Archive for January, 2005

KCMP Launch

KCMP launched yesterday at 9am and with high hopes for this new station, I have to say, I’ve thouroughly enjoyed the first few hours I’ve been able to listen to.

Have a look for yourself at their recent playlist, and you will surely see some of the music I have tried to push on my friends and family in the past.

I dusted off my lady friend’s MiniDisc player and recorded the first few hours of the station, which I will attempt to post as an mp3 at some point.

I’m not sure why I feel this weird connection to locally produced radio, but since I discovered KFAI, and now with the launch of KCMP, I’m enjoying flipping on the radio to see what’s on.

John Mayer

Does anyone get the feeling that John Mayer is a better musician than his albums would make it seem?

Record labels, let the man be free!

Seen While Driving

What is this… Texas?

Bull Horns

As far as I could tell, they were glued to the hood.

MacWorld SF 2005

I’d be forsaking my identity as an Apple -fanatic if I didn’t give my dedicated readers a quick update on the new products from Apple…

Mac mini – It has been shot down by the budget department for the near term, but I hope to someday get one of these to add to my home theater setup. I imagine hooking it up to the yet-unpurchased HDTV, and running iTunes, iPhoto, games, etc. on the big screen. For me, it makes a perfect little media server. For my sucker PC using friends, it offers a cheap way to get over to the Mac. Get a KVM and see what I’ve been crowing about for all these years!

iPod shuffle – There are two camps on this one, “what no screen!” and “freakin’ awesome!” Basically, a 512MB or 1GB iPod. Also doubles as a little thumb drive to store files on and shuffle (ha ha) files around. If you can’t figure out why there is no screen, think of this device more as extension of iTunes. You can get a random selection of your favorite songs from a playlist or genre you’ve set up. I especially liked the article I came across where the CEO of Creative Labs basically called iPod shuffle stupid. Where’s the screen, FM tuner, umpteen other features we have? He doesn’t care about elegant design, usability, interface… only adding more and more features.

“Actually, to me it’s a big let-down: we’re expecting a good fight but they’re coming out with something that’s five generations older. It’s our first generation MuVo One product feature, without display, just have a (shuffle feature). We had that — that’s a four-year-old product.”

“So I think the whole industry will just laugh at it, because the flash people — it’s worse than the cheapest Chinese player. Even the cheap, cheap Chinese brand today has display and has FM. They don’t have this kind of thing, and they expect to come out with a fight; I think it’s a non-starter to begin with.”

Can you tell that he is about to feel the cold slap of marketing genius? I think Apple will sell a lot of these.

There were various other announcements from Apple and other third party companies. I’m very excited about iPhoto 5, and also the upcoming Mac OS X 10.4, aka Tiger.

Call Forwarding = Racket

Okay, remember how I was all excited to find that call forwarding feature on my phone? Eric N. said “Make sure they aren’t charging you.”

I called them up to make sure that, yes, it would not cost additional money, just minutes on my plan.

Got my bill for the last month today. Nice $43.15 additional charge applied for call forwarding usage.

*blink, blink*

So I called them up and they credited me, no argument or anything, but seriously.

I figured out what the trick was… “minutes on my plan” is the same thing as “minutes billed as if you went over your available minutes for the month” back when I had the 350 minute plan with Qwest , and I would talk for 500 minutes, those extra 150 minutes were like $50? Yeah… same deal.

So we’re back to the old arrangement.. no call forwarding…

Does anyone use call forwading on their cell phones?