Monday, October 16, 2006

Microsoft and Dell cooperating to degrade computer use experience

This just in... Dell and Microsoft have forged a new alliance to create an even worse out of the box experience on new windows computers. Unsightly empty space at the bottom of your screen will be replaced with a task manager full of useful replacement programs for everything.

Here's how I understand the strategy to work. Microsoft creates a half-assed implementation of a feature... for example, wireless networking. Then Dell bundles in software that has "more features" and is 200% more confusing to use. Not to mention uglier and less reliable.

It's taking more and more time to "setup" a new dell computer.

usernames are obsolete

I am so tired of "sorry that name is already in use, how about these crappy names?" messages when I'm signing up for a service. Just use my email address... always my email address. It's guaranteed unique, and I can always remember it. All you need to do is build in a service that allows you to change the email address associated with your account if you need to change your email address for some reason.

If you disagree, you can find me on instant messenger as garythegaryowentheowen2062006

Sunday, October 08, 2006

83 yamaha 650 heritage special

Well, the result of the harley rental has left me in a place where I think I"m going to buy a yamaha 650 to tide me over in the meantime. I just don't think I can justify spending as much money on a harley and I would need too to get the one I want.

Mostly I just like to ride, and if it's on an older bike, I wont feel like as much of a poser. ;-)

I think I will arrange to buy it, and maybe Todd will help me do a little work to customize it and fix some of the annoyances. I want to see about adjusting the front brake and clutch to be a little easier to use. I also need to adjust the position of the front break, and possibly adjust how the clutch engages. It's probably due for an oil change as well...

Anyway, if I do end up purchasing it, I will put some pictures up.

movie and moving

Thom Yorke's solo album is pretty sweet. Currently listening to Black Swan.

We just had some folks over to watch labrinyth. Pretty sure I'm spelling that right... could be wrong though... who knows.

Tomorrow we'll probably have lunch with Ken Maiuri, which should be fun. I'm pretty tired now though... bed will be good.

Oh and I bought some long sleeve shirts at road runner sports for fall running. I ran 5.6 miles today (rough estimate) and it took just over 1 hour. It was a very nice jog. I was going slow enough that I could enjoy the run, but it was still tiring.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

itunes album art

I was very excited to hear that itunes finally has good album art integration. Now you can click on an album and just click advanced -> get album art, and itunes will automatically down the album art.

Sounds great right? Except that for some reason you need to be signed into the itunes music store... why in the world would I need to have an account with the iTunes music store to download album art? Windows Media Player has automatically associated album art with albums for years without requiring me to submit my credit card information (step 3 of the itunes sign-up process).

Thursday, October 05, 2006

smoking ban results in less smoking

Technically they said it results in less "pollutants" but I'm pretty sure this article simply says "banning smoking indoors results in less smoking indoors".

Maybe the Seattle PI is scraping content from The Onion...