erica's joys :)

I called it. Taylor Hicks won American Idol and I don't think they could have had a more fitting winner. He's so cute...something about the personality mixed with the dignified grey hair...yum. Meanwhile, the number of votes that came in was pretty huge. If people showed up to vote for president in those kinds of numbers, maybe, gas would be cheaper right now? ;-)

So my trip to New York was good fun. I did go to the Apple store opening but I didn't actually go in. By the time I got there the line was ridculously long. No Macbook for me and definitely no iPod since they weren't giving them away. I got some pictures of the outside of the place though. Its rather nice looking and the underground store concept is hot. I do wonder what would happen in case of a fire with a store full of people. That day was pretty awesome all around as I was 100 ft away from at least 2 billionaires in one day. Ah, if only richness rubbed off.

This weekend I'm picking up my sister and nephews and driving up to NC for our cousins wedding. I'm worried that the trip is going to be extremely boring, given that I'm used to roadtripping with my iPod. :-( How I miss MyPod.

Last thing to touch on before I go to bed. The DaVinci Code. I will start by saying that I am a Christian. That being said, I'm also a fairly smart Christian and can easily discern fact and fiction. Here's a hint; if a book is in the fiction section of the bookstore, its probably fiction (*shock*) and should be considered as such. I can't understand why people make such a big fuss about a book. It's not like the DaVinci Code is out to replace the Bible. It's simply a good FICTIONAL story that makes for good reading.

Time for sleep now. If I don't post again before Friday, have a SAFE weekend folks.

I know I said I wouldn't post until after tommorow, but I have to get this out because I am beyond angry right now.

For the past week I have been getting horrible service on my Crackberry. I could not make or receive a call without the call being dropped. Today I finally got fed up and called Cingular after every single call would drop or fail to connect. After getting through all the prompts to a person, I told the CSA what was going on. CSA tells me to hang on and leaves me sitting there for like 5 minutes. When he gets back he tells me "Okay so I was looking at your service area and it looks like the towers around you have been shut down."

Excuse me, what?

He continues, "The towers have been shut down since May 14 because we are degrading the service in preparation for an upgrade. The closest tower for you to connect to is 25 miles away from you."

Are you kidding me?

I ask, "Shouldn't customers have been informed about this?"

He responds, "Yes, you're right, I apologize as that should have been done. For the inconvenience I am going to issue you a $25 credit to your account. Thank you for calling Cingular."

Gee, thanks. So I get a $25 credit to my account but piss poor, practically unusable service. Here's hoping I don't have an emergency or anything and can't get my phone to dial 911. I don't think that $25 credit will be very much use then.

I wonder if all the executives sitting in Cingular's corporate headquarters less than a mile away from where I live are having the same problems. I venture to guess the answer to that question is no.

Happy humpday folks! As promised, I'm going to post my review of Google Notebook. Without further ado, here it is.

So by now you've likely taken Google Notebook (referred to as GN from here, on) for a spin. A lot of what I'm getting from people is "What's it for?" Well for me, it's uses are many.

First, its an information organization tool. When I'm off on a hunt for info about a subject, I tend to visit many websites and get small snippets of information from each. Lets use vBulletin for an example. Information about vBulletin is spread far and wide and grabbing bits of code to do X from one site and bits of code to do Y from another generally results in 35 open text files with a little chunk of code in each. I am not being facetious when I say I dread shutting down because I have to figure out if I want to save each of those little notepad files and what each is for. Enter GN. Now when I go on a hunt for vBulletin SEO (yep I do that too) tips, I can just highlight the snippet of code I want, right click, and add to Notebook. Easy as pie with no ugly notepad mess left behind.

Second, I like to use it as a place to save pages I may want to visit later. Yes, yes, that where Bookmarks is supposed to come in, but Bookmarks lacks the ability to share with others. If I'm making notes about house hunting in Arizona for my mom, I like that she's able to go in and take a peek at the notes I'm making.

Speaking of sharing, that leads me to my single "complaint" about GN. Where is the syndication? I know that you can link a person to your GN page, however, if Joe Schmoe makes a kick ass Notebook about vBulletin SEO, I'd certainly like to be able to subscribe to his Notebook. That way, the moment he finds some other nugget of knowledge on the subject, I'll get it too.

So that's my notebook review, no you may not have that 2 minutes of your life back. :) On to Taylor, Mr. Hicks if you're nastay. He will win American Idol. Why? Because how can he not? Seriously, how could you not vote for this man:

He's just the most adorable. thing. ever.

Speaking of adorable, George O'Malley on Grey's Anatomy? Too cute for words. That season finale was the best I've seen in a long while, possibly ever. I, for one, do not get emotional during movies and TV shows. I don't cry on the regular tearjerkers (Bambi, Titanic, etc). However, I did cry during the Grey's Anatomy finale. Denny dying was just too much...so was Izzies reaction. I'm so glad Christina got ever being scared of her emotions. Now maybe she and Preston can actually act like a couple next season.

