8/28/2010I am partially color blind. Most of what I see is in shades of grey. As such, my sense of hearing is more acute than most people I think. I really focus in on hearing things more than seeing things. A lot of people don’t hear things that I hear especially with regards to music. One thing I really like to do is listen to music. I mean REALLY listen to music. Sure it is nice to have some music playing in the background, but there are times (especially late a night on weekends between 11pm and 1am) I like to turn the lights down low, sit in a big comfy chair and listen to some of my favorite music. The type of music I mostly listen to is Electronica, Ambient, and 80’s. I do listen to many different types of music though including alternative, reggae, 70’s, hard rock, and new age. I love deep bass. When I listen to music, I like to listen with headphones. Headphones allow me to listen to music at relatively loud volumes without disturbing anyone. Also, a good pair of headphones will sound better than speakers unless you have several thousands of dollars for a pair of quality speakers. I have a decent setup with some Polk speakers upstairs and some Bose downstairs for the home theater, but I can’t blast those late at night. My old Sennheiser 545 headphones are 15 years old. For the past year, they have been starting to sound a bit “frayed” as best I can put it. Low ends aren’t that tight and high ends have a slight crackle/hiss to them. It was time for a new pair. I tried listening to several brands including some Audio Technica’s, Grado’s, Sennheiser, Denon, Beyer Dynamic, Bose, and Sony’s. I don’t need any noise cancelling headphones as I tend to listen to music in a quiet room. I looked at some wireless models, but they seemed to be a little expensive for what you were getting. As I walked around the showroom, I noticed a few times the wireless models would pop or lose connection to the base station. No thanks. I finally settled on a pair of Denon AHD2000’s. These headphones are a closed back design. My old Sennheiser’s were an open back model. I decided to go with a closed back model due in part to the extended bass end that these types of headphones have. ![0020522000_3331[1]](/bradyblog/Lists/Posts/Attachments/89/0020522000_33311_3_660CF602.jpg "0020522000_3331[1]") Bass is definitely the strong point of these headphones. The sound is tight and clean. I have had the headphones about a week now and I haven’t heard any distortion on the low end. Mid range is about average. Voices are clear, but not terribly so. Hi end is crisp and bright. I think my old Sennheiser’s might have had a little bit better mid range, but not by much.
Fit and finish are superb. The ear pieces are plastic (I believe), but they feel like metal and are quite solid. The frame is made out of magnesium, light and strong. The ear pieces are a leatherette material (leather would have been nicer). There is a standard mini plug that screws into a full size plug. The cord is wrapped in a thick material that coils fairly easily. I have a fairly large head. The headphones fit quite well on my head. There is no pressure on the top of my head from the headphone band. The ear pieces fit perfectly over my ears (I do have rather small ears though). I was a bit nervous getting a pair of closed headphones wondering if they would be too warm during extended listening periods. I am glad to report that I have no problems listening to these headphones for many hours with just a slight bit of heat build up and fatigue. The ear pieces are fairly large and when I am laying back against a pillow, they tend to push the headphones forward a bit, but not too much. Even though these are closed ear headphones, some sound does leak out. Not as much as my Sennheiser’s, but more than I thought would from this type of headphone. I am very pleased with these headphones. They are a treat to listen to. Songs I have listened to for years sound brand new and alive. I keep hearing new things in songs that I hadn’t heard before in any other headphones or speakers I have owned. Most headphones require a break in period before you start to hear what they will eventually sound like. If I hear anything different after the break-in period, I will update my post. 8/15/2010The country that I live in (the USA) seems to be full of people who JUST DON”T GET IT. Case in point: Obama defends plan to build a mosque near ground zero. Now the bat shit crazy tea baggers, right wing zealots, and baby boomers (ok, that last one is a generalization, but not by much) are coming out and saying that Obama is wrong for saying this and pretty much even allowing it. I mean how dare he allow for religious freedom in the country founded on among other things freedom of religions to the people who make the USA their home. Look, just because a mosque is being built a couple of blocks away from ground zero doesn’t mean that the Muslims will be planning their next attack from that very location. It also doesn’t mean anything that Muslims are building near ground zero because they didn’t blow up the twin towers. Religious extremist nut jobs blew up the twin towers. What about Timothy McIdiot? Some have speculated that he had very strong Christian beliefs and was a member of a Christian cult tied in to the Aryan brotherhood. Should they never build a Christian church near the Oklahoma bombing location? Of course they should. Timothy McVey was a crazed person just like the twin tower bombers. People, this country is about freedom of speech and religion. You are a bigot, racist, and at the very least small minded if you think for one second that a religion that is based on peace and understanding like many of the other great religions out there is out to get the rest of us. The Christians had their crusades that killed and murdered thousands of people. No one is a saint, get over it. This pic pretty much sums up the whole issue: 
