Anthony’s Ramblings

I spent the week in Albuquerque, New Mexico visitng my friend Jorge. The visit was fun for the most part. We had our down times where we weren’t doing much, but just “hanging out” was better than nothing. We spent a day at a local amusement park…that was fun. We played a couple rounds of mini-golf, and then spent the rest of the day on the go-karts. We also played tennis on a few days…that was fun too (even though I suck a lot). Today, before I left, Jorge’s mom was talking about planning a trip to Mexico….me, Jorge, and her. I think it would be fun. She wants to take us to Guadalajara…and somewhere else I can’t remember. She says I’d love it there, and that it’d be lots of fun. Oh yes, I can’t forget about the unfortunate fender bender in which the drivers side front end and door was murdered…all the New Mexican’s fault (guy who hit me). He thought he had enough space to make his turn, but greatly underestimated how far away I really was. Smack. He’ll be paying for the repairs, though. The car is still drivable…it’s all cosmetic damage…and I am thankful for that.

Today I start my +/-3 day stay at my friend Joe’s in Avondale, Arizona. The drive was fun. It seemed shorter than it really was…but the wrong directions that I had made up for it. I managed to go from Albuquerque to Avondale without any problems. Once I was in Avondale was when problems started. The directions I had got me in the general direction of where I was supposed to be, but they didn’t do much more. I called Joe and asked for some help, but his mom misunderstood where I was, and had me go in the opposite way that I was supposed to. I was close, but didnt’ know it…and when she gave me her directions (thinking I was traveling towards Phoenix when I was actually traveling towards Avondale)…it threw me off more….but we figured it out! (I’m here, obviously). All is well. Tomorrow (or later today?) we’re gonna venture out and check out the nearest Fry’s Electronics store…cuz we’ve got nothing else to do…except maybe go to the driving range down the street.

I’ll keep you posted.

I finally completed my thought of buying a Powerbook. It arrived yesterday, and it’s one of my better purchases, deffinitely. With education discounts, it came to about $2,400. I also decided to order iWork (which is also awesome), and an iPod (since they have a $175 rebate on them for students who purchase an Apple computer before September). All I have to say, is Apple rocks!

Powerbook Specs:

• 15 inch model /w the 8x Superdrive (slot loading…very cool)
• 1.67 GHz G4 PowerPC Processor
• 1 GB PC2700 (333MHz) DDR SODIMM RAM
• 80 GB 5400 RPM HDD
• ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 /w 128 MB VRAM
• Awesome backlight keyboard (which, along with the LCD, auto adjusts to the surrounding light and is really cool)
• 2 USB 2.0 ports, 1 FireWire 400 port, 1 FireWire 800 port, gigabit ethernet, V92 modem, S-Video out, DVI out, 1 PCMCIA slot, speaker/headphone out, line in

The laptop handles any tasks I command it to do very well. It boots fast, shuts down fast, does stuff fast…it runs WoW very well. I can have the graphics settings up pretty high and still get an average of 30 FPS (which is great for the machine only weighing 6 lbs). DVDs look awesome on the 15 inch wide display…well, everything looks awesome with this display. It is a bit lower resolution than my Insprion…the Insprion display does 1400×1050, and the Powerbook display does 1280×854. I’ve been ripping a bunch of CDs to be placed onto my iPod, and depending on the CD, the speeds for ripping are anywhere between 9x – 22x (more towards the higher end 90% of the time). The speakers built into this laptop are the best I’ve heard (they actually have some sort of frequency range). I haven’t tried running anything VirtualPC wise…but that’s even slow on my coworker’s Dual 1.25 GHz G4 workstation. Anyways…I think this is the turning point. I wave to the Windows world and say, “See you in VirtualPC.” I’m pretty positive I’m not going back.

Note: I am posting this awfully late..erm…eary, so I may edit after I awake from my rest.

There was and still is one hell of a fire here in the city of Atwater today. $3 million dollars in damage, and 9 businesses lost, mostly mom and pop businesses. The one that survived happened to be the newly built InShape City that happened to be the only business in a separate building, but only feet away from the other chunk of this strip mall that is now ruined. I drove out there to try and get a look, and some decent pictures, but it was very hard. I will probably drive by tomorrow and get some day shots. There isn’t any way to describe it…it’s just horrible. Click on the pictures above to take a better look.

