that’s right, u read it here first.  dog jumped the shark on his 100th episode titled ‘growing up is hard to do.’

first, let’s recap the unspoken contract we have with dog.  we agree to watch the dog morality speeches, e.g. ‘ice is bad,’ ‘you gotta stop for your kids,’ ‘i was a criminal when i was your age, but now i’m god’s messenger,’ with the explicit assurance that these moments will be preceeded by:

• 1.  dog and co. annoying lots of locals by getting in their face and generally doing satisfying detective work to find the fugitive.
• 2.  an action filled sequence when they actually find the fugitive and close in.  in particular, these scenes have the potential for violence, mace spraying, and other sorts of real action like unruly locals yelling at beth and mumbling in pidgin.

we know the terms of this contract.  dog knows the terms of this contract.  so when dog slipped in episode 100 without fulling his end of the bargain, i have to call jumping the shark.

the premise of this episode invokes holiday spirit (see: more heartwrenching speeches, less action), when dog agrees to hunt not for a fugitive, but for a runaway 15 year old nanakuli girl.  that’s right - a runaway girl.  is this dog or nanny 911?

why did this girl run away?  because her family imposed a no-boyfriend policy, which clearly the girl did not agree with.  let’s first look at this scenario - a 15 year old nanakuli girl not being able to date?  at 15 she should be working on her second kid - she’d be lucky to go on an actual date that involes a restaurant and dinner, rather than a back seat of an ‘86 honda accord.  with rims.  i mean please, hawaii does have the lowest age of consent in the nation - lets not kid ourselves here.

so dog and co. go about his normal sleuthing, but with no mace, no vests.  all the while the girls grandmother is hanging around looking sad.  ‘please help me find her.’  and dog’s crew is looking bored, spitting out stories about how they were bad when they were young.  really, the self proclaimed #1 bounty hunter on the planet looking for a 15 year old runaway? dog-please.

so they look all around the island, driving to beaches in waianae.  no girl.  why not?  because she’s out f’ing her bf.  it’s so clear, but they never ask who the bf is, never try to find him, although it’s painfully apparent that the kid ran away to be with her bf in some sort of local romeo and juliet meets amish teenage rebellion.

not only that, but when they ask for the girl, it’s not bang on the door-turn down the house kind of searching.  it’s sob story girl ran away interrogation, mixed in with dog’s moral lectures.

the worst part is that they don’t even FIND the girl, she comes back home by herself.

so let’s see where we stand on the dog contract:  we had lame sleuthing that was really more dog lecture than anything.  THEN, dog doesn’t even find the girl, which is pathetic considering she is only a 15 year old kid who’s obviously at her bf’s house geting her brains f’ed out.

and what are we left with?  the dog lecture.  that’s right, they call the girl into the office into a horribly staged dog and beth on 15 year old girl lecture.

i mean, they really took all the meat out of the show, and the end result was a maury povich moral sob fest with dudes in black vests.  absolutely pathetic.

ok ok, it was a christmas special and the 100th episode, so i give dog a slight pass because those episodes tend to have an unusually high level of gayness.  but you better step it up buddy.  i don’t waste my 30 minutes to watch 15 year old girls being hunted - i want to see the ice heads and wife beaters.  otherwise, i’d just tape daytime talk shows.

but the worst part is i fear that dog has really jumped the shark, and is unable to find ways to make his show interesting.  i mean, i think the real criminals have caught on, and are not using da kine bail bonds anymore.  secondly, if dog thinks that the show will be more interesting because he is NOT hunting for a real fugitive, he is wrong.  i want to see more violence.  they wear bullet-proof vests for god sakes, and i swear i haven’t seen the spray mase in like a year.

blood diamond was a good movie theater movie.  you know the ones with the great visuals and hectic action scenes that really benefit from surround sound.  the movie also makes you feel bad as hell about the world, which makes the $10 ticket seem a little pricey.  i could have felt bad for free, and used the $10 for half a lap dance.

anyway, the plot of the story is that solomon vandy’s village in africa gets torn up by rebels, and his wife and kids get kidnapped, while solomon is forced to work the diamond mines.  meanwhile, danny archer, played by leonard dicaprio, is working his way through the tough illegal conflict diamond trade.

so, solomon finds a big pink diamond, which turns out to be worth $2 mil.  danny finds out that solomon has found this monster diamond, and from that point on the movie centers around the basic plot of finding the diamond for their different interests - danny to get the cash, and solomon to use the diamond to find his family.

