right on bro!

Daylight Savings Time is here, and because of that, I woke up at 6:30 this morning. I haven’t woken up that early in a looong time. Yay!

After my run this morning I went out to the end the pier in Manhattan Beach. Nobody had caught any fish but the view walking back to the Strand was awesome. Going to make that a regular part of the run, I think.

My next Web project is coming along nicely. Programming is kind of fun although syntax is a pain in the ass. I’m hoping to basically just create a bunch of re-usable code for different projects as they come along.

Gonna go to the Promenade today for my twice a year “buy some new clothes” event. We’ll see.

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Well, this week went by without much of a hitch. It was pretty good. Things are a lot calmer and quieter at work, and I think it’s going to let me clear my mind a little bit and get back to things I like and/or need to be doing (like running). That’s good, because the year’s end is coming up and I’m starting to assess what the hell I did this year, and I’m seeing room for improvement.

I went to Hollywood Park last week with Regul. It was my second time there. I lost forty bucks, after doubling up on the third hand and giving it all back trying to bluff somebody out, but it was a good time. I’m feeling more comfortable playing with strangers. Looking forward to next week’s trip to Vegas.

Been really digging Ladytron lately…

Finally…my parents have asked me to go with them to France for a week next year. I figure that, while I’m there, I might as well take another two weeks and backpack around Europe. Any suggestions? Matt suggested Barcelona and maybe somewhere in Italy so far.

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There’s a bug in the new video iPod that Apple really should have fixed before it launched - rewind & forward don’t work properly for videos. Since Apple’s “award-winning Service & Support site” doesn’t make it easy to contact them for support, I’m just gonna throw this into the blogosphere and maybe they’ll get around to fixing it after they’ve counted up all the cash they’ve made from the new model.

When you rewind or a video for more than several seconds (i.e. hold the << down and try to forward), the audio will start playing again once you let it go, but the video freezes.

When you fast-forward for more than several seconds, it’ll just reset to the beginning.

This happened to me on both an episode of Lost that I downloaded from iTunes, as well as an episode of Red vs. Blue that I transcoded.

Nice work, Apple!

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Bleah.

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I ended up being late for work today because I was playing around with the new video iPod. Here’s a bunch of observations after the first day.

• I ordered the 30GB version from the Apple Store on the 12th, the day of the release announcement. The store estimate was 5-7 days to ship, and the estimated receipt date was Thursday the 20th, but I got it this morning. According to FedEx the package came from Shanghai. So if you’ve ordered one, maybe you’ll get lucky and it’ll come earlier than expected.
• The video thing is pretty cool. I downloaded the first episode of Lost from iTunes, just to see how it was. The screen ain’t no Jon Regul 50″ HDTV but it’s bright and clear. I’m going to skip watching Lost on Wednesday and get the iTunes version so I can see how it is.
• On the 30GB version, battery life for video is rated at about 2 hours. Battery life for music is rated at about 15. The battery was shot by the time I left work, although I didn’t charge it up all the way at first. So time will tell on this one.
• I had some problems installing it. It wasn’t immediately clear to me that the “Do Not Disconnect” message isn’t an error, and that I was supposed to eject the iPod in iTunes. As a Shuffle user, I’m used to just pulling the Shuffle out from the USB port whenver I want, except for when iTunes says it’s updating, and that’s what I thought was happening. I spent the first 30 minutes waiting for the message to go away, thinking that it was trying to update something, until I finally looked online. Apple would do well to revise this message to something like “Please Eject, Then Disconnect,” with the added bonus of having the error message rhyme.
• Transferring songs is a lot faster than the Shuffle.
• For the CDs that you’ve ripped, the album cover art isn’t displayed per song like it does in the TV commercials. To fix this, I got this program called iArt, which hits the Amazon search API for product images and matches them against the artist/album combinations in your iTunes library. iArt is processing my collection right now, and it’s accuracy is really good. Problem solved.
• I finally understand podcasting now that I can actually browse through the list of music/podcasts/videos. Podcasting does not work with the Shuffle.

