Monthly Archives: December 2006

What does snow in Africa have to do with Christmas?

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dtkic.jpgA lyric that has always bugged me is in the Band-Aid song “Do they know it’s Christmas?”  It’s the part where they sing “and there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time.”  I mean, I get the reason for the song and the money that they raised, but I’ve always secretly had my doubts that they really get any snow in Africa at all.

After a little Google searching it looks like they only get snow high up in the larger mountains, so unless you live atop Mt. Kilimanjaro you almost never get any snow at Christmas at all in Africa, so what’s the big deal?  Why that stupid line in the song?  I mean, I was over it.  I had moved on.  Bob Geldof was forgiven.  It was a long time ago.  Then the Bare Naked Ladies (I think) covered the song and it was like it was 1984 all over again.  I guess I never really got over it.

The Wii does weather

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wii.jpgToday the Wii grabbed our attention because its drive slot was pusling a blue color. When I turned it on it told me about the new Forecast channel and offered to doanload an update. Pretty slick, as we can now check the weather across the globe. Oh yeah, there is a Globe option where you can grab the planet and spin it around as you need to to find the place where you want to check the weather.

Not sure how much I’ll ever use this feature, but it is nice to see Nintendo pushing the Wii to do more than just play games. Rumor has it that we should see a beta version of the Opera web browser out for the Wii some time this Friday, which is slick, but long term they need to come out with a keyboard or a better way to input data in to the Wii as selecting letters one by one with the remote will become a pain over time.

If you don’t have a Wii yet you need to stand in line and get one. Today the extra nunchucks that I ordered showed up and now we can play against each other with a few more games. As soon as the remaining remotes show up we should be able to play a little 4 person tennis. This thing is a blast.

Did you get yours yet?

Winter golf in Pittsburgh

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golf-ball-in-grass.jpgIt’s not often that you can say you went golfing on December 17th in Pittsburgh, but that’s exactly what we were able to do today because of the great weather.  It doesn’t matter how well you play on a day like this, it is just nice to get out.  We finished the day checking out the Christmas lights in a little park in Clinton, PA and it ended up being a great day.

Anyone else out there like to go check out the lights or is that just us?

Microsoft and Apple battle for your living room

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ms-apple.jpgI was reading one of my favorite writers, Robert X Cringely, and was reading his opinions on Microsoft vs Apple for the living room. He tends to lean towards Apple winning, but I am not so sure.

Although Apple has done a great job with the iPod, iTunes, and will release the iTV soon, Microsoft may have already won with the XBox 360. When Steve Jobs gave us a sneak peek of the iTV a little while ago, one of the things I was not hearing about was the purchase/delivery of HD movies. I think iTunes is delivering near DVD quality, but as someone that has owned a large HDTV for a couple years I want HD content.

Microsoft is already selling HD Movies on their XBox 360 and it is already integrated in to almost 10 million home theater systems. (Ok, they are close to selling 10 million of them and I am making the leap of faith that most are connected to home theaters). So Microsoft is slightly in the lead here. Apple has probably not told us everything about their iTV plans, but even though Front Row is in hot pursuit or Microsoft’s Media Center, there does not seem to be any Tivo-like capabilities. Another nod for Microsoft.

Microsoft is not perfect and they don’t win them all, but they rarely lose when it is a market they want. This seems to be a market that Microsoft wants badly. Don’t get me wrong, if you visit here often you know I love Apple and its products, but this is going to be a tough one to win. The iPod luster can’t last forever as cell phones are getting better and better at playing music. Hopefully the rumors of the iPhone come true or Apple could very well watch the market they conquered fade quickly off in to the sunset.

The very music format lock-in that people complain about could work in Apple’s favor as most are probably not willing to do the work necessary to move their iTunes purchased content in to another Vendor’s product. Apple releasing a phone could reduce the amount of devices we carry and still allow us to take our iTunes purchased content with us. We’re very close to a cell phone that not only makes calls, but has a good camera, video camera, and music player. All Apple has to do is release a phone and people will go nuts over it.