mixed in is maddy bowen, played by jennifer connelly, who is a reporter writing about blood diamonds (conflict diamonds), i.e. diamonds gathered by rebel slaves who have been treated poorly. 

and boy have they been treated poorly.  the rebels aren’t messing around, they kill at will and cut of arms and stuff.  all while driving around africa in pickups while blasting 2pac.

bowen is trying to expose the sale of conflict diamonds by guys like danny, but wait, there’s a catch.  danny throws it in her face, because the only reason why there’s demand for blood diamonds is because americans (and europeans apparently) want cheap diamonds.  plus, maddy is really benefiting from all the sorrow because it makes for a good photo.  she is a conflict whore - it sells papers.  turn. booyah.

this is where the movie starts to make you feel pretty bad about yourself, because, yes, all these africans are suffering because you want cheap diamonds.  not only that, the flow of diamonds is so great that diamond dealers just buy up the supply and stick them in a valut to create false scarcity.

so, the plot thickens with various good guys and bad guys, and twists and turns here and there.  but you get the gist pretty early on that people are pretty much going to die, solomon will find his diamond, and he’ll get reunitied with his family.  the only real question you have is what happens to danny.  fyi: he dies.

one notable twist is that solomon’s son gets picked up by rebels, and is kind of brainwashed into a killer rebel.  then, even when solomon finds him, the kid wants to stay with the rebels.  yes, that is sad, it also makes solomon seem pretty stupid, because he’s been running around africa (not just normal bush africa either, africa infested with rebels with guns on pickup trucks), risking both his life and danny’s life, trying to find him.  and does the kid appreciate it?  no, he pulls a gun on solomon to take the diamond.  but wait, does solomon have a tear jerking speech up his sleve?  can he pull it out?  the suspense!  fyi:  yes.

overall, the movie has a pretty basic plot with unsurprising twists and turns.  it’s like lord of the rings in the sense that you know they have to go from point a to point b, but in between they meet all these people and stuff happens, blah blah blah.

the movie makes up for it though with pretty good action scenes that show graphic violence and other horrible conditions.  that makes it interesting.  for example, little kids driving around shooting people?  pretty interesting, right?  there are a lot of plot intricacies that i’ve missed, but really, you get the idea of bascially what is going to happen.

one note, the leonardo dicapprio in this movie is not the faggoty, floppy haired, charcoal sketching leo of titanic.  no, no, this leo is a big buff chain smoking ex-rebel with a british/african accent.  a lot of reviewers talk about how good or bad an actor’s accent is, but i think leo gets a free pass here, because i’ve never heard a white african, let alone a white african with a UK-ish accent.

another thing, the movie pushes the romance between danny and maddy - but why?  it’s not really important, except it creates a false sense of sorrow for danny’s death since maddy talks to him on the phone and starts crying.  sad right?  no, because you’ve just watched people getting their hands cut off and being shot by kids.  the relationship between danny and maddy is by comparison rather boring. 

i mean really, do we need a relationship in every single movie?  and when was the last time you saw an attractive female reporter that decides to go down to africa, rather than reporting the 6 o’clock news for six figures?  even if this girl did want to report in africa, it wouldn’t be jennifer connely, it would be dirty hippy protestor/reporter.  i mean, for all the time they spent creating a realistic african enviornment, they really blew it with this character.

all in all tho, i’m glad i saw it.  although the plot wasn’t great, the visuals made up for it.  it’s a little preachy, but the good thing is that by the end you’re pretty used to watching africans being killed and what not, so you don’t really feel so bad about the diamonds after all.

Survivor Cook Islands wrapped up on Sunday with a two hour special and reunion.  funny, i had no idea it was ending then - luckily it got ‘voed.

in any case, Yul won by a close 5-4 vote.  ozzy came in second, followed by becky, who got no votes.  It’s hard to break down who voted for who, but I would guess that jonathan, adam, brad, jenny and sundra voted for yul for sure, while nate, pavarti and candace voted for ozzy.  there’s one more vote, but i forget who that was.

overall, yul got a lot of credit for strategizing and managing his team.  his key move was getting jonathan to come back to aitu, but he also did a great job of holding his team together while also keeping ties with soon-to-be jury members. 

in my opinion, yul’s greatest accomplishment was balancing his intelligence and physical strength with humility.  you’ll notice that although yul was clearly very intelligent, he was never accused of being arrogant - a criticism oft-linked to perceived intelligence.  if anything, he made the others (especially nate) afraid of his intelligence, but never presented himself in an arrogant or superior manner.

