Moving the Blog, again

I’ve been through 2 or 3 different blogs now. i am making the move to google’s, blogspot. I am making the move because it works with a lot of the other things i use, twitter, socialvibe, etc. Hopefully i don’t have to move around again anytime soon. peep me over there.

Later.

http://stevenjr.blogspot.com/

Why I should go to bed at reasonable times

It is now almost 3 in the morning and I am still awake, as is the norm for nights that I do not work the next morning. Anyways, as I write I am currently watching- sorta- a movie that I believe was not well received at the box offices… The Cell. This movie stars J-Lo as a psychiatrist who enters into weird worlds of those who are permanently stuck in “dream worlds” of their own. She has to try to figure out stuff by interacting with her mind. All this goes on while she and her patient are suspended by hooks in red suits. To recap, this is why I should go to bed much earlier.

Later.

New MS commercials

There is a new advertising campaign on the television and the web letting people know that computers with Windows (PC) are cheaper than those with Mac as their operating system. This is after Microsoft’s campaign to let customers know who “was a PC” or how easy it is for a 8 year old to make a slideshow on his PC… and after the ever-so-intelligent slogan “life without walls” when your product is called Windows, ironic. Anyways, the commercial shows a girl with the challenge to buy a 17″ computer for under $1,000. You see her coming out of a Apple Store and then she is in her car and says there weren’t any and that she’s “not cool enough for a Mac”. Then in the end she buys an HP from Best Buy and has money leftover. Here is my gripe about this advertising campaign, does anyone buying a computer NOT realize that Apples are more expensive than generic systems running Windows? I know they are playing off the hurting economy, but I tend to think anyone who has done some sort of research on an item they plan on spending approx $1,000 on has already looked into the large difference between MS and Mac pricing and doesn’t really need a full blown campaign to let them know this. I’m starting to think MS thinks its customers are retarded; i.e. the “Mojave Experiment” where they had people use the latest edition of Windows only to tell them afterwards that they were using Vista, and the subjects were astonished… as in hey customers Vista isn’t bad, its you, you’re too stupid to figure out how to use it properly, we made a commercial to let you know that instead of making an OS that is just intuitive to begin with. Anyways, I think it is funny how much money they use on marketing and not on making their stuff better- Windows, Zune, XBOX. Oh well! I’m bias but I try to bring forth the facts at the beginning of the entry, then lay the opinion. Looking forward to OSX Snow Leopard in August, skipped the last operating system upgrade for this one!

MacBook Pro Upgrades

Can’t wait till  September 02, 2009. Thats when my MBP AppleCare expires. There is always the option of voiding the warranty at this point, but I feel like they sell that thing to you to run out at 3 years for a reason and I’ll ride it as long as I can. The plans are though to upgrade after that. Here is a list of what I am planning:

Currently

HDD: Fujitsu 80 GB

RAM: OEM 1 GB (2 X 512MB)

OS: OSX 10.4.11

Battery: DEAD Factory Battery

Optic Drive: Matshita DVD-R, SL

Planning

Western Digital 250 GB              $ 79.99-7,200 RPM

Crucial 2 GB (2 X 1GB)               $ 29.98

OSX 12? Hopefully out then       $ 129.00 ish

Li-Po Replacement                      $ 99.95

Panasonic BluRay                         $ 999.00

While the first four will def. happen, assuming Apple gets Snow Leopard out by then so I can upgrade from Tiger, and that fifth one is more of a wishful thinking kind of thing. The cheapest BluRay drive I have found that goes into the MBP runs about a grand… not worth the money. The others are not the much in terms of upgrades; the most expensive is the battery which I have found for $100.00; maybe the OS upgrade, price not yet determined. Other considerations is replacing the wireless G card with an N, will be loking into that when the time comes.

Later.

Godaddy.com

I’ve been working on this website thing for my mom since last Wednesday. She needs one for her new business, where she runs neighborhood pools throughout the summer and winterize them during that respective season. I’ve never built a website from scratch and done the whole registering a domain, hosting, publishing thing. The best I’ve been able to do is blogging and .Macs one-button publishing, so this is an adventure. It took less than 24 hours to get the domain registered and get the site hosted. Then the problems came. I thought that you had to first host before using godaddy’s included website designer, Website Tonight. Once I talked to support and read some stuff online, I figured out that the site offers three hosting options: Hosting, Website Tonight, or For Sale/First Web Page. It was confusing to me to have an option called hosting in the hosting section, but thats just me. It all sorta makes sense to me now. Anyways after I switched the domain from Hosting to Website Tonight, I found that the Website Tonight web-site builder was lacking much. After reading online some I found out that I could use my iWeb app to create my pages and load them on to godaddy’s servers if I set the domain’s hosting option as, you guessed it Hosting… the first one I had selected. So now I’m working on mom’s website in iWeb and hoping it all uploads as I’m thinking it should. I have found an easy program (at least it is reviewed that way by other users who have iWeb and godaddy.com accounts) for loading the ftp files, “Easy iWeb Publisher”. Check out my work in a few days… www.clearwaterpoolmgmt.com.

Later

Social Vibe

Here is a great site that lets you add a “badge” to your social sites so that you can help a charity earn money. Right now I am using Adobe to raise money for Invisible Children. By placing a badge on my Facebook with Adobe’s logo, every time someone visits my profile money goes to Invisible Children, If you want to know more about the charity go to http://www.invisiblechildren.com/home.php. For more information on Social Vibe go to their website: http://www.socialvibe.com/. It doesn’t take much effort on your part, just setup the account and start earning money for any charity listed on the website; they range from save the beaches to the fight against breast cancer. Use something you already do to help someone else out.

Later.

Duke gets blown out…

Clemson University held Duke to under 50 pts on Wed on their home court. This is one of the worst games I have watched Duke play. They couldn’t shoot, they couldn’t break the press, they couldn’t pass, and they couldn’t even catch the ball when it was passed to them or when they tried rebounding. They had a 20 game regular season win streak going against Clemson and they blew it horribly. It wasn’t ever close, they just came out flat. I wish I had spent my time watching something else tonight. I just watched Duke get physically manhandled by Clemson… the boys from SC were just too big and strong for the Blue Devils tonight. 

Final score: 74- 47 Clemson

Later.

Super Bowl Sunday & Sports

We had a great time Sunday during SB43. I would have liked Zona to hold on to that lead at the end… oh well. 2 TD for 100+ yards, Fitzgerald you’re my MVP. Good time to see everyone, Audy, Ash, Anna, Tony, Soy, and everyone else. Only 6 more months till Fantasy Football! Until then its Fantasy NASCAR, yeehaw.

Also in the sports world, Manny Ramirez is too rich to take $25Mil to play baseball with the LA Dodgers for the Summer, disgusting. 

And lastly, Michael Phelps was caught smokin some hash. How stupid is this dude? This was your year to rake in the endorsements, and so you get a few million in your pocket and decide to hit up a bong. I hope no one else pays you to advertise their products, if they do what kind of message are they sending…. as long as your body is sculpted and you single-handedly outmedaled countries in the Olympics you do whatever asinine stunt you want.

Later.

Happy 25 Years Mac

Just a funny cartoon.. to me