PMB / Josh Kelley @ HOB

Stephanie and I went to see Pat McGee Band and Josh Kelley last night at the House of Blues. The concert was held in the Cambridge room at the HOB, not the main stage. The Cambridge room is a tiny little venue that probably only holds 300 or so. Stephanie and I got a prime spot in front of the stage for the whole show!



Josh Kelley opened the night and turned out to be the better of the two performances. Pat McGee Band, one of my all-time favorites, doesn't seem to have the same energy that they used to (although this may be in large part due to the recent loss of their drummer, Chris). Josh Kelley, on the other hand, is a great performer and really seemed to have fun with the audience. The keyboardist, Dave Yaden, was having even more fun than Josh - he was either high on something...or just insane.



When Josh Kelley's set was over, a lot of the crowd left. I was surprised that more people weren't there to see PMB...or at least stick around to see if PMB was any good. We kept our front row spot in front of the keyboard stand, now occupied by Jonathan Williams, as PMB began their set.



Near the end of the show, the members of Josh Kelley's band came out and did some jamming with PMB. Dave Yaden sat down with Jonathan at the keys and started playing in his psychedelic style...Jonathan didn't seem to know what to make of him.



Josh Kelley seems to enjoy playing other people's instruments. During his set, he switched spots with his drummer during one song. At the end of the PMB set, Josh was standing at the side of the stage and playing on one of Chardy's bongos. (Note Jonathan laying on the floor of the stage watching)

Overall it was a very fun concert and I'll definitely have to check out more of Josh Kelley's music.

Most pointless software ever....after AOL, of course

I was just checking on my Hannah Montana auction and noticed a post about eBay's new "public Beta" of their eBay Desktop software.

First of all, the concept of a Public Beta is somewhat ridiculous anyway...when did a Beta test become a public event? The whole idea of a Beta release of software is to have a small-ish group of testers evaluate the software BEFORE opening the final release to the public.

But the real reason that I wanted to comment on this new eBay Desktop is that eBay is a WEBSITE! A website that now wants users to download special software to view the same information that you can get already...on their website!

While most companies are trying to move desktop applications ONTO websites, eBay is apparently going in the opposite direction. Can anyone give me any reason at all that a desktop version of eBay would provide any value????

Apparently eBay is subscribing to the AOL school of thought...which apparently is something like "Let's give our users a bloated piece of software that allows them access to the exact same information that they can get already using their web browser." (and yes...the software is indeed bloated: a 15 MB download AND it requires the installation of Adobe AIR as part of the installation)

OK...that's enough ranting for now. Go download the eBay Desktop application so that you can bid up my Hannah Montana tickets even higher!

Turkey X-ing

While driving down Chagrin River Road in Gates Mills this weekend, we had an interesting encounter with the local fauna.

Crossing the road was a flock of wild turkeys! Wild turkeys are native to Ohio but not to the Cleveland area.

The turkeys (probably 8 or 9 of them) moved pretty quickly across the road and into the trees on the opposite side. I was just quick enough to snap a picture with my phone before the last of the birds disappeared from view.

Hannah Who?

After reading about Billy Ray Cirus' daughter who performs as Hannah Montana and her national tour that is selling out arenas in minutes, I was able to snag a couple tickets to her upcoming performance in Cleveland.

So now I'm hoping that these tickets are as hot as the media makes them out to be!

If you know a parent that would like to take their teenage daughter out to a concert, please send them to my eBay listing...because I sure don't want to get stuck with these tickets.

Buffalo Wings

House walkthrough

I had the condo all nice and clean for a party yesterday and thought it would be a good opportunity to snap some pictures. Click on the link below for a guided tour:

2007_09_15_House_Pictures

X-Type on the Same list as the '61 Corvair

Time Magazine recently released their list of the 50 Worst Cars of All time.

On that list, at #46, is the Jaguar X-Type. I've read a plethora of unfavorable ratings on the X-Type ever since I first considered purchasing one. This Time Magazine rating is just more of the same nonsensical journalism that most press seem to give to the X-Type.

See their reasoning for putting the X-Type on this list:

"A business case is not the same as wisdom. Certainly, Jaguar needed an entry-luxury model to compete against the BMW 3-series and Mercedes-Benz C-class. Yes, the company, owned by Ford, had access to a very successful world car platform, the Mondeo, which Americans knew as the Ford Contour. There was money to be saved. But in its attempt to turn the front-drive compact car into an "all-wheel drive" sports sedan, Jaguar ran smack into the limits of platform engineering. The result was the English version of the Cadillac Cimarron, a tarted-up insult to a once-proud marque and a financial disaster for the company. It hardly matters that the X-Type was not that bad a car. Young affluent buyers had the feeling they were somehow being grifted. They were."

So the rating actually admits that the X-Type "was not that bad" but is still one of the worst cars of all time? Interesting.

From what I can gather, car magazines (and mainstream magazines, apparently) expected the $30-$40k X-Type to have the exact same quality of material and build as the $60 - $70k XJ.

