Category: Thoughts

Experiments, Random Ideas, and posts that don’t fit other categories.

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GooglePlus Review

( #GooglePlus, #SocialMedia )


Image Credit: Paul Vedar

Last night the good people over at Lifehacker offered invites to the new Google+ service. I jumped at the chance to get one because I have been looking at a way to do multiple people video chats for months. Skype offers it for a few bucks a month, which I was considering, but I don’t like that I have to install software to video chat when Google does it in the browser.

Google calls the feature “hangouts” and even in beta, it works pretty damn well. Actually checkout the Lifehacker crew’s video:

Google seems to have built this service around security and privacy. This sounds like an odd thing for Google, but it comes from the public scorn they got from rolling out Buzz (which automatically shared private info like email addresses) and also as a response to Facebook. Even though Facebook has privacy features, I feel that they always trying to get you to share more public data (and their updates always change settings to make that happen). In order to compete, Google is focusing security groups (called Circles) so you can share certain things with certain people much easier.

I am sure Big G isn’t completely saintly in this service, but since they have the Government breathing down their necks and face fierce competition with Facebook, I think the Google+ service is as legit as it can be. Since I am a google guy to start, I am hoping the service takes off because it will be much easier for me to manage my social circle with the plus service than with Facebook since I already have a hands off attitude towards it.

I was going to offer invites to readers, but it looks like Google shut down invitations already. But drop me a note, and if they turn it back on, I will try to get you in.

UPDATE: A blogger buddy (and current Keypulp founder) Joss Ross already found a security issue. Even if you choose a select group to see your post, someone could share it with everyone. Google has a fix, there is a drop down in the right corner that disables sharing. I think it should be defaulted that way, but for now, be aware and don’t share!

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The Incident at the Hotel

It was late. We had been in the car for eight hours and my cousin wanted to make sure his kids had a bed to sleep in. We were somewhere in Massachusetts and my phone’s GPS told us to go to a Radisson in Clemsford. They had rooms and the price was right. Off we went.

After a minor issue with an AC unit requiring a room change, my wife, cousin, and I went to the hotel bar for drink. The people at the bar were young and had a redneck vibe about them, but we were north. I then overheard that they were part of a large wedding party staying at the hotel. Two drinks in, I went to bed.

I woke up having slept through what I thought was a pretty uneventful evening. My wife looked like she did not sleep at all. “Ugh… the people next door were having sex all night, the girl was loud.” “Did you say anything” I asked sheepishly. She said that somebody told them to “shut the f**k up” and they apologetically stopped. She then mentioned that the girl asked her lover to “do it again” and “put it back in” several times.

I was somewhat grateful I was able to sleep, but sad I didn’t get to mock my new neighbors, until they started having sex again. My wife was right – it was LOUD. The dude didn’t seem to be making much noise, but she was a peacock in full bloom for the whole world to take notice of.

We walked over to my cousins room to relay the story (in code and quietly so the kids didn’t catch on). There was talk of breakfast, so I went back to the room to grab money when I heard crying next door. I just assumed it was a drunken lover’s quarrel and went on my way. My cousin and I went downstairs to his car and noticed a firetruck, police car, and ambulance pulling up. At first I thought heart attack, but then I mention to my cousin that I would not be surprised if it was our neighbors. He looks at me and says “what the hell could he have done to her?” I didn’t know. I asked the fireman what was going on, he just said “someone got hurt” and kind of smiled.

When we got to the fourth floor, the emergency crew was in front of our neighbors door. As we passed by we heard the girl say “there is so much pressure, I feel like I am giving birth.” I grinned at my cousin as he gave me an admonished look for not having more sympathy. None shall be given. My wife, cousin, his wife, and I stood in the hall as they took the girl out in a stretcher, her lower area on ice. I gave her “Ed-Hardy-shirt” wearing paramour a salute as they took her away, to repair the vagina he destroyed so thoroughly.

As he walked down the hall with a concerned look in his face, I couldn’t help but notice the stride in his step and the acceptance of knowing nods. The girl may have been shamed, but this young man earned himself a reputation and a story that will live on for years to come, at the very least in this little social circle.

NOTE: Having said all that, we all have our suspicions that the girl’s front door was fine and it was indeed that back door that might have inflicted some serious injury. Thoughts to ponder indeed.

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Father’s Day Gift Suggestions

( #JoeKnit, #FathersDay )

Image Credit: Somebody in my family

A few weeks ago I came across this post about great father’s day gifts and I read through to see if there were any good suggestions for my old man. If you are a frequent reader you know my father is a popular topic due to his unique personality. If you are not into Mean Joe stories—move on to another post. If you enjoy them or have a father that is a total pain in the ass to buy gifts for—keep reading.

