Ahoy!

I will proudly say I am an Old Spice man. In my 33 years of life the only deodorant I have ever used is Old Spice. Sure, every once in a while I had to borrow somebody else's when I ran out at home or forgot it at the gym, but I have never purchased another product. And with Bruce Campbell doing commercials like this, what guy would ever buy anything else?


However, I recently made a product switch within the Old Spice family. Since grade school, I had used the exact same product, but this month, I finally tried something new. You might say it would be crazy to make such a change, but I was kind of forced to. Below, I will document my deodorant usage for all to enjoy. Has anyone else made such a dramatic deodorant change? Did it turn out messy?

Old Spice Classic Deodorant
This is the grand daddy of all deodorants, the "Original Round Stick Formula". I started using this bad boy when first needed deodorant - way back at age 4. Actually, I think it was in 4th or 5th grade. Anyway, it is only deodorant. No anti-perspirant. The thing is probably 95% alchohol, and although I have no scientific proof, I think it stops odor by actually killing the sweat glands under your arm pits.


Old Spice High Endurance Deodorant
So my beloved Classic is getting harder and harder to find in stores. When I desperately needed some, I was forced to go with the next closest product. Still only a deodorant and with the same Original Scent, I assumed it wouldn't be much of a switch. After using it for a few weeks, I liked it. It actually worked better than the original, which I thought was perfect. It didn't have quite such an obnoxious smell (although that really is part of the charm), and prevented those pesky reapplications before going out at night!

Old Spice High Endurance Invisible Solid
Fresh of the high of discovering a new and better deodorant, I decided to try another new product. My previous fears of switching were gone. Now I made the leap to an anti-perspirant/deodorant. Still with the Original Scent, this was a deviation from the solid gel the previous two had. It offered an invisible solid. After 1 week, I am hooked. A very light smell with no sign of ever wearing off. With one application, I still smell good the next morning - after I go for a run! I am considering going for the Red Zone, but I don't know how Old Spice could improve upon perfection.

The Real Deal?

Jay Bruce (finally) made his first Big League appearance last night for the Reds and, man, did he ever look good...

AB	R	H	RBI	BB	K	LOB	Season Avg.
3	2	3	2	2	0	0	1.000

Now, can he keep up the momentum? Looking over the Reds roster lately, they have a ton of young potential - Bruce, Votto, Volquez, Cueto, Bailey, Encarnacion, Janish - that could anchor this team for years. I've got my fingers crossed...

The Rock Report

We're a Notre Dame family. That much is certain. Additionally, we rabidly support our football team even when times are tough (2007 still hurts). I know a lot of us read online sources for our fill of ND football news. There are literally hundreds of ND related web sites that deal with everything from recruiting to video archives to history and so on. I usually stick to a few of my favorites like Rivals and Blue-Gray Sky, although I'm sure many of you have your own.

Today I write in support of what I now believe to be hands down the best blog, maybe best website on Notre Dame football, The Rock Report. This site gets 7 to 10 posts every month during the offseason and goes upwards of 30 during the season. The posts are unbelievably well written, and they deal with topics that always drive me crazy. The Rock writes with very clear logic and a fair perspective - much like the media USED TO BE! As a result, I frequently find myself dropping his info into my arguments with all the SEC punks that I deal with on a daily basis!

Here is a recent sample of awesome posts to help explain what I mean. Give these a read, and make sure to add The Rock Report to your bookmarks!!! The first one, Enough, should be nominated for an award.

Enough
A response to the media bias against Notre Dame regarding recent "thugs and hoodlums" comment by Weis and the brouhaha over Rutgers and UConn scheduling. Maybe the best summary of my feelings of frustration with ND's portrayal by the media!

Racial Bias and Willingham
Another hotbutton topic - racism and Notre Dame. This is one of the most well thought discussions of the Willingham debacle I have read.

Chuck Long on SDSU
How many sites have an in depth analysis of our season opening opponent in May???

Crossing the Chasm (How ND Could Make the BCS)
A very good look at the potential of our team in 2008. There is hope!

The Light at the End of the Tunnel
A great discussion about how despite last season, ND is really back.

Smoking is... Bad?

Jim Leyland is the manager for the Detroit Tigers. The Tigers were picked to win the World Series this year by almost everyone, claiming they had the most imposing lineup in baseball history. Well, true to form, the Tigers are choking right now in last place of the AL Central at 18-27. Also true to form, Jim Leyland had a tirade on tape after being asked if the team lost chemistry when it lost Sean Casey. Casey is a blog favorite, so I had to give it a listen!