Beyond that, the press is always hung up on the Mondeo / Contour origins of the car and focus on this as a negative trait. I drove a Contour...it was a very capable small car. And the Mondeo is widely regarded as an excellent car in Europe. So why should a car that shares the Mondeo roots be slammed for simply building on a successful platform?

These types of reviews make me wonder if the author has even ever driven in the cars that they rate. Does the car have some plastic trim reminiscent of a Ford? Sure. Does the car share a platform with the Mondeo/Contour? Sure. But is the car an affordable, comfortable, fun-to-drive entry-level luxury sedan? Absolutely. If only that would count for something in the automotive press.

Amish my a$$

Stephanie and I visited Mary Yoder's Amish Kitchen restaurant in Middlefield, OH this weekend. The food wasn't any better or worse than your standard Bob Evan's fare, however the restaurant got its charm from the Amish ambiance.

Only a handful of the waitresses were wearing traditional Amish attire, the rest looked the part of a typical greasy-spoon waitress anywhere else in OH. I assumed that the waitresses that were actually dressed in Amish clothing were, in fact Amish.

Given this assumption, you can imagine my surprise when I noticed that all of the waitresses, even the Amish wait staff, were entering the food orders into the restaurants computer system!

I guess touch-screen monitors and computerized ordering applications are allowed in the Amish community now.

(I know that the restaurant itself isn't governed by Amish rules (or they wouldn't even have electricity), however the wait staff definitely seemed to be authentic Amish)

Overheard at...

...the fireworks following an orchestra performance at Blossom:

"That would kill Jesus!"
- little girl in reaction to a huge firework blast

I don't really know what it means, but it sure was funny

New MotoQ? Might want to skip it

Ever since I got the Moto Q, I've had tons of people asking me if I'd recommend it. My basic answer has been "No, the phone is extremely buggy, wait for the new batch of Windows Mobile 6 phones with WiFi that are coming down the pipeline." (ie. VX6800,

Well, Verizon has finally released one of the new Windows Mobile 6 phones (sans built-in WiFi)...the new Motorola Q9m.

For those of you who were patiently taking my advice and waiting for a WM6 phone, you way want to wait a little longer.

While the Q9m is getting some decent reviews, I've seen others that insult the consumers who purchase this phone:

"Seriously, if you buy this phone, you are dumb."
-Gizmodo

Verizon should be able to do better than this...

Snopes conspiracy?

If like techie humor, check out the other strips on this site...they're hilarious

Simpsonized

Twinsburg ranked again

Twinsburg has been ranked again, this time in a national magazine.

In Money Magazine's Best Places to Live ranking, Twinsburg came in at #93/100.

The only other Ohio cities on the list are Gahanna, Mason, Beavercreek, Highland Heights, and Westerville.

Weekend in NYC/Atlantic City/Philly/Hershey

Stephanie and I toured the East coast this weekend as we traveled to attend a baby naming. We took a plane to LaGuardia, a van to Syosset, a train to Manhattan, a subway to China town, a taxi to Central Park, a car to Atlantic City, a bus to the harbor, a boat on the Pacific, and finally a car ride home.

I think we covered pretty much all modes of transportation...too bad we didn't take a helicopter tour...

Click below for pictures

July 2007 - NY/NJ

Buffalo / Chautauqua, NY

Pictures from Buffalo this past weekend. Stephanie and I decided to stop in Chautauqua Lake, NY for dinner on the way back to Cleveland. What a beautiful area!

Buffalo June 2007

Step away from the Wiimote!

The first diagnosis of "Wiiitis".

Where do the good cellphones go?

Ross and I both used to have a Kyocera 3035 cellphone from Verizon. I think we both agree that it was a great phone...especially compared to Ross' crappy Motorolas.

Stephanie and I were in Marc's this weekend and I happened upon the following display:



A bunch of Kyocera 3035's for $1.99 / piece. The entire box is in Spanish and the sign says that they're "Emergency Cell Phones" but it's good to see that the 3035 is still going strong :-)


BTW...I hate Marc's. Worst store ever.

Twinsburg's ranked #5

Cleveland Magazine recently released their annual ranking of the top Cleveland suburbs. Twinsburg, where I'm going to be moving in a few weeks, made it to the top 5. Only behind some VERY nice (and VERY expensive) suburbs.

Burgas Wedding

A selection of pictures from the weekend down in Cincinnati for Dave and Jen's wedding



(Click on the photo to view the web album)

New condo

Assuming no unforeseen circumstances, I will be closing on my new condo on June 18th.

It's a 3 bedroom, 2 bath in the Ethan's Green community in Twinsburg, OH.

The condo is three levels:

1st level: 2-car garage, foyer/entrance hallway, storage room
2nd level: kitchen, living room, dining room, bedroom 3, full bathroom
3rd level: bedroom 2, bedroom 1, full bathroom


See the aerial view here.