also, while others accused him of being a godfather or puppet master, yul’s team never had those complaints.  he did a good job of working with them to create an environment that facilitated teamwork and equality, rather than using a leader/followers paradigm.  that was what got JP kicked off a while ago.  the main benefit here is that yul’s leadership increased team morale, leading to a string of critical wins that decimated the raro tribe.  more importantly, it kept aitu tight all the way to the final 4.  i mean, for all the strategizing and puppet mastery, i think aitu really did feel close personally, and although they were all tempted to break their alliance, they still stuck tight.

yul also mentioned that he didn’t want to be dominant in physical challenges so he would be a target to be picked off.  i think this may be true to some extent, but in the later rounds I think yul was just slower than ozzy.

yul also had a key advantage with finding the idol.  first thing is that he found it -jonathan had a shot at it before him which would have definitely been a big game-changer.  secondly, he kept it hidden until it needed to be played - and really his timing was perfect.  true, he didn’t have much of a choice at that point, but he used the idol as both a carrot and a stick for jonathan - stick, in the sense that jonathan would be kicked off once yul played the idol and the vote got redirected to jonathan, and carrot, since jonathan would be aligning himself with the soon-to-be stronger team.  yul also mentioned that raro was keeping jonathan on only because they thought that he (jonathan) had the idol.  I thought this was a subtle, but critical play, since it kept jonathan honest and protected aitu from another backstabbing.

on the other hand, ozzy was a great physical player, and was superior to yul in that respect.  he dominated the last few challenges to the point that some of his team members thought of voting him off first.  ironically, he won the final 3 challenges so they didn’t really have the chance.  however, ozzy was not as articulate as yul, and to me he seemed slightly dishonest.  also, i think a major concern for the jury was that he’d piss away the million $.  funny tho, when he was making his presentation to the jury, he brought up that he never saw his father, blah blah blah.  i think i even saw a tear.  that was a pretty weak attempt, especially since i’m sure a lot of members of the jury had parents that they’d never seen.  i mean, he was just not very convincing in front of the jury - didn’t have things as well thought out as yul - although yul of course did come of as being more calculating.

becky got to the final 3, but clearly didn’t belong there.  she didn’t get any votes for the $1m, and she really didn’t deserve it.  she stuck with yul, and in many ways role his coat tails.  at the same time however, she was key to aitu’s success, particularly when they were short on players.  her survival tactic if anything, was to blend in to the background.  i don’t think she created huge enemies, but at the same time i don’t think she was actually liked by many players.  i give her props for not taking the immunity idol - that was a classy move.  and in the second to last episode she took a really hard fall of the balance beam, where it looked like she fell 3 feet directly on her chest.  that was a brutal moment, but she kept on going.

other notes:  adam is a loser.  he had a physical advantage and would have had a chance if he could have won immunity, but he didn’t.  he also was quick to throw parvati under the bus, which was kind of a bs move on his part.  another thing - parvati is pretty hot - in the reunion she had an jolie thing going on.  not very smart tho.  i mean, the white girls did have a good strategy with sticking with adam and nate - i mean, what other assets did they have?  they’re not smart and they’re not strong physically?  all they have is T&A.  on one hand, they avoided attention as a physical competitor, since they were physically outmatched much of the time.  then, in trial counsel they leveraged their relationships with the guys to remain safe.  but ultimately, that strategy got them only so far.

one thing that came out in the reunion episode is that nate, stephanie and another black player got into an argument about nate selling out.  i guess they thought he should have done more to stick with the player players, instead of aligning himself with whiteys like adam, candace and pavarti.  nate made this even better by talking about his feelings for pavarti - classic.  i mean, nate walks the black walk, and boy does he talk the black talk, but in my opinion i think he’s a popolo trying to fit into the black stereotype so he can hang with white people.  to say it a different way, i think he’s not really fully down with blacks, he knew that by aligning himself with only blacks, he will be selling himself short, so instead he sells himself out and aligns himself with the whites as ‘the black guy.’  that’s just my theory, but i think it checks out.  i mean, he does such a good job of being the typical black guy, but does such a poor job of watching out for his people.

and that comes to the larger issue of ethnicity-based tribes in survivor.  overall, it seems like a pretty good move, considering that the population of minorities in the US is in many places higher than the population of whites.  i have to admit, it was good to see an asian win, and it’s true what yul said, asians are 1) underrepresented in media and 2) when they are represented they are stereotypical asians, not dynamic characters.  now, i’m not ready to jump on the boo hoo asians not on tv bandwagon, but it’s a decent point - and it was good to see him win.

