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I’m building up a long list of restaurants, dining and the like to go to in SF. When I tell friends where I am, they wax poetic and start telling me where I -have- to go! It’s far less fun to go to such places alone so I look forward to friends buzzing me up and asking to go out with me [hint hint!]

I just want a cordless phone that works. That’s all I want. Well ok, that’s not entirely true. I want a cordless phone that has:

• 2 cordless handsets
• good sound quality
• a call-answering/voicemail waiting indicator
• a reasonably simple interface
• caller ID

What I’ve found is a quagmire.

First off, our house is filled with crummy cordless phones. There is the one behind the bar that rings well enough but makes your callers sound like they are in a deep pit (it rubs the lotion on it’s skin). Upstairs, there is the analog 900 MHz phone. It sounds like shit too and it has crappy range. Then there is the Olympia OL-2410 we’ve been using; it sounds… not like “total crap” but just “poor” and the display recently went south.

What phone do I use? It’s the kind of phone that you can pummel an assailant with. It’s a corded Southwestern Bell Freedom Phone. It’s unapologeticly heavy, sounds great and feels good in your hand.

So, last week, the Olympia 2 handset phone system broke after 1 1/2 years of service. I called Staples and used the extended service plan I got to get an $80 credit. While I was waiting for the credit to arrive, I plugged in my old Uniden 900 MHz digital spread spectrum phone. This is a great phone. Great range, sounds like a corded phone, long battery life, enough heft in the handset to leave a welt on an assailant (especially since you can throw it across the room at him), a well designed answering machine… da da da…

The credit arrives so I go to Staples and pick up a Vtech 2.4 GHz phone. It was great except for it’s horrid range: less than 50 feet. Admittedly, compounding factors include that the range problem was between the 1st and second floors and we have 2 Wifi networks in the house. But shouldn’t these devices SHOULD be able to coexist in the same band?

I returned the phone.

I went back to Staples looking for a phone. After looking at all 30+ different phone models they had (think I’m exaggerating? Take a peek at Staples.com) I concluded that, unless I wanted to spend $220 on a phone, I wouldn’t get what I wanted. $220?!?!? $220?!?!?!? Two Trimline phones would cost $40 and work flawlessly for at least the next 20 years. And think how cordless phones have been around for 20 years now. Are you starting to smell a rat? I am.

So I forged my way over to Radio Shack. I was bedazzled by their selection as well. So many flavors of….. vanilla. With the help of a self-avowed over-achieving salesman, I picked out a $70 5.8 GHz phone. To be specific, it is a Maxus 5.8 Gigahertz Dual Handset, Radio Shack # 43-3585. I got it home and plugged one of the phones in. I didn’t dare take everything out of the box until I knew it worked because, I swear Radio Shack must employ master jigsaw puzzlers to pack their products. The corners of my mouth started to curl up as the dual-frequency hum of the dial-tone remained steady in my ear while I walked from room to room. Satisfied, I ripped the rest of the packaging open.

After everything was all set up, I opened the manual to figure out the intricacies of the Memories and such. It was there on page 13 that my heart died.

Conveniently, your cordless phone allows you to transfer outside calls from handset to handset simply by pressing DELETE/TRANS. Conversations will not be interrupted; only one handset at a time can talk with an outside caller. The second handset cannot go off hook to listen to conversations or make an outgoing call while the other handset is in use.

What?

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

Only one handset can be used at a time?! So why the frig did I buy a two handset phone? Is it a freaking backup for when the first explodes unexpectedly?

I threw everything in the box. The ecstatic guy at Radio Shack can repack it himself.

Tomorow I will go shopping for telephone system number 3.

Read my new entry on the subject

Many years ago, there was this fantastic bit that they did on the Carol Burnett show.

The scene: two men wearing suits sitting in an office. Blueprints sit on the desk in front of them

Owner: I have to thank you again for doing such a great job on this building. 64 stories tall, and you built it faster than expected and well under budget. And you got more office space inside this building that we originally thought you could! You are a genius!

Architect: [looking visibly nervous and disturbed] Yes well, I’m glad that you like it. I’m just… Yes well, we did a very good job. I’m very… happy… Well you know, this building isn’t without its flaws.

