“Honestly, we couldn’t agree on a font type” commented the company’s Director of Marketing.  ”We were locked in a conference room for six days arguing between Comic Sans MS and Courier New.  One employee just kept screaming ‘Wingdings!’”  ”So finally, we decided to remove the text altogether and just enlarge the chick on the front, and then we broke for pizza.”

“We’re really considering getting enough motivation to actually do something about this” said the head of the National Association of Hipsters, Seattle Chapter.  ”We have a number of protest ideas under consideration, our best being blocking access to the cream and sugar with our Macbooks.”  ”It’s going to be very hard to order my Upside Down, Venti, Half Café, Soy, Non-Fat, No Whip, Extra Foam, Triple Shot, 2 Pump Mocha Latte with room tomorrow, I just don’t know how I’m going to do it.”

“I don’t know what they’re so upset about, I think the chick on the cup is kinda hot” commented one patron.  ”All I know is, their little protest better not come between me and my morning coffee.  This coffee is the only thing that keeps me sane at work each day…the only thing.”  He ended the interview with an eye twitch.

While wars have been started over less, the debate over Mac vs PC is one of the hotest topics on the Internet.  For the past 28.5 years, I have fought bravely on the side of the PC, but alas, I have pulled a Benedict Arnold and joined the Steve Jobs Infantry.  Don’t get me wrong, PCs have been good to me.  Some of my best childhood memories are my father and I continuously swapping 5.25 floppy disks in our first desktop PC setup in our dining room.  We learned DOS together, we  single-handedly won World War 2 by defeating the Germans in PT-109, and if it wasn’t for Math Climber, I still wouldn’t understand fractions.  I’ve made a good living off PCs, from a Student Technician in College, to a Network Analyst at a small town in Massachusetts, to Manager of the Production Engineering group at Monster.com, PCs have provided me with a steady paycheck for a good number of years.  So why, you ask, have I bitched slapped Bill Gates and crew and jumped ship?  Excellent question!  I do not fit the “typical Mac user” profile: I have never voted democrat, I drive an SUV instead of a Prius, I’ve never attended a film festival, I did not put the Apple Sticker on my car (it’s fruity enough), and while I do enjoy the occasional cup of Starbucks coffe, most mornings I make it myself at home.

It’s true, my reason for purchasing a laptop washed in unicorn tears has nothing to do with joining the social elite club, but rather, has some actual technical reasoning behind it, and as my wife will attest, also speaks to my inability to ever be fully satisfied with a single gadget I own (she’s a saint people).

Let’s take the second part first.  Hello, my name is Chris, and I’m a gadgetholic.  Unfortunately for this disease, admitting you have a problem does nothing but allow you to make up a word (gadgetholic for those keeping score at home).  Although the nice people at the New England Journal of Medicine will tell you there’s no such thing as gadgetholic, my self proclaimed disease combined with my appearant Adult ADD prove to be a lethal combination, causing me to purchase any piece of technoloy I deem interesting at any moment.  My average attention span for a piece of technology I purchase is anywhere from 3-6 months, and many of the “but honey I have to have this it’s just what I need this will be so cool” pieces of equipment that have passed through this house, ranging from video game consoles, to DVRs, to Cameras, to Home Theater Equipment to cell phones, have either found their way back to the place of purchase, or for the select few that make it to the 6 month mark, to Ebay/Craigslist/Amazon Marketplace.  Maybe I set the standards too high for the technology I purchase with my hard earned money, maybe I just have a problem, you decide.  To tie this back into the discussion at hand, again the average time a gadget holds my attention is 3-6 months, and again, I’ve been using PCs for over 20 years!  I mean come on, the math just works in my favor here, I was WAY overdue to try something besides Windows, so it’s not my fault (the disease talking).

I also mentioned there was a technical reason here.  Twelve years working on PCs expose you to a lot of the headaches and issues that come from working in a Windows environment.  Install a fresh copy of Windows, 400 patches to install, viruses, spyware, driver conflicts, and seriously, if you knew my father’s amazing ability to look at a computer and cause it to immediately burst into flames, you’d understand.  Too many nights and weekends I’ve spent at work or awake at home trying to solve some kind of technical problem at work due to a limitation or bug in Microsoft software.  I’m done.  I’ve changed career paths to sales, and while I am required to maintain some sense of technical ability, I no longer want to spend my time troubleshooting my home PC.  While I don’t fully buy into the concept that Macs just work and they’re the ultimate computer, I think it’s time to give it a try, I mean seriously, if the worst that can happen is I start purchasing more overpriced coffee, is there really a victim here?