*editors note: Today we are lucky to have a guest post from TJFKAK, aka coughka. She is a big time lawyer for a firm that covers things like airplanes, boats, helicoptors, and space vehicles.

Amazon knows me. It’s f’ing crazy how well it knows me. I was browsing through Amazon when I discovered the Zojirushi Mr. Bento Stainless-Steel lined Lunch Jar, Silver. Given that I’m Japanese and a foodie, I pretty much drooled onto the keyboard while looking at it. Using Japadamus’ SAT Analogy of black: crack as Jap:Sony, you can pretty much just substitute Zojirushi for Sony, too. Everyone in my family has one of their rice cookers or hot water dispensers, and they cost at least $100 each. The list price is $64, but Amazon’s selling it for $35 now, which is cheaper than a lot of less useful potential gifts. Plus, you should really pack your lunches to save money, right? Spending money to save money in the future is what makes me so smart.
Anyhow, when it first arrived in the mail, I was surprised at how large the thing was. It looks like it could be the size of a nuclear warhead (or at least the size of those nuclear warhead props they use in movies.) But it comes with its own carrying bag (nice touch), that also contains a loop for storing chopsticks, which also come packaged in a plastic carrying case with the lunch jar. Very Japanese. It’s not too heavy, and if you’re not adverse to carrying a separate bag for lunch apart from your normal briefcase, it works fine.
Mr. Bento consists of 4 containers: a soup bowl, a rice bowl, and 2 empty multi-purpose containers (small and large sized). You can already tell that this was made for the traditional Japanese Bento form of lunches. Anyhow, the soup container even has a gasket, which is amazing ingenuity for a simple thermos container. How often does any lunch container have any mechanical piece more complicated than a handle or a snap lock? The rice bowl is the largest container and has a swivel lock mechanism, which secures that your rice won’t go flying out. The bad thing about these containers is that you can’t put them in the dishwasher. Also the two multi-purpose containers appear to be made of particularly thin palstic, so I’d be wary of actually microwaving them.
The directions suggest putting warm water in the thermos and in each of the indivual containers for 2-4 minutes prior to placing actual warm food into them, and although I read other reviews saying that it was ineffective, it actually worked fine for me. 5 hours after packing my lunch, the food was still warm. i haven’t tried chilling food in there, but the directions caution nto to pack particularly heat senstive foods in there, like milk and other dairy products. I guess if you plan on having cereal in the mornings, it might alright since the milk won’t be sitting for too long.
Anyhow, I really love this lunch jar. It looks stylish, carries a lot of food and maintains the food’s temperature very well. I lamely love showing it off at lunch.
I do, however, have some minor complaints about it. For an American lunch, it’s not very practical in that you either have to pack all hot or all cold things as there is no way to divide the thermos between hot and cold. Also, it’s a lot of food, so if you’re expecting to eat it all for lunch, you’ll likely have a massive food coma after lunch. It works better as an all day snack repository. You also have to expect to be eating in a somewhat traditioanl Japanese manner — ie, no sandwiches, just actual food dishes. Finally, because you should either warm or chill the containers before packing, it means that you have to spend some time in the morning assembling all of this, which isn’t always practical if you’re the type who’s always running late to work.
I’ve used this lunch jar a handful of times now, and I really enjoy it, but it’s probably not going to be an everday lunch jar. I would definitely buy this again and as a gift for others, though since its form and fucntion are great. You just have to expect to put a little thought into what you want to pack for lunch.

I had traffic school today - at 8am.  if you don’t already know, you can take traffic school after you get certain types of tickets to avoid getting assigned a ‘point’ on your driving record.  points are bad because they lead to increased insurance rates and if you get enough of them it could result in a license suspension.

in reality traffic school is a time suck in which you really don’t learn a whole lot, other than violating traffic rules makes you waste a bunch of time in a bs class.  it’s as rubber stampy as rubber stamps get.

interestingly, traffic school is an industry that the internet has completely obliterated.  now that you can take traffic school online, attendance at physical schools is supposedly very low.  we had 11 people in our class, and our instruction was saying that before online classes they usually had 40 people classes and they often had to turn away people.

our instruction actually gave us a lot of info about how online schools work.  basically, you read through several pages of text, after which you are asked a random question, such as ‘what kind of fruit does the author like?’  This question is used to ensure that you actually took the time to read through the text.  After that random question, you have an actual traffic schooly question.  At the end i guess you have a comprehensive exam that is supposedly very very easy. 