Owner: Yes but, everything is looking really good. We can clean up any small flaws that were made with the money that we saved in the construction and the increased rents that I’ll be be getting.

Architect: [starting to look despondent] Yes I’m sure you’re right. We can work this out.

Owner: We can discuss these problems after lunch. But first I have to go to the bathroom. Where is it? I think I saw it on the way in. Is it down the hall and on the left?

Architect: No.

Owner: Where is it then? Is it on the other side of the building?

Architect: [putting his hand into his hands] No.

Owner: [looking quizzical, and then with the look of happy realization] Ah, I see, you only put bathrooms on every other floor to save money. That’s how you did it! So is the men’s bathroom one floor up?

Architect: [starting to pull his hair, and speaking with a whimper] No.

Owner: [starting to realize that something is up] Then is it one floor down?

Architect: [he looks up at the owner and silently nods "no"]

Owner: Two floors up?

Architect: [he stares into the owner's eyes and doesn't flinch]

Owner: Two floors down? Seven floors up? Ten floors down?!!

Architect: Just a few… small flaws. I only forgot that one thing. [He sets his head down on the desk and puts his hands over it]

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That brings us to today’s fatal flaw.

Since the tape deck in my car broke several months ago, I’ve been looking for a replacement, a way to play recorded media. I tried using my Pocket PC and a radio transmitter as a poor man’s iPod but the user interface isn’t all that good for automobile use. I came across a really groovy 20 gigabyte MP3 player the the car. The Omnifimedia DMP1 Mobile Digital Media Player. It sells in some places for $600, but I came across it for $149. (I later found that it sells in many places for under $200) So I looked into it. It looks like a fantastic device. Rugged, reliable, attractive, and an all around great marriage of technologies. You can even download your music from your home network using WiFi, pretty cool.

I came across a review on Amazon.com that mentioned that the device has no fast-forward button. That sounded ridiculous. I considered how I would probably be listening to very long MP3s, things like four hour long concerts, hourlong radio programs, 30 minute long pod casts and the like. I found the manual online and gosh darn it, it’s true. Tape decks and CD players have fast-forward. You can skip forward with vinyl on a turntable. But not this device. The last device I’ve heard of it didn’t have a fast-forward button was an 8-track tape player.

What’s old is new again.

I went ahead and watched Matrix Revolutions while my PC was incommunicado. I’m disappointed in myself. The first time I saw it, just like Matrix Reloaded, I was disappointed by a number of things. Well, 90% of that disappointment was in my mind. The philosophy is tight, the action is great, the effects are wildly creative, tremendously realistic and groundbreaking (except, again, for some stretches of the CGI Neo & Smith combats) and it’s just a tremendous movie.

I saw The Matrix Reloaded tonight on HBO. The last time I saw it, in the theater, I was sorely disappointed. I think I blogged that a long while ago but I’m too lazy to look it up.

“Hype” is such a strange animal. You see, this time around, I really liked the movie. The action was eye poppingly realistic (except for the multiple-Agent-Smith parts where it was terribly noticeably computer animated), the storyline worked for me. And the thing I most suprised myself with was that I actually was kind of digging “The Explainer”.

The first time through this movie… wooo-eeee, was I disappointed. But there were so many fairly subtle things I cought this time through. For one, after Neo gained is “The One” powers, I was initially really disappointed that the only super-power he had was flying. An ability he used very well to run away on a number of occasions. I even talked about this with others and they gruffly agreed. But now I noticed that he had supa-fly X-Ray vision, could pass his hands though solid objects (like Trinity), could reanimate someone (Trinity again), could stop a sword being swung at him full-force with the pinky edge of his open hand taking the full force and only bleeding a few drops, fly at about 4,000 miles per hour, fight 100 Agent Smiths at a time without bleeding, fend off an Agent Smith “copy” attack, destroy squids with the power of his mind (and I now kinda understand how that would be possible).

