Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Seeing how I am a New Mexico native, I was interested in what the state quarter was going to look like (which is to be issued in 2008). I was sure they were going to use something typical like a roadrunner, piñon tree, or a nice desert scene with a yucca plant and some mountains in the distance. However, when I saw the winning design I was disappointed, but I know the reason why it sucks. Too many people in the rest of the nation don’t know it’s part of the US (even living in Texas, I’ve come across others that think this). But not only that, too often people don’t hear the “New” before “Mexico”. This is the reason why the New Mexico license plates were redone several years ago to include USA on them. And so the new quarter is yet another attempt to drive home the point that it is one of the 50 states.

When I’m coding I usually like to have some music playing, but often I get bored with my own MP3 collection so I usually use a internet radio station. The great thing about the ratings based stations is that you pick what sound you are looking for and say if you like or dislike it and the station adjusts. Here is my own comparison of Pandora vs Last.fm.

When I setup a Chuck Berry station on Last.fm, it was playing stuff not only from the 50’s but also Metallica, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Pearl Jam. I think it was too broad in finding similar music and on a whole Last.fm is much more broad in finding other songs to play than Pandora. I’ve also noticed that the volume of the songs being played on Last.fm are sometimes quiet, too loud or sometimes just right. Pandora has all their music at the same volume which is nice, because that means I don’t have to fiddle with the volume. The “social networking” aspects of Last.fm outweigh Pandora by a long shot but Pandora did add some new features lately. The only other thing Last.fm beats Pandora in is their wider collection of music. If I look for the band Justifide or Reform the Resistance in Pandora, I get nothing but Last.fm seems to have even the obscure and lesser known bands. I think Pandora outdoes Last.fm in many ways right now, since its radio stations are more finely tuned to what you like and are the same volume. The one thing that bugs me about Pandora is that sometimes they play the same songs too much, although u can click on a button to tell them not to play a song for another month. I cant say I used Last.fm as many hours as Pandora so I don’t know if they do the same thing or not, the volume changes were just too irritating to deal with, for me to use if for very long.

Not sure how storesonlinepro.com got my personal information, but I got some lame letter saying to attend their Internet Marketing Conference. I’ve noticed that I often get mail order catalogs and magazine offers from similar companies I either ordered with online or had a magazine subscription with. Either Musician’s Friend or Guitar Player magazine sold my information to a few other outlets and so I always get guitar related magazine offers or some guitar company I never heard of sends me their product guide. I think other sites online do the same thing as I’ve gotten mail order catalogs from X-tremeGeek and CyberGuys. Although the stuff in CyberGuys is actually useful, while X-tremeGeek just has weird gadgets. I have no idea how I ever got sent a Dr. Leonard’s mail order catalog though, I’m not an elderly person. :p

I’m sure I’m not the only one that has noticed that Zest soap dissolves with even 1 drop of water on it. If you have a bar of this in your soap dish by the water faucet for washing your hands, its worthless. Its worthless even if you have little grates that let water drain out the bottom of the dish. As soon as this soap gets wet it dissolves really bad and wont last a week. While all soap will dissolve and get really soft in water this brand is the worst I’ve seen for this. I won’t make the mistake of getting this brand again.

I’ve noticed that they fixed the formula so it doesn’t dissolve instantly in water anymore, although there are probably some cases of the bad formula out there.

a mouse perches on a frog in waist-deep (for a frog, anyway) floodwaters—a small sign of the early arrival of annual summer monsoon rains.

I’ve had this link in my bookmarks ever since I found it on National Geographic. Part of me is wondering why this hasn’t been made into a poster already. It would sell by the millions. The picture is so crisp and clear it looks like something someone might of done with 3d models or Photoshop. It reminds me of the Hippo and Tortoise story from the Tsunami. Everyone I’ve shown it to was amazed and thought it was cute.