Kevin's Musings

It’s whats for dinner. Really. I had a burger at J.G. Melon, one of the “100 must eat burgers before you die”. It was good, but, I am not sure if it deserves the classification.

For those of you out there who do rebates, include your email and watch them like a hawk. I had two rebates where I included all the “required” stuff and they were denied. When I phoned the promotion folks and called them on their denial they instantly approved the rebates over the phone. I would say some percentage of the rebates are setup to be denied waiting for people to content the denial. Sheesh.

I watched “The Ringer” starring Johnny Knoxville tonight. It was much better than I expected. They took a really touchy subject and did it nicely as a comedy. If you are easily offended you won’t appreciate it, so, don’t bother.

I just started the book “Are Men Necesary” by Marueen Dowd. It is interesting so far. Sort of a feminism meets Michael Moore book. Good so far. I just finished an old book, Junky by William S. Burroughs — short and interesting, but, obviously not for everyone (details his life as a opiate addict).

I am on the ever continuing quest to find the perfect headphones. I have never been a big fan of the bulky over the ear headphones. Standard ear buds are uncomfortable to me. For several years I practically lived attached to Sony MDR-J10’s of various color, but, in the high noise environment of NYC, the cars, trains, and subways, they didn’t have nearly enough sound isolation. I have tried a few different pairs of ear buds that offer moderate sound isolation without getting too expensive. While I may end up biting the bullet and getting a pair of Shure E2C‘s, my latest set is the Sony MDR-EX71SL/WK. It has taken a while to get used to get and to them, to figure out how to put them in for the highest comfort and best isolation, but, once you get used to them, they sound quite good and offer quite a bit of sound isolation. The “buds” are small enough to be comfortable for extended war and they have good bass and good treble. I like ’em. I not not sure if they will be prove to be loud enough in all situations, but, they sound good, are comfortable, and cost about half the price of Shure E2C’s. As with any sound isolating headphone, or any earplugs, you have to get used them. When you walk you can hear your steps. When you chew you can hear it – kind of strange. One good (or bad thing) about the Sony MDR-EX71SL/WK is they come with a short cord and an extension if you need something longer. Since I am now using the iPod Remote Control, it is nice to have the shorter cord.

I finished the audiobook of Stephen King’s latest offering, Cell. I really enjoyed the story, the pacing was good, the characters were interesting, and the ending was even good (which is my most frequent complaint about King books). If you are a King fan, it is definitely a worthy read. The narrator, Campbell Scott was a little monotone for my taste… I really like the texture of his voice, but, it seemed lacking in range and emotion. I have always enjoyed the ones read by Frank Muller and by King, but Scott was much better than some I have heard (I listen to a lot of audiobooks). If you haven’t heard audiobooks narrated by Frank Muller you owe it to yourself to pick one up — his accident was truly a loss to the audiobook community.

I started listening to Stephen King’s new unabridged audio book, Cell. I am about 40% through the book and am really enjoying it. It has a little bit of feel of The Stand with, if I am not mistaken, at least one element from Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. If you haven’t read Snow Crash (and enjoy science fiction and technology) you should run, not walk, over to Amazon and get yourself a copy. Snow Crash is definitely one of my favorite books ever. Back to Cell… I have full hopes that this is King back in full force. At this pace, I will have the book completed within the next few days and hopefully the end will be as strong as the beginning. Full impressions once I finish the book.

Apple announced a couple of weeks ago that it would be releasing a new wired remote control compatible with the iPod Video and iPod Nano. This remote would also give an FM radio. I had been wanting a remote control for my iPod Video, so I can leave the radio in my pocket or back and still be able to pause/play and adjust volume. I ordered this remote shortly after the announcement and received it yesterday. I must say I am quite pleased with it. It works exactly as advertised, the FM radio works well and the clip seems to securely attach the remote to my jacket (or whatever). I would definitely give this remote full marks.

I upgraded my blog, which uses WordPress, to the latest version — 2.0. The upgrade when cleanly and smoothly. The new version has some nice additional functionality. I would say I am pleased on the whole, but, for some reason my ability to post from my Flickr account doesn’t work now. I will futz with it some more, but, if that is all I loose it is not the end of the world — having a WYSIWYG editor is worth the upgrade.

I discovered, by accident, an interesting feature on my iPod Video… If you are listening to something and then remove the headphones, the iPod will automatically pause the playback of what you are listening to. According to Wikipedia, this feature exists in Fourth and fifth generation iPods, second generation iPod Minis, iPod Nanos and iPod Shuffles. This is a very handy feature — if you need to change headphones, drop the player, headphones get pulled accidentally, whatever, you don’t have to miss anything. Especially nice for audiobooks.

If you are a Windows user, you have probably noticed from time to time that a file (or folder) will get locked by a process and you cannot determine what process has locked it. This might keep you from writing to a file, but, more often it will keep you from deleting a file or a folder. I have stumbled across a great little tool, Who Lock Me, that integrates with Windows Explorer (aka My Computer) which will allow you to right click on any file or folder and the select “Who Lock Me? …” and it will tell you which process has a lock that file or folder. This tool is invaluable.

Our lease is up in April. It is hard to believe I have been here nine months now (nine months today). We have pretty much decided to move to the city. Maybe to Manhattan, but, probably to Queens or maybe Roosevelt Island. We looked at a few apartments yesterday. We looked in The Bronx, Queens (Astoria), and down in Brooklyn. We are currently most impressed with Astoria but have a few other neighborhoods to look at. We have a little time to figure it out, see if we can do it without a broker, etc.

I have placed a Google AdSense bar on there (I am sure you couldn’t miss it), added a Google search, and buttons (on the top) to push to Firefox and Google AdSense. I am not sure if I will keep these or not (I may eventually go to just a more generic Firefox). We’ll See. If you aren’t using Firefox, you should switch (this site looks better in Firefox — I didn’t notice that it looks a little funny in Internet Explorer because I rarely use IE anymore). Anyway, AdSense is easy to setup and actually shows up if you aren’t using AdBlock 🙂