Open sesame ... seed

Thursday, February 28, 2008
Random thoughts and events of recent:

1) I have managed to survive my entire life so far without many allergies. I'm allergic to cats, and sometimes I get some bad hay fever in the spring, but I haven't had any food or medicine allergies.

Unfortunately this has all changed in the last year or two. Somehow I have developed an allergy to sesame seeds. Of course, sesame seeds are on half the hamburger buns out there and in a good portion of the stir-fry I enjoy. My symptoms are never life-threatening, just annoying. Whether they'll get worse over time is unknown, but it sucks having to start looking out for foods that you never had to look for previously.

2) I had my big summer trip planned. Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. I even had my plane tickets on hold.

However with the recent economic downturn, I'm not so sold on going any more. The Europeans already use the US Dollar to blow their nose in, and now Mr. Benny-boy Bernanke seems it prudent to lower ... crap, economics is boring, I'm going to stop.

Anyway, I've put off my Caucasus adventure for a bit until things look a bit brighter. This year's trips will be closer to home.

And on a related note...

3) I've become obsessed with financial well-being lately. I'm panicking because I have a slight balance on my credit card right now. It's kind of stupid of me. I mean, I have no car payment, a decent savings cushion, plenty of money in my retirement fund (for somebody my age), and yet I'm still freaking out. I've become stingy with my lunches, eating at home a lot. I've passed on small frivilous purchases like a silly t-shirt that I didn't REALLY need.

Debt sucks. If you have some, work on getting out of it as soon as you can.

4) I don't know if I'll ever understand my love life. But I'm happy with where I am right now. The end.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Where is my phone

- My phone
- Where is it

Techno geekery

Sunday, February 10, 2008
WARNING: This post will likely interest none of you.

So I bought an Apple TV today.

I had thought about buying one a year ago, but didn't because of a few random things. For one thing, it was way too expensive. Secondly ... ok, I don't even remember the reasons now.

There was one thing that sold me on the Apple TV was some simple math. Right now I own about 60 DVDs. Figure I spend $10 - $20 each on them. That's $600 on media. And how often do I watch them? Maybe once a year, if that.

So I'm paying $10-$20 on a disc I maybe watch once a year. If you figure I can rent it for $3, it's going to take over three years to get a return on that "investment".

Enter the Apple TV. Their latest update allows you to rent movies off the iTunes store for $2.99 ($3.99 for HD movies). They download to your device and you can watch them any time in the next 30 days. This alone is worth it to me. No more blowing money on media, no worrying about unreturned rentals.

Additionally, I can dump all the music that's currently on my computer into the Apple TV and play it on my stereo. No more swapping CDs or plugging a laptop into the stereo. It will be great for parties ... I can have a playlist going, but anybody is welcome to browse the collection and play whatever they'd like too.

Yes, there are some things it doesn't support. But you know what - it's not a big deal to me. It's fulfilling 95% of the requirements I have, which is a lot better than anything else out there. Count me in as an Apple ballsack rider.