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« March 2006 | Main | May 2006 »
Well, I entered the WPBT-POY tournament tonight thinking I would do as crappy as I have done for the first three events I entered. Pretty much at the back of the pack. It was a 7-stud tournament as well, which I haven't played very much. But thanks to tight play and two lucky suckouts, I came in 3rd out of 42 very good players. Pretty damn cool.
Thanks to Pauly, for sending me the password at the last minute!
I went to the Cubs game today. My friend Lynn bought Cotton Candy. I haven't had cotton candy in a very long time. It was very good. But you knew that...
The Cubs lost 16-2.
Background:
I have a 2001 Lexus LS430. Really nice car, cool navigation system, really good Mark Levinson sound system, but there isn't an good way to use it with an iPod. It has a cassette player, but it really doesn't sound that great and mine was starting to eject my tape adapter randomly. I had a Griffin iTrip mini and it just isn't a powerful enough FM transmitter for use in a city.
I came across Vaistech's website last fall, and saw that they had interfaces for both audio and video integration with Lexus and Toyota cars. After 6 months of thinking about it, I bought their SLI model ($300), it has two audio inputs, one dedicated for use with dock connector iPods and one for anything else you want to connect.
Installation:
I initially thought about installing the unit myself. Then I learned (through taking apart my trunk) that it connects to the audio system through the dash. I really didn't want to do that so I brought it to my local Lexus dealer and they installed it for only $100. Not screwing up my dashboard is worth $100 to me. They installed the unit in the lower glove box. Vaistech strongly recommends installing it in an accessible location, I guess so you can remove it for firmware updates.
Operation:
I've played around with it for only a little while, but I'll tell you this thing works great. The Aux inputs act like a virtual MiniDisk changer, which was a Lexus option in other countries. The one adjustment you have to make to your iPod organizing with the SLI is the use of playlists. Everything you want to play has to be in a playlist. This doesn't seem to be a big deal to me, I'm just going to make a playlist for each album I want to listen to on my iPod. I have a 4GB Nano, so I don't have that much stuff on it, I'm guessing this could be a bigger problem for people with "regular" iPods.
The adapter treats each playlist like it is a CD or MD, you hit the next or previous disk buttons to go through the playlists in alphabetical order. So far, it seems to work just fine and it changes playlists pretty fast, there is probably a 2 second delay. The song up/down buttons change the tracks instantly.
So far, my favorite feature is the SLI takes advantage of the LS430's ability to display MD Text. The SLI causes the system to show the playlist name and song title. This is really cool.
I know, it's a lousy cell phone picture. I also should have used a better song than Steely Dan's FM, but that's what I had on at the time.
Sound Quality:
The nice Mark Levinson sound system makes the music I purchased from the iTunes Music Store sound really bad. I need to try some more stuff that I purchased, but Garbage's Bleed Like Me (a really good album) sounded awful. The stuff I ripped at 256 bit minimum VBR sounded super.
Podcasts sound about as good as you think they would.
Misc:
Toyota has a great service for browsing and searching the techincal manuals for all of their cars. Go to techinfo.toyota.com and check it out. It costs $10 for one day, but its really until midnight of the next day, so it's more like 2 days if you time it right. A month is $50. It saved me from tearing any more of my car apart. Also, the sections are all PDFs, so you can save them, which is also handy. I made sure I saved the section on reprogramming the remote control keys after battery replacement. It is a crazy complicated procedure, I guess to make it difficult for people to do it themselves.
I ordered a new computer for my company today.
Like all of our PCs, we have purchased 15 so far, we bought a relatively high-end Dell machine. This one is a 9150. It's a 3GHz Pentium D 830, with 1 GB of RAM and a 20" monitor. We buy our machines through Dell's small business site.
Dell's prices are still very good, but they have recently started a really dumb practice with their pricing.
For some reason, the base OS is Windows XP Home. First of all, why is Dell selling PCs on their Small Business site with XP Home? What's even worse, they have the nerve to charge $150 for the upgrade to XP Pro. And they charge you $10 more for a CD with the OS on it.
That is a bunch of crap. If you go to Newegg, you can buy an OEM copy of Windows XP for $144.95:
This isn't going to stop us from buying Dell desktop PCs (laptops are another story) but it is a bit deceptive.
Here's my full tilt referral code:
I recently heard of an interesting company called Scott eVest which makes clothing for people with lots of gadgets. Their stuff is pretty cool, I could use some clothes with hidden pockets for my iPod, my phone, my camera and all of the other stuff I carry around.
Since I have enough jackets for winter at this point, I'm interested in their summer stuff. Their version of cargo shorts have plenty of room for stuff but don't look like traditional cargo shorts.
Another cool item they have is a baseball cap with two hidden pockets. It would be handy for running because some of my shorts don't have pockets.
A friend sent me this link today. It is for a McDonalds of Japan mini-site. It is the most honest McDonalds advertising I've seen in a long time. 
It appears the point of the site is "Bring your kids to McDonalds, and they'll be good for a while".
