I haven't been blogging or tweeting much lately for two reasons. First, I have gotten completely hooked on Civilization IV again. Building up my society large enough to crush all others and take over the planet never seems to get old.
Second, I got a new dog! Karen was tagging along with our friend Cricket who wanted a new dog herself. They went over to the home of a friend of a friend who had a chihuahua that just had a litter of puppies. The chihuahua mother was a tiny little thing. Referring to her as a 'tea cup' would have been generous. The father was a small dog himself. Either a Cairn Terrier or Norwich Terrier as best as I have been able to determine. Cricket didn't find what she was looking for amongst the litter, but Karen fell in love with the lone male of the bunch. After seeing him for myself I had to agree. We had to have him.
So now Zoe has a little brother. His name's Charlie. He's about 3 1/2 months
old now. He's got a long, cream-colored coat. Look at him. Isn't he cute? Look at that little tuft of hair over his ears. He looks like a little boy with mussed hair. He's a tiny little thing, too. Last week he weighed in at a whole 3 lbs!
Zoe was quite jealous at first, and still is a little bit, but for the most part they get along pretty well. They've settled into big sister-annoying little brother relationship, but Zoe is still only about 15 months old herself so there's a lot of puppy in her. And they do spend quite a lot of time playing. Of course, Zoe is quite a bit bigger and usually dominates their wrestling contests. Sometimes it even looks like Charlie's getting his butt kicked pretty g
ood, but he'll go right back at her when she backs off.
He also has a little boy kind of clumsiness about him that is really cute. If you'd like to see some more pictures of him just click here.
While I'm at work it's a rare sight to see me without a pair of headphone shoved into my ears. I'm always listening to something, music, a tech podcast, or Howard Stern. For the longest time my listening device of choice was my good old silver iPod shuffle.
The iPod shuffle is a great MP3 player. It's cheap, it's light, has great sound quality, and runs off it's own internal battery. It's a very simple device. It has no display, has no built-in radio or anything like that. But that was okay. I didn't feel the need for it to do anything else.
Then I got an iPod Touch for my birthday. This little device is quite versatile. In addition to being an MP3 player, it has a large touch-enabled screen, a web browser with built-in wi-fi access, plays video files, it even has one-touch access to YouTube and the iTunes store. It was great for watching episodes of Battlestar Galactica on my train ride home after work. It was, that is, until I dropped it in my driveway on a rainy day and didn't discover it until later that evening. It was no surprise when I tried to turn it on and found it unoperable. I shook out the water. Put it in a bowl of uncooked rice (the rice draws the moisture out). I even threw it in the dryer. Dead. No response from either of the buttons. So much for that.
Having been spoiled by this thing I still wanted to be able to watch videos so instead of buying another one at $250 I opted for a less expensive iPod Nano. It had a smaller screen and didn't have that nifty web browser but it was about half the price. I still mourned the loss of my Touch, but the Nano was good enough.
In the meanwhile I was still using my Shuffle for music and the Stern Show, but when my laptop was stolen the Shuffle's charger was taken along with it. Replacement chargers run from $20-30 so I figured why not buy a refurbished Shuffle from the Apple store? With tax it would run about $42. I would get a new charger along with a new set of headphones (Apple charges about $20 for them), not to mention a new Shuffle. So now I have an extra Shuffle. This one's purple.
I was recently reading an article about reviving dead iPods. The article suggested that a dead iPod might be brought back to life simply by leaving it on the charger for 24 hours. But there was no way this trick was going to work on my water-damaged unit. Not a chance. But what did I have to lose? It had been sitting in my drawer for months. It couldn't be any more non-functional. What could be the harm in just leaving it plugged in for a day? To my wonder and amazement as soon as I plugged it into the charger the screen came alive with a graphic indicating it was taking a charge. As soon as it hit a full charge I immediately plugged in a pair of headphones, and what do you know? It was working again!
Let's take a little inventory here. I started out with my old silver Shuffle, added my Nano, got my purple Shuffle, and now my back-from-the-dead Touch. I've got four iPods now. Four. What in the hell does one person need with FOUR iPods? I have given each one their own job, as if they were infielders on some absurd electronic baseball team. The silver Shuffle is for Howard Stern, the purple Shuffle is for tech podcasts, the Nano is for music, and the Touch is for web browsing and movies. Now I don't feel complete unless I bring ALL FOUR to work with me every day.
We went to the March for Babies and we marched our 5 kilometers. It seemed much longer than I thought it would, but I checked the route that I normally walk my dog and it's exactly the same distance. Perhaps it's just because I was just unfamiliar with the route that made it seem so long. But anyway, we got a good workout and we got our t-shirts, raised a few hundred dollars for a good cause, so I'm pretty satisfied with the whole experience.
Funny thing happened after the walk. There was a barbeque for all the walkers afterwards. So I get my burger and chips and I'm walking to this bank of kiddie wading pools where they have all the sodas and waters. As I lean over to grab a water my burger patty tumbles to the ground. Karen, the angel that she is, goes and gets me another one, then SHE trips sending both my burger and her hot dog to the lawn. So we got no barbeque that morning but the dog ate great.
I have been pondering lately the value of all my techie knowledge. I've spent a lot of time writing about these great websites that I don't think anyone actually utilizes. This site, for example. Is anyone really reading my blogs? I'd bet not. I'm pretty sure no one was reading my tech blog either.