Orchard Hill Pictures

Most livable cities

In a ranking of the world's most livable cities, as ranked by Business Week, Cleveland shows up at #59! Impressive.

April Fools...Google-style

In case you missed it, here are links to Google's Hilarious April Fools Day 2007 sites:

Google Main Page April Fools:
http://www.google.com/tisp/index.html

GMail April Fools:
https://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/more.html

Also, here is a list of lots of April Fool's Day websites.

Family Reunion in FL

My great-aunt Anita had a big 89th birthday bash in Florida last weekend and almost everyone from that side of the family attended.

Here are some pictures from the weekend:

Let's Go Redhawks!!

Good luck in the tourney!

Great use of an RSS feed

I've been trying to locate a Nintendo Wii over the past week and have been frustrated that even 3 months after its release, Wii's are still incredibly hard to find. Since I don't have the time or patience to go stand in line outside of a store on a day that they are supposed to have a shipment of Wii's like some people...I have been relying on some Nintendo Wii Tracking websites to find one for me.

I subscribed to 3 different website's RSS feeds that were supposed to track the online inventory of numerous websites to alert users when a Nintendo Wii becomes available for purchase. After only 3 days of viewing these RSS feeds...and finding nothing except the silly Wii bundles that include numerous games and/or worthless protection programs or SD cards...the trackers notified me this afternoon that Amazon.com had the Wii in stock!



Luckily I happened to be sitting at my computer at the time of these alerts, because as you can see from the tracker messages in the image above, the Amazon.com inventory was depleted in only 4 minutes.

I was, however, able to get an order in during those 4 minutes and get free shipping as well. So now I have to wait for my Wii to be delivered...but at least I can stop the phone calls to stores and constant on-line checking in an attempt to locate a Wii.

Tiger Direct doesn't know Vista

I just got the following email advertisement from TigerDirect.com and wanted to extend a word of warning to anyone else who might have seen this...or similar offers.

This advertisement is for a "Vista Laptop" for $600. Sounds like a pretty good deal, huh?



From TigerDirect's description, it definately sounds like a good laptop. Who wouldn't want all of the new Vista features, right?

Notice that in the screenshot above, TigerDirect.com is advertising the "breathtaking Aero visual interface" as well as "Flip 3D".

However, if you read the details closely...or at least look at the top image, you'll see that this laptop only comes with Windows Vista Home Basic. The Home Basic version of the operating system DOES NOT include either the Aero visual interface OR the Flip 3D feature.

See the following from Microsoft's website:

You only get those advanced features if you get Home Premium or Ultimate. NOT the Basic version.

I can imagine that there will be quite a few disappointed shoppers who will order this budget laptop expecting all the new bells & whistles...only to find that they are running a stripped down version of the Vista operating system.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Stephanie threw me a surprise b-day get together for my 27th birthday.



She convinced me that we were going to a "Solon Teacher's night out" at The Boneyard. I had no idea what she had been planning until walking in and seeing my friends waiting for us.

Dan, Me, Ivan, Seth, and Jeff getting our race on. Seth won...but only because I crashed into a wall at the last turn.

Seth, Me, Ivan, and Jeff.

I even gave Dance Dance Revolution a shot. Wow, did I make a fool out of myself.

How lovely it is

The view out my window this afternoon. Ick...

Weird goings on in Google Image Labeler

Google has a new feature out in Beta called the Google Image Labeler.

Google has had their image search out for a while and it is a great tool. However, there are a lot of images out there on the web that are not named with descriptive filenames. If a file is named "DSC01239.jpg", how is Google supposed to allow that item to show up in its search results?

The answer is with the Google Image Labeler. It relies on pairs of users to look at that image and give it labels that correspond with what is actually in the image.

You are randomly matched up with another RANDOM user somewhere around the world. Both you and the other user type in as many words or labels as you can think of that describe that image. You get points if you are able to match a word with the other user.


I was playing around with this today to see how it works and came across some very strange results.

Quirk #1:
In the results shown below, you can see that I did not do very well. I only matched 3 words with the other user. The weird thing, though, is the other person's guesses, which Google lets you see when you are done.



The order of this round of Labeling was as follows:

1) Woman in Pool
2) Cup
3) Dragon
4) Cat

On the first item, the other user properly guessed "water park, pool, swimming". On the second item, the user properly guessed "milk, coffee". On the THIRD item, however, the user guessed "entrepreneurialism, accretion, and diphosphorate". I passed on the third item, because the other user stopped guessing (NOTE: While guessing, you can't see what the other user is guessing, only how many guesses that they have made). Then, on the fourth item, the other user returned to normal...guessing "cartoon, chinese"

So what the heck happened to that user on the THIRD item? Did they all of a sudden have a brain spasm and just randomly start typing in huge random words? Then when I passed on that item, they returned to normal and started guessing again.

