2005 November

Are you itching to ditch that name-brand DVR and install an Intel-powered home entertainment computer? It sounds like something big (and small) may be just around the corner …

My inner geek deflated when my wife exclaimed “you better not get me a navigation system for Christmas!” We were driving around lost. Looking for a soccer field. Yet again. Alas, the Woodie lacks a built-in navigation system. (Heck, we’re lucky if we can find a state map.) Our standard away game procedure is […]

Remember those rumors about cheap Wal-Mart laptops and desktop PCs? The bargain basement notebook computers went on sale on Black Friday, inspiring bad craziness, coast-to-coast. How crazy? Well, this you just have to see to believe …

There’s nothing quite like stepping on your digital scale on the morning after a monstrous Thanksgiving meal. It may have been thanks you were giving the night before, but that scale is anything but forgiving. To throw a couple more metaphors in the blender, dead men tell no tales and digital scales tell no lies […]

Football and Thanksgiving go together like apple pie and ice cream (which, come to think of it, will push that meal over the top … of your belt). Gathering round the Turkey-day boob tube isn’t so tube-like these days, with flat screen television technology featuring nary a tube. Thin is in, baby. When the big […]

Faithful readers may be familiar with rancho indebto’s family cellphone saga … lost on the beach, run through the washing machine, $150 in IM charges … we’ve been through it all. After running without a single cellphone for months now, the pressure’s on to jump back on the wagon. I might roll the […]

Watch out. Big brother is watching you. Employee monitoring solutions come in all shapes and sizes …

How many hours do you spend at your computer on an average day? (Too many?) Do you have any pain in your back, shoulders, neck, elbows, or wrists? (All of the above?) Have you done everything possible to make your workstation pain-free? The secret to working long hours at the PC without pain isn’t […]

The convergence looks one step closer with the news that Warner Brothers and America Online have teamed up on a new web service that will offer free TV show downloads, come January. Downloading TV shows is a hot topic, without a doubt. C’mon … who wouldn’t want to download episodes of F Troop, Chico and […]

There are two weeks until Black Friday. The mere thought sends a chill down my spine (okay, maybe there’s just a draft in here). Black Friday … a.k.a.: the day after Thanksgiving, traditionally the most insane shopping day of the holiday season. Like most years, my wish list is a short list: peace on earth, […]

I saw a service station selling regular gas for $2.10 yesterday and thought, “wow, prices have really dropped!” The oil industry, no doubt, hopes that we think “wow, that’s really cheap!” But we all know it isn’t … no matter how hard big oil pushes our price/pain reset buttons. So when I read today that […]

It’s safe to say that Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page can afford to live large these days. Here’s proof. Not content with a cramped and mundane private charter jet, Sergey and Larry have gone whole hog, ponying up big bucks for a whale-like but well-traveled Boeing 767-200. While it might seem excessive at […]

I woke up in the middle of the night last night and couldn’t fall back to sleep. Insomnia struck again. As I flipped through the channels looking for my makeshift white noise for insomnia cure, I learned something very important. (Well, lets just say that it was important to me at 2:37 AM.) DirecTV is […]

Could I have picked a better week to write about company e-mail monitoring? If you were ex-Federal Emergency Management (FEMA) honcho Michael Brown, you might not think so. The news that hit the wires about Brownie’s e-mail faux pas just may prove to be the maraschino cherry on the ice cream sundae of his career. […]

Too many computers and not enough desk space? You don’t need any magic to control multiple computers with one keyboard and mouse. You just need a nifty little hardware device known as a KVM switch…
What’s that? Another acronym?
Fear not… this one is easy to remember: KVM = keyboard, video, mouse.

If Wal-Mart sold a laptop or desktop computer for a measly four hundred bucks, would you buy it? I’d reckon that there are lots of people that would, but I’m not one of them, for oh so many reasons. Reason numero uno? I’ve never been inside a Wal-Mart store in my life. Not once. Not […]

Mea Culpa! I stand corrected. I’ve been found guilty of slinging acronyms without proper identification and publicly keelhauled for the less-than-professional use of buzzwords. It’s all because of my piece yesterday on Overstock’s ERP Software Woes. Read on for the gory details …