Reving the MacBook

Apple introduced some speed bumps for their line of MacBooks. The low-end $1099 version has now been raised to a 2 GHz Core 2 Duo Intel processor, 80 GB hard drive, 1 GB of memory and Combo Drive. With a student discount, this notebook retails for $999. This is as close Apple is going to get to the $100 laptop project.

What I'm psyched about it picking up an old version of the MacBook at a massive discount. I can't imagine why I would need a 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo processor in a MacBook. It would be used primarily for casual computing.

Samsung NV7 OPS

A few weeks ago (I can't remember if I mentioned this already) I bought the Samsung NV7 OPS. I haven't had much of an opportunity to use this yet. Partly because it's been raining and I've been hesitant to take it out in bad weather. Secondly because I've been working and I don't really have time to take pictures on my lunch break. I'll probably get good usage out of it this weekend for Walk America and PodCamp San Antonio.

Locked Car

Sophie accidentally locked herself and her brother in Liz's car today. Liz was packing up the kids to go to church when she ran back in the house to get a sippy cup for Roman. Sophie, not being strapped into her car set, wondered into the driver seat, cranked the radio, turned off the air conditioner and locked the car.

Liz and I spent about twenty minutes pleading with Sophie to either unlock the the door ("life up on the thingy, baby, please") or to roll down the window ("press the button, Sophie. C'mon, press the button"). Sophie was able to roll down the window just enough for Liz to reach her arm in...and than Sophie rolled the window back up, almost crushing Liz's arm. At some point I was able to get a coat hanger and by some miracle unlock the door.

Lesson learned?

Joost

LSD High Priest Timothy Leary co-authored this great book called Chaos and Cyber Culture in which he predicts the demise of television as we know it. It looks as though Tim's theory wasn't too far off base, at least not for the moment. Sure, downloadable digital media is gaining in popularity and even finding a nest in the mainstream, but I think, much like Dr. Leary's theory, that cable television as we know it will soon be buried by the on-demand content strung about the internet and connected to each user through thousands of social netowrking sites.

Joost is one of the first companies to try and come out full force to take down cable television. Essentially, it is cable television on your computer powered by the internet. The shows are not "shoveled" to you en masse, but cataloged and presented to you for immediate streamings. Joost is still in beta right now and is lacking in some content, but the concept behind it is amazing. I think this will be the future of multimedia. Death to overpriced movie theatres that show commercials and over-hyped DVD releases.

Busy Saturday

Saturday, May 19th is a cursed date. I've got so many things going on that day that somebody is getting dissapointed by me before the sun sets. Essentially, I've got five major events that I'm supposed to be attending that day.

• March of Dime's Walk America that morning


• Wireless Toyz' Car Show, Xbox Tournament and Sale


• Ryan's wedding


• Somebody else's wedding that my mom wants me to go to


• PodCamp San Antonio

I know that I have to do Walk America for Sophia. Wireless Toyz' sale can go on without me (I might make an appearance for the car show), the weddings are a no brainer cut from the list (I'm already married, bitch) and PodCamp San Antonio is going to be a major networking event. We'll see how it goes.

401k
Now that officially emancipated from Wells Fargo, I've got to figure out what to do with my 401k. The right thing would be to roll it over to Apple and keep it growing, but the fun thing would be to buy Liz a black MacBook and a 23" Cinema Display for me. Decisions.

Lenovo ThinkPad
Even though I'm a total Apple fanboy, I'd like to pick up a Lenovo ThinkPad T60 just so I could have a dedicated Linux notebook. Why not use Parallels on my MacBook Pro and load Linux on my main machine? Because then I wouldn't have an excuse to buy a new toy.

Beer
I'm a sucker for the good things in life. Liz and I made a special trip to Whole Foods this evening because I was tired of the beer selection at the Valero down the street from my house. I picked up a sixpack of Stella Artois and a corked bottle of Chimay Rouge.