I thought this might just be a fluke...an oddity...Google messing with me...who knows. So I Labeled for a few more rounds, and then came across this result (NOTE: Keep in mind that you are not paired with the same user each time. You are paired with a random user each round):





The order of this round was: Old woman, house, trees, Oxygen cover, anime girl, wrestlers, conference, and Damien Rice drawing.

You can see that the other random Google user and I were on the same wavelength here. We matched on our first 4 images just fine...the other user was making very logical guesses. However, look at what happened on the FIFTH item here. The other user guessed "bequeathing, accretion, entrepreneurial ism" and I finally passed on the item when I saw that we were not going to match up.

Then, just as with the first incident, the user then returned to normal, and matched me on the last 3 items.

So...what the heck is going on here?!? Is someone or something trying to sabotage the Google Image Labeler? Why would someone play along, entering labels, only to then start entering random long words??

Anyone have any idea what's going on here?

Quirk #2: I noticed that sometimes, the other user will ONLY guess "googley" and NOTHING else. A couple times, if I see that the other user has entered 1 and only 1 guess and i can't seem to match up, I'll enter "googley" as well and sometimes it will match.

Quirk #3: Even if a partner user is guessing properly, when viewing the partners guesses at the end of a round, the guess "abrasives" shows up a lot...on random pictures.

By the Buckeyes...

 
Me and Brutus, watching the BCS title game.

NYE

Stephanie and I at Blue Canyon for New Years Eve dinner.

We highly recommend the S'mores dessert!

Christmas in Vegas

I'm still recovering from jet lag (that 11:45pm Pacific time flight home was brutal), but here are some pictures from my National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation

Christmas in Vegas

VHS>DVD>Internet

If you're in my family:
My dad has been going through the process of transferring all of our old home movies from VHS tape to DVD. As he does that, I'm going to then take the DVDs and put select movie clips online for your viewing pleasure.

You can view the movies here

If you're not in my family:
Move on, there's nothing to see here

Need a PS3?

This is the "best" deal I've seen recently on the PS3.

At least they're not making you buy any extended warranties or accessories.

I'm still holding out for a Costco PS3...

YAWTSM

Thought this was yet another interesting way to swap music.

Sick of buying CDs from the store or online? Instead, swap CDs w/ another user of Lala.com

They provide the mailers, similar to NetFlix. You just list which CDs you want to trade, and when someone requests it, Lala will notify you who to ship the CD to.

Cost? Under $2.

Do I see myself using this service? Not a chance. However, it's still a neat idea.

I'll take 2

I had a whole post typed up on this, but then my post got destroyed by either Picasa, Google, Blogger, or all 3.

(I'm guessing it's because this image is gigantic)

Anyway...Walmart is running a deal scam on the PS3 where you can order one if you opt to spend $1400+

Click on the tiny thumbnail for a mega screen-capture of the Walmart site:

People will buy anything

GMail invites used to be hard to acquire. I remember people selling GMail invites for $100+ on eBay and people were happily buying.

Well now GMail is a public service, no invitation necessary. So now what are people buying?

Pre-registered GMail addresses!

Yep. People are paying for "hot" "rare" "supercool" GMail addresses on eBay.

Check this one out. $50+ for a free GMail address?

That one is for wii.will.wii.will.rock.ya@gmail.com. GMail ignores periods in addresses, so somebody went and registered wiiwillwiiwillrockya as a GMail address and someone actually wants to buy it from them!

That's just weird.

Their stock is > $500 why?

Google's not having a good day in my book.

First I've been unable to checkout using Google Checkout this evening. Google has a great error handling method in place:

Then I discover that the Blogger Beta integration in Picasa simply means that the pop up a window to Blogger Beta when you click the Blog This button in Picasa. With the original Blogger, you could click "Blog This" and your picture would automatically get hosted at Blogger.com and become a new post on your blog. Now, apparently that doesn't work even though Blogger (owned by Google) claimed it does.

MyWishlist - follow up

If any of you are going to try the MyWish list promotion that I posted about yesterday, be sure to turn off your pop-up blocker (or add the site to your allow list).

I successfully got the 25% off at Borders coupon (whoop-dee-doo) at 11AM, but the site presents the order form in a pop up window.



So instead of an order form, all I got was:



When you click on the bar and tell it to allow pop ups, it refreshes the whole page....resetting the flash animation and losing your claim to the item.

Now this isn't a big deal for a Border's coupon that I probably wouldn't have used anyway, but can you imagine if that happened on the Porsche?

Amex Promo

The American Express MyWishlist promotion begins today and runs through 12/14.

The main Wishlist items are up for sale at noon, 3pm, and 7pm ET. There are very limited quanities, so they sell out instantly (for example...on 12/4, they will be selling 1 Porsche Cayman for $5,000 at each of those times. Obviously fat chance of getting one.

There are also Wish Certificates that will be available one hour prior to the main Wishlist items. For example, today's 11am Wish Certificate is a 25% off coupon from Amazon.com. These Wish Certificates are free if you can get one, but they also "sell out" instantly.

