really cool feature). I saw it arrived in Nampa the next day, but then it just sit there. At one point I suggested I would drive down and get it, but then someone pointed out they have no facilities for me to do that. I figured out when the 3 days would be, and that put it on Thanksgiving day, which is a holiday. Turns out they don't deliver on the day after either. Then you put in Saturday and Sunday, so it ended up taking a week to get delivered.

It just struck me as odd that it took one day to travel from New York to Nampa, Idaho, and then took 6 more to get from one side of Nampa to the other.

Although I have a great FedEx story too. Once we were living in Lewiston, Idaho, which is way up north in Idaho. My sister-in-law had purchased us tickets to Phantom of the Opera in Salt Lake City, Utah (Thanks Holly!) We got the tickets way in advance, so we put them in the car glove box so we wouldn't loose them and we would be sure to take them with us when we drove down to SLC. Our plan was to drive to Boise, stay with family overnight, then drive to SLC, see the show, stay with family over night, then drive back to Boise.

Well, our car ended up having trouble, so we got a ride with my Dad who was driving down to Boise that same weekend. We were about half way to Boise when we realized we didn't get the tickets out of the car glove box. This was before cell phones were so popular, so when we reached Boise I called a good friend of mine. I told him where the tickets were, he got them out of the car and overnighted them to my uncle's house in SLC. The tickets beat us there. That was just cool.

What would be really nice is if you could have FedEx text message you every time your package's status changed. So you could track it in real time via your cell phone. I wonder if FedEx has a web service API. . . .

Be A Guide on About.com

About.com just updated their list of topics they are looking for perspective guides for. Guides are paid based on page views. As long as the page views keep increasing month after month, then the guide gets paid more. About merged with MiningCo.com long ago. They make an effort to be a great source of information on various topics, but I think their push for the magical page views is corrupting the layout. Anymore it takes me a long time to find what I am looking for on their site, and usually the signal to noise ratio is fairly poor with the number of ads.

I think it is a good idea. Kind of like what Weblogs, Inc. is trying to do, although for the moment they have a much better signal to noise ratio.

Entrepreneur Meetup Group in Boise, Idaho

Tonight at 6 PM I will be at Starbucks coffee meeting with other entrepreneurs as part of the The Boise Entrepreneur Meetup Group. If you are interested then stop by the Starbucks at 1100 Broadway Ave. in Boise. The meetup used to conflict with Kickstand, so I moved it to Wednessday. If you have then entrepreneur spirit then come by and say hi. It is informal. We don't require a business plan to get in.

Raph Koster's "Theory of Fun" Keynote

Alice of Wonderland has a rough transcription of Raph Koster's Keynote from Game Developers' Conference 2005. Raph wrote the book "A Theory of Fun". The speech is a really interesting read, even if you are not into gaming. In fact it might be more interesting for the non-gamer.

A visit to Raph Koster's Website turns up a PDF of the original speech from 2003, complete with illustrations.

Here are a few select quotes from the transcription:

. . .Building those patterns is necessary for our survival. If you don't have a pattern library, you are going to die. You won't be able to tell an apple from Draino. Fun is the feedback the brain gives while successfully absorbing a pattern. We need to absorb patterns, otherwise we die. So the brain HAS to give positive feedback to you for learning stuff. We tend to think of fun as being frivolous. The stuff that doesn't matter. And this is the serious games cheer line: I'm' here to tell you that fun is not only not frivolous but fundamental to human nature and required for survival. Therefore what we do is saving the human race from extinction. . .

. . .This is an interesting and subtle lesson to teach; the fact is as adults, as we build a large library of chunks, we get lazy. "I don't need any more chunks, I have enough to survive now". Then we get Alzheimer’s and die. Seeking out new information, hidden behind bricks, books, people, is actually pretty important. There's interesting work in early stage Alzheimer patients … learning a new language or playing videogames both retard the onset. . .

There was also a reference to Blink, which was already on my list of books to read.

One Man Can Make a Difference

One thing that really impressed me about Super Size Me is the aftermath. McDonald's stopped offering Super Size options on their meals, introduced their premium salads, and their healthy meals all immediately after the movie came out. McDonald's claims the events are unrelated to the movie.

Now I know the movie involved a lot more people besides Morgan Spurlock, but it was his original idea, and he was the producer, director, writer and guinea pig. It was totally his vision and he made a huge difference in educating the public to the hazards of fast food and processed food in general.

A More effective Smoke Alarm

Thanks to Matthew Oliphant for pointing out a new smoke detector. He found it out on Gizmodo. What makes this smoke detector different is it uses a parent's voice instead of a traditional beeper.

Just the other night Dawn and I had a candle burn down and set off the smoke detectors in our house after the kids were asleep. All our smoke detectors are wired together, so it set them all off. After blowing the candle out and the smoke dissipated (there wasn't much) we went to check on the kids. All 4 kids slept through it. Kind of freaky.

The KidSmart people claim 100% success in their tests with their system. Matthew pointed out that he can't wake up his daughter when he is calling her name and shaking her. I guess the jury is still out on their effectiveness.

If it isn't more effective, it is at least more creative.

Please Don't Super Size Me!

Dawn and I just finished watching the documentary movie Super Size Me. That is a truly scary movie. It is all about this relatively healthy guy (Morgan Spurlock) eating nothing but McDonald's for 30 days. He had 3 doctors, a nutritionist and physical therapist follow his work, as well as his vegan gourmet girlfriend. At one point in the movie everyone, including the guy and his mother, expressed concern that he may suffer permanent damage or death as a result of this experiment. His doctors compared what he was doing to binge drinking and said appeared just as likely to destroy his liver.

Now I've never liked McDonald's. As a father of four, my oldest being 7, it is very difficult to persuade my kids that it is not a good place to eat, so I've occasionally given in. After watching this movie I am sure we will make a significant change in my families eating habits.

The movie reminded me of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, where he exposed the Chicago meat packing industry. It looks like it may be having a similar impact on the fast food industry.

If you have not seen this movie then I recommend it. I found it entertaining and educating. We all know fast food is bad for us, but do we really realize how bad for us it is? This movie really just scratched the surface of this subject.