Even though we are having a blast with the Wii, the thought of owning an XBox 360 for all of its media integration is tempting. Time will tell which way we, and the rest of the market, go. I can’t speak for the rest of them, but I’ll wait and see what Apple actually releases with the iTV.

Scoble offers more good tips on successful blogging

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blogging.jpgUnfortunately I follow almost none of them!

I’ve always wondered how to draw more readers to my ego-driven blog that centers around the things I care about, but it ends up that the complete randomness of my blog is probably one of its biggest downfalls.

I have no niche. I could rattle on and on about the last 20 years of my tech life, but I really didn’t want to do that. I have to deal with tech all day at work, so writing about it at night didn’t seem too exciting. No 15 minutes of fame for me.

Check out Robert’s post on better blogging and see what kind of things you can do to improve your readership.

Don’t forget to keep up with my link blog.

Was I supposed to sleep at that Sleep Study?

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sleepmoon.jpgLast night I went to my first ever Sleep Study at a local hospital. For years my wife has been bugging me to talk to my doctor about issues I have when I sleep. For the record, I have no idea what people are talking about because I think I sleep pretty well. But, I have been told that I snore really, really loud and my wife thinks that I stop breathing “100 times an hour!”

Well, I never notice because I’m too busy sleeping, but I decided to talk to the doctor about all of this and he walked me through a questionnaire. Ends up he thinks I could have an issue with Sleep Apnea so he sent me off to the Sleep Study last night.

I’m the type of person that can fall asleep anywhere. When I travel I often fall asleep before the plane gets in the air. I am usually sleeping within seconds of my head hitting the pillow. But not last night. Not when it counted the most. I arrived at the hospital for my appointment barely awake. I figured this was a good sign. Then they checked me in, let me watch a little bit of the Steeler game, and then proceeded to stick numerous electrodes all over my head, a couple on my chest, and a couple on my legs. No big deal. I was still ready for sleeping. But they said I had to stay awake until 11pm, so I watched most of the Steeler game and the TV shut off automatically.snore.jpg

Then it happened – I could not get to sleep to save my life. Maybe it was the tube in my nose. Maybe it was the mile of wires hanging off of me. Maybe it was the fact that I could hear the entire conversation that the Nurse was having on the phone to a sister somewhere. Maybe it was the thing taped to my left index finger that glowed as bright red as Rudolph’s nose. Or, it could have been the big red light on the ceiling that had to stay on all night. Who knows? Whatever the reason, I could not get to sleep.

Then I had to use the bathroom, so you have to call for them (there is a microphone above the bed) and wave your hands so they see you on the camera. Did I mention that this is all video recorded? They come in and unhook you from the monitors and wrap all of the wires and harnesses around you and you then waddle your way to the bathroom down the hall. It is not easy to use the bathroom with wires and harness hanging in front of you and a glowing red thing taped to your index finger. I had to get, um, creative. Washing my hands was interesting as well.

I figure I must have finally fallen asleep around 2 or 3 in the morning, and I woke up at 5am to use the bathroom again. The study was going to end by 5:30 anyway, so they just unhooked, unstuck, and peeled everything off of me and let me go.

They told me that they got enough data and that I had a couple of dreams, but I don’t remember any of them. They had mentioned that if it did look like apnea and if it was bad enough they would come in during the night and fit me with a mask to help me breathe. Based on the horror stories from my wife about how poorly I sleep I expected to have a mask within the first hour of the study. But it never happened. I hope they got enough data, because I am not looking forward to going through that again. The Sleep Study was the worst night of sleep I ever had.

More Faith and the Nut Roll

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nutroll.jpgTwo years ago at Christmas I wrote an entry that was a favorite of some of the people that read this Blog called Faith and the Nut Roll. It was a pretty neat thing that happened in my life and since I switched over to WordPress.com and attracted a few more readers I tought I would repost it. With Christmas right around the corner it seemed to fit again.

