Burnerblog

As of this weekend, we have begun composting. Brendon and I made the first compost pile enclosure on the South side of our house (farthest away from where the majority of the backyard action takes place) and we now have a bucket (with a lid) next to the garbage can in the kitchen. I put up a sign to remind the kids which items go into the garbage and which items go into the compost bucket, and we empty the bucket once daily now. Since we just started, the pile looks rather anemic, but I’m sure within a few days or weeks, it will begin to fill up. I’m looking forward to watching the process of composting begin and to get some great gardening soil for Sherry.

As time goes by, Brendon and I will add more enclosures to the side of the house as we need more composting sites. A side-effect I’ve already noticed is that our household garbage has been greatly reduced, and the bags are now generally filled with real garbage and no fruit or veggie material. The amount of fruit and vegetable matter that used to go out in our trash was quite large (larger than I realized).

Fortunately for us, the garbage collectors here in our neighborhood do separating for recycling, so we don’t have to do that before putting it out onto the street. Now, however, at least our garbage will truly contain garbage and no vegetable, plant, and other composting matter. Plus, sometime next year, we should have some really good planting/gardening/potting soil!

It works.

www.simplynoise.com

For info on how it works and why it works, search on white noise using Google.

The 5th of July marked my 41st year and the 7th year of this blog. We celebrated my birthday with our good friends Kenny and Elaine at their beautiful house along with many of our closest friends including Stevie, Anita, Lawrence, CJ, Susan, Spencer, Matt, Mike, Jon, Kate and others. It was a really nice time, and I enjoyed the food, the drink, and the company. Of course, the Cuban Cigar went a long way toward making it a really nice night as well.

My Instinct (the phone I just got) was my main birthday present, but I also got a really nice assortment of items to use with my grill, Venezuelan rum, a Fry’s gift card (already used it on an 8GB MicroSD card for my phone), and some cash (went toward aforementioned MicroSD card) as well as the movie “IIchi the Killer.” I watched it last night… wow. Starts off really scary and ends up being kind of funny until the end where it gets scary again. What a roller coaster!

Anyway… it was a nice birthday, and I’m happy to celebrate not only my own birthday, but the anniversary of this blog. Seven years… wow.

…so I answer.

I forgot to mention that we went to see the True Colors tour with Cyndi Lauper, The B-52’s, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, and Andy Bell of Erasure (who sang a bunch of Erasure songs alone on stage). What a great show!

First out was a girl who I don’t remember. She played violin and did a nice job. Decent voice, nice songs, but we were getting our drinks, etc while she was singing. Then Wanda Sykes came out and did some comedy for a while before Andy Bell of Erasure came out. That was a bit of a surprise, as he wasn’t on the bill. It was really cool, and hearing him and seeing him sing a bunch of songs I loved over the years was really cool.

Then came Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Holy shit, they were good! Talk about energy! They really rocked, and it was a lot better than I ever could have imagined. Next up were The B-52’s who played a few old songs but mostly songs from their new CD “Funplex.” Good thing that they don’t have songs that suck, because it was a good set. I would have preferred a few more of their classics, but I understand that they’re trying to sell CD’s. Mesopotamia live was way better than any version I’ve ever heard before. It was hypnotizing.

Cyndi Lauper’s performance was far greater than any of my expectations. Stevie and I joked about leaving the concert after The B-52’s played, but I was glad we stuck around. Wow! Cyndi really is an amazing performer, and the show was nothing short of awesome.

As for who rocked the hardest, Joan Jett takes the title. Cyndi Lauper, on the other hand, was just amazing, and there were more times than I can remember where the hairs were standing up on my arms because I couldn’t believe I was hearing these songs from my teen years live… and she was just as good as she was back then (if not better!).

Great show. If the True Colors tour is coming to you, go. Seriously.

The phones are quite amazing, and very usable. The texting is easy and fast, picture mail is fun (we use it a lot now), the camera is quite nice, the calling is very nice, and overall, it’s just a great device. It has tethering built in as well.

The GPS works well, and the voice-activated live search is batting 1.000 for me so far with recognizing my voice and finding businesses. The Telenav GPS software is okay (not as slick as my wife’s TomTom), but is overall very usable and useful.

It was not a very hard decision for me to go from the Q9c to the Instinct. The interace is fast and snappy, and it just does what it’s supposed to do, and does it well. Every application I run on mine runs nicely, and the sports apps are especially well-done. Watching videos on youtube even works without any monkeying.

Music plays very well… and the headphone jack is regular size. I can connect it to my car’s aux-in and listen to music on my car’s stereo just as I can from my iPods or Zune. My nice headphones finally find use again… not that I needed any. The Instinct comes with a pair of nice stereo headphones that also double as a extended headset w/mic.

No AIM… yet.

Browser is okay, but there are supposed to be other options coming soon.

As for email, I will say that it connects VERY nicely to Gmail. Attachments download from Gmail without problems (not sure about Exchange; I haven’t had any attachments from that account yet).

Obviously, the keypad of the Q/Q9c (my former phones) is better suited to power texters who are writing long emails on their devices, but for regular use (I type about 10-20 emails a day with about 10-25 text messages), it’s quite easy to use (and actually quite fun). The handwriting recognition (a little touted feature) is very nice, and works very well albeit it’s actually faster to just type it in with your fingers.

