Eight years and (happily) counting!
Sunday night raininva and I celebrated both an early Valentine’s Day, and a late anniversary of the day we began a serious relationship. We drove out to one of Rain’s favorite restaurants as she told me about the incredible gift she’d got me that would blow me away.
Well, we got settled at the table and she presented me with my gift – the first season of Gargoyles on DVD. Now, that was certainly cool and something I’m pleased to have in my collection, but it didn’t quite measure up to the hype she’d been giving me. But I played along, and told her I was very pleased with the gift (not hard to do, since I did like it).
She said, “Yeah, I’m glad you like it; though I did get you a backup gift in case you didn’t.” And she hands me a 1 GB iPod shuffle.
iPod!
An iPod has spent quite a long stretch on my list of “things I’d like to have but I’m not holding my breath”. And I have to admit it’s keen to have a device which plays hours and hours of music on a single charge, with no moving parts besides the control switch. And it’s tiny, and weighs nothing!
A passing waitress saw me looking at The Precious and said, “You must have been a very good boy lately!”
Not really. But my sweetie loves me 🙂
*****
Rain got a nail in her Pontiac’s right rear tire Friday night, and assuming the tire was unsalvageable, we headed to Wal-Mart on Sunday afternoon for a replacement. There was a five-hour wait there! I swear, I’m going to start boycotting Wal-Marts not because of any political feeling, but because they are always overcrowded and scary. I want to start bringing a machete when I go to the Superstore down here!
So, I was about to admit defeat – Wal-Mart was impossible, and everything else was closed – when I saw a Shell station with a bunch of tires propped outside; I rolled the dice and pulled in. Turns out there was a friendly good-ol-boy in there who wasn’t even busy, and had the tire plugged and airtight in 15 minutes, and even re-inflated the spare for us. Only charged about 15 bucks, too!
Here’s some karma for you, guy. You deserve it.
Bowling for Chocobos
Dug out the sketchpad Wednesday night, and worked on that character some more.
There’s an Eddie Izzard joke where he drops into the role of the young Hitler in painting class, muttering to himself, “I can’t get this tree to look right… wait… dammit… fine! I’ll just have to kill everybody!”
That gives you an idea of how well the drawing was going.
Saturday night was a birthday party at the bowling alley for one of Rain’s work friends. I knew a bunch of people there from her work, including the one guy who begged off and just played Final Fantasy Tactics all evening. I bowled well… which is not to say I got a high score, but that I actually hit pins most of the time and got the rare spare and strike. Next time we go for ourselves, I think we’re putting the bumpers up. We had them for one game because of a youngster’s presence, and the score sheet’s a lot less embarrassing when there’s no gutter balls.
Back to the gym today, finally. (The holidays played hell with our gym schedule.) I was hoping the new mini iPod would be a lot cheaper, because it’d make an excellent gym companion, but no joy.
In the last week, I’ve read Diane Duane, Frank Herbert, Tom Clancy, Robert Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke, among others. That, and madwriter‘s posts have reawakened my writing urge. We’ll see if it goes anywhere… the nice thing about 15 years of abandoned projects is that I have a lot of source material to mine 🙂
Where’s that lottery money?
So, this morning in Tokyo, Steve Jobs announced a 10 gigabyte iPod for $500. I’m not sure that if added every CD I own to my MP3 collection that I’d have 10 gigs, even if I tossed in a gig of files to use it as an emergency boot drive. Heck, put a color screen on that puppy and you could watch ripped DVDs off of it!
Apple: “Yes, we’re expensive. But isn’t this cool?”
Weeks without posting and this is the best I could do
Apple’s announcing new product at next week’s Macworld Expo. My reliable insider sites have been saying things like “1.2 gigaherz G4 PowerMacs” and “cheaper, smaller, lighter iMacs with 15 inch LCD screens”, not to mention possible bugfixes to OS X.
This week, Apple’s put blurbs on their front page such as “Far Beyond The Rumor Sites”. This, of course, has the rumor sites whipped into even more of a frenzy. Here’s the latest: a Apple PDA to compete with all those Palm and Windows CE machines out there.
http://www.spymac.com posted this image, along with a video (which you have to register to see).
If Apple sold a PDA, and it was competitively priced against a Palm, I’d consider it. But it would start with no apps, probably be as expensive as all Apple hardware, and besides, that thing in the picture looks like a mockup to me. One dial to control a PDA?
Guess we’ll see next week…
Open the iPod connection, Hal…
Apple introduces iPod, a FireWire-equipped digital audio player (MP3, MP2, more) with a 5GB hard drive (1000 songs). iPod is the size of a standard deck of playing cards, and includes: 20 minute skip protection; FireWire connection; a 10 hour lithium-polymer battery which charges in 1 hour; backlit LCD display; playlist support; ID3 tag support; a scroll wheel for fast song access.
iPod will ship November 10 for $399.
Here’s a look at it.
I really wanted one of these for about 15 minutes, until the price got posted. I can think of other things to do with $400. If this is the beginning of Apple’s move into consumer electronics – well, I have my doubts. It’s neat – and I do want one – but I can’t afford that price.
