So I went to this credit union (near Berkeley Bowl) the other day to get $50 bill as a gift. I’m doing large bills now versus gift cards btw. Don’t do gift cards. I go to the ATM, take out some money, and go around and inside and wait in line. There’s a security guard that opens the door for you.
I’m waiting in line behind a couple people and I finally get to the teller. Can I exchange these $20s for a couple $50. They didn’t have any $50 bills. They didn’t have any $100s either. So I walk out, and I’m like this credit union doesn’t have any money. What a lame credit union.
Fast forward a week (which would be today) four people rob this credit union for $6000…probably in $1 and $5 bills.
“Let them do what ever they want. I’m not afraid of them.” -anonymous
That cracked me up.
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Professionalism in the Web world can be tough sometimes because there’s a mix of personal and professional and in the valley it’s t-shirts, shorts, flip flops, volleyball, foosball, and blogs. So emotions have to be really put in check, what you blog/msg board, wear, etc is all part of “professionalism”. In other words, I’ve self-neutered my blog posts.
However, in the non-Web world say legal, medical, financial, and oh real estate, there’s a clear line between someone being professional and unprofessional. When someone crosses that line, it’s unfortunate.
Wikipedia has a good primer on HDTV.
There actually is a pretty big difference between standard definition television and high definition tv.
For televisions, 1080p tvs are the way to go, LCD or Plasma is a toss-up. Samsung (LCD), Sony Bravia (LCD), or Pioneer Kuro (Plasma) are what people seem to be liking. 52″ is the new brag size replacing 42″, but 40″ and 37″ are good enough and possibly preferable– all depends on how far away you sit from the tv anyway.
For inputs: DirecTV HD is really good (HD comes in at 1080i), lots of channels and comes with a HD DVR too and the box is a sleek black that matches well with Samsung TVs.
An Apple Macbook connected to the tv via HDMI works ok. iTunes stuff doesn’t come in HD and per Engadget, Apple TV isn’t great either for movies etc, all standard definition still. Wondering if it makes sense for laptops and computers to have Blu ray drives, Sony and others are already selling blu ray laptops. Guess so.
We have an Xbox 360 that seems to upconvert DVDs. Movies look clear enough. This means no need for an upcovert DVD player, which is still questionable. Blu ray players (HD comes in at 1080p) are still too expensive (needs to be $100 - $150) and haven’t really learned whether or not the PlayStation 3 blu ray player is any good, in other words, better than a stand alone Blu ray player.
The best picture quality is supposed to be an HDTV with 1080p support and a Blu ray player which is also 1080p. However, it would be great if there was no need for a blu ray player at all and everything came in over the Web. The ideal box would be the DirecTV HD tuner, w/ DVR, Blu ray player, connected to the Web to be able to rent movies on demand with an unlimited movie library.
The address is 5335 College Ave, Oakland, CA. It used to be Hiro’s Sushi but the family sold the business to the new owner who used to be a sushi chef at Kirala. Which, if you extrapolate, means the sushi at Rikyu is really, really good. One sushi chef and the sushi chef is the owner. We went there tonight and I guess it was the grand opening. The location isn’t the area of College Ave where there’s lots of foot traffic. It’s not a restaurant for ambiance, it’s a nice every so often, I don’t want to wait at Kirala or go into the City, type sushi place from someone who knows how to prepare and slice fish.
I like the trend of new restaurants opening in Oakland and we seem to be poaching from San Francisco and Berkeley and also keeping our talent in Oakland…e.g. from San Francisco we’ve got Wood Tavern, Somerset, Mono Restaurant, Levende East, B Restaurant. From Berkeley we’ve got Bakesale Betty, Pizziaolo, Cesar’s. And we’re keeping the Dona Tomas owners in Oakland via Flora.
*sigh* The Vatican web site.
The “new” seven social sins are:
- Bioethical violations such as birth control
- Morally dubious experiments such as stem cell research
- Drug abuse
- Polluting the environment
- Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor
- Excessive wealth
- Creating poverty
The original deadly sins:
- Pride
- Envy
- Gluttony
- Lust
- Anger
- Greed
- Sloth
Useful life of a computer for someone in the tech industry is two to three years for developers, two to four years for everyone else.
Useful life of a computer for a business is until it dies, ceases to perform it’s function.
For tax purposes for businesses, computers can be written off in the first year via Section 179 or depreciated over five years. Section 179 is cool (accountant in my former life).
For home buyers, I’m guessing in reality the useful life of a computer is five to seven years. It should be more like seven plus years but then we can also break this down into parts, e.g. 1 TB hard drive should last 10 years, network hub 10 years, monitor 7 years, actual computer 5 years. It really sucks that this is the case. Computers should last longer, at least 10 - 12 years.
Our current computer set-up
- Our home setup (Mac Mini still on Panther) was put into place on April 2006.
- Work setup (MacBook now w/ Leopard) was put in place on August 2006.
- Work setup (IBM X31 laptop, with Windows XP) was put in place on August 2004.
Next year will be when we do our hardware upgrade.
I’m looking forward to the following this year:
- product launches
- Summer Olympics
- Presidential Election
- Mozilla 10 year anniversary, Firefox 3 (IE 8 probably won’t launch until late 2009 or mid 2010 fwiw)
- Honu Half triathlon with in May, Chronicle Marathon in August
- Wrap up home remodeling
Fairly basic. That’s it for now.
