Fresh Fish Served Daily

This weekend I finally retired the trusty Samsung T609 I’ve had for over three years and jumped headfirst into smart phone territory with the Motorola CLIQ. I was originally looking at the G1 (and I still like the keyboard a bit better) but went with the CLIQ mostly because the system memory is larger and, well, it’s newer so I’m hoping it’ll be a while before it’s obsolete.

I have to say, I am extremely impressed with the CLIQ so far. The big draw is their custom Android build/service/skin thingie, Blur. Essentially it just syncs up all of your social networking crap with your phone book. So when I’m looking at a contact I can see their phone number, birthday, and email address, along with their latest Twitter or Facebook updates. There’s also a “universal inbox” that aggregates all of your email, texts, and PMs from the aforementioned social networking sites, and a “happenings” widget that aggregates all of your friends’ stuff. As Dane has said it can make you feel a bit TOO connected at times, but as long as you don’t obsess it’s a neat feature.

Other cool bits: it has five virtual desktops so you don’t have to clutter your home screen; a handy “silence” switch; a 5MP camera; a button for quick access to wifi, GPS, Bluetooth, and power settings; and a plain ol’ micro USB port and headphone jack (hooray for no proprietary connectors!). The keyboard is smaller than the G1 so it’s not quite as easy to type with, but I have been getting better pretty quickly. I have been poking around and getting used to the Android OS as well and I am really liking it.

When taking out the trash a few weeks ago I saw a flat-panel monitor sitting next to the dumpster with a note attached that said “broken”. Two things sprung to mind immediately:

1) The layperson’s definition of “broken” does not equal mine and Dane’s definition of “broken”
2) Even if it is broken, the dumpster is not the place to dispose of an LCD monitor

I mentioned it to Dane and we decided to take it apart and give it a look. Considering that it looked almost new and it was bigger than my current 15″ LCD, it would be a great find if we could fix it. If not, we figured we’d find a proper disposal service. No harm done.

Dane plugged it in and attached it to the desktop. The power light came on, but the display stayed blank. Watching it closely for a while we could tell that occasionally it would flicker briefly. After some research Dane determined that it was most likely the voltage inverter. He found one on ebay for around $40 and we decided to try it out. The thing came in record time (by US Mail, even, in under two days!) Turns out that Dane’s hunch was right, and it works great. So I have a new (to me) 19″ 21″ LCD monitor for under $50.

I love living with an engineer.

I’ve finally had to face facts: my camera is dead. The LCD screen has been wonky for months now, and right before we went to Vegas I discovered that it had gone completely black. I’ve actually been wanting a new camera for some time so at least now I have an excuse to get one.

The old camera was a 3.2 MP Canon Elph. Aside from somewhat slow startup time it was a good point and shoot, so I’m leaning towards another Canon. I’ll probably be getting one in the next month or two, but until then picture posting will be limited to the cameraphone. (That’s also the reason why there isn’t an interesting header picture yet. Meh.)

Finally got around to upgrading to the latest version of b2evo, so things might look a little funny around here for a bit. I’m digging some of the new features, though, so you might also start to see some new stuff.

A few months ago Christine let us borrow her Roomba for a week to try it out. It took us about thirty seconds to decide that we had to have one. I’ve been in love with the idea of the thing since they came out years ago, but at the time they were too expensive to really be worth it. Now they’re hardly more than a good manual vacuum. We got ours shortly after they released the latest models. It’s a Scheduler, so you can program it to run automatically as often as once every day. Currently ours runs three times a week during the day while we’re at work. It’s fantastic! The floors are always clean, and all we have to do is empty the dirt cup and brushes every few days. The Roomba is much quieter than the old vacuum too, so I don’t have to worry about waking the neighbors.

When I told Dane it needed a nickname he said without hesitation “Kitty Smasher 5000″. While that’s totally hilarious, it’s kind of unfair to the Roomba. Even if the cats stayed still long enough for the Roomba to get close to them, it would sense there was something in front of it and slow down, then turn around if it bumped them. It can also tell if it’s sucked up a cord or rug tassel (or, conceivably, a kitty tail) and turns off the suction until it clears the obstruction.

