So to make a long and sad story as short and funny as possible I give you my new car "accessory".  The short version is I ordered some car parts (exhaust and suspension) from a friend and one of the two boxes had four of these in it.  Not exactly what I was expecting to make my car faster.  DHL somehow switched the labels at some point during shipping (which we're trying to track down).  Now that my tears of sadness/rage have turned into tears of laughter I just had to share what I actually got. 

Wonder how many HP Jesus is good for? I'm guessing at least 20 or so...

Hopefully if you're reading my blog in a web browser you're using Firefox (and if you aren't you really should be).  If you haven't been reading the tech press today let me clue you in - today is Firefox 3.0 day.

I've been playing with the Firefox 3.0 betas and release candidates for a few months now getting ready for the upgrade to 3.0.  I've found them to be fast, stable and very feature rich.  One of the main issues with older versions of Firefox was memory usage - if you left it open for long periods of time (I generally leave it running for days if not weeks) with lots of tabs open (I generally have between 8-20 tabs at any moment) it would eat memory like a fat southern guy at an all you can eat BBQ buffet.  That is to say a lot, in the hundred of megs of memory (I've seen as high as 800MB).  Firefox 3.0 is supposed to fix all that.

There is however one huge problem with Firefox 3.0 - Google Browser Sync support has been discontinued.  For some reason Google has decided not to update the extension for FF3 and is going to discontinue support for the entire app at the end of this year.  To say this sucks is an understatement.  If you're not familiar with Google Browser Sync let me explain - it is easily the best, most useful extension ever written for Firefox.

What GBS does it take just about everything about your browser (bookmarks, cookies, saved usernames/passwords, history, etc), encrypt it and transfer that data to Google's servers.  Then any other machine you're on (regardless of the OS) now has all your browser data available.  This is huge if you use more than one machine - no matter what machine I use my browser is the same.  If I register for a site on one (and save my password) that information is synced across all my other computers.  Once you get used to this you can't live without it.  Well I guess I'm going to have to.

I haven't yet downgraded to FF2 but I probably will as this is already driving me crazy (after only 10 minutes).  My sincere hope is that Google will come to its senses, update the app and continue to support it long term.  Hopefully there will be a big enough back lash in the blogger community that they will be forced to.

As it's been quite a while since I've posted anything I've been looking for something that would get me started blogging again.  Given that I can be hugely critical of bad customer service I decided I should be equally complimentary when someone gets it right.  Men's Health (and their publisher Rodale) gets it right.

I've been a subscriber to Men's Health for about 8 months now and really enjoy it.  Easy to read, informative and very useful.  A few months ago I got a random letter from Rodale (their publisher from what I can tell) that I owed them $49.95 for the Men's Health Total Fitness Guide, something I never ordered nor received.  At the time I pitched it in the trash assuming it was some sort of error or way to get me to order the books.  When I got a second one that listed my account as delinquent I decided I better take action.

Today I called up the customer service number ready for a fight.  I explained to the rather polite lady that I'd never ordered these books nor had I ever received them.  She immediately apologized for the trouble, noted this in my account, canceled the order and confirmed for me that I was all set.  "Are you still there?" she said, as I sat there stunned that it was so easy.  As I thanked her she commented "it's nice to help cheery people" - to which I explained I was ready for a fight and stunned that I didn't have to have one. 

Not really sure what this book is but now I may actually want it.  Well done Rodale, well done.

If you know me fairly well you know I'm a big music fan (and was actually a jazz music major in college).  While I still play a bit for fun I haven't played seriously in many years.  Fortunately that isn't the case for some friends (and co-workers of mine) who have spent the last 6 years recording their band Soul Patch's latest album, Sooner or Later.  This is their second release, their first Summers in Rangoon is one of my favorite albums - Arabic Ska is a particularly fantastic song.

Sooner or Later is a more mature album than Summers in Rangoon was, you can really hear how much the band has grown in the playing.  Since Summers they've really found their own style and groove which I really enjoy.  The first thing I thought when hearing the new album was that it sounded like a modern day Steely Dan with flavors of some of the great jam bands of modern times (Phish, Widespread Panic, etc).  There are several guitar solos that clearly show Ryan's appreciate of Trey Anastasio (lead guitarist of Phish).  Jason's vocals on Lose My Mind are especially nice, as is his extremely skilled drumming.  While I think Soul Patch is definitely a band for musicians they do a great job blending that into something that just about anyone could enjoy.