Last year the only thing I managed to get was a Best Buy coupon that I didn't even use (I think it was 20% off of $200 or more)

( you must have an AmEx card to claim/pay for any of the prizes )

Watch out Donald Trump

Congrats to real estate moguls Jimmy and Jakki VanMetre. Jakki sent me this link to a front-page article about their latest acquisition.

(copy of article here in case the other one disappears.)

Have people gone absolutely mad?

Can we go back to being civilized again?


Please?

It's a good thing I know a programmer...

Well, after poking around, I didn't find any tools that solved my specific ID3 tag problem.

I found a very useful .NET library built by Hundred Miles Software which provides a very easy to use object library to read & write ID3 tags. Using that library, I put together a simple little program to create or update ID3 tags based on the mp3 filename.

I stuck it up online so that anyone else that is trying to deal w/ missing ID3 tags can avoid the hassle of typing the tags manually.

Here you go: Version .00001 of EM ID3 Tool

Just extract the zipped folder to your hard drive and run EMID3Tool.exe
[insert usual warning about downloading .exe files here]

VZW...they can't hear me

Has anyone tried to call a VZW store lately? It's damn near impossible to get anyone on the phone.

The new LG-VX8600 came out yesterday and so I tried to call around to find out who had them in stock. None of the area VZW stores would answer their phone if you select option #4 - Sales.

I tried calling 4 local VZW stores and got the same thing at every store...probably about 20 times total between all the stores.

"We're sorry, Verizon Wireless [Insert city name here] is unavailable. Please leave a message."...grrrr

iTunes renaming problem

I just found a decent solution to a problem that has been bugging me since I started using iTunes/iPod and figured I'd toss it up here in case any of you have a better solution for me.

When I download music, a lot of time the ID3 tags are not properly set up. This is ok if you're looking at the file list, because the files are typically named "Artist Name - Track Name.mp3". But when you copy the song into iTunes, it uses the entire filename as the Track Name and then truncates it to 31 characters.

For example, a recent download was a list of Rolling Stone's top 500 songs. After importing to iTunes, this is how these songs looked in iTunes and on the iPod:



As you can see, unless the artist and track info was extremely short, the name got truncated by iTunes. For some tracks, this completely renders the song unidentifiable (#39 - Buddy Holly And The Crickets -"...Can you guess what song that is?).

I just stumbled across Wes Barris' website where he wrote a simple renaming tool called NameToTag. You just point this tool at a folder of files named in the standard Artist - Name.mp3 convention and it will automatically populate the Artist and Track Name fields in the ID3 tags.

One major problem with his software is that it isn't configurable for other naming conventions, so my Top 500 download which uses the "Track Number - Artist - Track Name.mp3" would put the Track Number as the Artist and the rest as the Track Name.

Since this tools seems to be quite limited, please let me know if you have found a (FREE*) tool that has better support for batch ID3 tag updates based on filename.

NOTE: I did a quick virus scan of the NameToTag program above. However, as with any random .exe file that you come across, use at your own risk and with EXTREME CAUTION!

*FREE is defined as meeting any number of the following criteria:

• Shareware


• Freeware


• Cracked software


• Commercial software with registration crack or serial # provided


• Commercial software that requires purchase - but someone else purchases it for me


• Corporate editions of software that do not require registration/activation

Since When?

I just did a quick search for a serial number for a piece of computer software that I "acquired from the internet" as I have done many times in the past.

When I clicked on a link to a serial number website, I was presented with the following message compliments of Google.

This is the first I've seen of Google intercepting a click from their search results.



By the way...the software that I was installing was a certain application to extract and create disc images. I just didn't want the actual program name displayed in the URL...just in case...

Mapping battles are fun!

vs.

Remember the good old days of Mapquest and Microsft's TerraServer when you had to click a cardinal direction and load one square of a map at a time? Gee, wasn't that fun?

No...I agree. It wasn't. Which is why the current "Mapping Wars" are so great.

This whole thing seems to have started when Google created one of it's killer apps by acquiring Keyhole.

Now we are fortunate enough to have two excellent products that are constantly one-upping each other.

Between Google Earth and Microsoft's new Virtual Earth 3D we have access to a wealth of cartographic information with an interface that is light years ahead of the old school click and re-load interfaces of just 3 or 4 years ago.

Microsoft's new tool actually bests Google Earth, in my opinion, by packaging almost all of the rich user experience that Google Earth is popular for into a simple web interface.

The one downside to Google Earth was that it required a stand-alone application that must be downloaded and installed.

While Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D still requires a helper application to be downloaded and installed, the actual interface is completely inside of IE.

While it would be nice if they could completely avoid the client-side download and installation requirement, the fact that these applications are so graphics intensive means that a client-side helper app will still be required for some time.

Enjoy the new 3D views of the world.

Oh...and don't forget to go VOTE!

No more Pi/2

Looks like Amazon has stopped their A9 Pi/2 discount (3.14/2 %).

It was fun while it lasted.

