Follow-up on the technology saga

Yesterday my PDA totally locked up, just froze with the backlight on and nothing on screen. Finally last night the battery gave out. But apparently there is happy news! My dear wife reports from home today that when she plugged it in to the charger, it came back up and appears to be working correctly. Let’s hope that it keeps it up - I don’t like my choices for replacing it, even if I could afford them:

First there’s the Palm brand products. I like their OS, but I’m getting a sour taste in my mouth for them after my recent troubles.

  • Cheap-o Palm Zire 22. Does most of what I need, but has a lousy screen (160x160 res) and is under-powered. $99.
  • Palm Tungsten E2. What I have right now. Causing problems after 9 months. $199.
  • Palm Tungsten TX. Bigger screen than what I have, plus it has Wi-Fi built in. $299.

Or, I could make the big leap and go to the ones running Windows CE, or whatever the heck they call it now.

The trouble there is that the bottom-of-the-line units start, price-wise, about the same place that the Palms stop. I could get the basic Dell Axim for about $250 right now, sans case and extended warranty.

Let’s just hope my E2 is back alive and good to go for a while. As much as I rely on it to keep me on schedule, $250 for a product that lasts only 9 months is ridiculous.

it's not my week for technology

On the heels of my stereo receiver biting the dust, tonight I pulled my Palm Tungsten E2 out of my pocket to schedule a lunch meeting, and it came up dead. The backlight stayed on, the screen was blank, and it wouldn’t respond to a reset, even a hard reset. I’ve only had it for 9 months. Of course, the Palm warranty is only 90 days… what a rip-off.

I don’t know what I want to do about a PDA now. I might try going without it for a couple weeks and see how much I miss it… but I know it’ll be bad. If I hadn’t just spent $200 on a stereo, buying a new PDA wouldn’t seem totally out of the question, but now… grrr… and I’m not very motivated to want to buy another Palm brand PDA. I’ll have to see what kind of employee discount I can get on a Dell handheld, maybe.

A slide projector... and a bedsheet!

[Kudos to Roger for playing along with the Veggie Tales reference.]

A follow-up on yesterday’s adventures with the stereo receiver. I hit my local Best Buy last night (and boy, do we need some competition for them in town, but that’s another post…) and ended up purchasing a Yamaha HTR-5930 receiver. It’s got the usual bells and whistles: Dolby ProLogic and DTS decoding, 100 watts per channel, etc. It was actually quite easy to hook up last night and get running; more intuitive than the Onkyo that died.

Didn’t have time to play with it much last night - it was getting too late. But a little bit of LoTR:The Two Towers on DVD was enough to assure me that this thing will kick out some serious sound.

Stereophonic Multimedia Event

No, not the blog. My entertainment center, usually. But last weekend for some reason the LCD display of my Onkyo HTS-650 reciever bit the dust. The amp still works, but you can’t see the display, so you can’t tell what source is selected, or what options, or anything like that. This isn’t the first thing to break on this receiver; it totally died a couple of years ago when it was still under warranty. Back then, two trips to the authorized repair shop in Coralville were enough to get it fixed. It’s no longer under warranty now, though.

I could take it in to see about getting it repaired, but I’m having a hard time being motivated to do that since the thing seems to have a failure history. What’s gonna break next? It doesn’t make sense to keep taking it in for repairs when after only a few repairs it would’ve been cheaper to buy something new.

I think I’m going stereo shopping tonight.

Mitt Happens

I met Mitt Romney yesterday. Well, if you can consider shaking his hand and saying hello “meeting” him. Mr. Romney is the governor of Massachusetts and a probable candidate for President in 2008. As with all presidential campaigns, the early path has to run through Iowa. And so Governor Romney found his way to Cedar Rapids to give the commencement address at Coe College on Sunday and then meet with various political groups yesterday. One of the groups he was meeting was our Christian Action group here in Linn County. Since the head of that group is also one of our elders at Noelridge, they held the meeting there at our little church. So for half an hour or so, I sat back and ran sound while Governor Romney answered questions brought by our local people.

I have a difficult time trying not to be cynical about politicians. Now, of course, Romney will tell you he’s not a politician. But he sure comes across as one. Besides the perfectly-styled hair, the booming voice, the picture-perfect blonde wife who gushes about their family, well, there’s something in the performance, too. I was pretty impressed, he was doing a pretty good job at what was, I imagine, his usual 5-minute introductory speech. But then he introduced his wife, and she came up and said a few things about their children and grandchildren. OK, nice so far. But then she says how she knows people have been saying a lot of nice things about her husband, but how she knows that the most important things to him are his family. Now that statement by itself is just fine. But as she says the phrase “people have been saying a lot of nice things about my husband”, the Governor emits far too loud a chuckle and an obvious “aw shucks” kind of look. It was so obviously rehearsed that it was painful. And from there on out, the cynicism kicked in. He was just another politician performing.

I suppose the American system is just so big now that it’s unreasonable to think that a “normal guy” could be elected president; so, instead of electing the best “normal guy”, we have to elect the best politician. But back in my heart somewhere I wish a really real normal guy could make it. I know I’m not the only one who feels that way - go read Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan series. He propels his “normal guy” hero on a path from history teacher and CIA consultant all the way up to POTUS. And of course then Clancy lets him give all the conservative speeches that Clancy (not-so-)secretly wishes a real POTUS would give. So the dream is alive… just unlikely.

