I’ll be honest. I had laptop envy. It struck me pretty hard over the winter holiday, wherein my friends and family spent time cruising the Internet and doing work while all sitting within thirty feet of each other. I retreated up to my office to dink around on my workstation, labeling me both as anti-social and a gaming dork.

There was a problem with joining their mobile computing ranks, however. At the end of 2009 I bought a sweet Lenovo G450 laptop on sale for about 60% off the original price. It was equipped with an Intel dual core processor, 3GB of RAM, and had everything necessary for daily computing. It could play high definition video, had a built-in Web cam for Skyping, and plenty of output ports. I liked it so much I wanted to buy another one.

The issue was that Lenovo (and just about every laptop manufacturer, apparently), was about to transition to Intel’s new mobile processor architecture. That meant the dual core laptops were undergoing deep discounts, and that remaining stock (namely the then-top-of-the-line Core2Duo) was at full price. I waited a few months, checking deal sites and our employee purchase program discounts, but never found a comparable deal.

I resigned myself to waiting for the i3, i5 and i7 machines to come to market, get some age, and then lower in price as the second-generation of ix came to market. Essentially, I was going to have to wait for two generations to pass me by.

That is, until I saw the Acer Aspire AS 5740 i5 laptop on sale at Costco for $599.99.
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been an unseasonably snowy winter out here in Virginia. While there have been a few days colder than my riding comfort threshold (25°F ambient), there has been snow and/or ice on the ground for the majority of the month. When the snow melts there is sand on the streets, so that makes motorcycling a bit more challenging. When the conditions are right, I jump on the bike and make a run for it.

I don’t see many other riders this time of year, but as I entered the freeway on the trip home I saw a single bright headlight in my side mirror. I got up to freeway speed, and he followed respectfully close behind.

This guy had jeans on, armored gloves, a big puffy down jacket, full face helmet, and white sport-style protective boots. He was a total mish-mash of gear, and this may have been the first time he was ever out in the cold. His coat inflated like a giant black down-stuffed Death Star. He crouched down as low as he could so that his tiny ass sportbike windscreen would offer as much protection as possible. His beat-up, late 90s Ninja 500 smelled and sounded grossly out of tune.

As I made my way to the right-most lane, my wingman reminded me of one of the reasons we ride in the first place. Here he was, only partially protected, in somewhat cold riding conditions (especially given his loadout), and uncomfortable. He seemed nervous making his way through freeway traffic and followed behind me as I made gentle transitions between cars.

Despite all that, Ninja Wingman was out on the slab today. He knew that he didn’t have the right gear, or really the right bike, but he rode anyway. He could have left his bike and drove a nice comfy car wherever he was headed. Instead he loved riding so much that took his bike out instead.

So from within the comfortable, highly protective top-dollar gear and aboard my special purpose long distance sport commuter, I salute you. I salute you, Ninja Wingman, for reminding me that the joy of riding conquers mild discomfort and shaky confidence. Keep the shiny side up, buddy, and I hope to see you more often on the ride home.

Anti-gun group the Brady Campaign has attacked Starbucks for allowing citizens to legally carry inside of their stores. Starbucks is “carry neutral,” and upon being interviewed by the NRA has no interest in throwing their hat in with a pro- or anti-gun movement.

However, the Brady Campaign is urging people to write to Starbucks and ask for them to ban concealed carry. Some stores like Best Buy have rules barring concealed carry on the premise. This puts legal concealed carry permit holders in a legal and ethical quandary. They can either leave their weapons in their vehicles (the #2 place handguns are stolen from), or violate the store’s policy and carry inside. If caught, they can be charged with trespassing (at least in Virginia). Now all of sudden a law-abiding individual is committing a crime due to a store policy.

Anyway, let’s not let this happen at Starbucks. Whether you like iced venti decaf five shot skim white chocolate mochas or not, we all need to stick together to keep America a safer and pro-carry country. Please do the following:

1. Go to the Starbucks.com contact page.
2. Select “other” in the “my question/comment is regarding … “
3. Fill out your name and email address.
4. Copy and paste this into the “comments” box, changing the particulars to fit you:
   

   I want to thank Starbucks for allowing valid concealed carry permit holders to exercise their legal rights within your stores. I have been a long-time Starbucks customer, and spend an average of $600 – $1000 a year in your stores buying coffee drinks and coffee beans. The issue of concealed carry is very important to me, my family, and my friends. Thanks again for allowing legal permit holders to lawfully carry inside of your stores should they so choose.

It only takes a few seconds, and will help let Starbucks know that concealed carry permit holders are thankful, loyal, peaceable customers.

If you’ve logged into GMail or Google Reader recently, you may have noticed Google Buzz, a new social networking platform from Google. I don’t think Buzz is very useful, but whether you use Buzz or not, your Google profile was set to “public” by default. That means that regardless of your previous privacy setting, your Google profile could be viewed by anyone — including your contact lists. Ars Technica ran an article about the privacy concerns today, but if you want to skip ahead to the “how the hell do I disable Google Buzz?” part, here’s my tutorial. I recommend everyone do this as soon as possible.