For some reason, I spent a lot of time today thinking about what Christmas means, and trying to figure out why I still haven’t really got the Christmas spirit yet. I mean, here I was just hours away from Christmas morning and it just didn’t feel like Christmas this year. Maybe it was because I didn’t go crazy decorating the outside of the house this year. Although, I didn’t decorate the outside because I just didn’t feel very “Christmasy” this year. Not sure why.

So I was helping clean the house today and I was thinking about religion, and how some people have faith and others need to actually see some proof. I fall in the middle. Those that know me best know I am not an outwardly religious person. Those same people might also be surprised to learn that I do my own praying just about every day. Some days I pray a lot. I pray when a friend is hurt. I pray when a friend is having a troubled pregnancy. I pray when a friend is having trouble getting pregnant. I pray for someone when they are sick or have died. See a pattern? I pray for others. I generally do not pray for myself because I have always felt I didn’t need it. I am fortunate. I have worked hard to get where I am, believe me, but there are others that are not as fortunate, so I pray for them.

I have pretty much everything I want except for that one last thing – blind faith. I know people that have it and I have always felt that it was the one thing that I was really missing out on. I think analytically. I work with computers constantly and I know that nothing is every truly random. I like to see proof. Evidence if you will. So I watch for things. Some things that others call signs, I usually call coincidences. But I keep watching. Hoping. I guess I keep looking for the big miracle instead of the little things. I watch a father of 2 get Cancer and die out of nowhere. I watch a little girl get trapped under her garage door and she barely survives, but she may never be able to lead an unassisted life. I watch as people, in the name of religion, kill and kill and kill in the Middle East. All in the name of religion. But I never see the miracle. I never get to see the good.

I want to believe. I want to have that blind faith. I do believe that there is something or someone out there. I do believe that it is God that is out there. I talk with him all the time. I thank him often. I just wish I had more proof that I could see. So while I was cleaning I kept in thinking about faith and how it was missing in me. I never got any answers, just more questions.

Earlier in the week my wife’s friend Karen had dropped off a nut roll for the holidays. I promised I wouldn’t touch it since my wife was going to have it at our yearly Christmas Eve party. I was finishing cleaning when my wife opened the nut roll to put it out for company. I had not discussed any of my faith thoughts with her at all, so I was surprised when I heard her say the word faith from the kitchen. That stopped me in my tracks. “What did you say?” I asked her. She said that Karen had poked the word faith in to the top of the nut roll with a fork. There it was right in front of me – faith. I was blown away. I had been thinking about that word all day long and here it was on top of our nut roll.

Maybe the proof you are looking for is not going to show up on a Billboard in the middle of Times Square. Maybe it will be in a message as subtle as a word poked in to the top of your nut roll.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Looks like the Wii was the easy part

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wii.gifAfter standing in line for a couple of hours to get a Wii I thought I had the toughest part behind me. I was wrong. Since that time I have checked everywhere for additional remotes and nun-chucks and everyone is out of them. I ended up doing what I should have done in the first place, I went to Nintendo.com and ordered 3 remotes, 3 nun-chucks, and a component video cable.

According to the site everything should be back in production the week of 12/18. We’ll see. As much fun as we are having with the Wii it would be a lot more fun if we could all play at the same time against each other.

While at Circuit City today I saw a little video of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance on the PS3. It stopped me in my tracks. The video quality was amazing. I see that it is available for the Wii as well. I wonder how the graphics hold up. It’s a shame the PS3 costs as much as it does and is as hard to get as it is, because it really does look like a decent game console, but I’m not sure it is really that much better than the XBox 360. If I had to make a choice today between the two I would probably go XBox 360.

Now, if I was in the market for a Blue-ray DVD player I would rather get a PS3 with built in Blue-ray player for $600 than get a Blue-ray DVD player for $1000. I can’t wait to see the status of the game industry at Christmas 2007. Should be a very interesting year for video games.