Garbage.net – My Blog, My Life

Three weeks ago we purchased the Samsung NC10 netbook.  With our economy going to hell, it was the least I could do.  The netbook is awesome.  I installed a wireless access point (with WPA encryption) at the house so we can use it everywhere.  It was originally meant to be a tiny travel netbook so we could do blog posts, unload the camera and use Skype without having to carry around some 6 lbs monster.  We literally use it everyday now.  Chris uses it all the time when she’s cooking.  I use it sometimes in the bedroom while writing these amazingly interesting blog posts.  And no, I don’t usually wear any pants.

Some of the netbook features include:

• 10.2″ screen (1024 x 600 resolution)
• 160 GB hard drive
• 1 GB RAM (upgradable to 2 GB)
• cooks a full chicken in under 8 minutes
• 93% full-size keyboard
• 1.3 megapixel webcam
• 10/100 Ethernet & 802.11b/g wireless
• Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
• 6 cell battery (7 hours battery life… for reals, Wilbur)
• intense vibrating “bedroom mode”
• Windows XP

It’s important to remember that a netbook is not meant to be a desktop, laptop or even a microwave replacement.  It’s meant for computing on the go when all you want to do is simple stuff like checking email, browsing the web for pony photos or making a grilled cheese sandwich.

I leave you today with a video from my good friend Christopher.  Here he makes a wonderful meal using chicken and pears.  He’s one awesome chef.  Make sure you have at least a pound of salt before attempting.  Enjoy.

We went to see Slumdog Millionaire this afternoon after having breakfast at Commander.  Great movie and great timing since it ended up winning 8 Oscars tonight. After watching it we decided we have no desire in going to India. It just looks dirty and dangerous.  The litter box room already does that for me.  During the Oscars they said Jerry Lewis had raised a total of 2 billion for fighting muscular dystrophy. That’s pretty freaking amazing.  Man on Wire also won for best documentary.  I saw that one last week and it was awesome.

I added an Exercise Calendar to the right-side navigation.  You can keep track of my exercises that way instead of me doing the same old boring post everyday.  Google Calendar has to option of making calendars public and embeddable which is pretty useful.  I did have to make a separate calendar since activities like Cat Poker Night and Coffee Enema Night would just get in the way.

That’s it for right now.  Looking forward to another great week at work, which is something I couldn’t say 3 years ago.  I leave you with a video from my good friend Gordon Griggs.  He’s showing off a sweet Starfire double-neck guitar he got off Ebay.  Enjoy it, Wilbur.

I got the BlackBerry Storm through work a few weeks ago.  A couple of co-workers had the phone before me and they all pretty much hated it.  The biggest problem they had was getting used to the typing.  After having it for almost a month now, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to type but it’s not horrible either.

It’s different from the iPhone in that it let’s you run multiple user applications at a time.  You also have to push the screen like a button to register a “click”.  This might seem kind of annoying at first but this prevents from clicking stuff you didn’t mean to click on.  The on-screen keyboard is also a lot larger than the iPhone.

So far I’m running the following applications: Google Maps, Viigo (RSS Reader), Gmail and Google Talk.  Google Maps is pretty damn cool now since Verizon enabled GPS for it.  It can tell me exactly where I’m at anywhere in the US (or Europe) by about a meter.  This is very useful for when I escape my captors somewhere in the dense woods of Pennsylvania.  It’s also good if we are somewhere in Chicagoland and we just need to go eat some Sweet Mandy B’s cupcakes RIGHT NOW.

I also enabled Google Latitude on my phone.  It lets a select number of people know where the hell I’m at all times.  They can easily go to iGoogle.com and see me on the map.  So no more “Where is Jose??  We are all so worried since our lives revolve around his well-being!”.  It will be more like “Where is Jose??  Oh let’s check that ‘internet thing’ he told us about.  Oh ok, he’s in Gary, Indiana in an alley next to the Crazy Horse bar/pub.  He is probably taking a well-deserved nap.  Let’s go back to torturing that middle-aged gypsy.”

Did I mention the best feature of all?  It’s fully paid by work.  So I can waste all my money on more meaningful things like a $150 joystick.

Speaking of joysticks, last night I watched the last show of Late Night with Conan O’Brien.  Even though he’s moving to LA I’m going to miss the show in NY.  He said that nothing would change when he goes to LA, he wouldn’t get more serious and that the Max Weinberg 7 would still be there.  So maybe it will be a good thing and he won’t get fake overnight.  2,725 episodes.  That’s an amazing run.

I decided to go back to WordPress.  The other site was cool and all but updating the database directly got to be a pain and I was too lazy to write some nice front-end for it.  I deleted a couple of posts but don’t worry, I’m still exercising.  I know you care about my well-being, Wilbur.

Street Fighter IV came out on Tuesday.  I was going to buy it right away but then I remembered that the XBOX 360 d-pad sucks donkey ass.  So I started looking at Mad Catz “Street Fighter IV FightStick Tournament Edition” (yes, my fingers hurt from typing that whole name).  It’s actually made out of the same hardware used on the SF IV arcade machines.  They sell it for $150 so I’m hoping  it also gives backrubs and cleans the catbox.  Anyway, to get this freaking stick, you had to pre-order it back in like July 1979.  Of course, I didn’t so I have to wait until they are back in stock sometime in April 2009.

A couple of days ago I set up an old computer next to the tv to play my emulators on our plasma tv. (TOP TIP: girlfriends/wives love extra hardware in the living room.) I can now play NES, SNES, Genesis and MAME games through the Bubbles emulator front-end that I developed using Visual Basic 6 (which eats VB.NET for breakfast).  The cool thing is that this Joystick of Doom also works with MAME so it’s going to be awesome once I can find one.

I know what you are thinking.  “Damn Jose, stop all this BS about yourself and give us some more Robert Jackson.  I need me some tips for taking a shower.”  I hear ya loud and clear, bitches.  Enjoy.