Greg

Where's that stupid button again?!?!?!?

There are a number of things that drive me crazy about technology and gadgets, but one of the biggest is the lack of standards

On the expensive and annoying end of this is how device manufacturers (e.g. cell-phone, music player, etc.) all seem to have their own form-factor for adaptors and accessories to ensure that you buy “their” stuff or at least 3rd party items they’ve licensed. 

On the just annoying side are things like keyboard layouts.  I’ve been switching back and forth between two laptops a lot lately and it’s driving me crazy.  One is a netbook and so has a tiny keyboard (“big size” if you listen to MSI :)), the other is what passes for a ‘fullsize’ keyboard on a laptop.  The two keys that are driving me crazy is “delete” and “ctrl”.  I keep hitting insert on one laptop and then typing over text :(, and the other has the ‘fn’ key where ‘ctrl’ should be so I keep NOT cut-n-pasting :(. 

I wonder how much is due to patents and licensing they would have to do and how much is just trying to differentiate the product? 

My love for the snow diminishes...

For those of you not in the Seattle area and who don't watch the news may not have heard that we’ve gotten a decent amount of snow (loads for by our standard).  For those of you in the Seattle area, I apologize for one more thing that you’re seeing about the snow….

My alternate title for this post was “how I spent Saturday morning” -  we spent the morning shoveling the driveway while some of the neighbor kids spent it snowboarding and sledding down the street.  Let’s just say that one of these two activities seems a lot more fun than the other, and I’ll give you the hint that it’s not the one that involves manual labor… 

It hit me a while after experiencing the juxtaposition of these snow-related activities that enjoyment of snow is directly related to how much it inconveniences you.   Have somewhere to go and trouble getting there?  Snow’s not so fun.  Tired of walks in the snow, sledding, watching movies, and you’ve reached the end of the internet?  Snow’s not so fun.  Have things that can be delayed and an ample supply of hot chocolate?  Bring on more of the white stuff :)

The fruits of our labor:

The most depressing part of the whole thing is that it start snowing again a few hours after we finished and then it was glazed with a  thin layer of ice…  Where’s our mild Seattle weather when you need it?  At least I got some great photos of Shay leaping out of the snow from Thursday :)…

Christmas is... here?

Over the last few years it seems like holiday decorations have gone up earlier and earlier.  And it's seemed a bit ridiculous.  At least most people have waited until just after Thanksgiving though.  What do you do if you're in a country that doesn't have Thanksgiving as a milestone?  Apparently your lights, signs, and other decorations go up really really early!   We just got back from a trip to Ireland and I was a bit dismayed to see that more than a week before December the high streets all had the Christmas banners and decorations up - good lord people, it's not December yet...

Well, lo and behold, we're back in the US and a ton of houses in our neighborhood now have lights and decorations up.  And it seems like half that do have decorations have DECORATIONS.  You know, where the whole house is lit like a circus.  And there are plastic animals, snowmen, Santas, etc.  Somehow I don't think putting up the few strands of lights we had for our balcony in the condo would cut it if this were a competition :)