3/1/2010Tonight just like every night I put the dogs out so that they could go do their business. I got one of them back in his crate and then I heard the other one that was still in the backyard barking like crazy. That meant pretty much only one thing; he had cornered some animal. I got a flashlight and stood on the deck and with the flashlight located the what was causing all of the commotion. Sure enough there was Loki and a bewildered looking opossum suffering the wrath of a pissed off boxer dog. I started to think how stupid this animal was. It was next to a tree yet it didn't even try to climb it. It had sharp claws and lots of fairly big teeth and yet it decided to just stand there. Hell, it didn't even play the "playing dead" card. It just stood there. You dumb freakin' beast I thought. How did your kind even evolve to allow for one of your species to be in my backyard on this night? I was finally able to get Loki by the collar and get him in the house. After a quick check to see if Loki had received any cuts or bite marks, I decided to go back out and check on the poor beast to see if it had suffered any wounds. Yep, the critter was still standing there just as dazed and confused as I had left it. It hadn't even moved an inch. It didn't appear to have any wounds inflicted upon it either. And that is when I noticed it. The opossums eyes were all milky gray colored and not the typical dark black they normally have. It was obvious it had cataracts in both eyes. I shined the flashlight away from its eyes and then back again. No response. I did this a few more times. Again, no response. The poor thing was blind. I could tell it could hear as its ears perked up when I made a noise and it was constantly sniffing the air. I started to look at the creature a bit closer. It was obvious this critter had seen better days. Its fur was really matted. It was underweight. It also had a few scars on its ears and down its side where some fur was missing. I started to wonder how many other animals had attacked it. I left the animal to its business and purposely didn't bring in the dog food bowl that had a few kibbles left in it so that this old and busted up marsupial could have its snack that it had earned and almost lost its life over. I learned something in all of this. It might sound funny, but it was almost a religious experience of sorts. What I had thought was just some stupid animal causing me frustration and didn't deserve to live as it was so dumb to not even try to flee or defend itself in any way was actually doing all that it could. In my mind I had condemned this creature to suffer and die because it was annoying. As it turns out, all that it was doing was trying to survive the best that it could with what it had to work with. It amazed me how quickly I had made all of these assumptions of what this animal should be doing when it was doing exactly what it could do. Sometimes all you can do in life is sit where you are and take whatever life presents good, bad, or indifferent. Yes, tonight I learned something from an old blind opossum. Things are not always what they appear to be. 1/9/2010I read about how the musician John Mayer suggested people go on a “digital cleanse”. I had tried something similar a few years ago before twitter, facebook, and blogs became popular. You had to go without email for a week. Work email was ok, but no personal emails. I only made it a day. You see I am a weak bastard when it comes to electronics, gizmos, technology, etc. Just looking around my house, it is sickening all of the electronic crap I have. Well, no it isn’t, but my wife thinks so and maybe she has a point. I am on the computer a good 50+ hours a week and always have a cell phone (myyyy preshhhhhuusssss) within arms reach at all times. I would say I am a connected kind of guy. No not THAT kind of connected with Tony Soprano and crew. The geeky kind of connected. Information of any sort is interesting to me. When I was a kid I used to sit and read catalogs like Crutchfield’s, Heathkit and just memorize all of the different statistics and power ratings. I read a lot on just about everything. When I was a teenager, I liked reading my Dad’s Scientific American, OMNI, and Playboy magazines. Oh, that last one wasn’t true. Really. I am just seeing if you are paying attention. Anyways, having access to information and how information is disseminated to me has been kind of an interesting topic. It is one of the reasons why I wanted to get into the IT field (besides that the chicks love a guy who talks about routers, servers, storage area networks, etc. If my wife asks me to talk dirty to her, I say something like, “The server shut down dirty and I had to do a fschk to make sure I didn’t have any dirty sectors on the drive that would cause corruption.” Yeah I know how to turn a girl on.). For a while I was really interested in ham radio as I thought that was so cool that you could bounce radio waves off of the Earth’s atmosphere and talk to someone on the other side of the planet if conditions were just right. Nowadays it is really easy to get access to pretty much anything you want to know about. It is also easy to stay connected to this information stream that includes your friends and family no matter where they live. I don’t live where I grew up. I moved around quite a bit during my college years and then in the military. Most people I know are scattered across the globe and with things like email, twitter, facebook, and blogging, I can keep up to date with what they are doing. Distance really doesn’t mean anything now when it comes to relationships. I always knew that