Traffic schools, both physical and online, are required to provide 400 minutes of ‘class.’ but our teacher said she finished the online test in a little over an hour, since she already knew the answers to traffic-oriented questions.  she also said that by scanning the text for words that didn’t fit in, such as a fruit, she could easily identify the random question answer without actually having to read through everything.

but online traffic school is also kind of a pain, because you have to get the test notarized, since they can’t validate your identity online, and you also have to wait for your certificate to be mailed to you.  it also costs a bit more.  in any case, i went in person because that just seemed easier and cheaper, plus, i wanted to see what the school was like at least once.

anyway, school i picked was called ‘fun fun fun and pizza.’  really, that’s what it was called.  it was scheduled to run from 8am to 4pm, with a pizza lunch in the middle, thus the ‘pizza’ in the name.

the students in our class included two teenage girls, and a bunch of adults that ranged from their 50’s to what looked like 80’s.  minors can’t take classes online, and i guess old people who aren’t down with the whole internet thing are better suited for physical classes.

class was basically the instructor talking about traffic rules, with a bunch of commentary and digressions mixed in.  at one point, the instructor started talking about rescuing pets and how you shouldn’t purchase a pure-bred dog unless you are going to show it, for a good 15 mins.  this made one of the students ask her to stick to traffic school instruction - which was a pretty awkward moment.

Additionally, you had one of these teenage girls asking all these stupid questions, and interjecting these ‘well one time my friend ….’ anecdotes, after which some of the older ladies would go on about their kids, blah blah blah. 

That was lame.  i reminded me a lot of college, where you always have these role players.  like, the kid that won’t shut up, the kid that asks dumb questions, etc.  all of which just makes the class a lot longer than it really should have been.

the instructor kept saying how she loved teaching these classes, although she doesn’t get paid much.  to her credit, she was very enthusiastic and made the mostly boring subject matter tolerable.  i mean, considering she gets paid $8 an hour (she mentioned this several times), she did a very good job.

the traffic info was mostly very obvious.  our instructor would also point out answers to test questions - so that made things a lot easier.

one bit of info that was particularly interesting was drunk driving.  apparently, cops give you a field sobriety test, and if you fail that you get either breath, blood or urine.  the field sobriety is not used as evidence, instead it’s used to see if you should be tested further.  you can also only get tested by one test -  you can’t get tested by say, breath, to show that you’re under the influence of alcohol, and blood, to show that you’re on drugs.

if you get a dui, you get a bunch of fines, a criminal record, go to jail, etc.  this can cost $10,000 - but often this will cost lots and lots more, especially if you hire a lawyer.  i mean, the criminal record thing is big in itself - this could cause you to lose your job, make it difficult to get loans and stuff.

but, if you refuse to take the test, you get your license revoked for a year, but do not get any criminal record or fines or any of that stuff.  The moral of the story, in my opinion, is that if you are drunk, instead of taking the test, refuse and take the license suspension.  you can even take the field sobriety first, and if you fail that then refuse.  they can’t use the field sobriety to charge you with a crime, since it doesn’t objectively show if you are under the influence, or what you are under the influence of.

in any case that was really good to know.  made the whole class worthwhile. 

at the end of the instruction portion, we took a 20 point, true/false test…and this was a joke.  the first 10 questions followed a true, then false pattern.  the final ten questions were all true.  i think almost everyone in the class got all the questions right.  the exam was also self graded, so i mean, if you needed to you could cheat easily.

so, our class was supposed to be 8 hours, but we got out at 12:30, after only about 4 hours of instruction.  that is on par with the online class - and a lot cheaper.  i mean, it was a good experience.  there are better ways to spend a saturaday morning obviously, but all-in-all i didn’t mind it at all.

one thing though, any sort of paper work involving old people is a bitch.  even simple things like filling out forms is a mind numbing time consuming experience.  scoring the test was also a bitch, because these old people had to go over every single answer, one by one.  god, it was so slow.

so that was that.

anyway, it has been mentioned that posting has been slow this week.  and yes, it has been.  but after this super long post i have a guest post from TJFKAK, aka coughka - it’s a great review of the zojirushi bento box thingy.  it’s coming in a few mins.

my shuffle 1 went dead, so yesterday i stopped by the apple store to pick up a shuffle 2.  one note about the apple store - clearly they hire people that are knowledgable about macs and ipods and stuff, but can’t they have at least one attractive woman per store?  the place is always like 90% guys, and the 10% of females that are there usually have a rosie o’donnel-ish feel.  i mean, you’ve probabaly seen the mac/pc ads where one kind of hip guy is representing the mac, and another stiff in a suit is representing the PC.  Man, i’d like to see that add with women.  i bet the apple girl would be a no-pit shaving, overweight hippie dyke.

