FlyPDX

I’m in the Portland Airport. PDX. They have free wi-fi! Superb since I was worried that we’d have nothing to do while we board. I suspect that it will work while boarding as well, but as it is I’m typing one handed with a sleeping munchkin in my left hand/arm.

Oh, and FlyPDX is the network name 🙂

Herding Home

We’ll be heading home tomorrow (Friday). We’ve been here in Washington State for 15 days as of tonight and its been great fun. I’ve learned some neat things about carpentry as well as had a chance to help with some network/technical stuff that my step-father-in-law needed done. Its going to be good to get home though because I’ve got lots of stuff to do and there’s something wonderful about being in my own bed, even if that is the familiar sounds of a house I’m more familiar with.

Thanks to all who participated in this Christmas with us, we had a blast and can’t wait for 2006 to show us what is in store.

UMD

No, not Weapons of Mass Destruction, UMD stands for Universal Media Disc. It is one of four(!) ways my new PlayStation Portable can get data into it. It has Memory Stick, USB, WiFi and UMD support. The memory stick is a ‘Duo’ memory stick from Sony. In short it is a locked-in proprietary format that means I will have to pay Sony somehow for the memory upgrades. USB and WiFi are standard (WiFi is 802.11b compatible) connection types for many computers. UMD is the most bizarre format though (and the games usually come in this format) because it seems overkill to have a plastic case around a CD/DVD type media. However, it is a great device and I surely can’t complain.

I bought this for work (seriously!) because it has an incredible browser and clients like one large one I have in Texas need me to do work that will display correctly on this device. The one major issue I can see with this is that the data entry control for adding text on web browser form controls (and in some games) is completely difficult for spelling words like ‘holly’, which requires you to select ‘l’ and then the ‘next cursor position’ button [I don’t know what else to call the button] then ‘l’ again.

This site does not currently render correctly in the PSP browser, but will do so shortly when I have a few moments to tweak the CSS. I am really impressed with the capabilities of this device and recommend it to those who are ‘on the fence’ about purchasing something like this. The screen is brilliant, the sound is good, the speed of the processor is excellent. I have to wait longer for my PS2 to load up games (granted they’re probably more sophisticated) than I do for the PSP.

It is a great device and I strongly recommend it for web developers (it supports RSS!), game players and regular travelers who want to watch movies on the go.

Its two downfalls for heavy media usage are that it requires the purchase of a newer bigger memory stick and a USB cable if you don’t already have one that is of the right spec (unless you buy the ‘giga’ package that Sony sells that comes with the 1 Gigabyte stick and cable). The media types it appears to support are rather broad so I can see it being handy for those who don’t want to get locked into one type or another. The latest OS patch (which I downloaded over WiFi!) includes support for the Windows Media Audio format (WMA) as well, though you do have to click through an end user license agreement to enable it. I haven’t watched a full movie on it yet but I can imagine that it will be handy to be able to bring video footage to various places to try it out.

Check out other reviews or buy it on amazon.com

GoodWill == Good Income?

Apparently up here (I’m on vacation in Washington) Charitable Organizations pay well. Granted that they seem to be doing good business, but I don’t think that GoodWill should be paying people orders of magnitude more than other employees who seem to be doing ‘quite well for themselves ‘at minimum wage. I guess that when most of what you get comes at 0 cost you can make some pretty good markup on it 🙂

Change Your Underwear… Switch Your Foot

So I was working away on the couch here in WA, Jessica was nursing Evie and watching the TLC show “Yet Another Home Tweaking Show Where We Surprise Someone By Blatantly Lyeing to Them.” A commercial ‘break’ came on and I immediately looked up because I recognized the Switchfoot song “Adding to the Noise.” Ironically the song is about turning off the noise that the culture throws at you (television, radio, and anything else that’s distracting to life). The commercial? Victoria’s Secret! Weird.

Prophets on Profits Should Be Stoned

Money.CNN.com [not linking because they’re not getting my page rank] has been predicting the demise of the housing market for months and months now. And it may quite well be going down but do they have to post it once a week somewhere on their site? I think they’re running a scam over at that site anyway, but the ‘news’ that they post is just bonkers at times.

You don’t take the content of this site literally very often, and I don’t take the content of their site literay or as reliable… ever 😉

Spider

Abby didn’t go to sleep right away for her nap. She came out and said, “I can’t go to sleep, there’s a spider on the paper towel by my bed.” I went to tuck her back in and get rid of the spider. I looked over and failed to see the spider. The problem is that I was looking for the wrong thing. The Spider was the flight options on the Frontier Airlines napkin Jessica had snagged for her bookmark last Wednesday!

Spider

Higglytown Zeros

There is a TV show for children called ‘Higglytown Heroes.’ I just saw them sing a song about how a trucker was a hero. I’m not saying that being a trucker is a pointless job. I am saying that dressing him up in the cartoon wearing a wife beater is probably a bad choice. Singing about how he delivers monsters to rivers, hats for cats and bowling balls for people is also a questionable message. I don’t think of the people who stop at the porn towns [stops on long stretches of road that have an adult store and a gas station only] as heroes. Maybe it is just me.