The Best Way To Vote

I have an early memory of going with my mother to vote at a polling place.  I don't remember exactly what year it was, but it would have been either 1980 (when I would have been four), 1984, or somewhere in between.  I do remember going behind a big curtain and watching her pull big metal levers and thinking that looked like fun.

The first time I ever voted was in 1996.  I registered in Kittitas County and signed up for an absentee ballot, which my mother forwarded to me in Pullman.  I voted for Clinton and a conservative friend of mine scolded me for "voting for a criminal" (he is now one of my more liberal friends).

Since then I have voted in most elections, but never at my designated polling place.  I know a number of people who insist on going to the polls because it holds some sort of romance for them.  However it still seems silly to me, perhaps because I'm all for modern conveniences.

I filled out my ballot last night, and as I did so I looked up what I could about the various candidates and initiatives on the Internet.  Just about every candidate has a website where they list their views on the issues as well as their endorsements.  The Seattle PI and other local papers have dedicated pages where they list their endorsements and links to write-ups where they explain their positions.

So after spending about an hour with my ballot and my Mac, my ballot is almost completely filled in and I am pretty confident in my choices.  To have a similar feeling going to the polls, I'd have to do all of my research ahead of time and take a list with me, which I'm not sure I would do.

I'm happy to see that absentee balloting is on the rise throughout the country.  I believe that this leads to more informed votes instead of just voting a party line or for those names that sound the most familiar, or in the case of initiatives just for whatever sounds best based on the two sentence description.

So take my advice, stay home on election day... just don't forget to vote.

The Race

It's been so long since I've posted that Safari didn't autocomplete blogger.com for me.  My only excuse is that I've been updating my Facebook status with some regularity.

In the meantime I have been pretty engrossed in the election.  Never before has politics grabbed my attention and kept it for so long.  Why is that?  I think there are two reasons.

The first is that as I've gotten older, my interest in politics and news in general has risen.  I used to spend my time in the car listening to Howard Stern and Tom Leykis, now it is almost exclusively NPR.  Does the world in general just become more interesting as we age?

Secondly is that I haven't been all that happy about where our country has been going politically for quite some time.  I don't consider myself too closely aligned with either party, but I have strong political views.  Recently I'm getting more and more hopeful that the majority is coming to realize that fighting an effective war on terror doesn't mean toppling any regime we don't like without thoughtful planning, or that letting gay people enjoy the benefits of marriage doesn't diminish anyone else's relationship, or that from a scientific perspective, there is no dispute that humankind was shaped by evolution.

So as you might guess, the recent polling data is leading me to get my hopes up that November 4th is going to be a good day for me.  Becky and I are thinking of having some friends over that night.  I'm planning on being glued to the TV all night, but I think that it will be like a major sporting event where having others around pulling for the same team will make a victory all the more savory.

After watching these campaigns for almost two years now it's hard to believe that it will all be over in just 19 days.  One big reason to look forward to the getting the election behind us is that I think there is a lot of news being obscured by the race.  It has taken a complete meltdown of our financial system to steal the headlines from the candidates, though now that the bailout has passed the economy seems to be talked about more often as a factor in the race then as its own standalone issue.

It's almost time to stop worrying about who's going to be fixing this nation and start worrying about how he's actually going to fix it.

iPhone Family

Since all of the stores opened at 8:00 AM on the 11th, I decided to get in line again.  This time I showed up at 4:30 in the morning at Bellevue Square and met my friend and fellow Apple fanboy Jeremy there.  The time in line went by very quickly, due mainly to the fact that I was able to talk with other like-minded people to pass the time.

While I was waiting I saw that the iPhone 2.0 software update had become available, so I figured I'd install on my first generation iPhone and play with it.  For some reason after the software is installed iTunes needs to connect to the same servers that were used for activating the iPhone 3G, which were completely overwhelmed.  As a result my phone was temporarily "bricked."