In Fever Pitch they had drew barrymore to use a mac - why not hire one of those girls?  or is that just in the movies where attractive girls do use macs.  I mean, even fry’s, whose customer service sucks, manages to put a few attractive asian girls in tight pants around the store.

 anyway, the main debate about the shuffle 2 was whether or not to get one at all.  I had trouble choosing between the shuffle 2 and sony s2 sports walkman, a.k.a. the mp3 tampon (black).  the sony s2 is new, and very feature rich.  it comes in 1 and 2gb versions and unlike the shuffle 2 has a small OLED display.  the thing is also packed with workout features, like a pedometer, calorie counter, timer etc.  it will even recognize when you’re running, and change the music to a more fast paced playlist.

I was actually impressed that sony put so much work into the s2, and it was tough not to buy it.  i mean, japs really  love sony.  if this was the SATs the question/answer would be Black:Crack, Jap:Sony.  But one big turnoff about sony is that their sonicstage software is widely recognized as sucking heavily - plus i don’t need another music management app on my pc.  the s2 was actually a little bit too feature rich for my taste.  I wouldn’t have used the exercise functions very much at all, and i don’t think i would have even used the display when working out.  another thing is that the player is designed to be attached to your arm with the included armband, but i mean, it looks funny.  tampon jokes aside, it seems like it would get in the way and/or look like some sort of blood pressure monitoring device or something.

So, i got the shuffle 2.  the first thing that you’ll notice about the shuffle 2 is its slick packaging.  apple always is solid in this respect - and  the shuffle 2 is no exception.  it is encased in a little platic coffin-like box, suspended above a white background - i looks super slick.

The device itself is tiny.  if the shuffle 1 was a stick of gum, the shuffle 2 is a book of matches.  the weight is negligible and it will attach to pretty much any piece of clothing with the integrated clip.  actually, the shuffle 2 is so light that it will dangle from your earphones, although this does seem a little risky since it could be easily dropped that way.

the shuffle has a silver, aluminumy finish that seems durable enough, unlike scratch-prone ipods.  like the shuffle 1, it has no screen, so that may be a deal breaker for some.  one thing that stuck with me is that, y’know, there are a lot of small mp3 players out there, but most feel either cheaply built, or unsubstantial, or a mixture of both.  the shuffle 2, although it is very very light, still feels solid, looks and feels well designed, and is sturdy despite it’s size.  big plus there for apple.

i used the shuffle 2 for a couple hours in the gym.  i attached it to the bottom of my shirt, and ran the headphones under my shirt to my ears.  i liked this approach because it kept the shuffle from getting all sweaty, and kept it out of the way of arm motions.  also, by running the headphones under my shirt it kept the cord from getting caught up in equpiment and stuff.  that was important, since one of my biggest fears is that i’ll get tangled in a machine and get choked by this little bitch, which would be a hilarious story that would get a load of press that everyone would laugh at.

anyway, the shuffle 2 worked fine, sound was good and it was loud enough even in the noisy gym.  the controls were intuitive, although they are arrached in a circle and can be somewhat difficult to identify by touch, but i mean, who am i?  i can’t spare a second from my workout routine to look down at my shuffle 2?  s please.

the best thing about the shuffle 2 is that after a few minutes, you stop noticing it’s there.  it clips on sturdidly, and you just don’t have to worry about it, really.  this compares favorably to the shuffle 1, which was always swinging around my neck, especially when i used the laying-down machines.

to charge the shuffle 2, you insert it into this little white usb dock.  surprisingly, the thing charges through its earphone jack, which is a brilliant design feature that enables the device to maintain its small form factor.  a lot of reviewers have panned this feature, but i think apple did a good job here.  for one thing, the dock has a solid feel and it sits securely on your desk - it’s not like one of those plastic usb hubs with no weight or substance.  another thing is that it’s really a good place to store your shuffle 2, since the thing is so small that it can be easily lost.  and the whole contraption looks really slick.  i mean, it takes a lot for an mp3 player to secure space on my desktop, but this was not really a problem for the shuffle 2.

