Lovely Weekend

I had a lovely weekend in Canada - we needed to make a run for the border for some official crap. But now its all taken care of and we got to enjoy some great weather. I figured the traffic was going to be horrible, but we made it to Windsor in 12 hours and back to Minneapolis is just 11.5 and that's including stopping for gas and at least one meal.

Checked out a placed called Callisantis (sorry on the spelling) Tropical Gardens. Its in Leamington I think, apparently the tomato and greenhouse capital of Canada. This place was huge, full of tropical plants (obviously) for great prices, but a restaurant, petting zoo, Nascar crap, reception hall, etc, etc. And all of it came out of a greenhouse years ago - amazing! Best part yet, they have things set up so American's can actually take plants back with them legally.

Hit up the Windsor Casino as well and won 'big' on the nickel slots. Well, I doubled my money and that paid for dinner and drinks. Works for me. One of the things I get a real kick out of, really the novelty of it, is their money. All the different colors, and being able to pay for your Starbucks with a couple of coins is really cool. Speaking of which, Starbucks doesn't really seem to adjust thier pricing for the exchange, so its actually a little cheaper to indulge oneself.

This is too frickin' cool. Though I don't know how useful the iGuy would be, but I think I might have to consider one in July when the mini iGuy comes out. 

Security Awareness for Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless

This blog has taken a new twist lately, its done by an IT guy who's sick and tired of the all the problems related to Windows computers. So what did he do, he switched his entire company to Macs, in just two days and didn't have to download a myriad of third-party products to secure the machines - they came that way.

Security Awareness for Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless

Nokia moving into the Tablet business?!

Seems Nokia plans to launch a new Linux based Internet Table this Fall, and its not a cellphone. I have to admit, it looks pretty cool, sounds like its going to work very well and may actually find a place in the market at only $350. Ofcourse, lots of such internet appliances have come and gone, but there is just something different about the Nokia 770.

Intel CEO Otellini: If you want security now, buy a Macintosh instead of a Wintel PC

There you have it folks, buy a Mac if you want security. And thats straight from the head of Intel!!

Another commercial we'll never see

A littel IKEA commercial from across the pond that will never find air time in the states.

Oscillate Wildly: It's Wise To Hide The Sex Toys

iTunes 4.9 adding support for podcasts

Steve Jobs showed off iTunes 4.9 at a recent conference indicating built-in support for podcasts. This is going to be a huge boom not only for iTunes, but for the podcast market as well. Plus, the future possibility of being able to purchase podcasts - that's just going to improve the financial prospects for the fledgling market as well.

Pride Toronto :: in 29 days...

...it starts, and in 32 days I'll be joining the party!

Google at it again.

Google had previously said it wasn't going to get into the portal business, but that seems to have changed today with the launch of a personalized Google homepage. Its still very minimalist, but its really nice to have access to a mutlitude of Google services presented in one place.

All in all, I think its a nice start. Certainly not anything like My Yahoo!, but we can be sure Google will continue to add lots of great features. RSS is already in the works.

Fashionable Star Wars fans, take notice...

.. iPod toting bad guys.

501st Bad Guy Boogie Fitted Tee > JABBA HONEY FANGEAR

Happy Birthday Bill! (& Me)

Gay Pride Essentials on iTunes

May this has been out for awhile, but I just noticed Gay Pride iTunes Essentials on the iTunes Music Store. It looks like three collections in one, starting with earlier stuff on up to today. Very interesting.

I don't know if this link will work, but give it a try: Gay Pride: Boys

ABC Fall Lineup

ABC is going to axe Extreme Makeover - what the hell?!?! Everyone seems to love the show and it does such good work for people. My first thought is that its too expensive to carry on, but sooo.

The New Vespa LX

Ok, I'm drooling over this sweet lookin' ride. 

The New Vespa LX showed up in my inbox last night and its been on my mind ever since. It looks like a seriously refined and elegant machine. I think I need to take a test drive!

Where are the terror alerts

I heard on Morning Sedition something about Tom Ridge stating that during the elections he was told to raise the terror alert even when it wasn't necessary or the intelligence wasn't around to back it up. Eleventh Avenue South: The Queen of the Homopocalypse points out Ridge's quote and goes on to show how the same strategy is being used today demonizing gays.

Should be an interesting weekend.

