- Today I am 31. Yay! #
Browsing Posts published in June, 2008
- Good morning everyone. I am at the cottage and managed to get an EVDO connection. #
I still think that Bill Gates has been the single most influential person in the computer market for the last 30 years. Without him things would have happened in a very different way. We would still have many of the technologies that we have today but there would be so many different standards that the computer wouldn’t be the same convenience it is today.
Bill Gates technically spent his last day at Microsoft and while I sometimes get angry at Microsoft’s monopoly, I still think that we were better off with one company taking us all in a clear direction. So now we move into the Steve Ballmer era. What does that mean for us? I think this is an uncertain time in the technology world. I don’t think that our lives will change to an extreme, but I think that with a new captain in the ship we could end up taking a different route from now on.
I think the next version of Windows will tell us a lot. Windows Vista was still Bill’s project really. Even though he had given the CEO position to Steve quite some time ago, just having Bill at the office means that he was still making decisions.
Windows 7 as it is being called right now, will be headed up by the same execs but I wonder if they have had some ideas in their heads that they just didn’t push because it didn’t follow Bill’s vision. Now that Bill has left it might be their opportunity to try those ideas out.
My feeling is that it’s scary that we might lose some of that direction we have come to trust and on the other side there might be an opportunity for things to change and improve.
Only time will tell.
- OMG – I can’t breathe. My Xbox 360 has the red light. I called them on Monday, still no box here at my house :( #
- @ambermacarthur Welcome to my town. If you need anything, just ask. Translation? Si t-as besoin de quel que chose, svp me l’aisser savoir :) #
- Thai for lunch. #
I am sooo freekin’ tired that I can’t come up with something better to write about. It is consuming me, so… that’s the topic of the night. I wonder how some people get on with a good sleep even when their lives are so busy. Sometimes it feels like the more tired I get the more trouble I have sleeping.
I can’t be in the minority here. Please tell me I am not in the minority! I write this from my counter with my kitchen computer (yes I really am a geek) and I think I am off to bed.
I need to ask… Do you have any tricks for a good night sleep? Is there something that you use; perhaps a piece of technology, to get a better sleep?
Please share! :)
- Weekend is over and now I am off to work. I hate the 401 from Montreal to Toronto. #
- @ambermacarthur You know… as a fellow Canadian geek it’s nice to see your posts about things Canadian! Keep up the good work! #
- http://www.thesleepygeek.com is back to blue. The dutch lost their game on Saturday (the Russians deserved it), so Oranje is gone :-( #
- @PuppyL0ve sure… I am in! I am now a follower :) #
- DOH! Can’t get on www.lockergnome.com or chris.pirillo.com. Looks like Chris is still having hosting trouble. Boohoo! #
I didn’t do much that was geeky this weekend. I spent it taking a trip to Toronto to visit some family, which was nice. However I did use my GPS a lot over the 2 days.
I know how to get to my wife’s uncle and aunt’s house without the GPS but it offers so much more than just turn by turn directions. If you don’t know where you are going that can be the most important feature but it’s also very nice for giving you the exact speed at which you’re rolling, a pretty good estimated time of arrival and when you need to find a point of interest there is no better tool.
I have known for a while that my speedometer is not quite 100% accurate so I use the TomTom to set my cruise control almost every time on a long trip. It’s a nice way of knowing what your speeding ticket will cost. *GASP* Also while traveling with the kids it is handy to have a way to find a washroom fast. There is always that looming “I have to pee” waiting to come from the back seat :)
We also took a trip to my wife’s cousin’s place to which we have never been before. This was once of the first times I have ever blindly taken an address, entered it in the GPS and followed the instructions. It worked great. It took about an hour and fifteen minutes to arrive at our destination which was what we were told it would take. When leaving there we were heading home back in Montreal so we put that in and it gave us a route around Toronto which was nice because we avoided the city traffic.
At this point most of the GPS units out there are about the same in quality. TomTom and Garmin are really popular names, it’s up to you to decide if it has the features you want. If it does, BUY ONE!
Happy driving…
People who know my wife Christine and I know that we are huge cruise fans. We have been married for almost 6 years and have had the chance to take two cruises. Our first was our honeymoon in 2002 and was quite a whirlwind, as you can imagine. Our second was when our son was almost 2 years old and was something that we had planned for a long time in advance. We were lucky enough to be taken by my parents with the whole family.
Being the geek that I am, I do a lot of research online. So off I went looking around and stumbled upon CruiseCritic. At the time it was laid out as most sites were and offered some very good information. Today it still looks quite similar (a little outdated) but still has a ton of content. I would recommend anyone to head on over to the forum and chat it up. There are thousands of cruisers in there who are very passionate about their pastime and love to offer their knowledge and opinions on almost anything relating to a cruise vacation.
A new site, and what sparked this article has popped up on the scene. socruise is a new website billing themselves as “your social cruise community”. It seems like they are trying to bring cruisers closer together on the ship as well as on the website. I am curious to see how it will stack up to CruiseCritic however; as they have been around a long time. One of CruiseCritic’s forum sections has over 200 000 threads and over 3.17 million posts. That’s an astronomical number of people posting and it will be hard for any site to chip away at that.
Still, there is another angle to this. I am tempted myself to start posting on socruise none the less. I have a strange feeling that once the core group of posters at CruiseCritic gets wind of socruise, they will bring people over and most will participate in both groups.
Something else to note, given this is a geek blog and a post about cruising… There is something for the geek interested in cruising. Has anyone heard of Geek Cruises? Now known as InSight Cruises they have been putting together cruises for like minded people for years. Started by Neil Bauman and Theresa Mazich in 2000 with their first cruise called Perl Whirl, they are now the place to go and sign in for a cruise.
One day I might be able to convince Christine to head out on one of these. For now, I will take any cruise I can get :) Breakfast at sea, on a private balcony with only the blue ocean in front of me and my wife beside me has to be one of my favorite things.
Happy cruising!
