First of all, my wife is wonderful. Without much arm twisting at all, she let me upgrade from my white MacBook to the new unibody Macbook Pro. I just wanted to list a few of the things that I have enjoyed since making the switch:
Bigger, more brilliant screen – The difference between a 15.4″ screen and a 13.3″ screen is significant and so is LED backlighting.
Illuminated keyboard – Not worth the price of the upgrade by itself but I think that it is one of the very best features.
Unibody aluminum construction – The MacBook Pro is sexy and sturdy, enough said.
Gaming – The graphics processors do a much better job with games.
I have missed a few things:
Battery life – A new MacBook battery lasts about an hour longer than a new MacBook Pro battery.
Portability – You just can’t beat the size of the MacBook for carrying to and from class/work. Netbooks, you say? Give me a break!
Boxee is an open-source media center application for the Mac that allows you to network with friends and give recommendations on media that you enjoy. Your friends can also view your Boxee activity.
Installing Boxee
Installation is a snap, just go to boxee.tv and sign up as an alpha tester. Within a few days, you’ll get an email with a link to the download and then you will just install Boxee like any other Mac app.
The Boxee Experience
After installation, Boxee scans your computer for videos, music, and pictures. You can also access online sources, both for audio and video, including Hulu, Last.fm, & YouTube. My favorite part about Boxee is that you can navigate the entire interface with your Apple remote. The interface is much better looking than Front Row too.
Boxee allows you to add network media sources and I think that there is a way to add an FTP source, I just haven’t figured it out yet.
My Plans for Boxee
I went in to my local Apple store and was told buy an Apple genius that an Apple TV is not worth the money. However, this post on TUAW outlines a way to install Boxee on an Apple TV and voila! I now know what I want for Christmas!
Note: After writing this post, I remembered that I signed some sort of T&C’s with Boxee, if this post breaks those terms, just let me know. Please don’t take my Boxee away!
I set up a Lifestream using Sweetcron and I have to say that I think that it is pretty cool.
What’s a Lifestream?
Good question! I like the following definition:
A Lifestream is a blog-like website featuring real-time flow of a person’s activity across various websites.
Right now I am only aggregating my Twitter, Flickr, and blog feeds, but I’ll add other feeds as it makes sense.
I’m hoping that my Lifestream will reduce some of the guilt I feel when one of my blogs goes a week without a post! If you can relate, you might give Sweetcron a try.
A couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon (not by using StumbleUpon) a site that offers the ability to upload, edit, and download ringtones for free. Audiko.net is very easy to use and after visiting the site my total number of iPhone ringtones went from 2 to over 50!
I recently opened an account with an online stock trading platform and made my first stock purchase. I know, I know- slumping economy, bad market, the end of the world- every reason in the world not to invest. I guess I’m just exercising some faith in capitalism?
Truth is, I just want to learn the process and educate myself. Lest you think I’m some sort of big shot Wall Streeter, I’ll just say that if you knew how many shares I bought, you would laugh! I purchased a few shares of Apple Inc. (AAPL) stock. I realize that I don’t know jack about when is a good time to buy and/or sell, I just want to give it a shot.
Anyway, I’m really hoping that Apple’s announcement on Oct. 14th includes aluminum-encased MacBooks and I’m excited to find out what the “brick” is. Oh man, I’m gonna make bank!
I’m really proud of my sister Hilary. She’s a young stay-at-home mom who has recently started a business of her own called Simply Yours Designs. She has a pretty niche product that I can only describe as cute Blogspot templates. She definitely caters to the female demographic. The design that she does kind of reminds me of what you would expect a scrapbook to look like, you can check out some of her designs here and here.
Hilary’s prices are really competitive and her site is a great place to buy “cute” blogspot templates. How’s that for a shameless plug?
You may remember my previous post about why I didn’t get an iPhone. Even though I tried to come up with lot’s of reasons why I didn’t need one, the fact was that I really really wanted one. I just couldn’t justify the expense, which for me would have included:
$200 to cancel my contract with T-Mobile
$399 for a white 16 gig iPhone 3G
$30 extra per month on my cell phone bill over two years ($720)
Plus, my wife and both sides of the family are on T-Mobile so I’m sure that I would have exceeded my minutes on even the cheapest AT&T plan, whereas those same calls are free with T-Mobile.
There’s another little detail that is hard to quantify. I share a family plan with my 14 year old sister and if i would have cancelled my contract with T-mobile, she would have been without a phone.
My total estimated iPhone upgrade expense: $1,349. Ouch.
A friend of mine upgraded to the iPhone 3G and gifted me his iPhone Classic. The phone is in perfect working condition and he had a protective cover on the phone since the day he got it. I jailbroke the phone, added a data plan to my T-Mobile plan, and now I have an iPhone without the restrictions of a contract with AT&T.
My actual iPhone upgrade expense: $480, or $20/month for the added data plan over two years. Now that’s what I’m talking about! With savings like that, it’s easy to see why the first generation iPhones are selling for upward of $500 on eBay.
To the person who gave me the phone, thank you so much!
A couple of weeks ago my wife leans over to me and says out of nowhere, “You need to get a motorcycle.” How many wives say a thing like that to their husbands?! Needless to say, I was immediately all over craigslist and oodle looking for motorcycles. We looked at several and decided that the Yamaha V Star 1100 was the right size for us to do everything that we want to do. I wanted enough power to feel comfortable on the freeway and to get up those mountain passes quickly. I think that my dream bike is a Honda VTX 1300c but that will just have to wait.
One day on our lunch break, my wife and I stopped at a place called Obsession Moto Worx to see what they had. They had this beauty in their shop:
A 2005 Yamaha V Star 1100 Classic. This was the first bike that we had looked at that my wife had an emotional attachment to. We had to get it. It’s black with tons of chrome and some really nice add-ons: 2-in-1 pipes, custom seat, hard case saddlebags (a must have if you intend to commute on your bike), windscreen, backrest, floorboards, highway pegs on engine guards. She has been dubbed “Black Betty” and she is beautiful… and loud! Here’s another picture to hold you over until I can get some good wallpaper quality images of the bike.
So my friend at work called last night and asked if Landry and I wanted to go flying on a power parachute (this guy has all kinds of connections!) and we told him that we would fly any time, any place. He told us to head out to Eagle Mountain at 8:30 a.m. and we would get our chance.
Power Parachute Before Take-Off
Our pilot was Kent Price. He’s been flying these things for 20 years or so and he’s a licensed power parachute instructor here in Utah. He flew us all over the west side of Eagle Mountain and we loved every minute of it!
The parachute or wing
We used a sod farm as our runway and we took off and landed there.
From 750 feet!
Power Parachuting OrangeSoda Style!
If you have the means or if you get the chance to go fly on a power parachute, do it! It is an amazing experience.
Humphrey the Bear in one of my favorite cartoons EVER! I promise that this song will get in your head and you’ll be dancing around bumping your hindquarters into garbage cans all over the place, I’ve been doing it for years!