I was about 15th in line, so I got into the store with the first wave of customers at 8.  The first step was to sign a new AT&T contract from one of the Apple Store handhelds, which couldn't connect initially but worked after a few minutes.  Next came the activation, which simply wouldn't work for anyone by this time, and Apple received a lot of bad press for it (though that didn't stop them from selling a million units over the weekend).  When we finally left, without activating, the line had gotten pretty long and was moving very slowly.  Jeremy took a video of it and uploaded it to YouTube.

For the next few hours I had two iPhones, neither of which really worked, until finally my activation got through.  So far I've been happy with it.  The GPS came in handy during our trip to Port Angeles and the difference between 2G and 3G is definitely noticeable.  The one major drawback (aside from higher monthly fees) is that I'm having to manage the battery life more.

As anyone with using the iPhone 2.0 OS will tell you, the real difference is the App Store.  I've gotten a lot of use out of Twitteriffic, Pandora, AIM, Remote, and NYTimes, and I've only just scratched the surface.

Becky, though she wouldn't admit it, has been looking forward to me getting the new iPhone because she now has my old one. Right off the bat she's been using it a lot, playing Sudoku and Scrabble.  She also used to always complained that she never had time during the day to check her email, especially since Blake likes to play with her laptop whenever she gets it out.  With her iPhone it's much more accessible.

Now Kyla is starting to ask about when she'll get an iPhone.

I'm So Vain

I just did a vanity search on Google, and noticed that my main website, www.hovenkotter.com only came in 6th.  Entries from this blog came in 4th.  So I'm going to link the term Brett Hovenkotter in this blog (which I know gets crawled by Google since it is done with Blogger) to see if I can increase my ranking.

The page one results look like this:

• My LinkedIn profile
• My Flickr page (which I haven't updated since moving to iWeb/.Mac in April 2007)
• A professional profile on something called spoke.com, which looks like a site built by harvesting data from LinkedIn
• Two entries from this blog (I'd be fine if this was first).  The first entry is recent, but the second is over a year old.
• The Hovenkotter Family website (www.hovenkotter.com)
• A couple of posts I entered on TheServerSide, the earlier of which is from 2003.
• A profile I created on the TWiki website in 2005 so I could post a question to their forum.

I don't know if it will help, but I'm going to link my name, Brett Hovenkotter, again just in case. And I'll link Brett Hovenkotter's blog to this site.

Mission: iPhone, The Sequel

When the original iPhone was released, I was the first person in all of Issaquah to get my hands on one. This was thanks in large part to my father who volunteered to hold a place in line for me at the AT&T store at seven until I relieved him at nine (seems fitting since I get my obsessive tendencies from him).

Now the iPhone 3G is coming July 11th, and of course I want one. The question is, should I get in line like I did last year, or should I wait?

It wasn't all that inconvenient to spend the day in line because I had a chair, my laptop, and a WiFi signal from the Starbucks across the street (allowing me to work that day), though a number of people I know were able to pick up the original iPhone at an Apple Store after only spending a couple hours in line because those stores had a larger inventory of them and an army of workers with handheld credit card readers to move the line quickly. However this time around it sounds like an in-store activation will be required so that AT&T can insure that its subsidy doesn't benefit unlockers, which will slow the line considerably.

Perhaps it isn't worth it this time around because the new iPhone isn't head and shoulders above the current iPhone, the main benefits are 3G data speeds and GPS. The original iPhone was light years ahead of any phone I'd used before, which justified the excitement. The most significant upgrade is the iPhone 2.0 software (third party apps, push Exchange support), which will be available to the current generation iPhone as well.

Regardless, I know that my patience will dwindle as the big day arrives. Right now I'm formulating a strategy to be at the Bellevue Apple Store when it opens Saturday, July 12th. Because of the in store activations, I bet there will still be stock the next day, the wait will be more tolerable, and I won't have to worry about getting work done. As more details about launch day are revealed, I'll continue to develop my plan.

