Stay tuned for a inside look of my Valentines Day Date!

Engtech wrote an excellent article about different ways to access your gmail account from places where they are usually blocked.   Here’s my take on some of the suggestions.  1.  Changing the website address.  engtech gives several web pages that point to the gmail service.  Most likely the school or workplace is using a firewall to block unauthorized access to gmail, any firewall worth its salt will already have these URLs down.  2.  I’ve personally never seen a business version of Microsoft Outlook that allows you to add any new accounts or modify any settings.  (You probably don’t want it anyway since It’ll leave your emails locally stored for anyone to see.)  3.  This might work.  4.  Convoluted, but works.  5.  Always seems to work!
On the subject of generic proxies on the web.   I’ve seen a lot of these sites available on the net where they allow you to use their banner-riddled based proxy.   I personally would avoid these types of sites!   You never know the ulterior motive of some of these proxy hosts out there.  You leave yourself open to someone surreptitiously stealing your password.  Be careful!

So Howard announced today on his show that he proposed  to longtime girlfriend Beth Ostroky .  He’s was pretty adamant in the past that he would never get married again.  It was surprising so hear his tone start to change after he moved to Sirius.  Howard did mention that a prenup would definitely be signed before a ceremony ever happened.  Few details have been announced on Stern Fan Network regarding the size of the ring.   The details they gave were the ring is a 5.2 carat emerald cut diamond, anyone out there have an estimate on the value that diamond?

You: white haired woman about 70 years old, wearing the bret “the hitman”  hart wrap-around sunglasses. driving the 1984 beat-up white Toyota corolla.

I saw you coming out of the Mollie Stones on Steiner yesterday.  You honked at me angrily as I exercised my right of way and drove past you trying to take a left.  You then pulled behind me and honked your rusty horn several more times implying you thought I was going too slow.  I looked at you with a puzzled stare through my rear view mirror.  I thought we made a connection.  If you are reading this and I assume you are, send me an email and we can grab some coffee (if your doctor is allowing caffeine in your diet.)  I’d love to hear why you are in a constant rush to get anywhere at 70 years old.  You’re pure contempt of me is so visceral, I’d love to develop the relationship further.  I’ll be the one to pick you up.

-Sushi attack

Dear Indian girl with laser engraved crystals on dashboard,

I saw you today while you were driving on Alma. You were in a white Hyundai accent. When I pulled up next to you at the stop light, I couldn’t help but notice that there was a line of laser engraved crystals on your dashboard.

I think this is a really bad idea for several reasons:

First, if you ever get into an accident and the passenger-side airbag deploys, who ever is sitting in the passenger seat will have these crystals propelled at their face at 220 miles per hour (I’m not making that figure up, either). If that person survives, 1) they will be upset at you, 2) their face will be horribly disfigured. This is how supervillians are created.

Secondly, if your car ever rolls over in an accident, and let’s be honest, it’s a Hyundai accent, your car will go flying if you hit anything larger than a beetle, do you want more, or less glass flying around in the car with you? Less, right? Thought so.

Finally, you really shouldn’t be looking at these crystals when you’re driving in the first place, and additionally, although these crystals are known for the beautiful rainbow colored prismatic effect, you really don’t need a rainbow in your eye when driving. Yes, all colors of the rainbow can blind you.

I would like to say I understand, but there is no redeeming value of these laser engraved crystals. The people’s faces in them BARELY look like the actual photo, and more often than not turn out looking like a big white blob imprisoned in a crystal. Or like princess leia when she sent videos to luke through R2D2.

And frankly, these kind of tacky trinkets are what give minorities and FOBs a bad name. I understand girls like to look at pictures and whatnot, and I’m sure that once you bought all these laser engraved crystals you figured out that there was really very little use for them, but your dashboard is not the place. If you INSIST on looking at pictures while driving, try a photo. See, a photo will not rip your face apart, burying glass into your skull, when deployed at 220 mph.

So, I have this aquarium. I got it after I won like six fish from the obon festival. No joke, I was dropping ping pong balls into the little fish bowls like Jordan. Shot after shot after shot.

But, that meant I was stuck with all these fish, and my girlfriend at the time wanted to get a tank – of course that meant that she wanted ME to buy a tank, but whatever.

So I actually have this pretty nice tank. It has a filter and pebbles and plants and stuff. All pretty standard for a fish tank – I mean honestly, I did a decent job.

But recently my fish started dropping like flies. I don’t know why. One day three fish died, all at the same time. I don’t think it’s my fault. I feed them, I even bought a special 14 day feeding puck for them when I went on vacation.

About a week ago, I was down to two fish. And that felt kind of bad, I mean, they are just fish, and I eat raw fish every week…but it still made me feel bad.

Then one of the two remaining fish died. Not only did it die, but the final remaining fish started eating it. The pic on the right is the fish after a few days of being dead in the tank. The final fish actually ate through this guy’s abdomen – I guess fish like toro too – leaving the bones and tail and head.

I don’t really know what to do now. One fish is not fun at all, especially knowing it’s a cannibal. And I don’t really know what to do with this half-eaten fish. Every time I take out a dead fish I end up using some kitchen utensil that I know I should not be using. I mean, I don’t have a net and I’m not ready to invest now particularly since I only have one fish left.

Today, most connected users rely on two separate devices, a personal media player and a mobile phone. This is an inconvenient option that requires users to carry mostly redundant hardware. After all most mobile phones can play media files – there is just not a device available today that eloquently combines these two features.

True, there are music playing phones, not to mention the hyped iPhone that promises 8 GB of storage. But even the most fully featured converged phone/media player devices offer miniscule storage when compared to, say, a video ipod.

The limitation here is the size and durability of hard disks. Even the smallest hard drives are difficult to fit in a mobile phone, and the durability of hard drives with many quickly spinning platters does not mesh well with our much abused mobile phones. As an alternative, phone manufacturers use flash memory, which is compact and solid state. But flash memory faces storage limitations – leaving us stuck with only a few GB of storage max on mobile phones.

Enter wireless storage. Instead of relying on device-based storage, why not connect mobile phones wirelessly to a small external hard drive. These drives could offer tens, or hundreds of GB of storage, while remaining neatly and safely stowed away in a purse or backpack.

So far, Seagate has done a decent job of brining this technology to market with DAVE, Digital Audio Visual Experience technology. DAVE hard drives are portable devices that wirelessly connect to mobile phones or other devices via bluetooth. This gives users with many GB of space for music files, documents and more – a much needed improvement over flash-based solutions. This technology will also enable mobile phones to maintain a small, comfortable form factor.

Despite sporting one of the absolute worst acronyms EVER, I think DAVE will be very successful, and will usher in a new age of mobile entertainment. The technology does need a lot of refining, and storage capacities will need to increase, but as mobile phone manufacturers get on board I expect that we will see more and more DAVE devices.