Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Tail-light Rants...EverNote...and other things...

So, I was driving home from work the other day and got behind a vehicle that had some darkened/smoked taillights. These were custom add-ons. To be more accurate, I suspect that the taillights had smoked covers over them. Now, I am all for everyone's right to customize their car so it reflects their personality or sense of individuality. But with one limitation. It must be street-legal and safe! So, I am behind this car, with a safe following distance and it breaks--but I couldn't tell 'cause the lights were smoked out too dark. This goes on for several miles, with me leaving increasing distance between our cars. Finally, at a light I was able to pull right up behind it and could--dimly-see the red brake-lights lit underneath the smoked out covers. If it was midnight, I might have been able to seem them a little bit brighter. Excessively-smoked out lights should be illegal. Actually, they probably are.

Then again, I'm so anal-retentive, when I gas up my car, I get the station's windshield wiper squeege and actually scub down my taillights to remove the dirt/dust just so they will be brighter to other drivers. Lavie just adores the newer Nissan Altima's with their crystal tail-lights. She was kinda crushed when the new 2002 Altimas came out with that look, and we couldn't afford a new one (she did get a new custom 2001 Altima--but never lets me forget that they don't have the same tail-lights). Just to make things worse, our neighbor recently bought a wicked-looking 2005 Nissan Altima SE-R. Great. Now I have to live with Lavie's parked next to that one. It really hurts.

Down here in Texas, many multi-lane roads have a center turning lane. It is commonly used by stupid drivers as a merging lane. You know, traffic is to heavy to make a 90 degree merge from a side entry so the driver pulls across the lane into that one and then drives in it until they can merge? Anyway, that's illegal too. So I was going down a 4 lane (2-in each direction) road in Houston--with no center turning lane. Then this pickup is trying to make a left turn but traffic that way is too heavy. So since there isn't any oncoming traffic in the other lane he makes a left turn into one of the oncoming lanes and drives about a 1/8 mile the wrong way until he can merge into the traffic. I couldn't believe that one. Geesh.

On to better things....

While I was camped out in hotel, chillin with me 'bro, he was showing me his cool Sony Viao laptop. Pretty. Widescreen LCD. Slim. Light. Cool. Dude didn't have a cat-v cable in his bag though so he couldn't connect to the hotel internet. Luckly geeky bother that I am had one in the trunk of my car. Score! So he has just about every single Microsoft Office application there is (except a beta version of Longhorn/Vista). One of the applications he was playing with was OneNote. I was really impressed. When I got back home, being the cheap (free) IT guy I am, I decided to see if there was an opensource alternative. Nope. But I did find this free version called EverNote. It isn't as featured as OneNote, but it is pretty close. And it comes in a free version. (Have I mentioned I really like OpenOffice as a Microsoft Office suite alternative?)

Other organizational applications (free) of note:
  • Rainlendar A customizable calendar that resides on your desktop.
  • Contact A cool address book.
  • NeoMem Store and organize all kinds of information in a cross between a word processor and database.
  • Chaos Manager An appointment manager, a calendar, a contact list and a notebook.
  • EssentialPIM A scheduler, contact manager, and outliner.
  • PocketMod This is cool. It is a flash-based pocket organizer generator.
Other thing I have been playing with is Firefox 1.5 Beta (Deer Park). I finally got brave enough to try it. I downloaded and installed it in a seperate program directory just to avoid screwing up my current release version of Firefox. I really like it. Pros: rearrangable window tabs. Cons: almost none of the extensions work right now. I am using it full time at work and am very happy with it. I wouldn't reccommend most people try it out yet, unless you know what you are doing or are a die-hard Firefox user. The lack of current extension support is a real drawback--but on the otherhand, I have been using it heavily for a week and haven't locked it up or crashed it yet!

Piro and Seraphim have opened up some new products in their MegaGear Store. Neat. Christmas is coming up! I like this gear. I guess I'll find out if family members like this gear too! Lavie looks styling in her "Darkly Cute" t-shirt! Now if I just didn't have to explain what it means to all her family members....

While I'm thinking about holiday gifts....how about that iPod Nano? Ars did a iPod Nano-Review & Destruction review. It is pretty cool. I'll take a black one please. Apple also released a nice version of iTunes (v5) get that update here. I really like the improved interface. It does sport a cleaner look.

Finally, here is a new desktop wallpaper site. I had been searching a long time for some Windows XP sky/grass desktop images I've seen on some Linux builds. It had them and then some more. I've had download issues with this site and FireFox. No problems with IE so I guess they just aren't Firefox friendly. Oh well. I'm using this one on both my desktop pc and laptop at work right now. I really like that blue background color with my floating/shadowed XP laptop settings. And my Rainlendar app looks cool on it as well.

See you in the skies.
--Claus

No comments: