technology bric-a-brac

friday i was able to go into work late due to a maintenance window, so i had a nice lunch at brasil. i had originally planned to drop a bunch of stuff off at the westpark recycle center, but i didn’t get around to that. oh well, there’s always other days.
saturday morning i got up around 8:20am (geh!) so i could go help sue with soccer. jack was shooting a wedding, so she was supposed to be coaching and mothering simultaneously. unfortunately, simcha only likes mom, so i couldn’t help much with her and sue ended up having to take care of her while being a coach. after the games they left for a nap then a birthday party. i figured since i was already in the general vicinity, and it was lunchtime, i’d head to sylvia’s. mmm. on the way back home, i stopped at a couple of places and looked at tvs. i’m still not sure what to do, but right now i’m leaning toward a sony bravia – xbr4 or xbr5, 46″ or 52″. they’re more than i really wanted to spend, but they’re considered the best lcd screens. maybe i’m just being hypercritical, but it seems like lcds have really good pictures but don’t handle rapid motion and scene changes well. even the really expensive ones with the 120hz and other bells and whistles. it makes it difficult for me to want to drop that kind of money. my tube picture may be inferior and lack clarity/detail, but it doesn’t pixelate or ghost or such.
whilst driving around looking at tvs, i was talking on the phone and hopped a curb. i’d been thinking about getting one of those infernal bluetooth headsets for awhile now, just for when i’d like to be on the phone and still need the use of both hands — so i decided to bite. i ended up going to the apple store in the galleria and buying an iphone bluetooth headset. it’s a pretty slick looking little device, and it seems to pair with my ancient razr okay. although i’m still trying to figure out some of how it pairs, whether it is active or not, and how quickly it drains my phone battery. hopefully within the next few months i’ll be getting a g3 iphone, and then the full benefits of the apple bluetooth headset will be realized.
another thing i picked up while looking at tvs was a western digital “my book” external hard drive (320gig). it was around $90, and it now serves the purpose of being my time machine backup drive. it hangs off of my airport extreme’s usb port. i had to reformat the drive as hfs+, but after i did that and shared it through the airport utility admin tool i was able to choose it as the backup drive in time machine. so now both my power mac and macbook air are being backed up to it. i’m not sure i like this responsible life i’m now living, what with backups and all.
saturday night i headed over to el pueblito on richmond for myat’s grad party. he and a few other folk who just got their mba’s were celebrating there. there were a lot of the regulars from that crowd there, along with a fair number of people i didn’t know. steve davis showed up, which was a cool surprise. myat spent most of the several times he talked to me trying to set me up with some girl there. not sure why he thought that’s how things should be, but he was persistent. i managed to avoid talking to her the whole time though. (yea, me?) i left around 1am and headed home.
today i got up and was messing around with my power mac, trying to figure out why it has seemed so sluggish lately. suddenly i realized it was showing it only had 256mb or memory. egads! i have a couple of 512mb crucial ballistix modules in there, but it evidently wasn’t seeing them. i powered the box off and tried every memory variation i could think of, but it never saw the crucial sticks. i guess they’re dead. *sigh* i searched around online, but i kind of wanted memory now, so i ended up trekking around town. i started off at microcenter, where they only sold “lifetime” memory or something, which was twice the price of the crucial i’d looked up. the microcenter guy tried to insist other memory isn’t good with apple, even if it says it is. whatever. next i dropped by a circuit city, but they didn’t have any for apple. then i went to best buy, but they didn’t have any either. so i gave up and drove to fry’s. at fry’s the guy argued about how any memory works in apples, and “certified” just means they tried it and it worked. whatever. (“guaranteed to work” means something when you have to return/exchange things if they don’t.) but i was tired of driving around and wanted something right then, so i gave up and bought a 2-pack of 1gig corsair memory modules. with a $30 mail-in rebate they work out to about $50, so i figure that’s okay. i got them home and put them in and they are okay so far. i may go ahead and order a pair of crucial 1gig sticks online as well. that’ll max out my box.
in the afternoon i finally went to eat. i’d woke up this morning craving a bagel for some reason, so i went to einstein bagels and had some kind of hot open-faced bagel sandwich and an iced tea. i sat there until they were closing, then the manager came by and said they had a bunch of bagels they were going to have to toss so i could have a bag if i wanted. he gave me probably 15 bagels. i kept a few and gave the rest to the potts this evening.