Important note: this will delete your public Google profile

Read the rest of this entry »

Sedagive? and I were able to run a little ad hoc test of the camera capabilities of three mobile phones. I have a Samsung Alias 2, Sedagive? has an LG enV2, and our friend has a Motorola Droid.

We shot roughly the same picture at the same time with standard settings for each phone. We expected the Droid’s 5.0 megapixel camera to produce better photos than the nearly year-old Alias 2’s 2.0 megapixel camera or the 2.0 megapixel camera in the enV2, which was released in March of 2008.

We were pretty surprised with the results, and further convinced me to wait on Verizon’s latest super smartphone.
Read the rest of this entry »

The more reviews I’ve written for Gibberish, the longer I’ve taken to waiting before issuing an opinion. Sometimes I label early write-ups as “first impressions” and leave the review for later days. In the case of the Synergy heated motorcycle gloves by Tourmaster, I waited almost sixteen months to write this up.

I try to ride my motorcycle to work as often as possible. I commuted on a motorcycle for almost eight straight months in 2009. There are two things that can disrupt your average motorcyclist: cold and rain. I tried a variety of insulated waterproof gloves but most weren’t up for the task of commuting at highway speeds. Gloves that kept my hands warm were often so bulky I had a hard time articulating the clutch and front brake levers. All waterproof gloves I tried lost most of their insulating properties once the non-waterproof outer layer became saturated with water.

I tried just about everything before turning to electric heated gloves. I had handguards on my Yamaha FZ6 and BMW R1150R. I had heated grips on the FZ6, R1150R, and BMW K1200LTE. I even have thin silk glove liners to help retain my body heat. If you’re on the bike at 25°F ambient and ride 70MPH that’s 2°F adjusted for wind chill. My commute is at least 40 minutes each way. I needed something else to keep my hands warm, so I turned to the Synergy electric heated gloves made by Tourmaster.
Read the rest of this entry »

I run up to six computers in my house. I turn them off or suspend them in order to save money and reduce my impact on the environment. I recently discovered a problem when doing this, though. I want to watch a television show or movie when I power on my HTPC. When I shut them off or suspend them most of their “lives,” all of the system health stuff runs at the same time I am trying to watch a program.

For example, I run Grisoft’s AVG antivirus software and Windows Defender. Both run on schedules and both can take a fair amount of CPU, RAM, and hard disk I/O resources. If you leave the machine off long enough, it’s possible to have both programs running at the same time.

This makes the rest of the system run slowly. This is particularly annoying when watching a 720p HD show via Boxee, which takes a pretty healthy dose of resources up on its own.
Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the raw truth. My dog Pearl eats poop. I’ve tried adding stuff to the dog’s food to make their bombs taste worse (?) and that didn’t work. There’s a new plan of attack coming online soon, but in the meantime we have to deal with the only thing worse than a dog eating poop: the gas and belching that accompanies it.

Enter the International Veterinary Sciences Anti-Gas pill for dogs. Purchased from Wal-Mart, the pill

is a pleasant tasting tablet specially formulated to promote healthy digestion and curb unpleasant gassy odors.

Does the product live up to it’s claim? Let’s break down the above sentence one bit at a time.
Read the rest of this entry »

We had another snow storm here in Virginia last weekend. I lived in Utah during my high school years, and while it snows much much less in Virginia, Utah was well-equipped to handle routine and heavy deathflakes. Virginia, especially where I live, doesn’t get enough snow to really justify a fleet of trucks and stockpiles of de-icing goodies like sand and salt.

As such, people start to get nervous whenever the forecast calls for snow. This is our second “heavy” snowfall this year, and normally we escape the winter months without so much as a flake. We got about nine or ten inches of snow at the house, and some of my friends got as much as thirteen inches. The storm took place over an eighteen hour period, and my buddy Stilts was visiting for the weekend.

We wound up staying inside the house for three days, and local roads are still iced over quite a bit. Here’s what we did, and what I might change before the next snow or ice storm.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve gone through a bit of an odyssey with my home theater personal computer (HTPC) setups in the house. I originally hoped to use my Microsoft 360 remote to control the Microsoft Media Center, but I wound up using a cheap USB remote instead.

There are many wireless keyboards on the market, but the suffer from at least one of the following problems:

1. They are very large and not suitable for use in a bedroom environment — they are too big to store on a nightstand or other accessible area.
2. They are too small and don’t have an integrated touchpad or trackball.
3. They have a “touch stick” similar to what IBM / Lenovo embeds on their laptop keyboards.
4. They cost a lot of money, around $80 – $150 depending on the model.

I had resigned myself to using the HDE USB remote for the majority of my needs and then getting up to use a USB keyboard when needed. Then I found a small wireless remote with integrated keyboard from Lenovo. Better yet, I found it on sale at 50% off.
Read the rest of this entry »