Watch the sales video here.

The starting price is $499. That’s a whole lot better than the $1000 we were fearing, but no where near as happy as the $300 we were hoping for. Oh yeah, the $499 is only 16gigs and has no 3G. The 64 gig version with 3G is something like $850. (I forget the actual cost, but it’s in that neighborhood.)

The data plan for 3G is cheap at only $30/month, but it’s AT&T. Oh. Good.

There was no mention of iPhone OS 4.0, or the end of the AT&T exclusivity agreement.

Still, watch the video and you too will see why I was drooling like a gibbering idiot throughout the whole presentation.

I don’t need it. I don’t want it. But at the same time I totally need it and want it!

Call it an iPad…

Get me a towel to mop up all of this fan boy drooling.

Picture taken from this Engadget page.

First of all, an update on last evening’s bird’s nest picture post.

Bummer dude.

Along with this post there was a less-than-140-character summary along with one of the pictures posted at twitter. Almost immediately after the tweet hit the stream I got a response from some one in Seattle saying it could be an eagle, or a heron, or an owl depending on my location. Or it could be a squirrel.

hmmm. We have lots of squirrels in our neighborhood.

Shortly after there was a response directly on Flickr saying it looked like a squirrel nest. Two votes for squirrels is enough for me to cave in and accept that I don’t have an exotic bird like a condor or an albatross living in my yard. I have what my eyes tell me I have: squirrels. Later in the evening I got another response agreeing with the squirrel theory.

Bummer dude.

>change of subject<

Today at 1:00pm Eastern time (10:00am Pacific time) Apple Computers is having a press event. They told us they would be announcing a new product. If said new product is anything other than their much anticipated despite no proof to it’s existence touch screen tablet computer then there will probably be mass riots throughout all of geekdom.

I will be following the event as best I can through twitter, although with the number of my fellow nerds salivating over this (or any) Apple press event it’s safe to say that the fail whale will be making many an appearance. I am also going to try and find some live blogs to follow. I usually end up at cnet for such things and they have already put up their page here.

I am not going to buy an Apple tablet. If it hits the market at a price similar to a Kindle I might consider it after some time has past and the initial bugs are shaken out of it. Until then, nope. Don’t need it. I would like to have something like that to play with, and it would be cool to have a wireless computer with a little more umph to it than my iPhone to carry around, should I ever want to surf the net in the woods or anything. But lets face it, I have no real need for such a device.

There is also a rumored update to the iPhone OS. I heard that version 4.0 might be on the agenda today. In anticipation of which may I once again announce to the world in general that, boy it would sure be cool to have a flash plug in for the iPhone version of Safari. Gee, that’d be swell.

One final rumor is that the exclusivity contract with AT&T might be terminating which means iPhone users can switch to other cell phone carriers. AT&T is shit, to be blunt. They are not even close to capable of handling the demand created by the iPhone. The cell network drops calls constantly, and the data network is slow and unreliable. Not to mention the fact that within 30 miles of Boston, Massachusetts there are many, many places where their 3G network is not available. (I can only speak from my greater Boston experience, but from what I hear holes in the network in the Boston suburbs are nothing compared to huge holes in the network in little towns like San Francisco, CA and some little hamlet called New York, NY.)

Now, having said that… I don’t think jumping ship to Verizon or T-Mobile the minute the option becomes available to us might be the smartest thing to do. Sure, AT&T sucks and their network cannot handle the current iPhone population… but what if suddenly there was a massive reduction in the number of smart phones using the AT&T network? Would enough people jump off the sinking ship to relieve the burden and leave a network that is capable of meeting the demands?

Maybe, but I still see us moving to Verizon, if not immediately then after our contract is up. I think we have another year to go, but I am not sure. I will have to look into that.

>change of subject<

Do you remember your dreams? When I was a kid I had nightmares every night. My parents chalked it up to being constantly freaked out by old Star Trek episodes and the occasional Channel 56 Creature Double Feature. When I was waking up terrified every night I always remembered what I dreamed about. I can actually still remember some of them now, 30+ years later.

But at some point I lost the knack. More likely I taught myself to stop remembering so I wouldn’t wake up scared.

Last week though, I woke up with a clear memory of dreaming about Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden fame having an NBC talk show. (I wrote about it here but am too lazy to link to it.) Today I woke up with another clear memory of a dream. That’s twice in about a week. Odd for me.

This one was a commute dream and I would guess that I have these all the time, given that I spend almost three hours a day commuting.

I was traveling on a two lane black top through a very rural wooded area (not one that I recognized) on my way to work. I looked at my watch and saw that it was 8:00am which meant I had plenty of time to get to work.

Accept for one small detail…

I was walking. WTF am I doing? I asked my dream self. I lucked out though and saw a breakfast joint type restaurant that was like a two story Cracker Barrel just up ahead and there was a transit bus leaving the lot. I figured there was a bus station and I could take a bus to work.

I got there and bought a ticket to Boston. (that’s another thing, I was trying to get to Boston to go to work in a place I haven’t worked in since 1995 or so) I waited for what seemed like forever until a bus finally arrived to pick up me and a small throng of other bus-commuters. When I got to the bus though it wasn’t a bus, it was a big van and all the seats were taken. I had to stand up, leaning against the sliding side door. At this point I guess the dream became a you-are-ridiculously-tall dream as I had to stand hunched over to avoid having my head rip through the roof.