I feel old

Nothing makes you feel old like having one of your favorite band start to release "Best Of" albums.

On a related note...next month (12/6) will be the 10-year anniversary of my first DMB show.

Friends and Family Discounts

Here's a couple Friends & Family discounts if you're interested:

PDF Links:

KMart 11/5/06

Sears 11/12/06

Can I get a definition of "anybody"?

On my morning commute, I regularly listen to NPR to hear all about the latest Republican scandals and/or mud-slinging. This morning, I heard the clip of evangelist Ted Haggard denying that he had sex with a male prostitute.

While this would usually just be another November news-bite, what caught my attention was the specific words that Haggard used in his denial:

"I've never said I'm perfect, but I haven't had sex with a man in Denver, and I've been faithful to my wife,"

In the audio clip (which I can't seem to find online), you can clearly hear him qualify his denial that he hasn't had sex with a man IN DENVER. However, if you look at this article at any of the mainstream media outlets, this denial has, apparently, been modified:

According to Yahoo News: "I've never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I'm steady with my wife, I'm faithful to my wife."

According to CNN: "I've never had a gay relationship with anybody. I'm steady with my wife. I'm faithful to my wife,"

Only a few media reports actually contain the quote verbatim.
The Syndey Morning Herald:
"I've never said I'm perfect, but I haven't had sex with a man in Denver, and I've been faithful to my wife,"

Media cover-up? Or simply poor choice of words on Haggard's part? hmmmm....

By popular demand...the Duck Butt

You asked for it, so here it is...


During a weekend trip to Gander Mountain with the southern portion of the Margelefsky family tree, Lauren and I found plenty of items to mock.

Most notable of these items was the "Duck Butt"

For those of you who have never experienced the "Duck Butt" in all of its half-assed glory, it is (just as the name implies) a plastic replica of a duck's posterior.




Here you can see Vanna Lauren posing with a Duck Butt.

And in case you were thinking, "You know, those duck butts sure are nice but do I have to sell my El Camino so I can afford one?" You're in luck. You can have your very own Duck Butt for only $4.99! That'll leave you plenty of money left to go get your mullet trimmed!





When we were done mocking the Duck Butt...and the just-as-amusing 4-foot hunting blind that looks like a giant duck that you can hide inside...we stumbled across this gem of a food product:




You know you're a redneck your career stinks when your product endorsements include your own brand of beef jerky.

Could be the end of the music goldmine

One of the last bastions of unlimited free music could be coming to an end. According to this article at Ars Technica, eMusic will soon be raising their prices per song.

This, in and of itself, does not threaten the free music, but it could be an indicator that eMusic will tighten down their policy of giving away free tracks.

For those of you who haven't gotten in on the free music gravy train, here is how it's done:

1) Go to this website to get 100 free downloads from eMusic

2) Sign up for the trial using a free disposable email address (I use an address @MyTrashMail.com so that I don't need to actually set up an account each time I need a new address

3) Generate a temporary credit card number using your credit card providers website. This temporary credit card number can be for as little as $1 as it will never actually be charged

4) When completing the eMusic registration process, use a fake name. The name does not need to match your credit card. The only actual information that eMusic will require is your zip code, since it is checked against the billing zip code of your credit card.

That's it. You now have 100 free downloads at eMusic. Go nuts, get a lot of DRM-free music, and then simply cancel your eMusic account. Rinse & repeat as necessary.

See? I'm not the only one

My "REBOOT" definately should have been included in this list

Blame game

What to do if a member of your political party turns out to be a homosexual child molestor?


Pretend you don't know him.

iPod (cont'd)

After my pseudo anti-Apple post the other day, I thought I'd update you on my experiences after a couple days of usage.

I finally have my music collection fully imported into iTunes and everything seems to be smooth sailing

If any of you do happen to get an iPod in the future, just remember to:

1) Convert your non-compatible music using something like EZ CD-DA Extractor instead of iTunes
2) Make sure you remove all playlist files from your library before importing
3) Import in small-ish batches to make sure that all folders get imported
4) If you have your music in folders, you can drag a folder into the iTunes playlist section and it will automatically create a playlist from that folder

and you'll have a much smoother transition than I did.

A few things that I've found really quite nice about the iPod
1) If you pull out the headphones, the iPod automatically pauses. So simple but yet a nice touch
2) The ability to rate the song on the iPod (never could do that w/ Archos)
3) You can flag a song to be excluded from Shuffling. That way all of those audio books and comedy tracks won't pop up when you decide to shuffle your music collection. That used to drive me nuts on the Archos.
4) Automatically downloading podcasts to the player. I never used podcasts before because it wasn't a big deal to have them automatically transferred to my computer. But now that they automatically get transferred to the player, I have something to listen to in the car in the morning when the current news is too depressing and makes me want to move to Canada.

