jr conlin's ink stained banana

No, i've not completely fallen of the face of the earth (although, i am mighty close to it). Unfortunately, "Paradise" does not include "plentiful free wireless connectivity". Some folks have such low standards for perfection. Add in the requirement that i interface with family members in a slightly more analog manner (Seriously, you wouldn't believe the reaction when i was sitting screeching 96K baud at them over the dinner table) and things are a bit off line.

Ah well, off to deal with the bright, yellow glowy thing in the sky that burnses the skins… (Hey, i'm a celtic guy in the tropics. We're not used to those levels of radiation and it's mighty hard to find an Aloha Burqua at the ABC shop.)

Dammit.

So, come 7:30AM tomorrow, i'm going to be traveling about. Normally, i tend to greet these sorts of times as a wonderful time to catch up on some coding, but as of this morning my laptop died. (Oddly telling, but that's another discussion.)

i shouldn't be particularly surprised. First, the power adapter died. $70 for a new one of those (and then i managed to score a few extras from a scrap bin). Then, a few months ago, the wireless card in it died and i had to spend $100 replacing it. Then the bottom third of the display kept flaking out on me indicating that one of the LCD ribbons had a short in it. Finally, this morning, it refuses to boot, and dies during the POST checks. Ok, so i paid $800 for it, but i was kinda hoping i'd get more than two years out of the box.

i am now short one laptop.

Of course, since it's me i'm talking about, there's some conditions on whatever laptop i decide to replace this with:

1) i hate Apple.
2) i'm not particularly fond of Sony. (Lest we forget that they're the ones that rooted customer boxes, push for DRM on everything, and otherwise express themselves as less than pleasant corporate citizens).
3) i'm currently less inclined to get another Compaq considering how this one faired. That said, i've got three power adapters and a 12 cell battery that's otherwise not going to be used.

That leaves Lenovo, Toshiba, and a slew of "who the hell are these?" guys.

So, dear lazyweb; got any suggestions for what laptop i should get?

Being a hard core nerd and all round science enthusiast (Hey, i read and mostly understand JIM's blog) i'm sitting watching the full coverage of The Phoenix Landing. i'll use the all caps because, let's face it, NASA is really dragging out the dog and pony for this one to get folks pumped about it. On a somewhat like note, i remember watching a commercial for the Olympics this morning during a Professional off-road Truck Race (official motto "Eat yer dad-burned heart out Bo and Luke! Yeeeeeeee-haaaw!™") which said "How many times can you watch history?" Funny, i thought i was doing that tonight.

All that said, i think i realized what the biggest problem that science TV has. They rerun more stuff than old Ed Wood movies. i'm honest, i've also been taping a bunch of astronomy shows, and it's kinda depressing how many times they either show the same footage or some variant of "stock" that they've taken from some previous show.

i mean, i know that they've got a limited budget, and they can't assume that everyone has a full idea about what the hell they're talking about, (ooh, maybe a Science Post Grad Channel) but it's wonderful to see something that's new. It's like i've seen the same footage of the death of the dinosaurs used on every show that even half managed to mention orbital bodies.

Granted, NASA isn't really getting out of that particular rut. They spent a few bucks putting together a video from "7 Minutes of Terror" showing the landing sequence, and have been showing that every 15 minutes. Heck, i've seen them take stills from the animation and discussed in detail everything they just described 10 minutes ago.

Still, i'm a huge space nerd, and i wouldn't really have it any other way.

One of the reasons that i've been running silent for the past few weeks was partly due to a few somewhat looming crises. It was a little detail where i had to get some stuff working or a few businesses would have had to shut their doors and the company i work for would have been in really rough shape. Thanks to the efforts of a great many folks, such catastrophe was averted, the day reasonably saved and a rather large asteroid dispatched without the loss of Bruce Willis and his plucky yet courageous crew.

One of the things that was pretty frustrating during that period of metaphorical apocalypse, was that there were some folks that i was dealing with that seemed to have a really hard time understanding why i was screaming in panic at them. This is because no matter how much of a crisis you may be having, it's always going to be less important than the crisis they happen to be having. i know this because i realize that i am now in the position of being one of those folks who's not exactly being swayed by the near continual screaming of someone else in the midst of their own emergency.

i'm sympathetic, mind you. i'll also probably put in a few hours over this long, holiday weekend poking at their code to see what i can get running by their deadline of Tuesday, but my current priority is figuring out how to lower my blood pressure and heart rate to sub-hummingbird as well as potentially figure out how to perform that act you humans call "sleep".

Life is an endless set of trade-offs, it seems.

i was reading Andrew Chen's note about Metcalfe's Law and it's corresponding inverse corollary. He basically summarizes social networks like parties, the more popular a party, the more folks show up or want to join in, but once folks start leaving the party, so does everyone else.

Well, that's mostly true, at least if the only thing keeping folks there are the other folks.

i mean, sure, they're drinking your beer and grinding your food into the carpeting, but once the attraction isn't quite so attractive, there's precious little to keep them there. They know that, so they leave to find the next fun party.

The real trick, and where things get hard, is trying to maintain the momentum and ensure that the party keeps going. For that, you have to provide them something they're not getting somewhere else, or at least provide it better than anywhere else that wants to offer it. In other words, the party or social aspect can't be the only thing you've got to offer.

It amazes me when i hear folks talk about social things as the sum total of the offering. It's one of the reasons i don't really get Facebook, MySpace, and other sites like that and don't hang out there constantly. i may go check on things, grab a beer, and talk to some folks i know that are also dropping by, but i can happily go for weeks without doing that. Sites like Linked-in offer a tiny fraction more service because they're useful as a geek social and job search tool, but again, it's not the center of my attention. In fact, i do a fair share of socializing on ye olde social sites like forums. Even there, should some of the more entertaining folks decide to leave, there's no real reason i'd stick around either.

It's one of the reasons that i think sites like Flickr and MyBlogLog are better social networks than some of the bigger players because the social aspects are secondary to the main tasks at hand. It's also one of the reasons that i think real social networks have yet to emerge.

Interesting times, eh?

Meanwhile, i'm going to go grab a plate of free nachos while they're still out.