Plus, I’m too much of a wimp to switch over to Linux

(For those who care, I purchased the 13″ Aluminum Macbook)

I’ve sold a few things on Ebay, but I’ve already been burned a couple times, and since you can no longer leave a buyer negative feedback (read: STUPID), I will probably no longer use Ebay.  I’ve also tried listing some things on Craigslist, but I’ve never had any luck there.  I was just about to start throwing everything into black garbage bags and make it Mother Earth’s problem when I stumbled upon a site called Freecycle.  Basically, it’s like a really really local Craigslist where you can offer items you no longer want/need to a message board, and people can contact you if they want said item  (You can also post items you’re looking for).  I decided to give it a try with the ultimate test, a used mattress and box spring that Craigslist failed to take off my hands.  I posted my item on the Lowell, MA message board, and within 30 minutes I had a response from someone looking to pick up my items.  Assuming this person actually comes to pick up the items, I’m impressed.

While I think the entire “Green” movement has become nothing more than a Marketing Department’s wet dream, it’s still nice to see web sites of this nature offering an alternative to just throwing away perfectly good “junk”.  So, we’ll see how this works out, but I encourage you to check out Freecycle, post some junk you have laying around and make that junk….well you know.

I’ve had some ideas while on this journey. I’d love to write a novel, but since my only formal training consists of this blog, and no one reads it, I cannot rely on this for sustainable income. I’ve thought about development, a field which I actually do have formal training, but I would have to go to back to entry level.

Basically, all I have so far are a couple ideas and a bunch of excuses.

So, as I begin this journey, I’ll be updating this blog of zero readers of my status, stayed tuned

EDIT: As I read through the post, I realized just how bad the iPhone spell checker is, so I corrected a few

Besides catching up with some friends that I miss dearly, visiting another great city made me realize how badly I want to step up the process of getting out of Massachusetts.   It’s not that I hate it here, it’s just that I hate it here.  The people suck, the government is backwards, and the living expenses are through the roof, but I digress.  Anyway, Chicago has officially made the list of places to consider, so let’s see what happens.

Apparently I wasn’t alone, and Netflix listened.

Right around the New Year, Netflix announced they had partnered with LG to integrate the Watch Instantly service into a set-top box that would connect directly to the TV and stream Netflix movies from the Internet, eliminating the need for a PC. In the same announcement, Netflix also indicated this partnership with LG was not exclusive, and to expect other hardware vendors to also integrate this functionality into devices.

On May 20th, 2008, another hardware partner was discovered, and Netflix and Roku launched the Netflix Player. Appealing to my impulsive side, I ordered one that day.

I received the Netflix Player about one week after ordering (I guess it was more popular than they expected). The folks over at HackingNetflix have a good video on the unboxing and setup:

I’ve been using the player for almost two weeks now, and my initial review is positive. The player is small, setup took all of ten minutes (including a firmware update and reboot), it’s wireless, the interface is fast and clean, and the player is silent, no fan whatsoever. The video connections on the back of the player range from Composite and S-Video to Component and HDMI, and for audio the player has analog RCA, Optical and HDMI. I have the player connected over HDMI to a 37″ Vizio LCD TV, and connected to the Internet via wireless G. Streaming movies to the player is fast, from selecting Play on a title to start of the video is about 20 seconds, which appears the player uses to cache some of the video for Fast Forward and Rewind operations. The buffer also appears to help with general playback, as I have yet to experience any video cutouts or digital blocking from network congestion. Much like the website, the Netflix Player also determines the quality of video by basic network tests at the start of each play. Most videos are about DVD quality, but it depends on the quality of the encoding, and age of the movie.

Now for my dislikes so far:

• No HD Content – I’ve been spoiled by renting HD DVDs and now Blu-Rays from the Netflix site, so it’s tough to go back to these standard definition movies. The good news is the Roku player is HD ready, meaning no need to upgrade hardware if Netflix decides to start offering HD titles in the future.
• Audio is limited to 2 Channel Stereo Sound – This goes along with the HD Video comment above, the player can handle up to 5.1 surround sound, when Netflix decides to start offering titles.
• No Queue Management through the player – this partially helps keep the interface as clean as it is, but it is still a paint to have to boot up a PC to add items to your Watch Instantly queue.
• Limited content on the Netflix site – The Netflix catalog has over 100,000 DVDs, yet only 10,000 items are available through the Watch Instantly service. While they are constantly adding new content, especially TV shows like “Heroes” and “The Office”, they really need to expand their selection.

Overall, this is a great product, and the perfect compliment to any Netflix Unlimited Rental account. To help with the content issue, it has also been announced that Roku will open this player up to other providers, in addition to Netflix. For $99, this box is a good deal. Buildout the Watch Instantly library and turn on the HD videos, and this box becomes a steal.

I finally got the chance to visit the new Apple Store on Boylston Street (located right outside the Prudential Center Mall) while in Boston this weekend.  This new store is the largest in the US, offering Mac-heads three windowed floors of Apple goodness.  While I didn’t buy anything on this trip, I did snap some photos with the iPhone, enjoy: