New Headphones

I have been using some Sennheiser CX300 headphones for 3 years now. I really like them and have thought about getting another pair, now that they are cheaper, about half of what I paid. When I got home Thursday there was a box that had been delivered on my doorstep that day. I didn’t have any flashlights or other stuff on the way, so I wasn’t sure what it was. The only thing I’m expecting is a rebate of some kind, which is what I thought it might be since the return address was “Fulfillment Center”. But once I opened up the box, there was another box with headphones in it a packing list that said “iLounge Envi winner”. Then I remembered that I had entered a monthly drawing on iLounge for free headphones. I had never won anything from them before, but this time they were giving away 50 pairs of headphones, so my odds had gone up substantially I guess. Even though they had my email address, they hadn’t told me I had won (though I found an article later on with the winners).

rf3tubes.jpg

Continue reading “New Headphones”

Distance Learning

I spent a couple of days in an online class this week for work. I think the guy teaching it was in Ohio. I have done video conferencing before, which feels pretty normal. I can see and hear the remote conference room and they can see and hear mine, so it isn’t too bad. But this class didn’t involve any video, just sound. Since it was a class on how to use software we all had to have computers, so our screens were set up to show his screen which would be either Powerpoint or the program, plus a control panel where we could type in questions. I was designated the contact person, so I had a microphone and could talk to the teacher, but nobody else had one and my microphone was usually off.

As weird as it was to be a student, I’m sure it is much harder for a teacher who has no idea if we are getting any of what he is saying. And he couldn’t even see our screens, so if someone was having trouble, then other people in the class had to try and figure it out. That aspect of it is actually pretty good because it means the ones showing others how to do stuff are learning it even better than they would otherwise. Having students help each other out is really better than having a teacher do it sometimes.

The only glitch was towards the end after a break when he was doing something on his screen (which he would do when he was testing something out or getting something ready). But he kept doing it for a while before I typed him a message saying “Are you talking?” I had done this once before, but it turned out he was just playing around with something and said he told us he wasn’t talking. This time I didn’t get a response right away. Then a few minutes later his microphone came on and he said he had just realized his microphone had been off the whole time. He had probably been talking for 5-10 minutes while the rest of us were just talking about whatever amongst ourselves, waiting for the next session to start. Using the control panel a couple of us sent little “laughing” icons and he said “Yeah, I guess you think it’s pretty funny.” I think he was kind of mad I hadn’t stopped him earlier by microphone, but I hated using the microphone and would get feedback or echo since my voice would play over the speaker.

I guess this is the way things work now and it is how David goes to high school, but it was kind of a weird experience for me. I never even saw what the teacher looked like.

Return of the Estonian

It has been six years since I first met the three Estonian college students that stayed with me and sold books door-to-door all Summer. I never heard much from Arni, but I heard from Martti a couple of times, and Madis wrote a year or two later to say that he and his wife had just had a baby.

This week I got an e-mail from Madis saying he was in Tampa for a conference and had a layover in Atlanta with an open ticket for the trip back to Europe. He now works for Estonian Air, the national airline of Estonia as an aircraft engineer (they contract their maintenance out, but he oversees some of that). That is great because I knew he was studying aircraft technology in school, so this is his chosen field. But they are pretty small: Wikipedia says they have seven jets. As an airline they are a big customer so he had a great time in Tampa with conference sponsors throwing all kinds of parties every night.

madis.jpg

Continue reading “Return of the Estonian”

iPod Games

Even the original iPod came with games, but the iPod Touch has none. I don’t care too much about games, but Solitaire is okay when you’re bored (the original Solitaire for the iPod using the click wheel was HORRIBLE). And Euchre is kind of fun. But the biggest selling game app on iTunes is Angry Birds, which I had never even heard of. I downloaded the free intro version and it is pretty funny. You use a slingshot to hurl different kinds of birds at structures that house green pigs until the green pigs are all gone. It’s kind of like Lemmings in that different birds do different things, and maybe reminds me a little of Fantastic Contraptions except it is less about building and more about destroying. The graphics and sounds are really cute. I played it all weekend and got 3 stars (the best score) on all but one of the 10 games. What is great about this game is that it is the most downloaded, highest grossing, and it only costs 99 cents. So I figured I should pay for the full version.

I also downloaded Euchre Lite which is free because it has ads. I thought the computer was doing a decent job, but my computer partner and I won 10 games of the first 11. The free version makes everyone play screw the dealer whereas the one on my Palm I would force myself to pick a suit on my deal, but I didn’t set it up so the computer had to (it was on the honor system). But the Palm really did some dumb things, so that just helped level the playing field. There are some pay versions of Euchre at the app store that are supposed to be hard to beat, but part of that seems to be because they cheat and give the human a weak partner and miserable cards. I had a Backgammon game like that on the Palm where if you ever left a piece by itself exposed, the computer would always roll whatever it took to send that one back to the bar. That takes a lot of fun out of the game.

Memos on iPod

One of the great features of the Palm from the very beginning was keeping memos. Anything you need to remember you can just write down and then look up them alphabetized by the first line. Not only that, but you can categorize the memos so I would have personal memos, memos for stuff to remember about computers, stuff to remember about work, etc. People sometimes refer to the Palm as my “brain” but most of what I am remembering in my brain is just these little snippets of text I had stored in there.

Continue reading “Memos on iPod”