Category: electronics

Want.

Yanno, I’m really ticked at the economy. Sure, I have a good job and a paycheck, but I’m finding that saving a few more of my shekels is a grand idea.

“Cash is King!” or so shouts all of the financial hacks who think they know better. Those same ones who told us all to invest in real estate.

Bah!

The problem with this financial austerity is that there are still lovely things in the retail world that entice me. Sing to me. Make me want to break out my paid off credit card and charge, baby, charge!

The latest little gem that’s got my eye is this:

(click photo for specs)

This is Polaroid’s latest entre into the world of photography.

It’s called a PoGo and is a digital camera. But it also has built in an inkless photo printer so you can instantly print photos of your choosing, when you want.

Now…this baby is only 5.0 megapixels, so it’s not wowing the photographic world.

But I love me a Polaroid camera. And by love, I mean LOVE. I had one as a kid. I own several now.

I was a *fool* for Polaroid’s I-zone that made these teeny sticky photos. I carried that thing everywhere.

I have tiny photos ALL over my journals from around the early 2000’s.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my high end camera and the gloriousness of the photos I can take. The depth of detail is amazing.

That said, I want the PoGo bad, because it’s FUN and *boop*, there’s a photo print.

Want!

Here’s the ouchie part.

It’s not available until March and I think will have a price point of $200.

I feel like two hundy is a little high for a Polaroid, but maybe if I’m very good and save my pennies, by this summer I can be shooting and printing and generally giggling over my new Polaroid cam.

My folks taught me that if you want a big ticket item, you gotta work a little for it.

So ok. Back to work. I get paid this week. After rent, end of month bills and credit card payments, there won’t be much left. But maybe I can put away a few.

Damn, I’m so fiscally conservative it makes my teeth hurt.

When really, I just want to be like Animal from The Muppet Show.

“CAM-ER-A!!! CAM-ER-A!!!! ME WANT!!!”

That which is taboo

Yup, I’m in love again. Painful, lustful, forbidden love with a steely, powerful object.

My new employer is a lot behind the times when it comes to IT expertise, but they are hip as hip can be with the portable crowd.

When I started work, I was asked “Would you like a PC or a Mac?”

Why, the answer was simple. Mac, please!

In fact, that was one of the go-no go requirements of changing jobs. Having used nothing but a Mac for the past twelve years, I would say I was reluctant to slip back to the Windows based environment.

So, my previous employer provided Macs, but they were refurb and a step or two behind the technology curve.

Not so with fascinating new employer.

No, I got to work and was greeted with a sleek, sexy, top of the line MacBook Pro. The 15-inch variety, 2.53GHz. Four beefy GB of memory. A roomy 300GB hard drive.

Yum!

It has this utterly awe inspiring, new crystal clear glass screen, the cool backlit black keys, and the glass trackpad with NO button. Nope, it’s all in one. You can scroll on that bad boy, click anywhere and whoa does it work nice.

The unibody design is light and compact and feels solid and well built.

This thing beats the crap out of my last work machine, an old style MacBook pro, that poor dented aluminum thing.

Then yesterday, I had occasion to work from home, and as I sat on the couch, caressing the keys of this hot young MacBook Pro, I looked at my VERY old, personally owned 17″ PowerBook (it dates back to, I believe, 2004) and then at my new work speedster and yes…I fell in love.

I mentioned later to The Good Man that I was in love, and that I may have to save our pennies (a LOT of pennies) to buy one of these. This might ensure that my writing projects are no longer in peril of going to the great bit bucket in the sky when my PowerBook fails…and it will. Soon.

He couldn’t hear me. He was too busy caressing his own brand new MacBook Air (well, new to us…he bought it refurb on a smoking good deal).

The family that computes together (on the same platform) stays together.

We’ll call this: Still life with Macsexy Beast. Taken with my company provided 3G iPhone.

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Oh, a small bit of irony. My beautiful, glorious MacBook Pro machine……well my IT organization got a hold of it first to set it up. They also turned it over and used an old fashioned electric engraver to scratch the company name and identifying information into the unibody metal case in a shaky script.

I believe, when the tip of the engraver touched the silky nickel aluminum blend unibody, somewhere in Infinite Loop, Steve Jobs shuddered.

Who engraves stuff anymore? My *dad* used to do that!?!!?!?

The iTunes Phenomenon

One of the really cool features of iTunes is Sharing. So the deal is, when there are other people on your same network, if they turn sharing on, you can listen to their iTunes library. Not copy, but listen.

Cool, no? Working in an office like I do, there is a whole long list of other people’s music I can check out. I’ve found some good stuff this way. For example, it’s how I got turned on to the Gypsy Kings.

I’ve also been on the sharing side. I say without shame I’m the proud owner of “Ultimate Daryl Hall & John Oates”, a two disc best of compilation. And I’ve discovered LOTS of people are really into Hall & Oates, because they stop me in the halls and comment on listening to my iTunes Library.

But here’s what gets my OCD up…

When I look at other’s iTunes collections, they are SO neat and quite tidy. Full albums. All band names and titles in their proper place. Neatly arranged and ordered for maximum findability.

My library on the other hand is a mish-mash. One song from an artist here. Six full albums from another artist (*coff*FleetwoodMac*coff*) over there. Chock a block full of “iTunes Artist of the Day” downloads from Starbucks.

And then there are the oddball Christmas downloads leftover from the Napster free-for-all days. No, the RCIAA didn’t come after me for payment on that copy of Billy Squier‘s “Christmas is a Time to Say I Love You”. I’m sure they snickered when my download log came across their desk.

Comparatively, my iTunes library looks like a twister came through and jumbled all the pieces.

Ah well, I hit “shuffle” and it all seems to work out.

The other fun thing about Sharing on iTunes is that you learn a LOT about people based on what music they have in their collection.