Clearly my interest in this piece of consumer electronics is excessive. With my father it was about cars, with me it's computers and other devices, at least my interests are cheaper.

MobileBrett

Along with the iPhone hardware and software updates, Apple announced that .Mac was going to be replaced with a new service called MobileMe, which brings push features for mail, calendar, and contacts as well as rich Web apps to access them.  The technology is very impressive and I'm very excited to use it.  The disappointing part is that I'm going to change email services again.

I've written about going from Gmail to .Mac for my email, and back to Gmail again.  In order to enjoy MobileMe's push email (where the server notifies the client when a new email has been received, as opposed to the client periodically polling) and new Web apps, which appear to be superior to Gmail's, I need to receive all of my email through it.

Even though I can just forward my Gmail address to MobileMe (which also gives me the benefit of Gmail's awesome spam filter), switching still sucks because I won't have my email history from the past three years in one place.  However I had the same consequences moving from Yahoo to Gmail and I don't remember it being a big deal (how often does one really need to dig up old email?).

The nice thing is that whenever I update a contact or calendar event on my computer it will be pushed to my iPhone immediately (and vice versa).  Plus MobileMe is a little cleaner to use Mail.app with than Gmail.

Should it make me nervous that I am continually growing more and more dependent on Apple's products?  They all integrate very well, which makes the single vendor dependence worthwhile, but if Apple closed up shop tomorrow I would be stuck migrating to different applications and services for much of my digital life.

Netflix vs Blockbuster Online

I've been a happy customer of Blockbuster Online since 2005.  At the time, Blockbuster was a little cheaper than Netflix, and while I knew a lot of people hold grudges against Blockbuster for late fees they've incurred in the past, I'd never really had a bad experience with them.

A couple weeks ago I read an article that referenced the old PBS documentary about the rise of the PC called Triumph of the Nerds, which I had seen when I was in high school.  I went to see if Blockbuster had the documentary available, but it wasn't there.  Next I went to Netflix's site and lo and behold they had it.

Technically I am now a subscriber of both services, though I will soon be canceling Blockbuster. Since I feel like I understand both pretty well, I thought I'd offer some comparisons.

Blockbuster's killer feature is Total Access, where you can return DVDs you received by mail at a store and get a new DVD for free.  Consumers who live near a Blockbuster store and watch a lot of movies will find this to be a key differentiator.  I however, live about 10 minutes away from my nearest store and almost never go there.  If I really needed a movie or TV show immediately I have Apple TV.  The only other thing that is in Blockbuster's favor is their envelopes, which are slightly smaller than Netflix's and show the movie's title without having to actually pull the DVD out.

One thing that really irritates me about Blockbuster is the fact that if you put a DVD in your queue that is part of a series, you have to put the whole series in together. This was an issue when Becky and I started watching Dexter on Apple TV and I wanted to finish the season with DVDs (Apple TV charges $1.99 per episode). I had to get the first disk of the season before getting to the second disk, but we'd already watched all of the episodes on the first disk already. Blockbuster didn't always force you to do this, I'm not sure why they decided on this "feature."

Obviously Netflix appears to have the advantage of a deeper catalog (at least they had one title Blockbuster didn't).  Also Netflix's website is much friendlier and prettier than Blockbuster's. The search dialog auto-completes a la Google Suggest and the Ajax-iness works a lot better, at least with Safari and Firefox.

So bottom line I would recommend Netflix over Blockbuster for anyone who wouldn't take advantage of Total Access.  Netflix also has a video-on-demand service, but between the DVDs and Apple TV I see no use for it for me personally.

Abandoning the Pirate Ship

After installing Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 on my MacBook Pro, I no longer had any need for Photoshop CS, so I dragged it to AppZapper, and it's gone.  Usually this would not be an event worth noting, but it is significant in that the last piece of software that came to my laptop illegally has been purged.