I had always wondered, but never really thought about how some popups get past the most sophisticated popup blocker. Well, this blog entry written by Chris Clark at his decaffeinated.org blog explains it all…and why we should be concerned. Now that I know, it makes perfect sense. Everybody, disable your browser flash plugin!!

Some unrelated notes: I really like the theme Chris Clark has at his blog. Also, it seems as if he is a Mac user. Running into other Mac users makes me want to buy a Powerbook even more. We’ll see.

I just ran across a wiki for the Homestar Runner site. It’s the Homestar Runner knowledge base that anyone can edit! People sure get into the nitty-gritty of the website.

Check it out!

Check it out. Of course, if you’re a regular Wooter, you’ll probably see it tonight. I’m not a regular Wooter, but I do cruise by the site every now and then…of course, I miss all the good deals…but oh well…hehe. *pats his savings accounts*.

Live 8 is part of the Live Aid concert series…to “feed the world.” So…I’m not wrong when I call it Live Aid…it’s the same damn thing! It’s called Live 8 this round because G8 pumped a ton of money into the program. Way to go G8!

I watched some of this year’s Live Aid…Live 8 on MTV, and it’s pretty good. I may consider picking up the DVD. It’s for a good cause. Becides…they didn’t make any money off the concert admission…it was free!

And the Compy…just peed…my carpet.

This is a rather old Strong Bad E-Mail, but it’s still funny. Strong Bad gets a virus in an e-mail, and it all goes down from there.

Watch it here

…half of 10 minutes battery

This Strong Bad E-Mail is actually about what kind of weird creature he’d like to be…but the beginning introduces his new computer. It’s pretty funny, too…but then again I’m a geek.

Watch it here

Random Text: Whoo…dad’s painting outside…I can smell it. Time to close the window. *plugs nose*

Dave Matthews Band – Stand Up

I purchased the latest Dave Matthews Band CD titled Stand Up at Fry’s a couple weeks ago. I never really got a chance to listen to it much until now. Of course, when I popped it into my car’s CD player, I autmoatically started at the song American Baby. Honestly, I didn’t expect the rest to be able to compare…but what followed was actually pretty good, too. If you’ve found yourself to like a song or two by Dave Matthews Band, or are even a fan…buy this CD.

EDIT: American Baby, Smooth Rider, and Everybody Wake Up are my favorites from the CD.

Gorillaz – Demon Days

Have you heard the song Feel Good Inc. by Gorillaz? It’s one of my temporary favorites. It inspired me to pick up a copy of their latest album, Demon Days, at the local Circuit City. At first I didn’t particularly care for the other songs on the CD, but they’re growing on me. It’s another buy I’d recommend.

Whoo…it’s been a long while since I’ve posted here. Here’s an update (more frequent posts will continue).

blogy.org

As a spastic choice, I decided to purchase a whole domain name just for my blog. Update your bookmarks! My blog can now be accessed at http://www.blogy.org. Not exactly sure what made me decide to do this…but it is cool, after all.

Glasses

Second on the news front. A couple weeks ago I decided to get my eyes checked. I’ve always felt that I wasn’t seeing things as well as I should be…but recently (past few months) it seemed to be worse. I found myself scooting closer and closer to things to see them clearly. So, I got my eyes checked. Both of my eyes are in need of a corrective lens…but my left eye is worse than my right. The eye doctor told me that since my left eye was the weaker link, my right eye made up for it. Since my right eye has had this extra strain on it for some time, it has finally started to “give up”. So, as of July 2nd, 2005, I wear glasses. It’s alright, I guess. I can see better!

iBook

There were a couple older Apple iBooks laying around at work, not being used. So, I decided to adopt one. It’s been keeping me from buying a new Apple computer, because let’s face it…I miss my Mac! I sold my Powermac on eBay a few weeks ago. It was just sitting in the garage collecting dust, so I figured I might as well get a few bucks out of it. It’s new owner is pretty nice, and is a big Mac fan, so that’s good. He really likes the machine. Of course, it’s left me here pondering how much a new Powerbook would cost me (of course with an educational discount through either my work or the college). But, until I’m ready to put down $2,400 down for a new Powerbook, this ol’ iBook will be sufficient. It’s a G3 500MHz, 256 MB RAM, 10GB HDD, 12 inch LCD. It runs Tiger very well, considering how old the laptop is. Then again…benchmarks have proven that Apple can develop a new OS but have it run just as fast, or if not, a sliver faster than the previous. Now that’s efficiency.