I did slow-motion through a couple fight scenes and they were total poetry. When fighting multiple opponents, each opponent was generally fighting full speed. Neo just fought faster. I say this because in many kung-fu movies, when the hero fights multiple opponents, the opponents are usually fighting poorly and taking a long time between strikes. Not so in The Matrix Reloaded. I’ve got to say that this is a great testament to Keanu Reeves, who was at the center of most of these tightly choreographed scenes.

Trinity riding her bike in the wrong direction on the highway… I did slow-mo through it and couldn’t tell how they did it. I mean, I know there is CGI in there, but it was totally seemless.

So forget your expectations, watch it again and enjoy it!

I saw the Iron Chef America miniseries a couple months ago and was totally psyched about it. I even wrote a gushing post here on my blog… but then I deleted the gush because… well… something didn’t feel right. I had to watch a few more episodes before I was sure what was up.

I know what’s up now. Iron Chef America isn’t a good program. It wasn’t transposed to the U.S. well. Actually, the only elements that they really brought over were that it’s a cooking competition with a secret ingredient with running commentary. Any other similarity to any show, current or canned is purely coincidental.

I’ll get it out the way and say that I enjoy Alton Brown’s commentary quite a bit.

Here’s what they’re missing:

A host with charisma… cult of personality style. Everyone knows that nearly a decade ago, a man’s fantasy became reality in a form never seen before, Kitchen Stadium, a giant cooking arena. The motivation for spending his fortune to create kitchen stadium was to encounter new, original cuisine, which could be called true, artistic creations. On the flip side, the backstory behind Kaga’s nephew is that “he came to America”. Feh. (BTW, just to break everyone’s heart: Kaga’s backstory isn’t real and his nephew… isn’t)

The Challenger doesn’t get to pick who he’ll fight. Why not? Everyone is standing there… why did the other Iron Chefs show up if they already knew who was fighting?

The American Kitchen Stadium isn’t as well supplied. I’ve noticed a couple times how chefs were having trouble finding ingredients or appropriate utensils.

5 dishes in 1 hour? Come on! I know that Americans appreciate busyness, but this is crazy. It changes the show from a culinary competition to a track and field meet, literally. I suppose that it forces the chefs to make better use of their sous chefs, making their management style important. Also, it is a different (and not necessarily bad) thing to see chefs barking orders and discussing things. But it seems a bit impersonal that some components of each dish aren’t even touched by the chef.

It’s obvious that the chefs know what the secret ingredient is before it’s revealed. That breaks my heart.

Alton has to do the final countdown himself instead of the cool voiced, Star Trek computer-like timer lady. That, and a lack of, say a big clock on the wall gives me the subtle impression that the timer might not actually be exactly 60 minutes.

The Iron Chefs specialities aren’t named. I realize that specialities are more of a moving target with the American chefs, but you’ve got to say SOMETHING else besides their name!

The Challenger’s introduction is too short. You could conceivably shorten it from what the original Iron Chef did… a full Olympic-hopeful style 3 minute biography, but to say, “And here is our challenger, Chef Blahblah. He owns a really nice restaurant!” Is…. distasteful.

The interstitial graphics look way too much like Robot Wars.

Why, oh why, oh WHY does our NC (Nephew Chairman) keep saying, “This is your first appearance in Kitchen Stadium.” They’ve put like 5 episodes in the can. Of COURSE this is their first appearance!

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There’s a lot more I could say about this… a lot more. I thought about doing a careful analysis of what was wrong with the show and how it might be fixed, but that wouldn’t be seen as a QA effort but a crazy fandom streak in me. I’ll settle with this nice little rant.

For the last couple months I’ve been using a teeth whitener to shine up my pearly whites. I’m quite happy with the results.

My teeth aren’t black or horribly discolored. I don’t smoke and rarely drink red wine, those are two things that can really darken a smile. But my teeth are just a bit yellow. And darn it, I want a nice smile.

I bought a “boil-n-bite” tray set and 15 ml of 22% carbamide peroxide from Dentist.net for a total of about $40.

The boil-n-bite set came with 4 trays… good thing because my first attempt at making a form fitting tray failed. But the next two attempts (top and bottom arch) went just fine. It was a matter of warming up the tray quickly (5 seconds instead of the suggested 15 seconds) and using all my fingers to squish the trays into place. I looked a bit odd with all 10 fingers in my mouth while hovering over the stove.. but hey.