When I first got my Powerbook, a friend of mine hooked me up with Photoshop, Office, and a few other applications.  At the time money was tight since Kyla was less than a year old and we were adjusting to living off of only my income; plus I had just dropped $2500 on a computer.

Since then I've taken higher paying jobs, so I've ignored the whispers of The Pirate Bay and ponied up my credit card to get new software.  I've long wanted to get a legit copy of Photoshop, but I wasn't going to shell out $700 for CS2 or CS3, and Elements has until this most recent version been PowerPC only.

Software piracy is kind of a funny crime.  Software companies will publicly state that it is the same as stealing, but I don't really buy that.  If you're pirating software that you wouldn't otherwise purchase, the software maker isn't really losing anything.  But if the application is actually worth the price to you, then piracy is harmful.

In may ways there are positive side-effects of software piracy on the developers.  I started off pirating several applications that I later purchased, so clearly that was beneficial.  Many people will pirate expensive programs at home, then get their employers to pay for copies for them to use at work.  How many copies of Photoshop has Adobe sold to people whose first experience with it was a copy that they got from a friend or downloaded off of a P2P network?

As long as what your doing eventually puts money into the proper hands, I think your conscience should rest easy.  Otherwise you're a free rider who's making the software cost more for the rest of us.

A Great Example of Why I Support Obama

Politicians are constantly making laws as a reaction to a situation that do little to alleviate that situation or make it worse.  Good examples include Sarbanes Oxley and the Patriot Act.

John McCain has proposed a gas tax holiday this summer and Hillary Clinton quickly voiced her support.  This makes sense because it makes them look like they're trying to do something for consumers while gas climbs to $4 a gallon.

There are several problems with this idea in my opinion.  First of all, higher gas prices have positive side effects like discouraging the burning of fossil fuels and making alternative energy sources more attractive.  Also, those gas taxes are used to fund certain public services, so either those budgets will have to be cut or governments will have to take on more debt.  The kicker is that much, if not most, of that tax revenue will go to oil companies, not consumers.

I'm pleased to see Barack Obama is going against the tide here, even though it will likely cost him political points.  He must know that this position will likely turn off rural and less affluent voters whom he is currently struggling with.

To be fair, John McCain also has a history of taking positions based on principles even when it might cost him votes, like when he referred to Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance" in his first presidential campaign (which he has since backpedaled on) and when he told Michigan that the labor jobs it had lost to globalization weren't coming back.

But this gas tax holiday is simply a bad idea, and this is generally the consistent view of economists.  Voters need more politicians who are willing to level with them and cut the pandering BS to move our country forward.

Jury Duty

I received one of those dreaded jury duty notices a while ago, but I had no idea what kind of experience lay ahead of me.

I was picked for a jury pool, but I was number 40 and figured there was little chanced I'd end up in the jury box.  In the end, I was the last person to become one of the 13 jurors.

It was a criminal trial where the defendant was charged with two counts of second-degree rape and one count of felony harassment (threatening to kill someone).  At times, it was extremely compelling, a bit closer to the dramatized trials I've seen on TV and movies than I expected.  But other times it was slow; our breaks were long (thank goodness for the courthouse's WiFi) and there were a lot of sidebars (where the lawyers and judge talk outside of the courtroom and we are left in a weird silence).

Watching the testimony of many of the witnesses was engaging, though I felt bad to see the victim and her daughter recount their painful stories, while the other witnesses' testimony (police officers, lab technicians, social worker, nurse) consisted mainly of them going over their resumes and procedures for 25 minutes and giving us useful information for 5.  The best part was the testimony of the defendant, who had some hostile back and forth with the prosecutor (though I tried not to let this influence me as an innocent man would also not be friendly to the person trying to put them in prison).

Finally we got to the deliberations.  I volunteered to be the presiding juror (AKA the foreman). Most of the jurors engaged in the conversation and made good points (though one guy just seemed confused).  I think we did a great job going over all of the relevant evidence and analyzing the important facts.