in terms of software, you use itunes and have to update it first.  i still don’t really get why everyone jocks itunes - i still like windows media player better, but oh well.  maybe it’s my computer (it’s not), but it takes a few annoying seconds to drag and drop songs into devices, and in that time itunes will often start doing something retarded like playing a song that i was trying to drop or scroll down to or something.  i mean, it was having enough trouble transfering - it shouldn’t really start doing anything else. 

the thing about the shuffle 2 is that you have to appreciate what it’s designed for.  it isn’t an jack-of-all-trades ipod video or zune, it’s more of a focused, niche-type player.  the shuffle 2 is like a goal line back - it won’t get carries every play like tiki barber, but it’ll get touches at the goal line because that what is designed for.  eh, not a great analogy, but you get the point.  i mean, you can bitch about how the shuffle 2 doesn’t have a screen, or you can get a nano.  the shuffle 2 is great if you’re going to spend a few hours in the gym, and have a solid list of songs that you will like to shuffle through.  but, it’s not for long listening marathons or cross-country flights.  it wins handedly in terms of size, while paying the price of features - but for me this is really a fair trade.

I mean, once you accept its role, it’s hard to say anything bad about the shuffle 2.  it’s just a simple, tiny mp3 player that works fine.  the niche it fills doesn’t have complex requirements, but at the same time, the shuffle 2 goes a long way in terms of innovation in even this relatively basic role.

roomba is the best invention ever.  there, i said it.  Oh sure, drugs that cure malaria in african children are okay - but is that fun for me to watch?  no.  but the roomba is.

In case you don’t already know, the roomba is a robotic vacuum cleaner that resembles a dinner-plate-sized hockey puck.  it basically drives around your house and vacuums the floor - all with little or no user interaction.

It’s been available for a couple of years, but I’ve always balked at buying one.  I mean, it is a neat concept, but it always seemed like a technology that could be very poorly implemented - creating more frustration than anything.  Also, my place is a mess - there are ethernet cords and power cords all over the place, boxes on the floor, rugs, papers, etc.  I can barely vacuum with a japadamus powered vacuum, let alone a robotic vacuum.

Anyway, TJFKAK got me a roomba for xmas.  THANKS!!  so i finally got to try one out without having my pake ass spend any $.  I know it’s not xmas, but it came in a really loosely wrapped package so I could see what it was already.  after that i might as well unpack and plug in, right?

To get the roomba started, you put it on top of it’s home base, or plug in an AC adapter.  The home base is this plastic recharging station that the roomba automatically returns to when its pau cleaning.  The roomba is actually pretty big.  I mean, it is the size of a big plate, plus pretty tall.  The one i got was white, but i’ve seen red ones and other colors as well.

One thing - the roomba is not very graceful.  In fact, it rolls around the room, bumping into stuff like a retarded child.  It will bump into large objects several times, bump, reverse, bump, reverse, etc.  For one thing, this process is very fun to watch.  I mean, this thing is very entertaining - you will sit for a while watching this thing, and then be embarrassed that you watched it do the same shit for so long.

More importantly however, this bumping process is how roomba maps the room, and kind of determines where everything is.  Roomba relies to some extent on infrared sensors, but the main guidance for the robot is its sense of bumping into stuff.  By bumping into things throughout a room, roomba is able to map where things are and create an efficient cleaning path.  I mean, it is pretty amazing.  A lot of the time, you will see roomba go through this process of bumping into things around it, then finding a way to navigate around these items. 

My biggest concern about roomba was that the robot would constantly get stuck on all the crap on my floor, meaning that I would have to watch it clean, rather than letting it do its thing on its own.  This was probably the biggest surprise about roomba - it is tough and smart.  even though the manual said to lift up power cords, and take away rugs and stuff, roomba easily navigated through or around these items.  Even with power cords, roomba would always find a way to either crawl under the cord, or roll above it.  That was pretty remarkable.  Also, I have a bunch of rugs that are probably raised 1/4 of an inch.  roomba had no problem going over these rugs, and was actually effective at cleaning stuff off the short rug fibers.

The only times roomba got stuck was when it started vacuuming a lose thread on a throw rug, when it wedged itself between the legs of a chair and a table leg, and when it vacuumed up a usb cord and proceeded to drive away with the USB hub.  Other than that, the thing was completely self sufficient.  It was actually pretty entertaining watching roomba get into a tough situation, then work itself out.  for example, roomba was really confused by this fan i have.  the base of the fan is slanted, so roomba can’t really get a good read on where it is by bumping, i think.  instead, roomba keeps driving up into the fan.  that produces a funny roomba humping fan action that was very entertaining, but eventually roomba got out of it.

