Some Thoughts on Some Things

I haven’t been posting all to regularly on random things I see and have thoughts on, because I have been too busy. Most of my posts have been “What is happening with me” updates lately. Which may be more or less interesting depending on your perspective.

Anyway, here are a few short thoughts on a few things.

* Brandy hasn’t posted lately. Wonder what is up with her.

* Al is absolutely right on Kerry’s irrelevance at this point. And the democrats in general are still just damaging thermselves more and more rather than putting up any actual viable alternative thoughts. I’m obviously no W fan, but the Dems are not providing any alternative I can warm to.

* Rebecca is about to have a Gideon. She “got my hair and nails done so Gideon’s first impression of his mother won’t be too grubby”. Yup. That’ll work. Anyway, very exciting.

* Tivo makes me mad. They have so badly mismanaged what they have. Over the last year they have basically stood still with their product. What innovations they have made seem to me either as distractions (looking at your pictures on your TV) or just done badly and late (TivoToGo), and meanwhile not doing many things that would improve the platform. And on the business side they have let important deals slip though their fingers. DirecTV is clowly pushing them out in favor of their own product. (And has not released the new feaures that Tivo HAS added to their stand alone system, so it makes the comparison even worse.) They had a deal with Comcast almost done but then said no… A year ago while there were cheaper alternatives out there, none was BETTER than an actual Tivo. Especially the DirecTV combo unit. But Tivo has stood still. Now the others are catching up and nipping at Tivo’s heels. Factoring in price concerns, in terms of VALUE (as opposed to actual quality not considering price) some are probably already ahead. In a year, unless Tivo does something dramatic, they will no longer be the best. I love my Tivo. But only as long as they are the best thing out there. As soon as there is a better option (not just value, but actually BEST) I’ll switch. It will make me sad though.

* Star Trek: Enterprise cancelled. Oh well. Haven’t had time to watch anyway.

* Johnny Carson: Makes me sad. I used to watch all the time. And I’d forgotton a lot of it. But one time a few years ago I was on a bus ride. Can’t remember why or where. But they were playing Best of Carson stuff on the TVs in the bus. And I couldn’t stop laughing. I put the Carson DVD sets on my Q at Netflix.

* Atlas 3B: Another rocket launched last night. A classified NRO payload. Presumably a spy satellite. I set my alarm to go off 40 minutes before (at 2 AM), but I didn’t realize I was hitting the snooze button every 10 minutes until 40 minutes after the liftoff. I slept through it. This sucks, cause you can see the launches pretty well right from my back porch, and the night ones especially are really nice to watch. You can’t see the actual pad of course, but you can see them a few seconds later once they are in the air. Since I have been full time in Florida (since 1 Jul 2004) there have been 8 launches (Messenger on 3 Aug 2004, NRO on 31 Aug 2004, GPS 2R-13 on 6 Nov 2004, Swift on 20 Nov 2004, AMC 16 on 17 Dec 2004, Delta 4 Demo on 21 Dec 2004, Deep Impact on 12 Jan 2005 and NRO on 3 Feb 2005). Of those I have seen 4 I think. Messenger, Swift, Delta 4 Demo and Deep Impact. I am told by folks here that you stop even noticing. I still notice and get annoyed when I miss one. I like watching them.

* State of the Union: I Tivoed it. Have not watched it yet. I may comment on it here. I may not. We’ll see if I am inspired.

* Work: Work has been going well. I’ve been having a lot of fun lately. It has been busy, but good busy. We were really stressing on a few things the last few weeks, but looks like everything is going to come together in good ways. Good. Also, there has been some turnover. Some people leaving, some new people arriving. It should be a good refresh. Lots of fresh new faces. There may be more info before too long on that. But nothing yet.

* Apple: That Mini is really cool. With the price I really want one. With a few added features, not the bottom of the line, but still… it is nice. They released ne powerbooks this week too. Which is of course what I REALLY want… I don’t want to go back to using a desktop. They are so confining! But laptops are of course a lot more for the same level of performance. And these aren’t the much awaited G5s, which may be awhile yet. BUt still. Anyway, new laptop isn’t in the works right now. But maybe a mini could be done by summer once we get all the basic settling in and getting situated done. Dunno. We will see. I’m a little annoyed though. Early 2004 when I was briefly “without job” before coming down there I needed cash flow, so I sold a bunch of stock and mutual funds and such. Some of that sale was all but one share of what I owned of Apple stock. It wasn’t a huge amount to begin with, but it was something. Given the run up in Apple, the gains in the last year would not be enough to get a PowerBook, but it would be plenty to buy a Mini! Oh well! That one share is doing awesome though!

* Iraqi Election: Seems like a complete success so far. And yes, I’ve read some of the things (Juan Cole for instance) that point out all the negatives. But on balance, this is very good and very exciting. We have a long way to go yet, but at the moment things are looking positive. If W actually manages to pull this all off against the odds and we end up with a good result when we look back at Iraq several years from now, I’ll give him full credit.

* Howard Dean: They really don’t want to win in 2008, do they?

* Garmin: They finally got an automotive deal! Garmin GPS (dealer installed option) on Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep. Woo! I wish they had gotten more, but this will do. I like Garmin’s interface and feature sets more than all the built in systems I have gotten a chance to play with (not many). Just so long as they don’t dumb it down for the car.

* Superbowl: I plan to Tivo it and fast forward through the game (couldn’t care less) and watch the commercials.

OK. That’s it. I’ve just been adding these quick notes off and on between other things as I think of them all morning. I’m done now.