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After commencement on Sunday, 1 June 2008 from Carroll High School, I recieved my graduation presents, like any normal teenager, fresh out of high school. I got a HP Pavilion dv2000, among some other things. The specs are as follows:

• AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-60 and 512KB+512KB L2 Cache (2.0 GHz)
• 250GB (5400RPM) Hard Drive
• 3072MB DDR2 SDRAM (2 Dimm)
• LightScribe Super Multi 8X DVD+_RW with Double Layer Support
• Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit) with SP1
• HP QuickPlay
• Hp Mobile Remote Control
• Mobile Stereo Earbud Headphones
• Fingerprint Reader
• HP Webcam
• 14.1″ WXGA High-Definition BrightView Widescreen Display (1280 x 800)
• nVidia GeForce 7150M with shared graphics memory
• 802.11a/b/g/n (draft 802.11n) WLAN
• 5-in-1 Digital Media Reader
• ExpressCard/54 PC Card Slot
• Expansion Port 3
• 6-Cell Lithium-Ion battery

My personal analysis:

Pros:

• Fingerprint reader integrated into Vista and logon/locking
• Media controls–touch sensitive
• Light-weight
• Webcam/Microphone
• Cool design on top
• Two headphone jacks in front
• Remote included (not used that much)
• MultiCard reader

Cons:

• No numberpad besides the function key thing
• Three usb ports–lame
• Small screen (1280 x 800)
• Warm area near where hands rest while typing
• Keyboard doesn’t light up
• Doesn’t have an included little prop-thing to incline notebook
• No bluetooth
• Have to buy the expansion thing to have more ports =/ ($100 something)
• Hp QuickPlay is annoying, but deactivatable
• Media buttons are easily pressed (not that big of a deal)

Overall, nice machine. Consider it. I only wish that I would have gotten a blutooth-enabled one, and the Artist Edition. Going to buy the expansion port because I want three monitors. =]

Now I just wish I could find a machine that supported multiple mice, because who doesn’t want to navigate windows/the web with two cursors?

I got this back in April, when our Sprint contracts were renewed. Here’s some specs from the official page:

Camera Resolution: 1.3 megapixel
Music Player: MP3, AAC, AAC+, 3GPP, 3GPP2 and MPEG3
Mobile TV: Y
FM Radio: N
Mobile Printing: PictBridge
Messaging Push to talk: N
Instant Messaging: Y
Connectivity Bluetooth: Y
Internet HTML Browser: N
User Memory: 16MB
External Memory: 64MB
Touch Screen: N

My personal analysis:

Specs:

• 190 Texts in Inbox
• 50 Texts in Outbox
• 500 Contacts
• 20 Missed/Outgoing/Incoming Calls each

Pros:

• Large screen, always displayed
• Nice buttons, easily pressed, hidden when in pocket
• Videos as ringtones
• Custom wallpaper
• Comes with 64MB micro SD card
• Bluetooth enabled
• Thin, fits nicely into pocket

Cons:

• No direct headphone/mic jack, uses adapter in port
• Ports have attached covers–annoying
• Low quality speakers, cracks at high volumes
• Atteanae is internal and where most people hold it
• Texting firmware trys to predict next word
• Texting firmware trys to use most used words more often
• Blind texting almost impossible
• Lots of features that require payment to Sprint
• Hard to text while charging
• Most options in phone disabled when internet is disabled with provider
• Can’t use mp3s as ringtones–video work around

Overall, It’s a pretty nice phone, and I think it could be a lot better with a few firmware adjustments. If I ever figure out how to hack/change it, I’ll update this ;).

The Presidential candidates and their lack of logic and consistency

On the left, there be Obama and Clinton, both seem to be lacking a credit in high school economics. There are very simple graphs of Price vs. Quantity that prove that there shouldn’t be: Health care, Minimum wage, Welfare, etc. I thought it would be easier to educate the proletarians. Apparently not, seeing as at least a fourth of the country is voting for either one.

On the right, there be McCain, who seems to be more liberal than conservative most the time. If this is what the republicans see as the most approbate candidate for the party, I’m afraid that your ranks have been infiltrated. He ensures a false hope of security through-out the nation, while installing his telescreens. Just a few signatures away from Big Brother.

But, then again, I don’t think we even need speed limits, the seat-belt law, mandatory car insurance, or anything else that limits our rights as citizens. Call me libertarian. =P

Backgammon

This is the one game on my computer, that I have failed to play and win. After years of being bored, and practically mastering every other game, It has proven to be only a series of large isosceles triangles. After trying to find it in Windows since my reinstallation and use of Ubuntu, I was thinking about resorting to online backgammon. The flashy-ness of the signs and distractions didn’t immediately aquire my favor or attention. “Backgammon Online!” seemed a bit to excited for backgammon than I was, but I guess someone feels that way about it…

Despite my ignorance for the rules of the game, it’s still sort of fun to see what the computer will let me do with the checker things. Perhaps I will learn how if I find another boring day.

I put Ubuntu 7.10 (Gusty) first on my small (8GB) hardrive, mostly because I was bored and hadn’t really gotten a chance to try out linux to a full extent, but when I starting using it full time, I stuck in the portable hardrive, copied over the important stuff, then wipped my main (40GB) clean, and installed Ubuntu.

I am fully impressed and ashamed that I had never seen this before. It is amazing compared to Windows. If you’ve ever had doubts about Windows and the lack of.. well, everything you’ve ever wanted, try Ubuntu. You can burn it to a CD to boot from, and simply test it out a bit, get a feel for it, tweak with things (the normal procedure I go through when testing), and decide if it’s for you.

It does take a bit of time to figure out the basics and get things set up incase you: want to play mp3s, use nVidia drivers, or user Opera. But please, If you have any problems, let me know, and I’ll personally find a solution and try to get it working for you! I believe it is that great. The forums have been a great resource for me, and solved everything I had a problem with.

Something else that I’ve been testing out would be the new WordPress 2.5 RC2. So far, it looks amazing, especially from Matt’s video of it. Personally, in Opera, it looks kinda shifty, but I take that as my own resonsibility because I choose to use it… >.< I might have to use Firefox to update some posts here and there…. I was just using a messed up plugin… But the visual editor is still messed up in opera. =P It expands to the whole width, overlapping the right column *annoying*.

One thing I’ve noticed is that it’s a lot cleaner. Tidy and white. Less images as backgrounds and more solid colors. I like it. If you get bored with your current setup, both Windows and the old WordPress, give both of these a try! Let me know what you think of either!

I actually came up with this by accident. I was working on number sequences, such as the Fibonacci sequence, and was trying to make up my own, and it turns out (one of them, this being it) was the same as n++. I felt pretty lame and geeky at the same time.

I actually haven’t had the opportunity to test out Vista as much as I would have liked to. The first service pack is supposed to be released here pretty soon, so I might as well wait for that…

And apparently Bill Gates quit from Microsoft? I haven’t heard much of this (or researched it at all), other than from Trevor. So look it up yourself if you care that much…

I also need to stop using “…” as much as I do, but I feel it gives a sense of flow (that could also be achieved through words). And you can’t begin sentences with “and,” but I’m doing that too… Maybe I’ll start to just write in lojban. That’ll make all of you non-believers happy.