So be sure to snag a copy on CDBaby, iTunes, Amazon or just about anywhere else that sells music online.  If you're around Boulder feel free to swing by our office, I'm guessing someone will play you a few tunes if you ask nice enough!

About a month ago I got my Bluray drive all setup in my Vista Media Center PC.  While I've had some issues with playback (about every 3rd movie locks up at some point) in general it's working very well and looks amazing.  The primary reason I bought a drive for my PC vs. getting a shiny new PS3 is so I can rip the disks that I own (that and I just couldn't be a single guy who owns a Wii, XBox360, and a PS3!).  With Bluray disks the only reason I want to rip them is to make playback easier/faster.  Each time I've watched a disk from the drive it will lock up at some point, when I rip them they rarely lock up.

When I got the drive I had not been following the ripping scene very closely so I figured this would be something I'd have to wait for.  I've been using AnyDVD and DVD Shrink for years to do all my DVD ripping, I'd heard that AnyDVD was releasing an HD version so I went to check it out.  I'm happy to say that not only have they released it I've happily been using it to rip my disks for a few weeks.

The issue with this is you need about 45GB per disk to store the rips (if you rip the entire disk).  From what I've seen the movies are usually around 15GB and all that extra space are the other audio tracks and the special features (of which I don't care about).  So I went looking for a replacement for DVD Shrink and was very pleased to find one, TSRemux.  TSRemux lets you pull out the audio and video streams you want and save them to a single .m2ts file (the new file type for Bluray).  You can then play this file back in Windows Media Player - no extra or funky software needed.  While I've been using PowerDVD to play back the disks I find that using Windows Media Player is much more reliable.

I purposely kept this fairly high level, if anyone reading this would like a step-by-step guide just leave me a comment and I'll write a post up for that too.

Here I am writing another post thanks to David Cohen, this time for sharing BlogBard with me. He's got it installed on the ColoradoStartups blog and I just added it to mine. You'll see a little player over to the right where it says "Listen to my Blog" (cleverly hidden I know).

Give it a listen, I actually think the digital voice is really good, one of the best I've ever heard. The phrasing is especially nice, it feels more like a person with a robot voice than a computer (pausing at the commas, periods, etc). Pronunciation is also very good saying "I - T" instead of "it" (when things are capitalized). I'm already finding it useful by playing blog posts in the background while I do things around the house.

You can subscribe to the audio files using iTunes therefore syncing them to your iPod or iPhone. When creating an account on their site you can manage all the various blogs you want to listen to by providing RSS feeds for each. It works similar to Newsgator Online but with sound (and of course a LOT less features).

So let me know, is it just my inner-dork that likes this or is it actually useful.

I got an email today from David Cohen asking me about high speed wireless options for his laptop.  Since I answered him in email I figured I should at least get a blog post out of it too.  To clarify we're talking cellular wireless here, not WiFi, etc.  As I explained to David there are three good options, at least in the Boulder/Denver area.

You can choose from the three major providers (T-Mobile being the exception here, they don't have a 3G network just yet) - they all cost roughly the same ($60).  They are all roughly the same speed although AT&T's HDSPA network is theoretically faster than Sprint and Verizon's EVDO networks.  The issue with AT&T is coverage, while they've turned up a large portion of the country their coverage doesn't match Sprint or Verizon.

We've been using Verizon's EVDO network for about 3 years now and have never had any issues with it (other than the occasional dead area).  If you need always-on high speed access when you travel get it, you'll love it.

As for connectivity you have a few options.  Many of the newer laptops come with these wireless cards built in (generally referred to as a WWAN card for Wireless Wide Area Network) but if you've got an older machine you're not out in the cold. You can either use many of the PC Cards available (if your laptop has a slot) or a USB dongle if not (Verizon even has one that you can put a MicroSD card in for double duty).