This is especially nice now that I don't need to use an FM transmitter or casette tape adapter.
5) Great battery life. I used to listen to the Archos for about 5-6 hours at work and it'd be dead. Now I can listen to the iPod at work all day and the battery is still not even halfway depleted.
6) iTunes is pretty good at grabbing your music's album art from the web. I tried to use that feature in Windows Media player when it came out and it was AWFUL. I'd say iTunes can find about 75% of the album art (assuming that the ID3 tags are properly populated). I've been slowly populating the rest of the album art using Amazon.com or Google Images to find the artwork.

That's about all of the random thoughts that I have at the moment...

EvilApple

I recently upgraded my mp3 player to one of the brand new 80Gb Apple iPods. I'm still very anti-iPod, however, I'm getting mp3 integration installed in my car next week and it was designed to work with...you guessed it...the iPod.

Up until this point, I've always just hated the iPod / iTunes out of principle, without ever really using either product.

Now that I've had my iPod for a couple days now, I'm starting to find lots of reasons to despise the Apple products. Unfortunately, due to the integration with my car, I'll probably keep the iPod instead of going w/ a better player from Creative or Archos, but I thought I'd post the annyances that I've come across with my new gadget.

1) When told to synch up Outlook's contact list and calendar, iTunes completely locks up. This happened each time I tried to synch for the first day. Finally I reset all of the synch settings, instructing the iPod to only synch music & movies. Sure enough...solved the freezing problem.

2) When you have a large library of files in .wma, iTunes gladly asks if you'd like it to convert your files over to iTunes compatible (AAC) files. I had a couple thousand songs that were in .wma format, so I told iTunes to go ahead and convert them. iTunes took between 1-5 minutes for EACH song that it converted. In other words, it would have taken a week to convert all of those songs.

I cancelled that conversion, and just used EZ CD-DA Extractor to convert into AACPlus V2 files and all 2000+ files were converted in just a couple hours. (NOTE: These AACPlusV2 files are great...very small files compared to .wma and even smaller compared to .mp3)

3) If you have any .wpl or .m3u playlist files in your music library, iTunes will create duplicate copies of any songs on the playlist when importing into your library. After clearing out the iPod and starting my library import from scratch, I found that a ton of my songs had been imported twice. A quick Google search on the problem revealed this gem. Instead of importing the playlist files as a playlist, it simply imports all of the songs on the playlist...even if it already imported those files. So I again deleted everything out of my iTunes library and removed all .m3u and .wpl files from my mp3 directories.

4) Even though I have appx 10,000 songs in my "Full Albums" directory on my computer and I told iTunes to add this entire directory to my iTunes library, I only ended up with about 8,000 songs in my iTunes library. After I realized the a good chunk of these were duplicates, iTunes really only imported about half of the folder that I wanted to import.

I have now blanked out my library and the iPod again. I'm going to have to go through and import chunks of albums at a time instead of importing the entire directory. Hopefully I can figure out why it selectively imports some but not others (iTunes didn't import my VH - Live Stages cd...hmmmm)

Stay tuned for more rants as I complete my conversion over to the iPod dark side...

Been a while

It's been a while since I've been on here, but wanted to post a couple pictures from the Pi Kappa Phi 10-year reunion from a couple weeks ago. The Miami chapter was formed in 1996 so alumni from the founding through the present all converged on Oxford for a very nice banquet celebrating the occasion.

PiKapp 10-year

Sep 16, 2006 - 4 Photos

Thanks to Lugi and Bally for the pix.

Get it while you you can

The Microsoft Windows Media DRM has been broken and there is a simple application out there to remove the DRM protection from your protected WMA files.

I'm not going to link to it to avoid violating the DMCA, but just do a Google search for "FairUse4WM" and I'm sure you can score a copy.

I'm sure it won't be long before Microsoft releases a "critical" update that patches the DRM system to prevent this software from working, so if you're interested, un-protect your music while you still can.

Schoolyard justice

The days of resolving school disputes in the principal's office are long gone. Now if you have a problem at school, just sue the other person and take them to court

The article didn't mention if the lawsuit was drafted in crayon or glitter ink...

5.1 THX on the cheap

I've been shopping around for a new 5.1 channel surround setup for my apt since my old college setup finally died. After shopping around for home theater in a box, component, & bookshelf systems I finally decided to just go the cheap route and get myself a nice pair of computer speakers to use with my home theater. I finally settled on the Logitech Z-5450s.

The THX certification and wireless rear channels sealed the deal for me (and the fact that it cost 1/4 of what I would have spent on a component system didn't hurt).

So check it out...and note the lack of speaker wire running out of the rears (there is a power cable since each rear has its own amp).

Click on the picture for the full album:

2006_08_15 THX Speakers

Aug 15, 2006 - 7 Photos

H20 Power

Charge your cell phone with water.

Next I want my car to be re-fueled while it rains...

Support Israel

I received an email from the JCF of Cleveland soliciting donations to a fund that will move children away from the Northern regions of Israel to "youth villages" in central Israel, out of reach from Hezbollah's missiles. I donated to the campaign and decided to post here in case anyone else would like to contribute.