I listen to a lot of tech-related podcasts, and one in particular, This Week in Tech, or TWiT for short spends much time talking about Twitter. They say that a lot of people use it, and I think it's a great thing myself. But I don't know anyone personally that uses it. Not one. I'd love it if I could keep up with some of my friends or family that way. I use it but no one's looking at. I have two followers but I have no idea who these two are. I feel like I'm alone on Technology Island.
Jott is another one that I'm pretty sure no one uses either. Such a shame. What a great technology.
Maybe it's just a matter of where I live. One of my friends at AT&T is a trainer. He was telling me that when he recently did a VOIP training class in San Jose he got a lot of questions about compatibility with Skype, and no one in Oakland asked any questions like that.
Okay, that's all for now. I'm watching game 6 of the Sharks-Stars game now. Go Sharks!!!
Hopefully you've already read my story about the theft of my laptop either in my previous posting or on my latest posting on my tech-related site Jon's Tech Central. "And now," as Paul Harvey would say, "the rest of the story."
A few days prior to my laptop being stolen I was home alone save for my dog Zoe. We were both laying on the bed staring at the idiot box when suddenly the dog gets up and starts running for the door, barking. I walked to the front door to see what she had heard that I hadn't. No one was on the porch but someone was in the driveway walking away from the porch, and it appeared like he had something in his hands. When he turned around I could see that the man had in his hands an old crappy clock that we had left on our porch. We, in fact, wanted to get rid of it. We just hadn't gotten around to it yet. The man himself was obviously a drunk. Most of his teeth were missing. He was dishevelled and dirty. I could smell alcohol on his breath.
I was furious. How dare this drunk walk onto my property and help himself to something that wasn't his to take. It didn't matter that it was something I didn't want any longer. That wasn't the point. The point was that this drunk was trying to steal from me. He claimed he knocked on the door. Bullshit. Even if I wasn't home did that give him the right to just walk off with it? Hell, no, it didn't. At one point he asked if he could have it. Hell, no. I let him know that in no uncertain terms that he'd better get the hell off my property and that if ever saw him again anywhere near my house I'd call the police.
I think that I was justified in my reaction. I still think I'm right.
But at the same time I know that alcoholism is a disease. I know that being an addict and being intoxicated makes you do things a clean person wouldn't. I know that that man needed help. I felt like maybe instead of threatening him I should have reached out to him. Maybe. Again, I still felt justified in my actions. But that didn't stop that twang of guilt as I walked back into the house.
Fast forward a few days to when I got my laptop stolen. There were few, if any, possessions I owned that were more valuable to me. Now I am without it...but I still have the piece of crap clock.
So let's take a look at the big picture. Some poor sick soul tries to take something from me that I didn't want anyway. I ignore his sickness and threaten him. A few days later my new car is vandalized and my most prized possession is taken from me. Are these events somehow connected? Is there some weird sort of karma going on here? Was God trying to tell me something? This will bother me for a long time, I think.
This segment is called, "My Dog is Special". My dog is a year old chihuahua. She has what is considered in some circles a "deer head", as opposed to an "apple head". See here? Buddy, on the left is an apple head, and Zoe, on the right is a deer head. Deer heads have flatter heads, longer ears, and longer snouts than apple heads. What makes her speci
al is that in addition to the fawn-colored coat (which is no so uncommon) she has four white paws and what I like to call a white "sleeve" going up her front left leg. I've searched for Chihuahua pictures on Google and Yahoo and have yet to run across one with that exact color pattern. Once, on "The Dog Whisperer" I saw a Pit Bull with those markings but that doesn't count! A Pit is not a Chihuahua! And THAT is why my dog is special.
Hello, and welcome to my new blog space. I'm not completely abandoning my old website Jon's Tech Central. I still intend on updating the page with new stuff at some point, but I'll be doing most of my blogging here. I'll also be micro-blogging on Twitter. On Jon's Tech Central I felt like I shouldn't make any updates unless they were of a tech nature and that for the most part personal stuff should be left out. This will be my personal blog.
Okay, so here's what's up with me. First, I got a dog! She's from the Dublin SPCA. Her name is Zoe. We adopted her on Super Bowl Sunday. She's what has been described to me as a deer chihuahua. She's sort of deer colored. Long ears. Long legs for a chihuahua. The vet estimates her at about a year old. Her first obedience class begins tomorrow!
Second, I got a new car. It's an '07 CR-V. We bought it new, but I kinda think we paid too much. Shouldn't a car that's last year's model be relatively cheap? That's what I thought. But what the hell, I'm very happy with it. Here's my tip about dealing with car salesmen: Don't bring distractions like little kids...or dogs!
Third, my friggin' laptop got stolen! Some loser smashed out one of the windows in my new car and proceeded to help himself to my precious HP Pavilion 17" baby. The worst part is that I stupidly didn't change all of my information on my iTunes account and the loser was able to charge about $140 worth of crap from iTunes. I reported it to the bank and cancelled my credit card and everything, but jeez, how stupid of me not to do that immediately, huh?
All right, that's it for now. This is just my first entry. I'll have more later.
old now. He's got a long, cream-colored coat. Look at him. Isn't he cute? Look at that little tuft of hair over his ears. He looks like a little boy with mussed hair. He's a tiny little thing, too. Last week he weighed in at a whole 3 lbs!
ood, but he'll go right back at her when she backs off.