Edited and safe for work

However, I had to post about one of my favorite sports interviews of all-time. This one took place when Chris Myers (then with ESPN) interviewed Leyland live on ESPN. Leyland is a big-time smoker and often puffs away in the dugout. Myers asked him about his tendency to smoke in the dugout. Leyland paused for a moment, put his head down and delivered the obligatory platitudes about how bad smoking is for you, how children should avoid smoking, how he knows it's unhealthy. Then he looked directly into the camera, his eyes very wide, and said,

"Still. Smokers out there, you know what I'm talking about. That moment, after you've had a huge meal, say at Thanksgiving, when you step outside in the cold, light up a cigarette and take a deep inhale ... that's about the best moment in the world, you know? All the smokers out there, you know that feeling. Sometimes, smoking is fantastic."

Myers quickly cut to commercial. AWESOME!

A Meaningless List of Names

• Clive Handshaker
• Stephen Drew
• Nicholas T. Riley
• Nicholas B. Riley ("Nick" to his friends)
• Reginald McDaniel III
• Rufus Sinclair
• Peter Willinilly
• Jonathan O'Rourke
• William Pecan
• Ryan Barrel
• Michael Apricot
• John Jones, Jr.
• Duke Winnebago
• Louis Scallywag
• Ernest "Ernie" Tophat
• Bob Roberts
• Julie Petticoat
• Richard Hemoglobin
• Brian Shuttlecock
• Elrond Hobart
• Artie Troup
• Guy Personage
• Marian Feather
• Beatrice McGee
• Charles Gruff
• Christopher Halflife
• Jason Fishscales
• Meredith Burkewiecz
• Alexander LePlato
• Timothy Hotpants
• Joshua Scant
• Miranda Tableclothe
  

I'll Say It - I Don't Like Apple

So we recently lost an employee who was using a pretty spanking new MacBook Pro as her daily work machine. For some reason, completely unfounded, I've wanted to try switching to a Mac for awhile so I took this opportunity to give it a go. Maybe it's because I'm a bit of a techie, but whatever the case, I was back to a PC in less than a week.

Let me say something upfront - aesthetically speaking, nothing beats Apple. They are stunningly gorgeous. But, for me, they severely lack in functionality. Let me count the ways...

1. The MacBook Pro has a touch pad, but you can't use it to click on/select items. You have to use the giant click bar beneath the pad. Furthermore, there is only one(1) giant click button even though OS X supports right-click context menus. So to right click on something you need to move with the touchpad, hold down the CTRL key on the keyboard, then hit the giant click bar. It couldn't be more awkward. It was only recently that Apple even introduced a mouse with more than one button. How can a company that prides itself on usability have such ridiculously poor human interface devices?
2. No standard delete key. This is a bit petty because it's only on the MacBooks, but there is no delete key - just a backspace. So to delete a word you need to go to the end of it then backspace. After awhile I discovered you could mimic delete key functionality by holding the FN key whilst using the backspace, but that's stupid. Why change common functionality?
3. Installing applications sucks. Maybe this is because I'm a techie and I want to know exactly what's going on with my machine. To install apps on a Mac you simply drop the program into the Applications folder. To remove it, you drag it out. However, to remove it completely you need to read the application specific docs to find out all the system-level files that also need to be deleted. Why can't I just have an installer and uninstaller?
4. This one is work specific, but integration with Exchange is worthless - making it impossible to use a Mac as your day-to-day work machine in an Exchange environment (unless you're really to put up with all the retarded work-arounds available on the internet). I have to assume Apple has something up their sleeve here because the new iPhone is rumored to have full Exchange sync capabilities next month. That would seem pretty outrageous if you could fully sync your $300 Apple phone with Exchange, but not your $2000 laptop Apple computer.
5. Here's a nitpick - expanding a folder in the computer view resets the view back to the top. So I scroll down, expand the folder, then get reset and have to scroll down again. What is this? 1989?

I tried for two days, gave up, tried again for another two days, gave up. Finally, after having my hands on this machine for almost a week I put it down for good. As much as I wanted to love the Mac, I just couldn't. I've worked with every OS under the sun. The Mac OS X is nice, it's stable, but it's certainly no easier to use than Windows or even a good Linux distro.

