Moved here from 360

I moved this blog here from Yahoo! 360.  Unfortunately, Yahoo!’s new profile blog service provides no feed.  I thought that was a basic service of a blog.

WordPress was kind enough to provide a way to import the 360 contents totally.  Seems to have worked well.

Actually, I sporadically post to this blog, but perhaps now with wordpress it will have a new excited audience (or maybe not).

McDonalds Baked Apple Pie

It’ll kill you with 5g of trans fat per little pie rectangle. I bought a couple for old times sake as I used to get when I was a kid. I just looked at nutrition info online and it’s far worse than the hamburgers as far as trans fat. They should just remove those deadly things from the menu.

Gmail

Good: streamlined interface, no obtrusive ads, powerful filtering/labeling/search mechanisms, good spam filtering
Bad: a little slow to load at first (but far faster than advanced Yahoo! Mail)

Stamina BodyTrac Rower

Good: Inexpensive, a good upper and lower body workout, small footprint, quiet, good mix of aerobic and muscles — you can even save some breath for singing with your iPod/stereo and can row with eyes closed, something you can’t really do with a treadmill.
Bad: Questionable reliability (according to Amazon reviews), digital stroke meter had blown digits (but was replaced under warranty quickly and easily), perhaps not the same mechanics as actual rowing and different from the fan based rowers, can’t read too well or at all while exercising, unlike on an exercise bike.

Microsoft Money 2008 — Update: MS Money Discontinued

Good: Seems pretty similar to Money 2003
Bad: Limits online account sync to 2 years from activation versus seemingly unlimited time for Money 2003. File formats not backwards compatible. I.e. once you upgrade you can’t go back. Someone’s getting a free copy of Money 2008.

Also bad:  Just found out that Microsoft is discontinuing MS Money.  They are encouraging people to switch to Quicken.

Potbelly Sandwich Works

Dunno, but somehow their sandwich seemed much better than Subway or Quiznos. Weird how living in California and only having the mini-mall exposure to Subway, I never realized that the chain’s name meant anything. In Chicago, it dawned on me the idea that Subway was almost always real close to the train stations.

NYTimes.com

Good: No more TimesSelect. Now you can save articles and even create your own homepage there.
Bad: Once in awhile the RSS feed seems to get messed up with links going to ‘null’ — or well at least Google Reader has trouble with the feed.

PC Magazine / PC World

PC World seems far better. I like the tips they give you such as the many links to free software which usually work pretty well.

PC Magazine writers apparently have something against Google. They must have all been turned down in interviews or something. Okay, just kidding, but really, even the main editor has some super paranoid writings against Google.

Sony Pictures DVDs

Bad: Annoying anti-piracy prevents me from watching their DVDs on my conventional Toshiba DVD player.

Darn Sony. I don’t particularly like their electronics: overpriced and proprietary. My personal goal: boycott Sony movies where possible and Blue-ray. Never get locked into their expensive proprietary systems — memory stick, for example.

Windows Defender

Good: Free anti-spyware from Microsoft.
Bad: Seems to correlated with increased frequency of crashing my machine. Seems best to leave it off, but run a scan manually every so often.