That wraps up today's post kids. I doubt I'll be posting anything tommorow so I'd like to remind folks about the Apple store opening on 5th Ave. I'll definitely be there. Good times. :)

Google Notebook is live! Yay! Now the levels of traffic to here will normalize and I'll return to having 6.2 readers again. :) I'll do my own review tommorow...right now its time for bed. Congrats to the Notebook team!

P.S. Here is my Notebook (the one that was in the screenshots).

Apparently I'm a Mid-Level Nerd. I'd have to agree with this assessment.

Well lookie here...the Apple Store - Fifth Avenue will be opening on May 19th. How convenient that I will be in New York that day. Maybe if I drop by I'll win one of those great prizes they mention. People are speculating that Apple plans to release a Red iPod. Wouldn't it be fantabulous if those were one of the great prizes and yours truly happened to win one? Nod your head in agreement now please. Thank you. :)

Speaking of Apple, here is my switch update of the day: Widgets? Friggin cool. I love the Blogger one and might soon make use of it (though not right now). Are there any that I should have installed that aren't part of a vanilla build of OS X? I've only installed the Google ones. Let me know please.

Thats all for now folks. Have a great weekend. Oh yeah, Happy Birthday Mr. Frost!

First lets start with the standard: The views expressed on this website are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer. Now on to the post.

Today was Google's Press Day and I had the webcast going while I worked. Marissa announced some labs stuff, nothing major, just the standard fare. Yunno, Google Desktop with its own media player and other cool Google Gadgets, something called Google Trends, Google Co-op, and Google Notebook. Meh, nothing big about those at all.

Yeah right, those are all excellent releases. The 2 I'm most excited about are the Gadgets and Google Notebook. Seriously, I <3 notebook. I have some screenies for those who want to see a little of it before trying it out. Honestly, it takes marking things in del.icio.us to the next level. Search, note, keep it moving. Google knows how I work...maybe because I work at Google? Hmmmm.

Oh before I go, a quick switch update. My MBP was kicking my PC's ass until I realized it can't do dual monitors (I do not count the laptop LCD as a monitor). Very bad, oh Appley ones, very bad.

Even though I'm a little mad at apple for that whole genius bar mess, I am happy to report that I have switched!

I got my macbook pro today and am now typing this blog from it. I must admit, it's taking a little getting used to but it's already well worth it. I <3 expose forever. Dragging a program to the Application folder to install it? Outstanding! Everything is so pretty...now if I could just turn my windows a nice shade of pink I'd be all set.

Mac people, you may stop gloating now. I know you're saying "Silly Windows girl," in your heads. Don't laugh if in the future I discover some cool new feature that is actually old...it will be new to me dangit!

Moving on, I've found out that the new Mario is for the Nintendo DS (yes, this is me, late again). I must have a DS now. For Mario and for that cool brain age game (can you call it a game?) I've been seeing on TV. I can already tell it will be an exercise in self control not to use my savings to buy toys. Lets see, digital camera, iPod, NintendoDS...anybody got anything else to add?

So the iPod woke up but wouldn't get out of hold. Mind you it was turning on and everything, I just couldn't drive it because it was stuck in hold. So I say to myself, "Self, get thee to the Genius Bar so they can unstick it."

Sometimes I wish I didn't listen to myself.

I went into the Genius Bar with an iPod that was stuck in hold and walked out of the Genius Bar with an iPod that had the folder with the exclamation mark and wouldn't spin up.

Geniuses? Methinks not. Very bad, oh Appley ones. Very bad.

I plugged my iPod in this morning on a whim and it worked. Thank you oh Appley ones for making what seems to be a self healing device. Yeah okay maybe its not self healing but if draining the battery all the way then plugging it in saves me from spending $300, I'm a happy camper. :)

When I was 8 or 9, I was in love with Mario and Nintendo was my pimp. I'd get done with Mario and Nintendo would lure me back with a new improved version of Mario. "You know you want some more of him," Nintendo would say and I, never to reject my Mario (except for the travesty that was SMB2), would bend to Nintendo's will.

After Super Mario World, Mario and I parted ways. At 12, I was too sophisticated to be swayed by the tempations of Nintendo. No more could they wave anything with Mario plastered on it under my nose to make me spend my (mom's) hard earned money. I was a discriminating consumer with 6th grade tastes you understand. Mario....Kart? What was that? Who wanted a knock-off Mario Game? Not me.

Fast forward 10 years. I still love Mario but we hadn't been together in a while. I'd see him in emulators but we wouldn't speak. I thought I'd lost him forever.

Fast forward to now. Nintendo is back up to their old tricks, trying to pimp Mario to me with a New Super Mario Bros. I won't put up a fight. I know its pointless to try to resist, I'll just succumb like they want me to. Yes, I will buy the new console Nintendo, whatever you say, just give me my beloved Mario and nobody gets hurt.

I love that man.