June 2005

My girlfriend and I spent most of the last week in Mexico. One of her best friends got married at the El Dorado Royale resort in Cancun. Almost five full days of tequila and sun makes for a pretty good time. The place was terrific and the wedding was lovely. I’d love to say more, but every day was wonderfully monotonous — wake up, breakfast buffet with bloody mary, lay in the pool reading magazines with a never-ending margarita, lunch buffet, cervezas on the beach, dinner buffet, martini bar evenings … If you’ve never done an “all-inclusive” vacation, you don’t know what you’re missing.

CapitalOne’s website is just terrible. About every third time I click the “LogIn” button on the front page it simply redirects me to the front page. Even on my work connection the entire site loads like it’s running on a 1992 486 box. There are ridiculous pop-ups thrown at me every time I attempt to download a statement. The layout is cluttered with AdSense-esque ads and 63 small-print disclaimers on every page. This is a company that must have money falling out of their pockets — why can’t they have a fast, slick web site? Even Washington Mutual — my local bank — has an infinitely better system.

“Do you feel shackled to old technology just so that the music middle men can maintain their inflated profit margin? Well, you should now.

Released just three days ago by RCA, the new Foo Fighters CD contains DRM that supposedly prevents the CD from being loaded and ripped via iTunes. Customers are already complaining that their legally purchased music isn’t worth the money they paid for it because they can only listen to it in CD players.”

“Suspended Florida State quarterback Wyatt Sexton was taken to a Tallahassee hospital on Monday evening by local police after causing a disturbance in the street, then identifying himself to police as ‘God’ and the ’son of God.’
Sexton was not arrested.”

Oakley has started advertising Thump — “Digital Music Eyeware”. If these had a BlueTooth iPod dongle I would go buy a pair right now — before lunch even. They don’t, though. They have a 256mb or 512mb memory gizmo and you need a USB cable to update your tunes (and what looks like a c. 1995 cell phone battery pack to charge them). It’s tragic. So close to being perfect. Think about how much lighter and slimmer (and cooler) they could be if they weren’t doing the processing! Boneheads. I love Oakley, too. They are a great company. Slick marketing, killer sunglasses. It bites that they missed the target on this.

Here’s another silly music meme. This one’s from A Small Victory. Take all the songs in iTunes (or your music player of choice), alphabetize ‘em, and tell the first song of each letter. Yes, it’s lame. Yes, it’s fun. I got more than 26 because I couldn’t resist including numerals and non-alphanumeric characters. And I also win the dork award because I had to take the time to give you an appropriate link to find the songs on your own.

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Hey, Florida Crew Alumni! One of the current rowers, Kerri Riva, is attempting to find everyone. If you used to row for UF, drop her a line and let her know how to find you. Hell, drop me a line and let me know how to find you. (I highly doubt she’s trying to get anyone back into a boat. It took me 30min to pull a pathetic 6531m tonight. Check the sidebar of this page to see how I’m doing …)

Tonight was the premiere of the final season of one of my favorite shows — Six Feet Under, on HBO. It’s really brilliant, this show. I can’t get over how every episode is just so freaking fantastic. I’m going to be a bit sad when it’s gone.

I have been thinking a lot lately about how I used to never watch television. For the first twenty-five years of my life, if you had asked me, I would have said that I didn’t consider myself a tv-watcher, even that I didn’t really like tv (except for football, of course). In the last five or six years, though, I’ve become addicted to quite a few shows: Law & Order, West Wing, CSI: Miami, the Sopranos … I honestly think that some of the best production/writing/acting in media is on these shows, but I am also wondering if it’s really TV that’s getting better or if it’s just that I am getting older.

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A Short List of Things That I Had at One Time Thought Were Quite Technologically-Advanced But Which Now Are in My Closet Because I Will Probably Never Use Again (and What Replaced Them)

• VCR (TiVo, DVDs, and 950 Cable Channels)
• Stereo Component MiniDisc Player (iPod, mp3s)
• Portable MiniDisc Player (iPod, mp3s)
• 5-Disc CD Changer (iPod, mp3s)
• Approximately 850 Music CDs (iPod, mp3s)
• 2 Microsoft Sidewinder PC Video Game Controllers (Playstation 2)

Emerald Nuts:

• bad: content-free, crappy-ass Flash website
• good: wickedly funny commercials
• good: nifty recyclable plastic pop-top ergonomic container
• good: mouth-wateringly awesomely delicious nuts