Two of the counts (there were three total) were pretty easy since the evidence was pretty overwhelming.  On both of these no one ever cast a "not-guilty" vote.  The last count was more difficult because the evidence was circumstantial.  We started with this count, and after two half days on it we were stuck at 10 guilty, 1 not-guilty, and 1 abstaining, so we went on to the "easy" counts before coming back to it.

Our votes were always anonymous, but everyone knew who was on what side of the fence.  After we ruled on the first two counts, a few people briefly seemed to switch to not-guilty for the last, probably because they figured the defendant was already going to prison and the evidence on the other rape was stronger, but after we went over the facts again we returned to 10 voting guilty.

On the last day we focused on trying to find reasonable doubt for the last count.  Finally we took a vote and were unanimous.  After everyone returned to the courtroom we all filed back into the jury box one last time and the bailiff took our ruling forms from me to the court reporter, who read them out-loud.  I had assumed that I would be the one to read the verdicts, which is what you see on TV, but I was happy not to be the bearer of bad news.

Now I am left with some interesting reflections.

First of all, my confidence in the criminal justice system has increased.  If I ever am put on trial for a crime I didn't commit (not that I expect to) and I had this jury, I'm pretty confident I would be acquitted.  There was a strong sense of wanting to honor the innocent until proven guilty directive.

But as far as feeling satisfied with the ruling, I am conflicted.  My impression of the defendant, from what little I know of him, is that he is basically a good person who got his heart broken and reacted by doing some unforgivable things to the victim.  It's important to have punishments to act as deterrents, and if he wasn't prosecuted this guy could have done the same things to someone else; but there is still a part of me that feels sorry for him.

In the end however, it really wasn't our call as jurors.  Our job was simply to determine if we believed the defendant was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of committing the crimes we were presented with.  The judge is responsible for exacting the punishment.

I can safely say that this experience was one of the most interesting of my life.  I doubt I'll ever end up on a trial as compelling as this one again, but the next time I get one of those jury duty notices in the mail, my spirits are more likely to rise than fall.

The Slow Creep of the Mac

There has been a watershed event in the world of the Macintosh, my mother is now the proud owner of a new MacBook. She had no prior Mac experience though she did have an Apple II in her classroom during the '80s, but I'm pretty sure I used it more than she did.

The kicker is she absolutely loves it.  The day after she bought it she had left it at my place for fear that it might be stolen while she was out shopping, and that night my sister Cassie came to get it back for her because she wouldn't leave Cassie's MacBook alone.  She's been using IM regularly as well as video-chatting with her grandkids.

I'm very surprised by the number of switchers since I entered the Mac world back in 2005, it seems most of my family has followed me since then, though I don't know exactly how much I influenced them.  My brother Kyle actually beat me to switching by almost a year.

Becky became a switcher just because she received my old Powerbook as a hand-me-down, but she has admitted to liking it better than Windows, which is significant because she is usually very skeptical of any new technology I try to impose on her.  She gave Linux a chance back in 2001 when I tried to use it as the primary OS on our home computer, but quickly became frustrated and we had a rebooting war for a while before I finally gave in and left Windows up full time.

I have nothing against Microsoft (especially since a collapse in its stock price would probably drag my property value down with it).  In fact, I really like a number of their products like Exchange, Visual Studio (to an extent), and the C# programming language, but after spending time using OS X, Windows really loses its luster. I still haven't spent much time with Vista though what I've read doesn't lead me to believe that it would do much to change my mind.

The Apple (TV) of My Eye

The last major piece of my multimedia setup is now in place.  A couple weeks ago I purchased an Apple TV (all but $18 of which was financed by Christmas gifts) and one week ago I received the "Take 2" software update.  Before I bought it I did have some hesitation that our family might not get a lot of use out of it.  I can now safely say that those fears have been extinguished.