growing up, but today it is even more true. Getting back to the digital cleanse thing, this week was interesting. I had a lot to say with my son turning six and the CES show (digital toys!!!) going on among other things. I got accustomed to updating cyberspace with my ideas, and thoughts that were important to me. I will admit it was a little difficult not posting things this week. I actually slipped up once this week and sent an email via my phone, but I had seriously forgotten that was on the verboten list. Other than that, it was a complete shut down of all social internet sites and applications(other than email). I also missed not keeping up with people. Did Steve find a job? Just how cold is Cindy in Montana this week? What sort of heavy machinery is Shawn driving today? Did Kevin post any new videos of his music? Will Michelle regale us with another housewife from Yacolt witty-ism (I kid Michelle, I kid!!!)? All of these things become a part of my life that I can dip the digital toe into every once in a while to get a slice of their life and they in turn get to do the same with my life if they so chose. Seriously, how great is that? Yes, all of this information can be hectic and controlling if you let it and I think that is the point of what John is saying here. Back away from it for a while and gain some perspective. I fast one day a week for several different reasons, but this is one of the reasons why I fast with regards to food. How do I relate to food and what is its meaning to me? I am always trying to gain more insight into my life and my surroundings. Now back to posting a bunch of useless nonsense about what I ate and what movie I saw because you know you are dying to hear about my life. 11/21/2009  VS  First things first. I realize that this “review” is about a year late as these two phones are one rev back from what is currently on the market or in the case with the blackberry bold, the bold “2” or 9700 is due to launch any day now on ATT (it already has launched on the T-mobile network). I wanted to give my impressions of the two devices at a higher level with regards to the two product lines and not so much the individual units themselves. iPhone: I have had the iPhone 3G for about 9 months. My previous phones before the iPhone were a couple of Winmo devices like the Samsung blackjack II and before that the Cingular 8525. Both of these phones were actually pretty decent devices. The 8525 was probably the closest to what I would call phone nirvana as it had it all at the time. It was starting to show its age and the fact that I had to use the stylus for pretty much everything other than making phone calls got annoying quick. It also didn’t have a built in GPS and being a geo-caching nut, I really wanted a device that had a GPS in it. One day while logging into geocaching.com, I noticed they had an iPhone app for geocaching. I resisted purchasing the iPhone on principle, but finally gave in after about 3 months. I know, I know, I am weak. One of the reasons I didn’t want an iPhone was the lack of a physical keyboard. The blackjack and the 8525 both had a physical keyboard (the 8525 was a delight to type on for such a small device). It took me quite a while to get the hang of the iPhones virtual keyboard. The predictive typing helped out quite a bit. I can still type faster on a physical keyboard though. The user interface on the iphone is pretty slick. The capacitive touch screen is a real engineering feat. It allows for multiple fingers to touch the interface at the same time and allows for things like “pinching” to allow for zooming in and out for example. The ability to finger swipe on the menu system allows for quick menu action. Apps for the iPhone are done very well and is in my opinion one of the main selling points for the iPhone. It is brain dead simple to find apps, buy them, download them, and start using them. The camera is pretty decent for a 2MP camera. The colors are good and consistent. Call quality is very good on both ends of the phone. The music player on the iphone is somewhat confusing. It just seems like it is trying to do too much. Some people like it, I am not one of those people. Email/SMS is done very well on the iPhone. Exchange support is there if needed along with POP and SMTP. Web browsing is outstanding on the iPhone. With its large screen, it is easy to view web pages. Some things I don’t like about the iphone are that it doesn’t have some sort of light to allow for notification of new messages. I really wish they would have included this as I often set my phone in quiet mode and just want to visually look at the phone to see if I got a message or not. I am really surprised they didn’t include a light around the circular button at the bottom of the phone that pulsed like on a Mac computer. For me the jury is still out on the virtual keyboard. I don’t like having to rely on a proprietary cable for syncing and charging. The blackberry uses a standard USB charging cable and since I have a ton of those from various gadgets, there is always one at hand. Blackberry: I got a new job about 5 months ago. Part of my new job responsibilities is being an Exchange/Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) admin. I haven’t played with a blackberry since they were a text only device. I was able to get a blackberry bold 9000 and a blackberry curve 8320 for doing some testing. These are the two most common devices deployed in my work environment. The screen on the bold is incredible. While not being as large as the iPhone and lacking the touch screen capabilities of the iPhone, it is absolutely beautiful. I don’t care how good your vision is, I dare you to find a pixel on the screen. It is like looking at a miniature hi-def TV. I don’t know if I care for