Reviews, Rumors, Ravings..
In June of 2003 I bought a 3rd generation iPod (when they still had buttons!) and my interest in Apple Computers was born. After playing with the office iMac at work, I bought a 12" powerbook on ebay and I was officially a mac guy. Today I still use my PC for games, a macbook pro for travel, and my iPhone is always by my side.
I haven’t had a whole lot of time and/or interest in this website for a long time. Lots of things have happened and there’s a lot on the horizon. Lately I haven’t been feeling too well. I have been pretty lonely and it’s going to get worse when Alison moves to Texas in a few weeks. The only people I really talk to face-to-face on a daily basis are my students at the airport. They are nice and fun and all but they really aren’t my friends per se.
I have lots of stuff coming up in the near future. Helping Alison move to Texas, Flight Team Nationals (I get to see some of my internship friends again!), and leaving for a monthlong trip to Russia/Finland. All in the first half of May.
I got my instrument instructor rating on Tuesday and the review board prep for KSU is intense. I’m studying all the time and damn tired of it. My liking of flight instruction varies week to week. I am feeling a little overworked right now and not really liking it. One of my students is almost done so hopefully that will cut down on my workload a little.
I kept the 23” Apple Cinema Display. It is big and looks very pretty with my laptop and silver desktop. It works well but has some quirks. The power button works when it feels like it, since it’s trying to work with OS X to put the computer to sleep. I won’t bring it to any LAN as it’s too expensive to risk theft or damage. I also think it’s too big for my brother’s desk but hopefully I won’t be using it too much longer.
I was really really bad and I bought a 23” Apple Cinema Display. It is gigantic. And really expensive. I don’t know what I think yet. It is very pretty. But $......yeah….
I was really looking forward to this macworld for two reasons: Macbook Pro (or macbook with a damn vid card) 12” and the widescreen iPod. I’ve been holding off on buying my own iPod for a while because I thought they could get an upgrade or drop in price at macworld. I’ve mentioned a few times how much I love the ultraportable laptops, with my previous three laptops being 12 inchers. So this macworld was a bit disappointing for me. I got the equivalent of a crippled mac mini for your tv and a widescreen ipod nano with a phone and internet viewer built in that won’t even be ready until june.
So what have I done about it? Well, I wanted a high capacity ipod, so I went out and bought a 5.5G 80GB Black iPod the day of the keynote. My reasoning was that the iPhone couldn’t hold as much as I wanted, so I might as well just buy it. I like it a lot. I like the lcd screen way better than my old 3rd gen, but I still like the third gen’s button placement. I like the movie player and have some fun stuff on it like my quakecon movie, don hertzfeldt’s dvd, and anime music videos (best part of vid iPod imho). It’ll store all my game iso files soon too when I reorganize my hard drives. Zune can’t do that!
My phone is also in dire need of replacement, so I went ahead and bought a new PEBL off ebay. We’ll see if it does what I want it to (namely just be a phone). I like the quirky way it opens. What do I think about the iPhone? I was definately geeking out during the keynote, but now the Steve-factor has worn off and I’ve read a lot about it. I was excited about it running OS X, but now they say it won’t run any 3rd party apps or widgets, so meh. I also hate the cingular only, 2 year plan it comes with, although my t-mobile plan will be free again by june. I just wish it was an unlocked phone, and if you didn’t have cingular, the extra features like visual voicemail wouldn’t work. I could live without that. We’ll see what I want in june.
As far as the laptop, I’m used to the 15” inch and am quite happy with it. A 12” would be fun, but it’s not necessary and I STILL have the 12” powerbook because I like it so much and am afraid to sell it. Right now the 12” is plugged into my TV and is performing the job of the apple tv, only it can actually play xvid and other stuff. Hooray for vnc + tv out!
It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of the 12” powerbook by apple. I was waiting for so long for them to announce a new intel one before I finally broke down and bought the 15” macbookpro. I like the 15” (I just realized I never did a review of it, probly cause my site was down thx jo) but could I return to the 12 inch form after living the good life of my current awesome laptop? Probably. Let’s take a look at what I want:
Proc: Intel, semi fast…..nothing demands a super awesome processor anymore.
Ram: Upgradable to 2gb would be nice
Screen: Widescreen or not, >1024x768 would be nice
Vid Card: Capable of gaming in Windows. This is the only reason i picked mbp over mb
Hdd: My 80gb in the mbp is getting tight, would like more
CD: want one in there, thats why i got rid of the Dell L400
Design: I like the aluminum design over the mb, but at least offer it in black if not
Tablet: rumored that this could be a tablet. Depends on reviews..
So basically it comes down to how well does it game, and what does it look like? Unfortunately it has to beat my current mpb to justify the effort of selling it, which is a difficult feat. I sure like the ultra portability though. I take it everywhere. :D
Now onto other rumors. iPhone. If you’ve seen my phone lately you know I need a new one. I want to see what the iPhone will look like. It’s supposed to be an mp3 player and phone in one and supposed to work with every provider. I am holding off until macworld to make my decision, and it’s all based on design. If I don’t like it I will probably get a motorala PEBL. I know the PEBL gets bad reviews due to storage space and bad camera, but my current phone is the same and I don’t really care. I like the PEBL design and I just want it for a phone.
Widescreen iPod. I need a new iPod since my 3rd gen’s screen stopped working. If both the iPhone and the widescreen video ipod are released and both look cool I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m betting only one will be released or I’ll only like one. I want an 80gb at the moment but I can wait until macworld to see if a new one comes out.
With my luck, things will be announced and not ready until August or something. Until then, It’ll be a long 5 weeks!
My internship with American Airlines is over.
The flight team regional competition is over.
What the hell am I going to do with myself? I have free time again!
It’s been so long that I don’t even know what to do with myself at this point.
Since it appears like it will take a while before my actual webserver goes back up, I am going to attempt to use this livejournal thing since most of my friends are on here anyways.
So what’s been going on with me? I know it’s been a while since I’ve had any time to hang out.
Internship ended halfway through August. Most of you know that. It was an amazing experience and has left me with way too much desire to get into my career with the airlines. So much that I am now working hard to get my flight time in so I have the expirience to get hired. This means I have about one more semester in Ohio. Once I get hired, I will be given a city as my base city and I’ll have to move there. So like Will I will be torn away eventually. So, we’ve got to LAN party like we’ve never LAN partied before! Or something.
Once I got home from $Texas, I started work as a flight instructor at Kent State. I have two classes this semester, Crew Resource Management (easy), and Computer Literacy (makes me cry so easy). Computer Literacy is a little bit of work since my teacher is a retard and asks weird questions. I also still work at Resnet. Actually, I am taking computer literacy because I needed 6 credits to work at resnet. Any time that was not taken up by flight instructing, class, and resnet went to flight team. I probably practiced an average of 4 hours per day for flight team, and coached both Computer Accuracy and Simulator events. The competition was the week before last, and we got third place in the most competitive region and won a spot to nationals. I won 4th at Navigation, 8th at power off landings, 7th at power on landings and 6th at simulator. Awesome! I will graduate before nationals, so this was my last competition. I promised to stick around and help coach cause they are my friends and I can’t abandon them.
What news has happened in the last, oh 3 months, since jo took down my site?
I got a 15.4” macbook pro, 2GHz Core duo and 2 GB of ram. It’s pretty awesome. Runs windows except for the built in speakers don’t work (headphones port works fine). Excellent frames on q3 and fs2004. Still trying to sell my 12 powerbook, will go on ebay soon.
Also, I need a place to live, so anyone looking for a place until May, tell me.
I guess that’s all for now, not bad for my re-entry to blogworld.