Switching to the iPhone, I'm really tempted to get one next month - provided they fully support Exchange synchronization. However, I have to say this - am I the only person in the world who wants buttons!? I currently have a Windows Mobile device with a touchscreen and I loathe it. I absolutely hate having to use two hands to do everything (one to hold the device, one to select items on the screen). I want to be able to pickup my phone with one hand, slide it/flip it/whatever, dial with my thumb, and hit go - all while keeping my other hand free to drink a beer. I hate having to put stuff down just to make or answer a phone call. Because remember, at the end of the day, this is a phone. Sure it's also an iPod and can take pictures and videos and connect to the internet via WiFi, but how's the call quality? How's the reception on this baby? Deep down, I know I'll end up drooling over the iPhone and then getting a BlackBerry Bold instead - at least that's what I hope I do.

So he's the summary... Apple - pretty and nice, but for me, ineffective. Oh, and did I mention they cost about 2x as much as comparable hardware that lacks a picture of fruit on it?

Building a Computer

So Teresa gave me the green-light a week or so ago to go ahead and build out a computer. Our computers stink, and my desktop is from about freshman year of college and really won’t do what I need it to do anymore. I had in mind that I wanted a desktop, because between Teresa and I we already have 3 laptops (2 from work and Teresa’s from college). With that in mind, I compared similar computers from both Dell and HP, trying to get those items that I really wanted – fast processor (~2.8 to 3.0 GHz), 4GB of RAM, Windows XP, DVD Burner, 500GB HD, etc. I didn’t need a monitor, as I still had a functional monitor and really couldn’t justify getting a new one. After looking at the prices Dell and HP came back with, the computer I was looking at would cost me roughly $1250.

I didn’t want to spend that, and I knew Teresa wouldn’t allow it, so I dabbled with the idea of building the computer myself. I went to Tigerdirect.com and Newegg.com and priced out an AMD Phenom processor build at around $750. However, I talked it over with an electrical/computer engineering friend who’s job is designing and building circuit boards and he assured me that it would be better to get an Intel Core 2 Duo than anything else out there. He stated that while the Quad Cores were technically faster, most software systems (including WinXP) didn’t efficiently use the four cores and it was better to stick with Core 2 Duo, because it was a lot better than the AMD Athlon.

So I did it, and here are the specs on my new computer:

• Intel Core 2 Duo @ 3.0 GHz
• ASUS motherboard
• 2 x 2048 GB (4GB total) of Dual Channel DDR2 667 MHz memory
• 500 GB SATA HD
• Phillips DVD-R burner
• GeForce 512MB Video card
• CoolerMaster Chassis with 550w PSU and 3x120mm fans

The first time I put it all together, I did not seat the processor heatsink/fan assembly properly, and I kept needing to shut it down due to heat issues. After buying new thermal compound and re-seating the heatsink and fan last night, it all worked like a charm. The CPU was idling at 17 degrees Celsius, I’d installed WinXP and all the necessary drivers. The last thing I was doing was updating the BIOS. After I’d updated and restarted…
…NOTHING!

After restarting the computer would even boot to the BIOS screen, and no signal was being displayed to the monitor. I figured the only thing that hadn’t been restarted and tested was the motherboard after the BIOS update. So I called ASUS and they told me today that the BIOS chip is bad and I have to either send the BIOS chip or the whole motherboard back, depending on if the BIOS chip is removable or not. I’m still happy with the computer I built, but I’m not so happy with the BIOS chip. I guess that’s something I’ll have to deal with after Hawaii!

Google = Skynet

It's just a matter of time.

Terminator 3 was not a very good movie, but it had one really cool concept. The movie revised the original concept of Skynet being some massive mainframe computer. Instead, it revealed that Skynet was in fact an artificial intelligence that infiltrated the world's computers through the internet. As technology moves forward, I think this may end up being the case after all!

My theory starts with the rise of handheld computing. There have been tons of attempts to have a computer in the palm of your hand, but for various reasons, all have been relative failures. The Newton and Palm are 2 that jump to mind right away. However, in a very sneaky fashion, mobile phones have stepped into the handheld computing void in the form of smart phones. These phones are here and they are taking over in a big way. Apple releases its updated iPhone in June with a lot of rumors about what it will offer. Probably more memory, a smaller size, faster processor, camera, GPS and 3G wireless data capability.

