journal for 2004-04-23
another apple
I’m in the passenger seat of our totally awesome Geo, Tag, and we’re headed back to Bethlehem at a blistering 60mph. (“Drive faster, Neddy!” // “I can’t! It’s a Geo!”) We spent most of our evening in King of Prussia, at the mall. My sister Heide is in town, and I’ve been singing the praises of the Macintosh to her for months now. She saved up, and brought her tax return with her, and tonight picked out a shiny new iBook. It is, in fact, one of the brand new 1GHz models. I’m looking forward to helping her get acquainted with it, but I don’t think that will happen tonight.
We finished her purchase pretty quickly. Sure, we played around with a G5 so I could give her some intro to the basics, but the purchase wasn’t too painful, and we didn’t really dawdle /too/ much afterward—in the Apple Store. We did, though, go to a slew of other stores and smell a lot of smelly things. Heide later commented that her nose hurt from smelling too many strong things: candles, lotions, creams, oils, and who knows what else.
We looked for a digital camera, but I didn’t see anything like my digital Elph for less than $300. She wanted to buy something tonight, and wanted to spend about $200, so she got a PowerShot A20, which is what Steve at work has. I think she’ll be fine with that. It’s certainly better than her current ultra-cheap no-storage, no-display model.
so, it’s 2145 now, and we’re still about an hour from home. I think that once we drop her off, we’ll head home, consume some water (we’re both feeling dehydrated) and hit the sack. Tomorrow’s going to be a full day.
big saturday
Tomorrow is the annual Spring Thing (or Fling? I don’t know) in South Side, which means one very important thing: the chili cook-off. Gloria and I will pick up mom and Heide and hit the south side for lots of cheap chilis of wide-ranging quality. I’m excited: the goods usually well out-weigh th ebad. Unfortunately, Heide’s diet has been /even more/ restricted than last time I saw her. Among the restrictions: no tomato. Also, she doesn’t eat beef. So, I think she’s just along for the ride.
Of course we’ll also be making our weekly ice cream trip. It’s Heide’s birthday, so I reckon we’ll treat her. Then I’ll be walking her through the basics of her iBook, and maybe if it’s not raining I’ll take a bike ride or Gloria and I will hit the gym. We didn’t go tonight, because of the shopping. Normally Gloria goes on Saturday mornings, but I reckon we’ll sleep in after this late night.
If we’re feeling shoppy, we might try to get me some new linen pants, as all my pants are too heavy for the recent, wonderful weather. I also need some new cycling gear, and Genesis Bicycles is having a sale. My cycling shoes are nearly falling apart. I’d be OK with putting that off, though. I’d like at least /some/ time to just hang out with Gloria.
Today Gloria said that she thought we should get more fun legos to build together, which is an excellent idea. Apparently she enjoyed building legos with me as much as I did! I don’t think we’ll get those this weekend, either, though.
Then, tomorrow night is the D&D game. Brian made noises like, “Well, we might need to show the house, so we’d need to go somewhere else,” but I’m not too worried that our plans will really be interrupted. I mean, it’s possible, but I have a hunch everything will be fine. (I have no reasons, though.)
rss
I’ve been looking for a good RSS aggregator since I first found out what RSS was, and everything I’ve seen has sucked. A lot. I’ve thought about writing one, but I never bothered. It was always easier to just bookmark pages and check them now and then.
Still, every once in a while I’d bring up Google and look for new software. This week, I found NetNewsWire, a Cocoa RSS aggregator. It’s /very/ expensive, in my opinion: forty dollars. This may be because it is, in my opinion, a little feature-heavy. Maybe there’ll be a medium-sized feature set for cheaper, sometime. I say medium-sized because there’s already NetNewsWire Lite, which is offered free of charge. I like that quite a bit. If I end up having NNW tell me that I have to register, I may just move to NNWL, unless I find some really compelling features.
It’s not that the extra featuers are neat. It’s just that many of them don’t do much for me. One neat thing is the ability to build a blog entry based on an article found via RSS. Since Bryar doesn’t (yet) support the standard APIs for blog-posting, this feature doesn’t help me. Of course, I could write support (into Byrar, or as middlewear), but I’m just not that interested. Vim is fine for journaling.
I think that’s enough journaling for tonight. I’m sure I have other things to say, but I’ll say them later, if I remember. Well, except for this: I also saw a neat piece of software, for cheap. It’s a client for Netflix, designed to help you manage your queue and keep a record of moves you’ve seen. If I pick up Netflix after Gloria’s subscription expires (which I may or may not do), I think I’ll buy that app. It’s about ten dollars, which seems about right.
I’m starting to feel OK-er about spending money on software, but I’ll say this: now that I feel more OK about buying software, I feel less and less OK about crippleware and nagware. Look, people, make it a real “free version” or just have the demo die after a while. What’s the difference between crippleware and a “lite version?” I don’t know if there’s a definition, but if you ask me it’s this: a trimmed down version has fewer menu options; crippleware has them all, but half of them bring up a reminder to buy the full version for the missing feature.
That’s it. Good night.