I want a Mac. Oooo the envy.

Apple says the G5 is the world’s fastest PC. Power Mac sales had slumped as the slower pace of worldwide economic growth forced graphic designers and advertising agencies to cut spending. Apple, based in Cupertino, California, said sales were hurt by the perception that the processors weren’t fast enough.

I might have to start a Technology Anonymous group for geeks like me with an addiction to buying cool technology. I can’t be alone in wanting one of those pristine G5’s though. Sitting here blogging won’t fulfill my technology desires, so I better get back to working. To the coding caves, Robin!

Recently I was surfing Amazon and noticed that they started incenting customers with a nickel for answering trivia.

These nickels can be accumulated – but must be used within 1 year from the date of earning (see restrictions)– and used to offset purchases from them up to 10% of the overall item value. The trivia questions often have you looking through their products to earn that nickel which is very smart. Good idea.

Blogstakes, a sweepstakes-type weblog, has launched with two chances to win prizes so far. You can sign up for a chance to win:

Win free BrowserCam for a Year - Browsercam has a room full of servers ready to take pictures of your website in different browser formats and make them available to you. This is useful for webmasters and designers to make sure their website code works in different browser versions.

Clip-n-Seal Fresh Party Pack -  Fresh Party Pack filled with 25 Clip-n-Sealed Party Foods. The food will be sealed with large, medium, and small Clip-n-Seals - a total of 25 Clip-n-Seals and 25 bags of food.

Also, if you run your own blog then you can put up a link to these and if the winners signs up through your website then you’ll win the prize too. Nice!

- Joke time: are computers male or female? and The programmers drinking song
- Get AIM notification every time someone reads a blog entry (thanks Dave)
- The Rolling Stones finally allow their music to be downloaded
- Kuma: War, available in Feb 2004, blurs the line between video game and reality
- Mindplay Mp21 can monitor player activity by analyzing the 3D space around a blackjack table and tracking player behavior based on dealt cards.
- Pictures at a Rotary Club where Bob Graham came to speak of Dave Winer and Halley Suitt both using Sony Vaio laptop (see very last pic). I have a Vaio too and it has done me well! Dave is wearing a Google shirt too, imagine that?
- Now you can graffiti your favorite website

Watching the keywords and terms that people use to get to this site (see left column for most recent referrers) can be informative, humorous, and sometimes disturbing. At the least it helps me understand the stories that people are most interested in. Things that make you go hmm.

For example, last week I wrote a very brief entry about Teddy ballgame, the splendid splinter, and the horrible story surrounding him after his passing. Since that time the search engines picked up keywords for Ted’s head and people are coming here looking for pictures of his severed body. Sorry. While I wish this was fiction, but it isn’t, apparently one of the people at the cryogenic plant took pictures of the actual procedure after Ted’s death and at one very brief time actually had these pictures up for sale on his website. Well I’m sorry I don’t have any idea where those pictures are or what this website URL was and I heard on the Jim Rome show on Friday that this guy (wisely) took the offer down. So, for those that the following applies to, instead of searching for Teddy’s violated skull, here’s some positive things about Ted Williams that maybe you’ll enjoy:

Related stats and sites:
Ted’s Career batting stats
Ted Williams official website
1941 - Baseball Almanac - the complete season - the last time anybody has hit over 400

We just received this email from Amazon:

Dear Associate,

On Friday, we discovered we underpaid you for a small percentage of your marketplace orders in the first two quarters of 2003.  We’re crediting your account {sic}, our best estimate of the additional amount you are owed. 

We’re in the process of going through all our logs to determine the exact amount you’re owed.  If we find it’s more than what we’ve credited you, we’ll make this adjustment in your next quarterly payment.

We also estimate that you’ve sold {sic} more marketplace units in the third quarter than are currently listed in Associates Central.  The issue was that a small portion of 2003 marketplace sales was not being tracked through August 16.  This has been fixed and starting August 17, your marketplace sales are being tracked correctly.  We’re working on amending your reports from July 1 through August 16 and will post a message in Associates Central when they’re up-to-date.

We apologize for any confusion or inconvenience.

I do not know if this impacted just us or every Amazon Associate during this time period, but it’s nice to see an affiliate program that will admit to and correct their mistakes. Watch your email and Amazon stats for changes …

Lately after purchasing our new cell phone and deciding that I would make it a regular thing to carry around like my Palm (I’m becoming quite the portable geek), I’ve become a bit more concerned about cell phone radiation leakage. A friend told me the story (tall tale or non-fiction?) of some policemen getting testicular cancer from leaving the radar guns on their laps too much which only added to my mild aniexty. No, it’s not paranoia, but I thought I’d do some studying and see what I could really find out about this leakage from cell phones and what can be done about it:

- Thanks (not) Peter Nelson for pointing out: In reference to the hands-free headsets mentioned in your article, it has been shown that on the wire to a cell phone, a standing wave can exist that can penetrate deep into the brain.
- First coast news:

Two minutes of exposure to emissions from mobile phones can disable a safety barrier in blood causing proteins and toxins to leak into the brain, could increase chances of developing Alzheimer’s multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s. (Scientists at Sweden’s Lund University)

- AegisGuard(tm) claims through their extensive testing to be better at blocking cell phone radiation than any other product
- NZine: The Electromagnetic Radiation Health Threat:

When the cell phone signal is held next to the brain there are changes in the brainwaves in 70% of people. This test was done at a level of about 2 microwatts per sq. cm., which is only a fraction of the actual exposure experienced from the cell phone. It is the level which is experienced at a cell phone site. In this, as in most aspects, people are not all the same. Some are more electro-sensitive. People who sleep with a cell phone by the bed have poor REM sleep, leading to impaired learning and memory

So I’m wondering what others are doing about this? Using shields? Keeping cell phones away from you as much as possible? Carrying the phone in a shielding case on your belt or in a purse?