The Apple TV syncs off of the iMac (it makes the most sense to use the computer that is always at home), but you can stream content off of any computer via iTunes.

Music

My entire music collection has been synced to it and once in a while I play classical music just in case it really does make the kids smarter.  Otherwise I haven't played music on it too often, but this feature will come in handy for parties.  I'll have to manually copy new music from my laptop to the iMac for it to sync, but that's okay since the iMac's iTunes library will be the "family" media library and include more kids music.

Pictures

I'm also syncing my entire iPhoto library to it.  We haven't found much use for the photo browsing feature yet because it's so much easier to navigate pictures with a computer, but the Apple TV's screen saver shows random pictures from your library float by and we often find ourselves just watching it.  I wrote a simple rsync command to sync my laptop's photo library with the iMac.

TV Shows

I didn't think we'd ever really use this feature, but a number of my friends had mentioned that they liked the new Terminator show, which was now up to its fifth episode.  So I bought the pilot episode through Apple TV and are able to catch up at $1.99 an episode.  I'm not tempted to cut off the cable yet because none of iTunes' TV content is in HD and there's no way to watch live sporting events or news (I watch a lot of CNN during election years).

Movies

One night when Kyla was sick Becky wanted to watch a movie with her.  She was looking at the On Demand selection but nothing was jumping out at her.  I mentioned that she could get one through iTunes (we didn't have Apple TV at the time, but I hooked Becky's laptop up to the TV), and that night Kyla saw The Little Mermaid for the first time.  We've now bought several Disney movies this way.

Getting Rid of Disks

I've been playing with Handbreak a lot, learning to fiddle with the quality settings.  This isn't a simple process like ripping CDs with iTunes, but I'm getting the hang of it.  Once they're there, accessing movies via Apple TV is much faster and easier than having to deal with disks.

Movie Rentals

I love browsing the movie rentals on my Apple TV and have been really tempted a couple of times to buy one, but then I remember that I have kids that don't always sleep well and that it is highly unlikely that I'll finish the movie in the alloted 24 hours.  When Becky and I watch movies we typically spread them over two or three nights, and with Netflix or Blockbuster Online, you can do that.  If Apple extended this limit to 72 hours, I'd cancel my Blockbuster subscription tomorrow.  I'm not in the market for a Blu ray player (I flirted with the idea of buying an HD DVD player a couple months ago, thank goodness I decided against it), I would like to just skip the whole disk thing and go straight to downloads.

I know I'm not alone with this complaint, so I'm guessing Apple will figure this one out eventually (the first step might be a 99 cent time limit extension, but that will get costly).

Home Movies

My other big complaint is that Apple TV does not sync the iMovie Events library.  I really would like to see my home movies sync to the TV automatically, without having to include them in the iTunes library (which would be silly since I'd have to have space for two copies of every movie).  This feature may not be highly demanded yet since iMovie '08 first introduced the whole movie library concept, but its a gap that should be filled soon.

Future?

I believe that Apple TV may have a bright future if Apple plays it's cards right.  Last night Becky was telling my mother how much she liked it, which is a good sign.  Becky is a good barometer for a technology's broader appeal since she is young, bright, and moderately tech-savvy, but has no patience anything that doesn't "just work."  Some examples: she was very happy with TiVo, her iPod nano, likes my iPhone and plans to use it once I upgrade after the 3G model comes out, and likes Mac OS X despite having been very comfortable with Windows; however she couldn't stand Linux no matter how hard I tried to use it as our primary OS back in 2001.

My advice to Apple would be to get a bigger selection of movies available for rent (especially those in HD) and then start airing commercials so that more people find out that this thing exists.  It is less expensive than a Blu ray player and has many more features.

Goodbye to an Old Friend

Yesterday I took the first computer I ever built to RE-PC to get recycled.  I haven't booted it in over a year and we've been trying to get rid of some old junk lately, so it was time for this machine to go.  It felt rather unjust to have to pay someone $15 to take something I paid $2,200 for eight years ago.