I got 22% because… well, because I’m cheap. 10% is only a few pennies cheaper but is supposedly recommended for “beginners”. Bah. I’ll admit that the first couple times I did it, I had to take the trays out after about 30 minutes because of a burning sensation in my gums, but I’m good now.

I brush my teeth, squeeze about 0.5 ml into the tray along the tooth-line in the tray, and plunk it in my mouth. I usually do both the uppers and lowers at the same time. Though I’ve done my uppers more often because that’s what people see the most. I leave them in for 45 min to 1 1/2 hrs depending on how I’m feeling and how fed up I get with having bulky trays in my mouth.

After about 5 sessions, my teeth were noticeably whiter. Importantly, they still look natural. They’re not monochromatically WHITE but an imperfect and naturally looking white-er.

The last couple sessions haven’t gotten them much whiter, but that was expected. I’ve read that the first couple sessions give the most benefit.

I could have gone to a dentist or Brite Smile but I seriously wasn’t interested in paying $600 for WHITE teeth… $40 was more my style, even if I have to stick trays in my mouth for months instead of a single 2 hr dentist visit.

Last but not least, it very much appears to be “safe and effective”. I couldn’t find anyone online that had problems with the stuff.

update 12-30-05:It’s been 8 months since I used the teeth whitening stuff and I’m still happy with the results. I went to a dentist a few weeks ago and I asked about teeth whitening products. They compared my tooth color to some tooth color swatches they had; my teeth compared to the second whitest in their swatches and they said I definitely didn’t need whitening… though they’d oblige me if I still wanted to give them money. I thought that was a bit strange because before I went in, I was thinking I might need some more whitening. I guess I’ve got a little tooth-color-anorexia. Suffice to say, I’m still happy with the results.

I just saw the “Oona Wentworth” episode of Nip/Tuck.

I literally knew I was done being sick when I realized that I was feeing the full creepiness and disgustingtude of this show. Bravo to everyone who made this masterpiece of …. of…. whatever the heck it is. It’s really on it’s own out there. Nip/Tuck is a great show but I can’t tivo through two episodes…. I need to recover and digest and finally remind myself,”Well, at least I’m not as bad off as that!”

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3-14-05 update
I woke up this morning with alternating and repeating visions of Dr. Bobolit cutting his face off and Adrian pleading for his mother to make love to him. I’m feeling pretty unclean on this fine sunny morning. Yup, pretty darn unclean.

In a fit of wanting to type faster, I looked into the latest version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. After 30 mintues of googling, I’ve decided that speech recognition is still not ready for prime time. :-( (dear reader. Do not dispair. Read my update below!)

I found several blogs and sites that talked about how excited they were at the prospect of how the software could help them, but I never found any followups. That says to me that everyone who tried it got dis-interested quickly. When I first tried speech recognition several years ago, I had a similar experience. After a few days with it, I thought that if I only put more dedication into teaching the computer how I spoke, I could get some use out of it. But I just wasn’t interested in putting that much effort into it. Hence, the waning interest. Well, here we are, 10 years of research, my computer is 200 times faster (!!! 3 Ghz vs 14 Mhz!!!) and the reviews still say pretty much the same thing.

The most useful review was from John Udell’s Weblog. He included a video of him dictating a letter. His was virutally the same experience I had 10 years ago. The recognition had about a 2% error rate. That sounds good until you realize that this posting so far is 203 words… That means there would have been 4 errors in the preceeding text… errors that were spelled correctly and were likely gramatically correct, just not what I intended to say.

So then you have to correct the errors… That can be terribly slow, and error-prone in itself in an audio interface. Listening to John Udell patiently talk to his computer in a carefully moderated voice, and having the machine still make dumb mistakes drove me crazy, and I’m a patient guy.