One thing that I think would be cool would be the ability to skip to all available songs from a particular artist when you’re shuffling. I hope they build this in at some point (or, if it’s in there already, I figure it out).

As far as the video thing is concerned…I think Apple’s going to need a lot more short-form, FREE video content feeds for the video thing to work, integrated into iTunes like podcasts. By short-form, I mean like, 5-10 minute clips - their TV episodes now take a bit of time to download. A site like StupidVideos or Red vs. Blue would be perfect for a video podcast, because the videos they produce are mostly low-res and very short, and they’d be the right size to view several of them before the battery goes kaput. I have no idea how anybody would make money off of this. But it would be cool, so they should do it for me.

That’s it, because I feel dirty from talking about this thing so much. But I’m done bragging now. Thanks!

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I never heard of FedEx delivering at 8:30 in the morning, but they just did. My video iPod just arrived. Too bad I have to go to work.

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I was determined to get over last week’s cold, and I did - just in time to go to Disneyland on Saturday. Yes, that’s right, Disneyland.

Of course it’d have to be a very special occasion before someone would drag me down there, and it was - a birthday dinner at Club 33, the park’s secret, members-only club. It’s tucked away in the New Orleans section of the park, above the Blue Bayou restaurant, and isn’t marked by anything except for a number (”33″) on the door.

I’ll skip the details, but it was really, really nice, the food (duck with fruit risotto) was really good, and the waiter didn’t act condescending when I asked him for a wine recommendation.

So happy birthday to you-know-who, and thanks to you-know-who for the once-in-a-lifetime experience!

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I’m at home today. Yesterday around noon, I felt like I hit a brick wall. So I wrapped up my work, drove home, and went to bed. I woke up in the evening, ate some Tuna Helper, watched today’s Lost and Monday’s episode of CSI: Miami, then went back to bed.

Not sure what it is. It could have something to do with my boss plunking his fever-ridden daughter next to me at work, or it’s just general exhaustion.

I picked a wack day to be at home. The neighbor who bought the house next door is putting up a fence. And that kid on the other side is constantly whining, or wailing, or something. There’s gotta be something wrong with him.

I ordered the new iPod from the Apple Store yesterday. It should be here in a week or two.

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I feel good right now. Better than I’ve felt in awhile. These past couple of months have been pretty stressful and this is the first weekend I’ve had in awhile where I’ve started to de-compress. I remember when I was working on freelance gigs, I had a much happier outlook, and it kind of feels like that. Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned in this.

I turned 31 on Friday. All of the festitvities were planned for Saturday, so I figured that, after a rough day at work, I’d just get some takeout and go home. But I got an email from Cynthia in the afternoon, and she ended up taking me to he Stinking Rose in Beverly Hills for dinner. Mmmmmm, garlic - bread with bagna calda, prime rib, and red wine.

Saturday I worked on some stuff for a little bit, ran my laundry to the laundromat (had them do the fluff and fold - happy birthday to me), and went for a short run.

After that, the festivities started. First I met up with everyone (Jon, Matt, Kelly, Caroline, Montez, Brian, Toby, and Kevin) at C&O Cucina in Marina del Rey for dinner. I’m starting to like that place a lot.

After that, we went to Oktoberfest at Alpine Village in Torrance. It was my first time there, and it was pretty crazy. Oktoberfest was held in a huge outdoor tent about, the size of a rock concert, and it was lined up with tables full of people drinking beer out of giant styrofoam cups. There was a real oompah band on stage, doing the chicken dance song, some really weird fast-food-dance song (the lyrics were “Pizza Hut/Pizza Hut/Kentucky Fried Chicken/Pizza Hut”), and some other songs (like “Ein Prosit”) that I learned in German class in high school that I never quite believed were real, but I guess they are. Everyone was just sitting around drinking and having a good time. Brian and Toby won beer steins from the cow-milking contest, which was pretty cool.

Today went by so quickly - I woke up really late, ordered some food, ate it, and then went back to bed. After that, Toby, Kevin and I drove up to the Valley and had dinner with the Reasler and the Best Couple. I helped Mike fix his blog, and now I’m back home.

Thanks all for a great weekend!

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Wow, it’s already Thursday.

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