In 2000 I knew I wanted a new desktop computer, and couldn't decide whether I should try to build my own or just order one from Dell.  Eventually I figured that if I really wanted to call myself a computer geek I should go the home brew route.  I bought a beige case, an 800 MHz Athlon processor, 256 MB of memory, mid-range video and audio cards, and a 19" monitor (I think that cost more than $500).

Initially I installed Windows 98 on this box (which was later named "Ironhide"), and at one point I was triple-booting Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Red Hat Linux 6.2.  I tried to move to Linux full time, but Becky didn't have my patience and she would constantly reboot back into Windows.  Around 2003 I gave up waiting for Linux to become a useable desktop OS (I kept thinking, this will be the year!) and Ironhide ran Windows full time.

In 2004 I felt like it was time to upgrade, so I assembled my second homemade computer and installed Windows XP on it and Ironhide was repurposed to run Fedora Core full time as a headless server.  It hosted a website I built using the latest Java technologies that hosted pictures of Kyla and my first blog.  Eventually this site moved to Blogger and Flickr and ultimately to .Mac, so I shut Ironhide down to save on electricity.

After buying the new iMac it was clear that Ironhide needed to go, along with that huge monitor.  I'm keeping the 2nd desktop, named Megatron, for now even though I no longer have a monitor for it, just in case I find a use for it.

I really love using Macs, which have the elegance of Linux and the usefulness of Windows, but I do miss building my own systems.  On the other hand that aluminum and glass iMac looks a hell of a lot prettier than anything I would build.

New Addition

Our family is now the proud owner of a brand new iMac.  I feel like I got a great deal since I found it on Craig's List and it was still in its shipping box.

I had several motivations for this purchase:

1. I wanted a home server. I used to leave on an old computer running Linux, and that computer was very old (I built it in 2000) and I don't think it was very energy efficient.  iMacs use mainly laptop components which should consume less power.
   
2. I wanted a computer that acts as a file server for all of my video content.  I can't keep all of our home movies stored on my MacBook Pro, and getting out an external hard drive every time I wanted to access it was irritating.  The iMac has a Firewire 400 and a Firewire 800 port, plus a gigabit ethernet port, so accessing an external hard drive attached to it over the network should be very fast.
3. I wanted a computer for the kids to use.  Kyla plays games on my laptop or Becky's regularly, and I'm always afraid that they will get damaged (my wireless Mighty Mouse was almost a casualty).  If they use a desktop computer the risk is really only to the keyboard and mouse.
4. I wanted something that looked nicer.  Becky and I have been cleaning out a lot of old junk, and my old setup in the den was something of an eye sore.  The iMac replaces the following components: a large beige PC tower, a black PC tower, a big 19" beige CRT, and a dark gray speaker and subwoofer set.  The iMac's all-in-one design takes up far less space and is much prettier.
5. I wanted a homogenous Mac environment.  The more you use Apple's products, the more you discover synergies between them.  Also, since the kids will be using this computer, there is a real virus risk if they use Windows.  Don't worry Microsoft, I'll be running a legally purchased copy of XP via Boot Camp and Parallels on occasion, plus I bought Office 2008 (which is pretty nice).

I strategically proposed this purchase to Becky at the same time we found out we were getting a healthy return from the IRS.  After the purchase of the TV, she is due for a purchase herself, though we both would like to save and invest the majority of our recent positive cash flow, which is why I was motivated to find a bargain.

Mouse Resurrected

So since writing my last post about my dead Mighty Mouse, I had decided that I would buy a new one despite its shortcomings.  After spending some time with a normal mouse I found myself really missing the Mighty Mouse's scroll ball which is very smooth and goes horizontally.

After the Macworld keynote which didn't include any mouse-related announcements (none were expected, but I was just making sure) I was finally ready to order a new one, when it dawned on me that I ought to see if there was anyway to bring my broken mouse back to life.  I discovered a site that describes how to disassembly a Mighty Mouse, waited until the kids went to bed and got started.