The thing is ridiculously cute, too. It has a backup beep similar to the one trucks have, and the “I’m finished” beep makes it sound like it’s so proud of itself. The new ones have voice capabilities too, so when the brushes need cleaning it actually speaks to you in plain English.

The cats have mostly gotten over their initial terror. Now they sit on the arms of the couch and watch the Roomba go by. Sometimes Daisy will follow it around the room before she gets bored.

Why is it that flickr doesn’t have an option that would allow you to keep certain photos out of your photostream? I don’t really think that my contacts need or want to see a bunch of photos of yarn in their contacts’ “recent photos” feed.

Got my invite for Ravelry yesterday. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s probably because you’re not a knitter. Because if you were a knitter, you would already be signed up on their waiting list. (Seriously. Everyone on the various knit/crochet communities I read has been talking about it.) It’s a place to keep track of your in-progress and completed projects, see what projects and yarns other people are using, read reviews, and join groups and add friends like your standard LJ/myspace crap. This is fabulous for me. I can’t think of a single time where I used the recommended yarn when doing a project, it’s usually too expensive. So I can find the pattern I’m looking for and see what yarns other people have used for theirs. It’ll also encourage me to keep up with my projects and take pictures. It hooks up to flickr for project pictures, with a neato drag and drop interface. I know my CS fellows will tell me that drag and drop is for n00bs, but I’ve gotten lazy in my old age.

Obviously I’ve also signed up for flickr. I hate to say it, because I always liked having my stuff on my own site before, but it’s way better than my gallery in it’s current state. I dig the group pools. That’ll be great to find pictures once Dragoncon rolls around. I still haven’t decided if I should try to revamp my gallery and use flickr for moblogging, or just switch over completely.

I love getting new toys. I finally decided to retire my trusty Samsung s105 after three years. Since it worked like a champ the whole time, I’ve become somewhat partial to Samsung and was hoping to find another good one. The t609 was the winner. I especially liked that it had Bluetooth so I could transfer files to it without having to search for a compatible data cable. Now I just need to get a Bluetooth adapter for my computer, since I’m itching to get some new ringtones on there. It also has a memory card slot to store extra mp3s, photos, and video. Only downside? The weird proprietary headphone plug, which means I’d have to buy a specific headset if I actually wanted to utilize the mp3 player. In all likelihood I won’t be using it much since I already have an mp3 player, so it’s a minor irritant. Overall I’m pretty happy with it so far, so I expect it’ll last me another two to three years.

Whenever I go for a bike ride on the trail lately I’ve been wishing for a music device of some sort. While the scenery is pretty, it can get a little boring if you ride for two or more hours. A discman has no place to sit on the bike, and I’ve shied away from mp3 players before because I didn’t want to spend oodles of money for a lot of storage I don’t need. After some poking around today I found this little thing. It’s small and cute, and the armband thingie looks ideal for bike riding. It’s also got plenty of storage for my purposes. I don’t need to store every mp3 that I have on it, that’s what my computer is for. I’ve seen some pretty good deals on it, so I’ll probably pick one up soon.

My computer has been making a rather nasty grinding noise for the past few weeks on and off. I powered it down overnight a few days ago because the noise was keeping me awake, and when I tried to turn it back on the next day all I got was a few loud beeps in protest. I discovered it appears the CPU fan is about to go out. Of course you know, this means a trip to Fry’s is planned for Saturday.

Even if I don’t get anything I always enjoy my trips to Fry’s. The walks down aisles filled with shiny new toys, random wiring, and other assorted gadgets makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I love playing with all the useless and expensive things that I’ll never buy. They also have a decent selection of things I actually need or will use. Of course, it still amuses me that they planned for the imminent 3 hour long shopping trips by installing a coffee shop (with snack bar) in the middle of the store.

Along with the CPU fan, I may or may not purchase any of the following items: a largish, cheap harddrive; a quieter case fan; an extra battery for my digital camera (I need extra power for outings at Dragon*Con); compressed air; and, lastly, random cheap video games that are either over 6 months old OR were not very popular at the time of their release.