the scroll wheel. On the newer blackberries, they moved away from this type of input device which is probably a good thing. They keyboard is really, really good. I had forgotten how much I missed typing on a physical keyboard. The keys have the right amount of play and are spaced the right distance apart (at least for my somewhat large hands). The apps are OK. Nothing special here, but there are some decent ones out there and blackberries “App world” is no Apple App store, but it does the job. There aren’t as many apps for the blackberry as there are for the iPhone, but the most popular ones like facebook, twitter, etc are there. The camera is not as good as the iPhone, but the phone does take videos. Call quality is quite good and very comparable to the iPhone. I like the fact I can use add on memory cards to the phone, so there is technically no limit of how much storage that is available. With the iPhone, you are locked in to whatever you purchased (in my case 8GB). The music player is quite nice. The audio sound quality was superb. Web browsing is just so-so on the blackberry. Navigating isn’t as easy as the iPhone because you have to use the scroll ball and the screen is smaller, so there is a lot of zooming in and out. Email/SMS is the bread and butter of a blackberry. It takes a while to become used to the combined inbox where your different emails and even facebook updates are kept. Things I don’t like about the blackberry are that the screen is somewhat too small. If it was just a 1/4 of an inch bigger, it would be so much better (the newer blackberry 9700 has a somewhat larger screen.) The build quality could be a little bit better. The battery cover on the back comes off quite easily and while using it, I have had it pop off more than a few times and the battery falls out as a result. Again the newer blackberries have addressed this issue (so the spec documents say). Conclusion: I wouldn’t mind using either phone as my primary phone (with google voice, I can have both phones ring depending on which one I have with me at the time). Both have their positives and negatives and in the end they end up being equal. Now if I could only get my hands on an android device…..hmmm….. 7/16/2009First off, I am no economist. I am not even capable enough to balance my checkbook. There are things in life I can do pretty well (if I do say so myself), but finances just isn’t my forte. That being said, I noticed something today looking at the 6 month DJIA chart. Starting in March of 2009, there is a fairly gradual gain being seen there. It isn’t the best rally Wall Street has had in its long history, but at least it appears from the outside looking in that there is some good stuff going on there and we might be heading out of a recession as a few financial prognosticators are saying. Now, here is another chart that I saw earlier in the week. It is the US Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment survey. For the month of June, it shows a figure of 9.5% meaning that 9.5% of the population that CAN work isn’t working. Yes, yes, there are all kinds of caveats about “seasonal adjustments” and the fact that a lot of people aren’t being counted if they stop looking for work for longer than four weeks and a lot of other crazy numbers that make my head spin. For the sake of the argument, lets just say a lot of people are out of work right now in the US who should be working. Other countries are being hit pretty hard too, but I was lazy and didn’t look up the numbers. Global recession? Ok, I wouldn’t doubt it. Now, when I look at the above two charts, doesn’t something just leap out at you? It sure did to me. Here we have a stock market showing several months of gains and the unemployment numbers showing the highest percentage of out of work people in over a decade. Here is where my silly wild ass bug eyed thinking machine most people call a brain goes into a temporary lock up mode (don’t worry folks, it is only temporary…hopefully). How could this be? How can the stock market be doing fairly well and yet vast numbers of people aren’t employed? Then my brain slams into gear and a thought crosses my mind. Could the reason why this is happening is because we don’t need these people to have a functioning society? Huh? What? How can that be? I dunno, but it seems to me that this is what the numbers are saying. Now true we are in debt up to our kids standing on our shoulders and our grandkids standing on their shoulders eyeballs and all that, but seriously, this is the only way anything makes sense here. It is like someone somewhere is saying, “why create new jobs? We have a fairly healthy economy as is?” Why do I need to deal with these unemployed people? Just leave them to fend for themselves. I have a job right? AM I RIGHT??? Wrong! Something is seriously messed up here. I have no idea what is really going on or what is happening. I am just trying to call things as I see them and it doesn’t make any sense to me. Here is hoping that those of you out there looking for work can find it soon. 6/21/2009A long time ago I wrote a blog post about how I was progressing with my GTD (Getting Things Done) system. I thought I would circle back to see how things have progressed. I still don’t follow the GTD method that is laid out by David Allen. I just couldn’t get it to work right. I also found I was just making more time for me to do more work. Not what I want to do really. For one thing, I gave up on OneNote. For me it is just to unwieldy. I also now have an iphone and there is no OneNote client for the iphone. Also, I could never get the OneNote mobile client to work the way I wanted it to when I had a windows based smartphone. I do like the Evernote application. It is a really nice desktop and iphone application