The most startling so far is an older gentleman I work with. A quiet gent, hails from Ireland and speaks with a soft brogue. Been married over forty years, kids long raised, he’s a quiet respectful guy.

His iTunes library contains, and I’m not making this up:

Pussycat Dolls
Jessica Simpson
Ashlee Simpson
Britney Spears
Rhianna

Just to name a few. TOTALLY unexpected. He claims he enjoys these artists for the music……

Then again, what does MY iTunes library say about me? Hmm……I think I’ll go uncheck “Sharing” now…

Use your words.

Something is wrong with the fuzzy one.

No, not The Good Man. The one that’s more fuzzy.

The Feline.

Something’s amiss and we can’t seem to figure out what, exactly it is.

It’s not from lack of The Feline *trying* to communicate. Oh no, she’s communicatin’

A lot.

Our normally fairly quiet cat is now taken to meowing. Insistently. Incessantly. Bowl is empty, the hailstorm of meows is ceaseless. Fill the bowl, the meows stop for a while, replaced by crunch, crunch sounds. Then, when sated, the meows begin again.

They don’t sound like pain meows. Her ears aren’t hot and she’s not acting sickly.

Just the opposite, actually. She seems in fine health. She’s dropped a couple pounds and her nose has healed up nicely. She seems in great spirits.

So what’s with all the meowing?

I have heard about these devices made in Japan that will “interpret” your cat’s vocalizations.

I can’t help but think if we got one, the translations would be something like, “You people are boring. Get off the couch and hunt something! And what’s with this food? Could I *get* some of that stuff out of that can with the picture of the mermaid on the side? And while we’re at it, I need bottled water in this bowl. And this collar makes me look fat!”

Maybe sometimes it’s better not to reach out and paw someone…

Utter distruction.

I have this fabulous little SmartDisk drive that I adore.

It has this great form factor that rocks. It’s one inch by one inch square with a little flip out arm for the USB connector.

It is twelve nice-and-roomy GB’s. I admit when I bought it, I thought 12GB was an odd size, but whatever.

Been carrying this around in my backpack for about a year now. It has all of my blog post drafts, lots of photos, a couple videos, much of my writing and various other things. I just dig this little guy.

It’s what I use at work so no personal stuff ends up on the work machine. All safely put away on a jump drive. And I can take work files home on it and not have to carry my entire laptop.

About a month ago, my Little Drive turned up missing. I was distraught. I had gone sailing out of the office late for the shuttle bus and was just sure it had fallen out of my handbag as I ran.

I was heartsick. I had made that major IT error. I had failed to back it up. It had several original files on there, including the beginnings of a new novel. I was 6,000 words into it, and sure, I could recreate, but who wants to!?

Highly depressed, I went back to the online store where Little Drive was procured only to discover they no longer make the 12GB version. The best I could do was an 8GB, so I bought one.

I was too depressed to even fire up this new drive. Unsure what to do, I soldiered on. Until I got a call from security at work . Seems they found Little Drive on the shuttle bus. I almost wept with joy. I ran over the security department and retrieved my creative soul. I immediately brought it back to my desk and backed it up to my Big Daddy firewire drive.

Whew.

So, reunited, we began again, writing together, saving interesting tidbits. A letter to the editor. A draft of an entry to a local poetry contest. Yes! We were happy again, side by side.

Then there was yesterday…

For the past several days I’d had that odd back of my mind feeling that I needed to backup Little Drive. Paranoia, I think, after being parted. But when I got to work, I got out Big Daddy drive and backed Little Drive up.

Then I plugged Little Drive in and started working on some stuff.

Later, I had to attend a “lunch and learn” meeting that I’d rather have poked my eyes out than sit through…

So I decided to take my MacBook and “appear” to be working while really working on my own stuff. I had Little Drive attached to the MacBook. In a rush to get to the meeting, I hurriedly picked up my MacBook and whacked Little Drive on the underside of the shelf right above the laptop stand.

Broke the USB connector, yes I did. Well, it was connected…but hanging there by its blue and red and green and yellow wires…

I was able to gingerly plug it back in and it mounted. Yes! I pulled off the files I’d worked on that day (that didn’t make the morning backup) then I ejected the drive.

I peered into the little arm and thought “well, it’s connected, I’ll just push this back in and it will work fine.”

I’ll spare the suspense. I did and it didn’t. Meaning I fixed it but it no longer worked.

So I yanked the USB connecter back out. My “fix” had snapped off all the wires.

Damn.

I pried open the cracked plastic a bit and took a look. It didn’t look good. But I thought maybe I could take it home and fiddle with it. Ok, to be fair, since I’d backed it up, there was no need to resuscitate this drive…I’m just…emotionally attached to it.

Owing to being “raised by engineers” (an honor bestowed on me by the engineering team of which I was a part of…as their financial analyst…right out of college) I figured I could figure this out.

I mean, my dad could make a toaster last for thirty years, I could fix a damn USB connector!

The Good Man suggested that even if I fixed it, odds of “data loss” were high with my kludgy fix.

Well, he needn’t have worried.

In one of those bits made for sitcoms, the more I tried to fix it, the more I broke it. I kept trying to pull the wires out a bit more. Trying to take the shielding off so I could get more space. All I did was fray the wires to unrecognizablility.

Then I thought maybe I could pop out the 12 GB drive and put it in the 8GB case! The one with the working USB connector!

After busting it wide open, I discovered that, yeah, those wires were attached to the drive in such a way as to not be easily removed.

Basically, I pulled a big ol’ Bull in a China shop on this poor little drive. It’s now in many, many pieces on my desk at home.

*sigh* Gonna miss you, old friend…

So the new 8GB has gotten the call to the bullpen. You’re up, fella. Let’s see what you got.