In terms of cleaning, roomba was great.  when it goes over a dirty spot, a blue light will go on and roomba will focus on that spot for a while.  cool!  plus, it is pretty good at getting stuff out of carpet.  Like, i have all these feathers that are coming out of my comforter.  they are pretty deep inside the carpet fibers, but roomba did a good job of getting them out.  Roomba also has a little sweeping brush tool that will loosen things in corners and help it reach areas that a round object would not be able to access.

the best part about roomba is that when it’s finished, it just goes back into its little home base and goes to sleep.  awwwwww.

Overall, the roomba is awesome.  I mean, it cleans well and it’s very entertaining to watch.  one thing tho, it’s kind of weird to interact with the roomba while it’s cleaning.  the way it works is that you can restrict the roomba to certain areas with an infrared barrier, but i just let it go everywhere since my apt is small.  So anyway, i’ll be letting it do it’s thing, then all of a sudden it will creep up on me in my room or in the kitchen or something.  that is a little surprising.

another thing is that you need to make sure you keep doors and closets closed, because the roomba will literally investigate every corner of a room and it can end up in a closet or something.  the weird thing tho, is when you shut the door the roomba will eventually start bumping into it as part of its mapping process.  Like, i was taking a shit with the door closed and the thing kept on bumping on the door.  that was a little annoying.  Also, you have to kind of watch where you’re stepping, because the roomba moves around pretty quickly and can end up under your feet if you’re not careful.  Oh yeah, and be super sure to close your main door, because the roomba can’t tell indoors from out, and will start cleaning outside (not what it’s for) and get all f’ed up.

The thing is, i knew about roomba and how it works, etc.  but you cannot really understand what it’s like until you actually see one in action.  it’s incredible seeing this little robot scout around your room and clean.  it mean, it’s immensely enjoyable and entertaining.  plus, you kind of root for the little guy when he gets stuck or something.

roomba’s inventor irobot did a good job of bridging the novelty of a robotic vacuum with the functionality necessary to make it an effective cleaning product.  one of the most remarkable things about roomba is that the thing looks like it knows what’s going on.  when it hits cords, it doesn’t panic, instead it goes into a methodical forward/backward motion until it is free.

anyway, great gift.  probably one of the few that i will keep this year.  thanks TJFKAK!

the 2006 fantasy football regular season ended last night, and i eeked out my first win to avoid a winless season.  actually, the winless season would have been more impressive than going 1 -12, since it’s actually pretty hard to lose every single week, but oh well.

and i won due to the play of…jeff garcia.  yup, that jeff garcia - 49er’s castaway, short stints in detroit and cleveland - now subbing for mcnabb in philly.

the thing about garcia is he’s having a great season.  In his  3 games subbing for mcnabb, he’s thrown for 641 yards, 6 TDs, 0 INTs, with a 60% completion rate.  I mean, great stats - he’s scored like 80 points for me in the past two games.

one thing though about philly, the fans are asses.  I mean, they are notoriously bad fans - booing michael irvin when he nearly broke his back, throwing batteries on the field, throwing snowballs at santa etc.  The worst was at a phillies game, the cerimonial first pitch was thrown out by some dude who just had a hand transplant.  so, the guy throws the ball with his newly transplanted hand and it barely makes it to the plate.  normal adults often don’t throw it all the way to home, let alone some guy who just had a hand transplant.  anyway, the fans boo him.  classy.

So, in the second quarter, garcia took like 2 huge hits in a row - 1 was called for unnecessary roughing, cuz it was a helmet to helmet hit, and the other was just a huge hit where garcia ended up on the bottom end of an enormous popolo.

After that hit, garcia was obviously not feeling well - he was all gimpy and at the very least had the wind knocked out of him.  In the meantime, AJ Feely gets up, puts his helmet on and gets ready to come in.  but garcia stays in…and gets booed by the crowd.

Ok, for 1, it’s BS to boo a QB that just took 2 huge hits for your team.  #2, it’s 10 times worse to do that for AJ Feely coming of the bench.  AJ Feely?  really?  are you f’ing kidding me.

anyway, that was BS.  they had sly stallone on the show talking up philly and stuff, but really, come’on.  the city is known for a bell and a sandwich - plus1 and a half million overweight low class fans.

And philly fans always bitch about how their teams never win anything.  It’s no wonder.  who’d want to play for these people anyway.

and it’s not like im a huge jeff garcia fan.  i mean, give me a break, jeff garcia?  but anyway, he saved my season to some extent.  good job buddy.