So now we’re back to Mr. Romney. It will be interesting to see how his (as of yet unannounced) candidacy goes. His success will largely depend on who decides to run against him. I will also be curious to see if his Mormon beliefs hurt him any. I tend to think that the religious right will look past it. Oh, are we really starting the presidential election cycle already? The season in Iowa seems eternal. I guess we still have one more year of relative peace.

The Pursuit of God in the Company of Friends

Dick Staub on the Staublog (which needs to move to some software that supports RSS in an awful way) today notes a phrase that caught my ear:

People like that I sign my correspondence “yours for the pursuit of God in the company of friends.” When I was younger I thought a lot about “doing” things for the kingdom of God. Now I think more about loving people in my day.

I like that phrase. “The pursuit of God in the company of friends.” Sounds like what I want to be doing.

BookJournal: Xenocide

I haven’t been a fan of everything Orson Scott Card has ever written (sorry, Keith), but my love for Ender’s Game and even greater affection for Speaker for the Dead drew me to read the next book in the series, Xenocide.

Xenocide picks up Ender and company pretty much where Speaker for the Dead left them. It introduces us to a few new characters along the way, but wrestles with the dilemma of being on a planet where saving the humans there will cause the death of the indigenous species. Card pulls off this drama in his usual thoughtful fashion, asking questions about the nature of life and consciousness.

I don’t know that this one was quite as good as Speaker. I got a bit lost at the end once they start doing faster-than-light travel. It just got weird there for the last chapter or so. But still, if you’ve enjoyed Ender and Speaker, I can definitely recommend that you continue on and read Xenocide.

more odds and ends for May 2006

Wow, so it’s been far too long since I posted. What’s been happening? Last weekend Mom and Dad and Reba came down to visit. We had a good time. Saturday we did a little bit of garage saleing and Reba looked at an apartment. She’s planning on moving down here in June. That should be interesting. She’s going to Kirkwood in the fall. They came down Friday night, left Sunday afternoon. It was good to see them again.

Yesterday was supposed to be our first softball game of the season, but it got cancelled due to the weather. It wasn’t actually raining, but it had been raining pretty much solid since Friday night. The fields were undoubtedly a mess. So last night we went out for supper and then went to the library instead. It was nice.

Now today we’re home. After work I took Laura on a bike ride while Becky worked in the garden. I did about 8 miles, which for my first time out this year, pulling a kiddo in a trailer, isn’t too awful. We’ll see how sore I am in the morning. :-) It was nice to be out. Gotta love having the Cedar Valley Nature Trail and the Cedar River Trail nearby.

So now it’s nearly bedtime. Just finished watching American Idol, and Becky is upstairs trying to get Addison to go to sleep. She just fights it so hard. I’m in the process of setting up a blog for my in-laws to use to post stuff about their vacation this summer. The funny part is, they can use my domain (thehubbs.net), and it doesn’t seem strange at all. :-)

Well enough randomness for tonight.

Andrew Osenga - The Morning

Only 18 more days until release. If you’re a fan of Andy Osenga’s already, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about; if you’re asking “Andy O-Who?”, let me introduce you to the man who is hands-down my favorite solo artist. Andy Osenga is a wonderful singer, songwriter, and guitar player, formerly of The Normals, currently with Caedmon’s Call, a member of the Square Peg Alliance, and now releasing his second full-length album in what I hope will be a long and brilliant solo career. (By the way - a link to his blog has been sitting over in my sidebar for months now. If you’d paid attention, you would already know what I’m about to tell you. :-))

May 16th will herald the release of The Morning. Andy has released four of the songs on his blog over the past week - if you get over there soon, you may still be able to hear them. After The Garden is a rockin’ tune, reminding us that he doesn’t fit neatly into that acoustic singer-songwriter stereotype. Santa Barbara is only slightly more laid back. House of Mirrors gives a smooth, relaxed vibe that will just leave you wanting to hear it again. And New Beginnings? Well, as Andy says, it just about sums up the themes of the whole album.

Go and listen to his songs. Then hit his website and preorder a copy today. Or, buy a couple of copies. Heck, stock up on his older stuff if you haven’t got it already.

OK, so this is a rather shameless promotion on my part, but seriously, folks, this is some good music, and Andy is just the kind of guy you’d want to support by buying his music. I’ve already ordered mine. :-)

It's Monday again...

No, wait, it’s Tuesday. It just feels like Monday. It was very very hard to get out of bed this morning. It was cool and there was rain pattering on the roof. But no, I had to get up and come to work. When I got to work, I found out that I’m losing a good engineer off of my project. Double-grrrrrr. And now I have meetings for pretty much the rest of the day: 10:00, 11:00, 1:00, 2:00, 2:30… the last three all overlap. Just another day.

On the bright side, you should go over to Andy Osenga’s website and listen to the cut he’s got up there from his upcoming album. It’s amazing. He’s finally taken the chance to really rock out on this one, and it sounds great. I have this album pre-ordered, which means I should be getting it in a couple of weeks… I can’t wait. But hey, I have to. :-(