Selling dialup access for under 10 bones a month is a growing market. Netzero, Bluelight and Juno are picking up dialup subscribers that AOL, MSN and Earthlink are losing. Times are tight and justifying a $22-$30/month dialup line when you can get the same thing for under $10 doesn’t really make much sense. At the lead in spinning gold from this lowend pricing strategy is United Online:

United Online’s growth produced a $21 million profit during the first half of this year and ignited a hot stock that mushroomed 16-fold since the September 2001 marriage between NetZero and Juno that created the company.

I have written before echoing the facts that the bulk of netizens still use dialup and while broadband is really cool, it still doesn’t have the majority in-home userbase. As webmasters, we can’t forget the modem users. How many websites are optimized these days for broadband only? How many have heavy flash intros (some that you can’t skip, grrr) It’s kind of like the wireless crowd, who is really out on a limb (not a lot of websites offer wireless-friendly versions) as I’ve found out trying to surf with my phone. Good ole’ standby 28k-56k dialup users abound.

We have a dialup through Earthlink that we’ve had for many years and really the only reason we keep it is for is an emergency backup connection of the network connections go south and for an early email address that we wanted to keep, which makes me think about exploring some way of getting a cheap email-only account. More ISPs should sell email-only accounts (some do), because those are kind of like a phone number, but then again, with all the spam, maybe it’s not a bad thing to switch ISP and emails from time to time to purge all the email harvesters that catch up with us.

I’ve always thought these mood necklaces and rings were groovy (is that so 70’s?) and when Kara came home the other day sporting one around her neck I said, “hey, what about me?” and she responded with saying she almost got me one but wasn’t sure if I’d like it. There is a festival in town today that she took our youngest to and she said she was going to the dollar store to get me one. Right on. So do you believe that these things can actually measure your mood?

Related articles:
Marshall Brain explains how mood rings work
Mood Jewlery description chart

Freddy vs. Jason is the Tyson vs. Lewis of slasher flicks. It promises to be a great match and no matter who you think going in has the upperhand, you expect it to be fun along the way. Now, if you are looking for some great literary piece of great moviemaking, then forget it, you’ll be disappointed, but if you want better than the typical B-grade horror slasher flick fare complete with cheesy acting, funny one liners, gory slayings, boobs (breasts in the opening segment alert!), then exit stage left for Fandango right now.

The story goes like this …

Freddy Krueger can’t get back to killing the teens because they are taking this drug called Hypnocil, so what does he do? He wakes up Jason Vorhees, with help of his mother. Yeah, that Jason Vorhees, the hockey-faced machete-wielding teen stalker who can never die. Nevermind plot logic with this flick thinking too much about how one hellion can summon another hellion, but can’t seem to get past the effects of some experimental drug. Remember, these slasher flicks aren’t supposed to have plots that make sense!

Enter Lori (Monica Keena) the lead, who besides having nice looking breasts, and cannot really act (sorry), but does conveniently have some past movie tie-in to Freddy. Then there’s her dad, as chief physician and consultant to the local mental hospital (got to have a mental hospital in every decent slasher flick) has aided in locking up Lori’s boyfriend. And speaking of her boyfriend in the psycho ward, he’s just getting his nightly medicine when he just happens to see on the news on TV that Lori’s house has been the source of a brutal murder. Now how’s that for slasher flick coincidence? Like any real psych ward is going to be showing Channel 9 news to a psych ward where they don’t want them to have bad dreams.

As for characters there is the more than token stoner guy who has some funny one liners (”That goalie was really pissed”), the slutty image-conscious teen (Kelly Rowland), the chick (Katharine Isabelle) with a substance problem, the jock with the mondo ego, the geek who lusts for sex (Christopher George Marquette), oh and don’t forget a virgin; can’t do a horror flick without a virgin. The sterotypes are nearly as plentiful as the body count. And by the movie’s end, both Freddy and (mostly) Jason rack up some more victim counts.

And as for the match between Freddy and Jason? Well, it takes awhile, perhaps too long, to get there and when you get there you feel yourself wondering who you should root for: the lumbering Jason or the nightmare unfriendly Freddy? As it turns out, don’t think too hard or your head will feel like it met the wrong edge of Jason’s machete.

If you are looking for a good, artistic film that makes sense then by all means go see something else, but as far as comparing to other genre horror movie sequels, and that’s precisely what I’m doing for this review, this is one that belongs at the top of the sequel heap. It’s not scary and not in the league of classics of truly scary films like Halloween, but it more than makes the cut for sequels. Grade B-