So, I’ve been on the phone for the past 30 minutes listening to some lady in India working for HP tech support try to convince me that the IP addresses in use on my network are incorrect because they do not begin with 192.168.

Oh my.

Wil Wheaton, yes, that Wil Wheaton, posted a great piece about his recent experience camping.

Long story short? Wil takes family camping. Discovers that the campground has Wifi. Watches kid glued to a PS2, rather than playing with the gaggle of other kids all around him. Laments. Wonders. Writes.

One thing he mentioned that strikes a chord with me – parents that have the DVD player going in the car for taking junior to the mall, the supermarket, church, or whatever. Can’t your kid spend 10 minutes apart from animated fantasyland? Mine can. Heck, our minivan has a DVD player in it. We’ve never turned it on in front of the kids. In fact, I’ve only ever turned it on once to test it. Why get it? The van already had it installed.

It gets worse. A couple of months back, Heather went to Target, with Alex in tow. She encountered this lady pushing her 2-ish year old kid around in the cart, complete with an elaborate rig of entertainment. The child safely seated in the cart, strapped into the shopping cart seat liner to keep the germs away (come on, what mom doesn’t have a stack of wipes the size of your head stashed away?) along with a carefully attached portable DVD player playing the Backyardigans for the kid.

Come on people, don’t you think junior can stand to spend an hour away from Pablo and Tyrone? Think back to when you were a kid, back in the days before the DVD. What did you do to occupy the time at the store? Played with a small toy? Read a book? Used your imagination? Amazing how we didn’t need portable DVD players plastered on our shopping carts.

Nice job Wil.

Holy crap. I feel like Rod Serling’s going to come walking out from around the next corner lamenting about a world where all web portals look exactly the same.

Go take a look at Yahoo. Ok, done? Now go to the new AOL 3.0 beta site. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but come on kids, can’t you think of something new to do?

The RIAA is at it again.

They’ve officially reached a new low. I expect infomercials soon.

So, they provide a model letter to ISPs, and then decide to tell the ISP they’re going to sue the person at some IP address. They inform the ISP their intent to subpoena your identity information, and your ISP notifies you of this. If you act now, you can save $1000 on your settlement with the RIAA!

Nevermind that precedent has been set on more than one occasion, showing that the RIAA sued the wrong person…

I swear, these guys must be the biggest dopes walking.

This morning, Heather told me of the emails going around on her Mom’s group email list. Seems that common sense is in short supply these days. At least that’s the impression I got from the emails she read to me.

First up, Purell. It seems that Purell is now the devil. Some parent didn’t heed the warning on the package to “Keep out of reach of children”, and put it on the edge of the bathroom sink. What did her curious toddler do? Same thing any other one would — took a drink. The kid’s ok, didn’t die, but now some of the Moms are on a campaign to rid the world of Purell. Don’t get me wrong, I think Purell is far over-used in our culture. We’re building stronger germs over time because of it. However, I think it’s a wonderful thing when you need to quickly sanitize your hands and for whatever reason, washing your hands isn’t an option.

Next, Magnetix, a toy for older kids that I’ve never heard of. Seems that back in late 2005, a toddler swallowed a couple of magnets from his older brother’s Magnetix toys. The magnets wended their way through the child’s intestines, eventually attracting the attention of each other, twisting the child’s small intestines around to the point of killing the child. This tragedy, while terrible, could have been avoided by not putting the child in a position to eat the magnets in the first place. Even if the bits weren’t magnets, they’re still a choking hazard, are they not? If they’re a choking hazard, they shouldn’t be within the reach of a toddler like that either, now should they?

Parents, let’s all whip out our common sense and band together against reactionary fury over such easily avoidable problems. Here’s a set of basic rules to follow:

1. If it says “Keep out of reach of children”, then do it.
2. If it’s small enough for a toddler to choke on, keep it away from the toddler
3. If it’s probably going to hurt the child when he/she is unsupervised, find somewhere else to put it.

As parents, we need to realize that we’re the responsible ones. So, go be responsible already.

Ok, so the other day, I read a blog entry on TUAW which discussed a cost comparison between the 17” MacBook Pro and the Dell XPS M1710. I didn’t think the comparison was comprehensive enough, so I took it upon myself to do my own.

On the Mac side, I chose one from each of the 3 flavors of portables — the MacBook, the 15” MacBook Pro and the 17” MacBook Pro. Using the specs of those systems as a guide, I selected competing Dell systems that were closest in configuration to those. The only exception was at the 15” size. Dell does not currently offer a 15” notebook that uses a 2.16 Ghz Core 2 Duo processor. As a result, I selected the Thinkpad T60 widescreen version, which offers a 15.4” widescreen with the 2.16 Ghz Core 2 Duo. Further, Dell does not offer a 13.3” system at all, so I selected a 12.1” instead. Choosing the 14” E1405 does not significantly affect the comparison, as the E1405 came in $18 cheaper than the XPS M1210. Rounding out the comparison is the 17” Dell XPS M1710.

I read some very insightful stuff on Roughly Drafted today, mostly about the Zune. The artwork alone practically had me crying with laughter. Witness….

(more…)

These guys are just scary. If you haven’t heard about it, go read it for yourself.

How can you get to be an adult and not understand the difference between 0.002 cents and 0.002 dollars?

Don’t get me wrong, not everyone at VZW is like this. The guys I know over there (*not* customer service call center guys!) are good guys and are pretty smart to boot. Maybe they should give basic math lessons to their co-workers.

Currently playing in iTunes: Dani California by Red Hot Chili Peppers