Week of 11-15: Mini Internet just short of awesome.

I have officially joined the 3G generation and I have to say, ...ehh.. Maybe if I had gotten into it when it first hit the market I would've been more impressed. Sure it's cool that I can jump on facebook and the such (I'm using my phone to blog right now). But there still seem to be a lot of restrictions. Streaming video is of horrible quality and flash is non-existant. Could be the phone or the service provider, but I can't really complain. $25 for unlimited internet is pretty decent. Oh well. In the mean time I'll be happy with what I've got and wait until 4G is cheap enough for me.

Week of 11/08 - Television: a Cruel and Tempting Mistress

This weekend I was reminded once again how much influence television has over our lives. Let's face it. Before there was a home office in every house and a computer in every home office, there was a television in every living room. And before the blogosphere and internet advertising dictated our every day lives, TV programming did the same. For me, this weekend, the programming of influence was a show by the name of Man vs. Food. This guy gets paid to travel the country and eat until he gets sick. And, every once in a while he travels to our neck of the woods, showcasing some local eateries that I wouldn't normally take much notice of. This weekend, my job had me rushing off to Boston, Massachusetts to work at a blood drive at Gillette Stadium; tough work for an Eagles fan but times are tough and money is in short supply. It just so happens that a few nights prior I was watching an episode of Man vs. Food on Netflix (which I can stream through my Wii now) which took place in, you guessed it, Boston! The place from the episode that stuck in my mind was a little shack on the harbor known as the "Barking Crab", a little hole in the wall restaurant that served up ridiculously large portions of seafood. Since my wife and I were in the mood for some authentic New England seafood, and since the best places to get authentic Philadelphia cheese steaks are little holes in the wall, I figured what better place to eat? The food was fantastic and smashing open a whole lobster with a large rock brought out my instinctual hunter side that hearkened back to my neanderthal ancestors. I left the "Barking Crab" that night with a full belly, a satisfied grin, and a touristy t-shirt sporting the slogan, "Everyone should have crabs". Unbeknown to me at the time, I also left the "Barking Crab" with a horrible case of food poisoning, one that left me violently ill for the better half of a week. If there is a lesson to be learned from all of this it is, "don't trust everything you see on TV". Now, off to Zagat.com to figure out what's for dinner tonight.

Weeks of 10/25 & 11/01 - Computer issues / Fab Lab

10/25 - Computer Issues

As of the middle of last semester my home office has been collecting a disturbingly heavy amount of dust. The reason? My desktop had crashed and I had neither the time or the money in order to fix it. And, since my laptop was holding me over (very surprising for a $200.00 Black Friday special) I didn't see the need to confront it at that time. Well, here we are, my second to last semester and classes are picking up in requirements and my laptop is no longer cutting it. So, a couple of hundred bucks later (granted I still didn't exactly have the time or the money) I've upgraded to a 64 bit processor with 4 gigs of ram running windows 7 64. There's still a huge gap in my tower where there should be a dvd drive but funds kinda ran short. Giant computer vacuum of dust aside, I am now able to run Adobe Master Collection CS5 and Lightwave 9.6 with ease.

11/01 - Fab Lab

I went on my first class field trip since grade school today with Josh's Advanced 3D class. Our next assignment will require us to construct some sort of functioning mechanism and then print it three dimensionally. Que Northampton Community College's Fab Lab. Here, you can bring in your Lightwave design and have it molded into reality in a few hours. Some of the examples that we were shown included various gizmos with cranks and gears, statues, and a working hand wrench. The highlight of the tour was a hover craft / race car with wheels that actually spun on axles. The most impressive part was that is was designed by a fourth grader, effectively transforming our next project into a ridiculous TV game show hosted by a washed-up redneck comedian.