that can do many things and does them well. I use evernote to type up my notes and take pictures of things I want to remember like business cards and things like that. It is easy to search for my information which is a key requisite in my system. I also use the “Remember The Milk” (RTM) application. It is a web based application. It also has a really nice iphone application (paid version only). I started to use the RTM application because I started to work somewhere where I didn’t have full control of my Outlook tasks and couldn’t sync to my iphone. I use RTM to set up reminders and to remember things I might have to do for work or need to be done around the house. I can be alerted via several methods whether it is an SMS text, email, or even by twitter. I have started using a moleskine cahier as my catch all “to do list”. I take a cahier with me everywhere. I don’t always carry my iphone with me wherever I go (I know blasphemy!). I still haven’t gotten used to typing on the iphone and can write faster in the cahier. I protect it with a leather cover from Renaissance Art. The cahier has a very flimsy cover and while that makes it easier to carry in your pocket, it will tend to fall apart without this protection. I have a large moleskine notebook that I use to take notes in. I keep the notebook in a Rickshaw folio. I like this folio a lot. It holds a few of my pens and pencils and some other odds and ends and isn’t too big. I also keep a journal. It is an Oberon Design Lotus Icon journal. This is starting to go with me everywhere. I might do a post later about this journal in more length. All in all this system works for me. Yes, there are a lot of “inboxes”, but it allows me to be flexible. I have successfully dealt with the “What should I use, digital or analog for my GTD system?” by using both ;-). I might have a few minor tweaks like using the new extra small moleskine volant’s instead of the larger cahiers for my catch all notes. I start a new job tomorrow. I had only worked at my previous job for two months. I believe that is a record for me. I am not one to job hop from job to job. I like to become part of “the gang” that has been there for a while and has a lot of knowledge of the position. It is a double edged sword staying at one place for too long as you can get stuck in a rut and the routine can start wearing you down. I am excited about this new position as it has a lot of possibilities ahead of it. My previous position was a contractor position which was technically a long time contract at times it didn’t feel like it. This helped make the decision to go with this new position. I do feel blessed that in this economy I was able to have a choice on where I work. Many others are not so fortunate and I realize that. Along with many others I am looking forward to when the economy picks up and the unemployment rate can go back down again. Onwards and upwards! 5/9/2009I started a new job recently. The new job requires me to drive to downtown Portland. Even though my new job is only 15 miles away, it often takes a little over an hour to get there. It is pretty much stop and go the whole way. I also have to pay $5.25 to park at a parking garage. This past week, I decided to take “the Max” (trimet.org). I drive about a quarter of the way there and then park at a park and ride and catch the Max from there. The cost is about $4.25 a day if I pay for a month in advance, so it is a little cheaper taking Max than paying for parking and I don’t have to fight the traffic. I have never really liked big cities. I can’t describe it, but I get an almost suffocating feeling being downtown in any large city for any length of time. I like quiet open spaces. The hustle and bustle just isn’t my thing. So, I am now driving to a park and ride then taking one train and then transferring to another one. I now am dealing with “the public” in very close quarters. The people who ride the Max come from every walk of life and run the social gamut from gang bangers wearing their gangs colors all the way up to well to do financial types with their expensive suits. You are approached by people trying to work a scam on you and panhandlers asking for money*. You see it all. I am definitely out of my comfort zone for lots of reasons. I began to wonder why this is. Why was I uncomfortable? Then it hit me. I have been avoiding the human condition. I don’t want to see these people and their lives. I didn’t want to smell them (trust me, you do riding in a cramped environment like that). I didn’t want to hear them talking about this, that, and the other. I wanted to be left alone and in my car insulated from all of this. You notice a theme here? I, I, I, I……. It is time I expanded my thinking and really started if not enjoying the whole experience at the very least saw the reality of it all. For whatever reason, I am supposed to learn some lessons from this experience. I am out of my comfort zone and that might not be such a bad thing. I was more worried about my comfort and insulating myself from life than living life and experiencing it as it arises. *A pandhandler guy in his early twenties came up and was asking in soft voice “do you have any extra pennies?” It was obvious he wasn’t in a good place. He looked very unhealthy, he probably was a meth head as he had the sores of habitual meth user. He smelled strongly of mold and mildew and BO. I ignored him. He moved on to the next person. As I watched him go down the train asking for money, only one person gave him some money and then he got off the train. I started feeling guilt. I felt ashamed. Was this the type of person I was? I hope not. I decided from that point on, I would keep some spare change in my pocket. The first person who asked for it that day, got it. |
|
|
|
|