The accessories it comes with are quite welcome considering the trend lately of companies cutting out the accessories that devices ship with.

Also, I posted a quick video of the kids on their Instincts on Youtube; it’s pretty funny.

…and so did Sherry, Gelli, and Brendon. What did we get?

The Sprint Instinct! It’s what I was drooling over when it was first announced, and after seeing it live, I just had to get one (as did Gelli; she bought her own). Brendon, Sherry, and I all have birthdays within the next month or so, so we used that as an excuse to get these phones as our birthday presents this year.

So far, we all are amazed with the phone. Super-usable, super-fast, very responsive, and not laggy or buggy at all. There are some things to get used to, but even the handwriting recognition works on this thing! It came with an optional use stylus (there isn’t a stylus slot on the phone, but there is on the included case) that I haven’t tried to use yet, but may.

The screen is nice and bright, the speaker and ringer are loud and clear, and my son is in love with one of the ringtones. He plays it on his phone (he has affectionately named it “soundsystem”). There he goes again, playing that ringtone! lol

I’m at the point where my phone is everything I’ve always wanted in a phone. It’s awesome… convergence devices. GPS/mp3 player/video player/Internet access/telephone/camera/etc. It’s sweet!

Oh, and best of all, it doesn’t bear a fruit logo. :/

I’ve been busy. So busy, in fact, that I’ve neglected ol’ Burnerblog once again.

Here is the kind of post I hate to read on other people’s’s’s’s’s blogs.

I’ve been playing bass in two bands, playing Age of Conan online with friends, racing in NCNASCAR (and winning some races!), having friends over from out of town, reading neat websites with cool ideas, and many other things.

Next up for me is making a compost pile, organizing one corner of the garage, and waxing my car.

And maybe keeping this place a little more up-to-date than I have been.

I finally found a fast OS that is perfect for our kitchen computer: gOS. I downloaded the DVD iso today and after some testing, decided to go ahead and install it onto the kitchen computer. The verdict from the wife and daughter so far: they both like it. It’s fast, responsive, and does exactly what it’s supposed to do there: run the browser and do light media work.

gOS is available for free, and the DVD image (like nearly all Linux distros these days) offer the ability to run from CD/DVD first to see if all the drivers work, how you like it, etc. The install was SUPER-EASY. Considering all the Linux distros I’ve tried, this one was by far the easiest to install and get running. No Linux knowledge is necessary. The menu system is very OSX-ish in that it’s a menu bar on the bottom of the screen, but I’ll forgive it since it seems useful the way it was implemented. The main feature I like: speed. And lots of it.

If you’re looking to flip the Linux switch, or are just Li-Curious (I made that up just now… lol), then give gOS a try. It’s great for that older machine laying around, and makes for a great browser system in your kitchen, living room, hallway, bathroom, etc.

This is my next phone.

I didn’t jump on the iPhone bandwagon for a few reasons:

1. I didn’t want to have to go to AT&T.
2. I didn’t want to purchase another Apple product.
3. I didn’t want to pay out the nose for a non-3G phone with dubious text-input ability.

Well, it seems my patience (and the patience of others like me) is being rewarded by Sprint who is releasing the Instinct. It’s similar to the iPhone in that it has a touchscreen face, but otherwise seems to have a lot of nice features and good performance.

June 20th is the drop-date for this phone, and the first person in our house to get one will be my wife, Sherry. She’s over-due for a new phone, and she’ll get this one before I do. Then, I’ll get mine, and eventually, my daughter Gelli says she wants to save up for one as well. My son? He doesn’t care so much about flashy phones; he just wants one that will do voice and text messaging. He loves simplicity.

Anyway, I have been reading a lot about these phones, and once again, it’s funny how threatened certain people feel about this device (as they did with any other device that posed serious competition to whatever beloved product they paid lots of money for, as if the presence of the newer product somehow invalidates them and their purchase). May iPhone fanboys have been posting about how “all Samsung and/or Spring can do is copy the iPhone,” blah blah blah. It makes me laugh.

Word is that the phone will cost less, have fewer restrictions, faster service, and lower rates than an iPhone. And the best part: it won’t be an Apple.

What’s my beef with Apple? Well, let’s say that after owning four iPods, I will never purposely purchase another Apple product again. The fact that Apple won’t release new features for iPods when the hardware can handle them is a big sticking point for me, indicative of a company that cares only about profits and not at all about the consumer. The Zune, the Zen, and many other DAPs add features and enhancements to their firmware, and allow users to upgrade their mp3 players. This is very cool. Apple, on the other hand, will only update firmware for bug-fixes and to update their DRM. Bleh.

The fact that Apple is so against third-party app development for the iPod, iPhone, and only grudgingly supports development for anything else on their products also shows that they’re a company that can care less about innovation and cares more about their own bottom line. Ironic considering how they portray themselves to be such a forward-thinking company.

As-if.

So, back to the original point; I’m going to be getting a new phone because I love gadgets and I love me some new phone hotness. I can’t wait!