We have family coming to visit and stay for the next week. Should be fun, Bill's family is great and his two neices are just adorable. I'm sure kitty is going to be in heaven having all that attention available to him all the time. I'm looking forward to having meals around the table with lots of people; all the action and life all under one roof. Two people in a big house can became stale without an influx of thoughts and new events to share and discuss.

I'm not really sure what I'm saying, but I'm excited about our visitors. But as a caveat, being the introvert I am - when am I going to get 'me' time to recharge?!

Microsoft's Share of Browser Market Slips

Love pulling up the news and reading a report that Microsoft's share is slipping further as quality technology earns more market share. I use Firefox exclusively at work - keeps my desktop clean, organized and I've had no spyware problems since I started using it. My boss is still stuck on IE - which means I'm stuck cleaning his computer on a regular basis. But trust me, I do what I can to stear him towards the light.

A 20-year battery: BetaBatt

I think this is so cool - finally something niffty in energy technology. A startup is set to unveil tritium-powered batteries, likely to make them the first to commercially develop atomic powered batteries for the masses. The great thing about this technology, is that it won't be spreading dangerous radiation around (same stuff used in glow-in-the-dark watches), but will provide us with long lasting, efficient power sources. I wonder if this type of battery could be used for electric cars?!

A Google Game: Guess-the-google (not by Google)

Its desribed as such: Guess-the-google reverses the Google image search process by picking the keywords for you, the player must then guess what keyword made up the image.

Play it now!

The Minimum Wage Increase?!

So I've been looking on news sites and I can't seem to find any mention of the minimum wage increase in Minnesota, yet I swear I saw a clip on the news last nigth of Pawlenty signing the bill into law. Sounds like its the $1.00 increase that was talked about, raising the wage to $6.15. As I recall this starts in August and marks the states first increase in 8 years!! Thats far too long - and now I wonder how long it will take to get the next increase made in this state.

But a better question, why is coverage of this news so hard to find?!

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Brother, Pebbles and I.

The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post is now live!

Use iChat for all your IM needs

iChat in Tiger now lets users access all of the major IM services through Jabber. So no more do we need Yahoo IM and MSN IM running next to iChat. But the process of setting it up might not be obvious, so All Forces offers a visual guide to using MSN on iChat.

Xavier in the window.

Xavier in the window.

And for the Neo-Con Death Cult Members...

...we introduce to you the Alertstatus Dashboard widget. You will always know the current security status for das homeland, quickly and easily from your Dashboard with this handy, yet simple widget. Available now!

What a gift!!

So I hit the big 25 and as many people experience, their car insurance rates drop. Unfortunately, I switched a few months back to Costco Auto Insurance (underwritten by American Express) to save some money and get a mutli-use discount with the house insurance. So I thought my quarter-century discount wouldn't be a whole lot - hell, I figured I was a winner already saving quite a bit over State Farm's rates.

But then I got the letter (actually a few weeks ago, but I forget to mention it) notifying me my rate was going to decrease almost $750 dollars. That is a 38% price drop!!

Oh, and now I can rent cars.

Ok, now you can wish me a Happy Birthday. I'm 25 today.

Student reaction to Ann Coultier's show at St. Thomas

I dug up a pdf of the St. Thomas student newspaper and read the many articles and letters to the editor. Its almost unbelievable what some people say about Ann, both good and bad - some people actually don't get that she is preaching hate. WTF!

April 22, 05.pdf

Flidget Screen Shot

flidget_200505021615,
originally uploaded by ebartz.

Flidget

Apple posted a download for a new Dashboard widget, Flidget. Looks awesome, its a cool little app to upload pictures to your Flickr account. I don't use Flickr very often, but people love it and it works great for posting pictures to this site.

Gas Prices Widget

I wish I could program, but maybe someone has the guff to put a new widget together. Take the lowest gas prices posted on gasprices.com, or maybe twincitiesgasprices.com and show the cheapest gas nearest one's zip code. Awesome!!

Might someone put this together?

The New Family Guy

So anyone want to take a guess at home many complaints FOX got this morning after the re-premiere of Family Guy? The opening scene was superb, really highlights some of the crummy shows that FOX has tried to shove down our minds since taking Family Guy off the air.

I laughed, I really did most of the time. But I couldn't help but think of all the people who are no doubt complaining today.