Sunday, October 24, 2004

Car PC - way cool!

Alright, so I saw one of the coolest geeky things I have ever seen at J.P.'s Car PC Weblog.

There is something about the concept of having a PC in your car that is interesting to me. I was actually thinking about this concept a few months ago (that it would be nice to be able to have GPS and at least part of my MP3 collection in particular). It would also be cool to let the kids play their computer games on the road. We have been thinking about adding a DVD system to our family van anyway - instead of spending $400 on an entertainment system, why not put that money toward a car PC?

Well, to be completely honest, I thought that some of those stripped down pictures of J.P.'s Jeep made me a little nervous. I think that my wife would kill me if I started taking interior panels off our Odyssey.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Enough with the holy wars already!

I’ve been using my Palm for just more than two weeks now and I am pleased to say that I am enjoying it quite a bit. I have largely adjusted to the small nuances that bugged me at first and have found an actual increase in my productivity with the Palm. I find it very interesting that Microsoft’s support for their own office documents is so weak in the Pocket PC world (or even more surprising that there have been no real changes to the applications since they were first released). That’s another post though.

Thinking about the switch-over has returned me to a long-standing question about the technology holy wars that so many people propagate. I have worked in the IT industry for years and if I hear even one more Windows vs. UNIX vs. Macintosh discussion, I will probably just fall over dead on the spot. Then there’s MS Word vs. WordPerfect or Intel vs. AMD or Pocket PC vs. Palm. I have even heard people debate firewire vs. USB 2.0. Is there no end? Let’s get over it people!

I have said for a long time that there is no point in arguing who is right, but only what is right. In the world of computing, my simple rule is, “If it works for you…use it.” Well, truth be told, my real rule is probably something more like, “If it’s new…I will wish I had it” – but I digress. Just because I prefer using a PC doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t consider Macs (I actually enjoy using one every once in a while down at school). In reality, the computing world has never been this cross-platform friendly. Go ahead and try to name a word processing program that won’t allow you to save in RTF…I dare you!

Nobody has a perfect product. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses. Use what works best for you and leave the next user to their own opinion. Just remember that not everyone thinks that your Zarus PDA running Linux that you connect to your OS 2 system to download OpenOffice documents is cool.

There you have it – my two cents on the technology holy wars…what’s yours?

Friday, October 01, 2004

No respect!

I would say that most of my geeky interests go unappreciated at home. Sure, there have been those days when the GPS really came through or I was able to pull up great uncle Bedford's sister-in-law's phone number while we were on vacation, but most things are endured instead of appreciated in our home. Add blogging to that latter list as of last night.

I showed my wife this blog and gave her the 10 second explanation about what a blog is. Her only reaction..."That's weird."

Well, it is a little strange, but in a cool kind of way. It's one of those ''why...because I can kind of things" that just may stick for one.

What about you? What does your significant other think about your blog?