Grr. I don’t know… Maybe I will give it one try. I tried to type as fast as John was dictating and I very quickly realized that, when it worked well, he was going at like 100 to 120 words per minute. I type at something like 25-40 WPM. I would love to be able to integrate this kind of performance in my typing life! Maybe I could dictate and then edit by hand? I don’t know…

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update 4-29-05: I’ve been using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 now for two days and I’ve got to say that I’m extremely impressed with it. My previous reservations were unfounded. I’m typing this right now with my voice. It’s pretty darn cool, and yes, I’m going a lot faster than I could type after only one day of training. it takes a little bit of getting used to, speaking to the computer, but really not that much. More importantly, I feel that I’m using a different part of my brain in order to write things. It’s a speaking thing, not a writing thing. That was one thing that I was hoping that I would get out of this.

Woot!

I’ll keep my intrepid readers abreast of how I’m doing with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

Oh, and as for the microphone, I’m surprised to say that I’m very happy with a cheap lapel mic that came with my web cam.

Gosh darn it, it’s even becoming easier to say things like “Send that” instead of clicking on the Send button in Outlook.

You know, I have to admit that it’s kind of nice to hear my voice in an otherwise quiet room. It’s better than listening to the mindless, brain sucking television in the background.

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Update 5-3-05 I’m convinced.

I am now able to type and about 80 wpm. That’s twice as fast as I have ever been able to type in my life. With more practice and the new headset that will be arriving in a few days, I am fairly confident that I will be able to tie at 100 wpm very reliably. This gosh darned thing is good! There are still a few small issues but they all seem conquerable. For example, right now the integration with Firefox is less than perfect. But there are tools to get past that. I’m really pretty impressed.

Of course, instead of me doing just necessary things faster, I am now becoming more verbose. I think I like that in my Internet life.

Case in point: this is getting to be a pretty long blog entry, isn’t it? It’s not that I’m spending more time writing this entry, it’s just that I’m “typing” a lot faster. Woot!

(and it is a bit of a novelty teaching the computer to understand the word “woot”)

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update 5-5-05: That’s it, I’m hooked. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 is amazing. I really can type/speak at about 80 wpm. It’s still taking a bit of getting used to but darn it, this thing works. I went out and bought a good dictation headset (an Andrea ANC-750) from Knowbrainer.com and that has improved the accuracy quite a bit (of course, it’s also an excellent gamer headset ;-). I’m thinking less and less about how I speak to dictate after just one week.

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Update 5-20-05: I continue to be happy with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 (DNS8). My biggest gripe with it right now is its memory and performance footprint. When it’s running it takes longer than normal to switch between windows, even if DNS8 isn’t engaged. That makes it so that it’s a bother to leave it running on the odd chance I’ll want to issue a “close window” or a “send that” command. Though I admit that I’m a huge short-attention-span-theater window switcher. I have 2 monitors and at the very moment I have 12 windows open. On any day when I’m spending more time writing than not, DNS8 stays running.

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Update 9-14-05: FYI I continue to be an avid Dragon NaturallySpeaking user. I got a DMCA takedown notice from copyright-compliance.com last week representing Scansoft saying about this very page (where I gush happily about DNS)…

It has come to the attention of Scansoft that you are distributing unlicensed and unauthorized Scansoft Products.

If anyone can find the unlicensed Scansoft product on this page, I’ll give them a prize.

Update 10-7-05: Sweetness. I just installed another gigabyte (bringing me to 1.5 GB) and all of the lag that I’ve been seeing when moving between programs has gone away. I can now leave Dragon NaturallySpeaking running much more of the time without a strain on my PC.

Picasa 2.0 kicks butt. I found the original Picasa a few years ago and loved it. I’ve only been playing with the latest version for an hour or so but it looks like they’ve cleaned up all the shortcomings of the original software and then some. And the best part is, it’s FREE! Google bought the Picasa company and is giving it all away. It looks like their strategy is to get ahead by being a part of the picture making process and being a preferred (but not required) vendor for some photo related services. Darn it, they hope to get ahead by being the best. And I think it might just work.

Get Picasa.

PS. I want to know who wrote the readme.htm. It is wonderfuly written. Uplifting, conversational, tremendously informative, witty without being smarmy, well laid out… The damn thing is a model of what a readme should be.

I include the readme after the cut.

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