Monday, November 25, 2002

Bad day -- 10:20 pm CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

Today was the last day for our diabetic cat. She'd slowly been going downhill for several months, and our only options were extensive/expensive tests and cleaning bills, or else to let her go. We didn't want her to keep suffering. She wasn't too obviously sick yet, which made the decision much tougher. But the signs were there. This afternoon she made her last trip to the vet. We'll miss her for a long time. Wherever you are, have a beer (or your equivalent beverage) in memory of Katy.

RealPlayer Exploit -- 12:18 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

There is an exploit in RealPlayer and RealPlayer One that could allow someone to run arbitrary code on your computer. You can also check out Real's official security announcement that includes a link to a patch. That page seems to indicate that only the Windows versions are affected. Thanks HardOCP.

Ugly Weekend -- 12:09 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well, it was a miserable weekend to be a Michigan sports fan. The Lions lost due to a combined effort of incompetance from both team and coach. The Wolverines lost to the hated Ohio State Sewage. Michigan State got crushed by Penn State. The Red Wings went 0-1-1. At least it's over. The only positive was the Pistons winning at Indiana and Miami.

I plan on making up for this weekend by eating turkey like it's going out of style on Thursday. Hopefully the Lions' annual Thanksgiving Day game won't upset my stomach too much. Did I mention I like turkey?

Sunday, November 24, 2002

NFL Week #12 So Far -- 11:01 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

First of all, I'd like to start off by giving a swift kick to the groin of the good people at the local Fox affiliate who switched away from the Bears-Lions game in the last minute of regulation to show commercials before the Packer game. The football gods did not look favorably on that, and struck Favre with a case of vertigo or something.

Speaking of vertigo, I must've had a nasty case of it when I made my picks since I'm 8-7 so far. Eeyore is a game better at 9-6 (Thanks to Eeyore for correcting my math). A typical ugly, wacky weekend in the NFL.

Sweeney on 64bit UT2K3 -- 5:17 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Evil Avatar asked Epic's Tim Sweeney a few quick questions about the 64bit version of Unreal Tournament 2003 that they showed off at Comdex. Here's a snip:

In pure CPU performance, Athlon64 is about 15% faster than previous Athlon's of identical clock rate for 32-bit apps, and 30% for 64-bit apps, because it exposes double the number of CPU registers, enabling the compiler to generate more efficient code. As for UT2003 performance, we haven't benchmarked yet but expect it to be faster though less than 30% because the GPU is as significant a factor as CPU.

Still Using Your PDA? -- 4:38 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Someone at Slashdot asked the musical question if people still use their PDAs. Personally, I'd be absolutely lost without mine. Paper organizers are too bulky, too expensive, and don't do what I want. My schedule is on my PDA, as well as all of my contacts and a seemingly endless list of to-dos. It has eliminated my "endless sticky note" method of organization. My wife thought it was going to be another tech toy for me. She's been amazed at how much I still use it. I bought my Handspring Visor Deluxe for about $250 two and a half years ago. I haven't seen any other PDA worth the upgrade price yet.

WinCE/PocketPC devices are too expensive, don't do the basic PDA tasks well (calendar, to do, phone book), and are a very poor laptop replacement. If they were a good substitute for a laptop, the price might be worth it. Plus the battery life is next to nothing. Unfortunately, the PalmOS devices are getting flashier and more expensive, but not more useful. The future (for me anyway) probably lies in some cellphone/PDA combo. But that's the distant future. For now my Visor and Motorola StarTac work together quite nicely.

UPDATE! Loyal reader Chris Glass emailed me to point out the forthcoming Kyocera 7135, which looks like a step forward in the PDA/cellphone combo market. I'll be interested to read reviews on it when it comes out.

J.t.Qbe comments: I use my PDA (Visor Deluxe) as an extension of my own memory--it remembers things so I don't have to (and so I don't have to carry around a hundred slips of paper). I used it constantly before I became a telecommuter, but now I don't need it as much. It's still a handy datastore and I always take it with me whenever I go out, but I simply don't use it as much as in the olden days. Give me an office job and I'll be using it all the time again.

Past Two Days' News

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