The tools required were a razor blade and a flathead screwdriver.  After getting it taken apart I found the small plastic piece that protrudes down from the mouse's top cover and contacts a button on the mouse's base.  It was bent and not properly contacting the button, so I bent it back, put the thing back together, and my mouse is back!

It's an awesome feeling knowing that I just saved myself $70, which is better spent on other things... I'll go into that later.

The Mouse That Died

Kyla often plays online Flash games using my Mac. She isn't very good with the trackpad, so I let her use my mouse instead.  Over the holiday weekend she dropped my bluetooth Mighty Mouse on the floor and it broke. She's only three and I should have known better than to have her use my $80 mouse (now they're only $70, but that's what I paid).

So now I'm left wondering what kind of mouse I should replace it with. Most people don't really pay attention to what type of mouse they use, but a mouse is the main means by which we interact with our computers and a good mouse can be significant productivity boost.

One of the most baffling moments in my career was when I was at a client who had just issued me a brand new high end, dual-Xeon workstation... along with the very cheapest ball mouse on the market. This was really stupid.  Why have me use some $2,500 monster computer with a $5 mouse whose ball would get constantly stuck and required several minutes of my time every week to pull the thing apart and clean it? The extra $15 for a decent laser mouse would have been quickly recouped since I was an hourly consultant.

I don't know whether I should get a new Mighty Mouse, or go with something more exotic like the Logitech VX series.  The Mighty Mouse wasn't perfect, it felt like half the time it didn't register a right-click correctly and bluetooth is overrated since I always had to re-pair it after the connection was lost, but after having gone without it for about a day I realize how often I used the horizontal scroll, and I don't see anything comparable in other mice.

If I do go for another Mighty Mouse I might wait a couple of weeks since conventional wisdom dictates that you shouldn't buy any Apple products prior to Macworld.  I haven't yet heard of any rumors regarding a new mouse, but after following keynotes for a few years now I know that there is typically at least one thing revealed that the rumor sites didn't catch wind of.

Welcome to High Definition

Finally, I have HD.  I now own a 52" Samsung flat-screen LCD that supports 1080p resolution. This is a big step up from my 32" tube television, but I figured that since I don't buy televisions often, I ought to buy something that would keep me satisfied for a long time.

I really wanted to get TiVo HD, but the CableCARD doesn't support On Demand, which we use from time to time (especially for Kyla's cartoons).  Instead I've got the latest Motorola cable box/DVR.  It's definitely a lot more responsive than the old cable box, but after enjoying TiVo's intuitive user interface for over three years I'm really nonplused by my replacement for it. For now TiVo will live on upstairs in our bedroom while I figure out whether or not it is still worth the extra $13 per month (I should have bought that lifetime plan).

The Samsung's picture is awesome.  I've watched some 1080p movie trailers on it (I hooked my MacBook Pro to it with a DVI to HDMI cable) and was blown away by all of the detail I could see.  I also watched a couple of DVDs on it and they look so much better than on the old set, but this is partially because I'm using component video cables for the first time with my DVD player (my old TV supports component video but I only recently figured this out, silly me).

If either Blu-ray or HD DVD were winning the format war I would pony up for an HD player, but as far as I can tell they are still neck and neck. If I were to buy one today I would probably go with HD DVD because they are far cheaper and Blu-ray is struggling with three different standards, but for now I'll stay on the sidelines. I'm still really enjoying watching the DVDs I already have and I can get HD movies via On Demand. Perhaps by the time the war is over we'll be downloading HD movies online (got to love the Highlands Fiber Network).

Unfortunately the TV didn't make it for Becky's birthday party (though it would have been a big distraction while we were toiling away with party prep), but at the party I described our big purchase to one of our friends who informed me that we would be hosting a Super Bowl party this year.

Go Seahawks!