So apparently I'm not the only thing that's gotten thinner over the last year as laptops are getting smaller and lighter all the time.  Recent Jason, Ryan, and I all got the new Macbook Air from Apple.  Wow, what an amazing machine.  Brad had one for a few days but just couldn't get used to the glide pad (vs. the track point on a Thinkpad).  While I agree with him and hate glide pads the Air is just too amazing not to use.  It's one of those products that you just have to hold, feel, touch, and play with to appreciate.

Yesterday when I got into work I was greeted with a new Lenovo X300 - this is the Thinkpad answer to the Air.  So how good is their answer?  Well on the coolness factor they aren't even close.  While the X300 is an awesome machine it just doesn't match the form factor of the Air.  Yes it's very thin and light but we've seen thin and light laptops before (the X61 isn't much thicker/heavier than this).  Where the X300 shines is in it's features.  Let's do a little side by side shall we?

As you can see from the specs it's no contest, the X300 wins almost every category (other than CPU).  However with machines like this it isn't all about the specs, not by a long shot.  The Air is just so much cooler, so much sexier that it just smokes the X300.  When I got my Air I knew the X300 was coming and I was really worried that I would love it to the point that I wanted to swap my Air for it.  Don't worry Jason, I want my Air.  If I'd gotten the X300 first I'd be happy with it but after having an Air for a few weeks there is just no substitute.  I'll be finishing the X300 up today and giving it to Brad tomorrow, we'll have to wait and see what he thinks (my prediction: he'll LOVE IT).

Here's a few pictures I took of the two side-by-side.  Sorry they aren't better, it's the best I could get with my crappy camera.

I've been wanting to do some healthier tomato based dishes so tonight I decided to try a seafood cioppino (a cioppino is a seafood stew).  I headed to Whole Foods to see what looked good in the seafood department and fortunately they had fresh muscles.  I also picked up some fresh shrimp and some more of the fresh hake fish that I made last night.  The only thing I would change was using a red wine instead of cooking sherry (I didn't have anything that I was willing to open and cook with).  I didn't want sherry to over power the flavor so I used just a little and it came out great.  I think it would definitely be better with red wine (like a syrah) so next time I'll plan a bottle with the meal.  Be sure to serve it with a nice french baguette or a good sourdough roll.

What you need
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 medium onion, quartered
3 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 California bay leaf
1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried hot red-pepper flakes
1 (14-ounce) can crushed roasted tomatoes
1/2 cups water
1/2 cup full-bodied red wine such as Zinfandel or Syrah
1/2 cup clam juice
1 1/2 pounds of fresh seafood (fish, shrimp, scallops, muscles, calamari, etc)

What you do
Coarsely chop the fennel, onion, and garlic in a food processor. Heat the oil in a large heavy pot over medium-high heat until it shimmers, then stir in chopped vegetables, bay leaves, thyme, red-pepper flakes, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper. Cook, covered, on medium heat, stirring a few times, about 4 minutes until the vegetables begin to soften. Add the tomatoes, water, wine, and clam juice and boil covered for 20 minutes. Stir in your seafood and add a pinch of salt then cook uncovered until the mussels open wide, 4 to 6 minutes (discard any that remain unopened after 6 minutes). Check your seafood frequently and serve as soon as the last pieces are cooked through (so you don't over cook others).

If you've been following my blog for a while you know that I've been waiting for Vista Service Pack 1 for quite a while, with high hopes that it would make life with Vista a lot better.  A few weeks ago I was able to get my hands on the final copy of SP1 and I've been playing with it as much as I can since then.

While it seems to be a bit better it is not the vast improvement I have been hoping for.  Things are still slow, copying files over the network still sucks, window focus is always going screwy, and in generally it's still just a slow dog.  Even with all the GUI shit turned off.  So far I'm very disappointed, how could it be that the largest software company on earth would not only release Vista when it wasn't ready but more than a year later and after the first service pack have it still suck.

I haven't yet taken any machines back to XP since installing Vista SP1 but I'm doing that now to do some testing.  I'm getting really tired of this game, really tired of Microsoft making me look bad.  If only OS X and Linux were real options.  I hope to soon post real world benchmarks between Vista and XP on the same hardware so I can see which is better.  I'm guessing it's going to be XP, wouldn't you think?