May 2, 2006

I was pretty tired this morning and decided that I needed to sleep in a little bit more than usual. So I wasn’t out of bed until almost 7:30. Yesterday was so slow that I figured that there wouldn’t be very much going on this morning and I was right.

By mid-morning I was swamped with work though and it ended up being a really busy day. Tomorrow I am going to a show being put on by SUN Microsystems in Manhattan. I am really going this time unlike the last event. That will be somewhat interesting but not very. It is neat that I get to go into New York City finally but that, again, is only so interesting. It isn’t like I haven’t been there before. The show is going to take up the entire day. The downside is that I have to be at the office at 6:45 in the morning to be able to catch the shuttle that runs from the office into the city. That is nice because I don’t have to drive in the city or do anything extra but it means that I have to commute for a total of almost four hours tomorrow which is going to make for a really long day. Especially that early in the morning – I am going to be struggling big time just to stay away. At least SUN feeds us.

Dominica came up and met me at the Thai House for our regular Tuesday lunch. We are all ready old regulars at the Thai House and they are expecting us. Dominica left for Geneseo around 2:10. This is the first time that she has been down here that she has been able to drive straight back without needing to stop in Endicott on the way to drop something off or to pick something up from John Stephens – The Surfing IT Wizard.

I was exhausted after having had a busy morning and between that and the large Thai lunch I had a very sleepy afternoon. I really wanted to get some chocolate to get some caffeine into me but there was nothing that I wanted from the vending machine for $.75 or less and I didn’t have any more change than that and I didn’t have anything smaller than a $5.00 bill so I was kind of stuck. Back to tea as my core caffeine source.

Foiled again! They have run out of regular tea and only the decaf stuff is left! It’s a sleep afternoon for me.

Have I mentioned that Nintendo has decided that its next generation (or, since the XBOX 360 has been out for some time I guess it is correctly called a THIS generation) console isn’t revolutionary enough for its old, and by now well established, name and has decided to appropriately rename it the Wii. The Wii? As in, Wii bother buying one? Wii should we care if they are making a new console? Wii would I spend my money on it? Yup. Wii. Apparently Wii is Japanese for “Americans are idiots.”

Or even worse they might try to convince us that it is a misspelling of “wee”. As in “this is likely to be a piss poor console”. Or “I drank eight Mt. Dews while playing my Nintendo and now I need to Wii.” Or maybe they are trying to draw on the marketing power of Gonads and Strife.

In either case, do you really think that adults are going to go down to the local video game store and when the kid behind the counter asks them what they wants that they will work themselves up into a frenzy and in their best squirrel imitation voice say “Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii”. No, I think the embarrasment alone will cause them to say “An XBOX 360, please.” The real question is “Wii would wii want that?”

Apparently Nintendo’s next (and by next I mean for the generation after now) generation console will be called the Tuurd and Nintendo’s marketing department will make some claim that the name is all out “You” and engineering’s job will be to make it live up to its name. Wii?

Here is some cool news: Lego is open sourcing the firmware for Lego Mindstorms. Cool.

In addition to AOL’s in2TV service (which I managed to exhaust of shows that both looked interesting to watch AND actually worked within three days – except for Babylon 5 which I am interested in checking out as I have never seen it,) ABC has launched their own, free, streaming television system. I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet but it could be interesting. The biggest question will be what content do they plan to make available?

In archealogical news, it looks like the world’s largest pyramid may have been discovered in Bosnia. It is believed to be 722 feet tall which is one third taller than the great pyramid of Giza in Egypt. If it turns out to be real, this is a truly amazing find. Satellite imaging suggests that there may be two other, smaller pyramids near by.

The end of an era has come. The US Military has started replacing expensive human trumpet players with “bugle bots“. These are tiny little speaker/amp compos that actually fit into the horn of a bugle (I am sure this is where all of those cheap, practice bugles start coming in handy) and play taps for you. How wonderful – a military funeral with a RECORDING of taps and some guy in a uniform holding the tape player and doing the army’s rendition of “air guitar”. How embarassing!

AntiVirus software vendor McAfee has an online Spyware quiz. The results of this quiz show that at least 65% of respondants are unable to identify spyware when surfing online. This does not refer to viruses or worms or other malicious code that is infecting your computer against your will but is refering to software that users voluntarily install onto their computers. Of course, does McAfee really know what is and isn’t spyware? This is the same vendor who thought that Microsoft SQL Server and other major products were viruses and their own AntiVirus product has been labeled one of the most devastating malwares of the year! Anyway, if you are quiz happy feel free to take the quiz yourself and see how you do.

I talked to Min at 6:00. She was approaching Corning and should be home in about an hour. I am still at work. Tonight needs to be a relaxing night for me. I am tired all ready and tomorrow I have to be up around 4:30 to be able to make it into work on time to catch the shuttle. So I am going to duck out of here a little on the early side and spend the evening just relaxing. I will probably watch an episode or two of Remington Steele and have a snack. I am feeling a little hungry all ready. I am going to post early today since I know that I am not going to feel like writing once I get back and I could easily not have any time tomorrow to work on the site. So don’t be surprised if there is not another update until Thursday morning. I may not even be in “my office” tomorrow at all. I have no idea how late it will be by the time we actually return from Manhattan. It might not be all that late or it could easily be very late.

Fortunately I have no pressing work on the dockit for this evening. So I can just head for the apartment and relax. I am really glad that I got so much done on Saturday that I am in a position to not have to do anything tonight. Nothing even hanging over my head! What a nice change. I didn’t know that I was going to be going to the SUN show tomorrow until this morning so it kind of caught me by surprise. I knew that there was a show coming up but I didn’t know when and I didn’t figure that I was going to be going to it. I will appreciate the change of pace. I like mixing things up and keeping work fresh. I think that it will be a mildly fun day.

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