More importantly, the phone will release simultaneously with iTunes new applications store. What does this mean? Users will be able to download thousands of programs to run on their iPhone. Games, organizers, office suites, everything. The iPhone will be able to do everything that a computer can do with the exception of having 250GB of storage and the ability to play or burn discs. How will many of these apps work? They will be widgets that run off the net but display on your phone.

This is where Google comes in. They have already cornered the market on internet search and advertising, becoming a multi-billion dollar empire. Gmail is just about the greatest program I have ever used. Ali and I couldn't have rented a house in Nashville without Google Maps and Streetview. I am totally dependent on Google calender, and the Google docs are pretty slick too (if they could just figure out how to allow cut and paste from other apps). What is the common thread to these and many other Google apps? They are run from the internet. No software is installed on your computer. This is also why Google is sitting in prime position to exploit iPhone and other smart phones. Their apps run off the net without draining memory and power from the handheld device.

I don't think it will be too much longer until the PC as we know it no longer exists. It will be replaced by a handheld unit that links wirelessly to the internet to run applications and access all your data stored online. Sure, you'll be able to dock it to a monitor or keyboard at home, but the actual computer will not be there. Think I'm wrong? Just consider all the Google apps I mentioned above. How many do you use? What about your pictures - all online yet? Movies and music? If studios have their way, no more CDs or DVDs. It will all be on-demand service that requires a download fee or a monthly subscription.

When you look at all these things, it's not hard to see how Google will be running the world before long. Supposedly, they are even working on their own OS, which would be the final dagger in the heart of Apple and Microsoft. I think it's safe to say that James Cameron was right about Skynet but wrong about the name!

It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people!

Evil Hackers

I hate to cover Ian's posts, but this one was too good to pass up. Apparently some hackers were really pissed off at the Epilepsy Foundation and decided to post some inappropriate content. The hackers had some issue with the Epilepsy Foundation, and the "inappropriate" content they posted was pictures, web links, and other visible content that caused seizures in the users viewing the site. Here's the story.

Amazon MP3

Wow, it's postapalooza for me today...

I recently stumbled across something fantastic - Amazon MP3. It's a service offered by Amazon to purchase DRM-free MP3s. I repeat, DRM-free! None of that crap iTunes forces on you about only being allowed to burn the songs n-times or only being allowed to play on n-computers. These songs are 100% yours to do with as you please. On top of all that, they're encoded at a higher bitrate than the songs available through iTunes and they cost less! I can't stop ending my sentences with exclamation points! Several other nice features:

• The tool integrates with your Amazon account for one-click song purchases
• The download utility will automatically import your purchases into your iTunes library so your songs are easily accessible to your iPod, if you're in to that

The store is being backed by the RIAA so the catalog is quickly growing. I, for one, have completely abandoned the iTunes store. I mean, why wouldn't you? Higher bitrates, DRM-free, less cost - this puppy sells itself. Check it out, you'll never buy from another online music store again.

Did You Know?

I don't know if people noticed this, what with all the breaking news about gas prices and the Indiana democratic primary, but apparently there was a cyclone over in Burma that has left 60,000 people dead or missing with that figure expected to grow to 100,000 in the coming weeks. Let me repeat that in case you missed it the first time - 100,000 people dead or missing. For comparison, that's the equivalent of the entire population of South Bend, IN dying or disappearing. I watch the news every morning as I'm getting ready for work, pretty much 30 minutes, and this has barely gotten a mention all week. Who the hell is producing these news programs? Gas going up another $0.50/barrel gets a 10 minute story and 100,000 people dead is a footnote? Hillary and Barack splitting another 2-state primary gets 15 minutes of coverage while 20 miles of coastline disappearing in Burma is glossed over?

My point here isn't to sound like a hippie, you all know how much I hate hippies, it's to point out the clear insanity of the media in the United States. It seems their only goal these days is to work Americans into a frenzied state of panic and then walk away. I get it, gas prices are high. It's no longer a lead story unless they suddenly jump to $10/gal or OPEC disbands. It's not news. Hillary and Barack. Yeah, I know, it's neck-and-neck. Just tell me when there's a winner. Until then - NOBODY CARES! The network channels devote hours of air time every day to mindless entertainment "news" shows that do nothing but make their viewers dumber. Meanwhile, they can't find 5 minutes to devote to a natural disaster that has left one hundred thousand people (I spelled it out for emphasis) dead? Again, I don't really care about all the people dying and what-not, I just find it frustrating that if aliens were to land in China and wipe out Beijing that story would take a backseat to some actor flipping the bird to paparazzi outside a Walgreens.