I tried to engage in small talk with my fellow passengers (very out of character for a non-speaking guy like me) but most of them ignored me. The only one who said anything said in a perfect Boston accent, “I don’t speak English.” Clearly the asshole did speak English but I left it alone. (note: that actually happened to me once. I was a kid tagging for Tewksbury Little League baseball outside a long closed down supermarket that was called Heartland. I was asking the people going into the store for donations. One woman said to me in a perfectly formed Boston accent, “I’m sorry, but me no speak English.” I was flaggergasted. That scumbag woman had lied right in the face of a 12 year old kid. I can only hope she choked on whatever food she bought that day.)

Just after being told off by my non-English speaking, English speaking fellow traveler the alarm went off and I woke from this bizarre dream. Can anyone tell me what it means? I think it means I have a long commute, but I’d like some one in the brain shrinking field to concur with me.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my Update/Apple/Dream Post.

You’re welcome.

There is a tree in our back yard that has this huge… thing… in it. I think it’s a bird’s nest. Jen agrees. Unfortunately for my bird watching aspirations I have no clue if it really is or not. It could be a big pile of trash that blew up there the last time we had some major wind. It could be a shopping bag or something. I can’t tell.

I’d like to think there are a couple of winged neighbors living in a sweet little tree-top abode, but I don’t know.

My questions therefore are:
1. Is that a bird’s nest?
2. If it is, can you tell what kind of bird lives there just by looking at it? (I’m hoping for bald eagles or something)
3. If you can tell what kind of bird lives there, when is the best time to catch a glimpse of them?

I don’t ask for much, just everything.

Here’s what you do… Click on the image (preferably open it in a new tab or window so that you don’t lose this page… because you never really ever want to leave this page, do you?) and go to the hosting Flickr page. Click the All Sizes button above the image. Click on the Original link. There you will see these pictures blown up to a ridiculous size and you’ll have a larger view of this… whatever it is.

I wanted to include one shot that wasn’t zoomed in so you can get a little perspective from the tops of the houses.

Of course the coolest part of having a huge might-be-but-might-not-be bird’s nest in our yard is that it gave me an excuse to use the humongously awesome new camera. Even better, it gave me a chance to use the manual focus. My old camera would only have focused on the branches in the foreground. My new camera’s auto focus did the same (I know, I tried), but with the manual I could actually almost focus on the thing I wanted to focus on. Of course I did a crappy job, but this is nature watching post, not a photo critic post.

So tell me what you think. Is it a bird’s nest?

There is a downside to car pooling. Like when one of us isn’t feeling 100% and the other has to leave work early or be stranded. Okay, there can be an upside to that too I guess. Especially when you’re the one who isn’t feeling less than wonderful. You get to go home early and take care of your sweetie all day. That should probably go into the upside category. Maybe there is no downside to car pooling.

Another upside is when you pick up your beloved wife at her office and start discussing what to do for dinner as you head home only to remember (like it’s ever far from my mind) that The Border Cafe in Burlington is almost sort of kind of on the way home and you could just stop there for dinner and not have to worry about cooking or cleaning or anything.

So the downside is that you sometimes have unexpected needs to leave work early – which is in fact an upside, and the upside is The Border Cafe. You also save money on gas and can be all smug and green. So it turns out car pooling is a win-win-win-win situation.

I like it!

Today is January 25, 2010. More than a full month into the New England winter.

I just checked weather.com for Methuen, MA. Check out the temperature:

Rain + temps in the 50’s = No more ice on the sidewalks! WOOHOO

Jen and I car pooled to work again today. We did it specifically so that we wouldn’t ride with Hitler. (pic is from the Museum of American History in Washington, DC.)

I actually watched 2/3 of yesterday’s game. I wish I hadn’t. It was painful. I was about to put it on at the start of the game when I was called away to a wonderful roast beef dinner that my beloved Jennifer had made for us. I didn’t get back to the tube until just after the start of the second period.

Jen was in the living room and told me I might not want to put the game on. I sat down, prepared for the worst, and turned it on. She said, “They’re losing 2-0” just as the screen popped on to show me that no, they were actually losing 3-0.

Losing 3-0 early in the 2nd period against the team with the worst record in the entire NHL.

Final score? 5-1. Chances of the Bruins finishing this week in 13th place when they were in 5th about a week ago? Really, really good.

The collapse has been complete. Injuries have been a part of it, but I think the major reason is that they just suck. They are getting embarrassed at every turn. When the Canes scored their fourth goal not one but two Bruins had fallen down at their offensive blue line allowing the Whalers to skate right in and score at their leisure. That’s the kinda stretch they’re in. Tripping over themselves in their attempts to stop sucking.

The Hurricanes scored five goals and Dennis Wideman was on the ice for all of them. Let me rephrase, DEFENSEMAN Dennis Wideman was on the ice for all of them. He has played like garbage all season. So much so that last week his head coach called him out by name to the press. If I were in the Bruins front office I would have demanded that Peter Chiarelli trade him by sunup today. However, a quick perusal of the Boston newspaper sites and a twitter search show no such things. (although I’m not the only twitter user begging to see him traded away.)

I want the team we had last year back. At least I want their ability to win games back. It has been a pretty heavy suckfest since day one this year and the time needed to right the ship slips away more and more with each blow out loss.

Is it time for the Olympic break yet?

Go Bruins?

The cookie party song from the Sarah Silverman Show

The Sarah Silverman Program
Cookie Party!
www.comedycentral.com
Joke of the Day Stand-Up Comedy Free Online Games

We had quite the treat yesterday. We got to meet Larry and Nawal’s baby yesterday. He is wicked adorable. Cute as can be. Very well behaved and down right mellow. His mom and dad are sleepy but doing well and very happy. Congratulations to the new parents and welcome to town to the new little man.