For more details, click here

Dropping the Bomb

Add the EuroCom F-Bomb computer to the list of poorly named products. Apparently there's a marketing director somewhere in Europe who's about to lose their job (although they have suceeded in generating a good amount of internet buzz...)

AOL = Evil; Reuters = Stupid

Headline: AOL may offer free high-speed Internet != Story

You've got to love a headline that has absolutely nothing to do with the story:
"Time Warner Inc.'s AOL unit may offer its full menu of services, including e-mail, free of charge to anyone with a high-speed Internet connection, The Wall Street Journal said on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter."

At least AOL may finally stop charging gullible people for things that they already give away for free on their website

New RAZR a stretched version of the old RAZR?

This site has some photos of the new Moto Canary (RAZR 2). Is it just me or is this think waaaay too tall/long?

Car Similarities

Someone recently posted a thread to one of my Jaguar forums commenting on the similarities between the tail lights of the Jaguar XJ and the Ford Taurus.

I decided to take a look at the rear-ends of both of these cars (made very easy by the rear-view photos provided by Autobytel.com):

 


While the general shape is the same, I don't think the tail lights are all that similar.

While I was doing this comparison, I decided to do a couple other comparisons.

The most egregious copying of the Jaguar styling, in my opinion, is the Kia Amanti.

See the following side-by-side comparison of the Jaguar S-Type and the 2006 Kia:





While I'm on the topic of Korean car manufacturer's blatantly stealing designs from other car companies, here is one more (Honda Accord and Hyundai Sonata):


 


Lastly, I decided to compare the profile views of my current car (the Jaguar X-Type) and my old car (the Ford Contour):


 


You can definately tell that both cars share the Ford Mondeo platform...but the Jag is so much more fun to drive :-)

Note: I appologize for the tiny pictures...for some reason Picasa is not correctly uploading the full-sized images.

One Expensive Picture

I'm now the proud owner of the following digital image, courtesy of Cleveland's Operation Safe Streets (aka Operation Oh-Sh*t-we're-broke-how-can-we-make-some-money?).

I figure as long as I'm paying $100 for this picture, I might as well get some use out of it.

So...In case you were wondering what my car looks like as I drive back from my lunch break someone drives it down the street, here you go:

 

(Note the proper use of the directional during lane changes)

And in case any of you were wondering...I was doing 38 on a 5-lane (2 each direction with turn lane) road. You would think that the road would be 35 mph...but apparently I was wrong. 

City Vision

The final class in the CSU MBA program is a class on contemporary business strategy. The final project for this class has traditionally been to create a strategy for a particular business. However, since my professor is from Washington state and has a severe disdain for the City of Cleveland, my class was tasked with creating a strategy for the City of Cleveland.

My group was supposed to be professional consultants presenting a strategy to the City so we created a website on which to distribute our strategy. It really isn't a very good paper...however, since it has consumed most of my time for the last month, I figured I'd post the link to my group (City Vision) website.

Increase the value of the paper hanging on the wall

Congrats to Miami U's Richard T Farmer School of Business for ranking in the top 20 undergrad b-schools in the nation according to Business Week magazine.

I'm all for things that will make my undergrad degree more valuable. Come on Miami, how about moving into the top 10 next year, ok?

Now I just need CSU's MBA program to receive some sort of accolade besides being the least-expensive MBA program in the state of Ohio.

Another odd accident scene

Ever since I started commuting across town due to my new job, I've seen quite a few impressive accidents. You may remember this one from a while back. This morning I passed another one.




It's a little bit tough to tell...but that's a minivan, completely flipped upside down on I-90 E.

Too bad they don't have video of the car actually flipping over...I'm curious how it's physically possible for a vehicle to end up like that.

You've got to be kidding me!

Another example of Conservatives Gone Wild.

(Link will be valid for non-WSJ subscribers for 7-days, then it will require a login and password)

Humorous results of another frivolous lawsuit

A while back, Apple got sued by someone who claimed that their iPod caused hearing loss due to the loud music being piped into their ears through the iPod.

This was pretty rediculous...to imply that it's Apple's fault that the user is dumb enough to blast loud music. However, Apple today announced a software update for their iPods to allow parents to lock in a
maximum volume so that their stupid children don't deafen themselves by turning up their Kelly Clarkson too loudly.

Will we now see this change occuring in other "dangerous" products?

Cars will have lockable maximum speeds so that that kids can't take turns too fast.

TVs will have a timer on the power button so that kids can't stay up too late watching the Amazing Race and miss school.

Computers will have locks so that kids can't surf...oh wait...that already exists...

A Client in the News

One of Vizion Solution's clients made the news yesterday.

TCP makes compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs)...those spring shaped lightbulbs.

As if I needed another reason to dislike "Amazing Race"...

As long as people continue to watch awful reality shows like Amazing Race, well written and acted television shows will continue to be yanked off the air.