I am not going to overly complicate things, I am just going to list Mike’s (the author) suggestions and state why they won’t work for my dad:
1. Omaha Steaks: My dad is butcher, thats not happening.
2. Golf Accessories: My dad doesn’t like to play golf, although for a short period he did like to sneak onto courses to take walks and nap.
3. Sports Tickets: He could care less about any form of sports or team cooperation.
4. Remote Control: This is not a bad idea on paper, but any of the new remotes that have LCD screens will piss him off and be relegated to a drawer before he even tries it.
5. Fishing Equipment: I have never seen the man take an interest in fish in my entire life (besides eating them).
6. Camcorder: Technology = No.
7. Pocket Watch: He doesn’t care what time it is. He is where he needs to be until he doesn’t want to be there.
8. Restaurant Gift Cards: He’d rather cook for himself.
9. Magazine Subscription: No interest in reading anything outside of a very few select topics (mostly health related, but not the Men’s Health kind of articles).
10. Movie Gift Cards (Netflix, Blockbuster, AMC Theaters): Has lost the attention and desire to sit through an entire movie.
11. Camping Trip: Depends on what you mean by camping. If you suggest a hotel room, jacuzzi, and quality steaks – he might go assuming the right company is involved (not his family).
12. Custom T-Shirt/Polo Shirt: It would have to be the right material and proper color blue or it will sit in his closet for all of eternity.
13. Swim Trunks: This is a man who mows the lawn in meat-stained white t-shirts, old jeans that are held up by string. STRING. He would look at the netting inside the trunks and punch them so hard the little Chinese kid that made them would feel it.
14. Anything from Sharper Image or Brookstone: See #6.
15. Accessories for the Barbecue Grill: Besides his bare hands on the open flame? No.
16. Massage: This actually could be feasible if there was no spa music. Actually, he has an acute hatred for perfumes and sweet smells so he probably would not step foot inside a massage parlor.
17. Shaving Accessories: See #13 – this is a man that does not care about appearances (unless he wants to prove how pretty he is).
18. Wine/Beer of the Month: Does not drink fermented alcohol anymore.
19. A Tie: No

20. A Home Cooked Meal: See #8.

As you can see, he is a pretty difficult person to shop for. Do you have a father or relative like this? Or do you have a suggestion for my old man? Share your stories here. Good luck finding your dad a good gift!

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Reviewing Music Cloud and Backup Services

( #Amazon, #GoogleMusic, #Cloud )

Over the last few months, mobile music lovers have been treated to a few new innovations in accessing their personal music collections. I am going to spend a few minutes reviewing those new services.

Amazon Cloud Service

The first music cloud service that I could access (officially) on my phone was Amazon’s Music Cloud service. Amazon starts off by giving you 5 GB of free online space, but with the purchase of a cheap album, your cloud drive will be increased to 20 GB. Another good feature is any music you purchase from the service does not count against your space restriction (translation: if you buy music from Amazon they host it for free).

When I first got the service, it was snappy and worked well in my dead zone house with just the phone signal. Over the last few weeks I have experienced the service getting stuck even in good reception areas. That said, the streaming service, doesn’t seem to drain the battery too bad which is a plus. Overall Amazon’s service works well. Although I have one more minor gripe: the “download files to your computer” feature asks me to download the download app every time I want files, even though I have it installed already. Annoying. Glitches aside, I have been buying most of my music through them (screw apple!).

Google Music Service

A few weeks ago Google announced it would be offering a cloud music storage system. The difference between Amazon and Google is that you can’t buy music from Google, but you can upload up to 20,000 songs. It took about a week, but I uploaded 50 GB of music to the system which was just under 8000 songs.

The service is slick and works well on my phone. Since I have both Amazon and Google stream apps on my phone, I have found Google’s service more responsive and less buggy – which makes sense since it is their operating system. The web interface is very similar to Amazon’s but has album pictures which is nice.

The upload app that runs on your computer is a little buggy and gets stuck after a while, but I guess processing 8000 files can be excessive.

Learn more about Google’s music service here. One bad thing about the service is you have to request and invite and is not open to all Google users to start with, but it is honestly worth the wait.

Apple iCloud

Reports are coming in this morning that Appple is about to announce a cloud service as well. I could care less. I hate their draconian DRM policy and never purchase music from iTunes.

Personal Cloud: Western Digital My Book Live

The last option I am going to discuss is a personal NAS drive that you can open up on your firewall for a personal cloud. I purchased a 2 TB Western Digital My Drive for $140 bucks. I plugged it into my router and it immediately worked.

The nice thing about this little device is that is has a built in DLNA server which can feed your music and files to all of your computers, gaming systems, and phones. It would VERY well with my android phone (something I could not figure out using Windows Media Player media sharing services).

Adventurous people can cut open firewall rules so they can access their music from their phones anywhere they are. Personally, I don’t have much desire to do that since I have the other services, but the My Book drive is a really cool device to have in the house, especially if you have streaming media devices – it just works well.

Conclusion

Right now the Google service is impressing me the most since it can host all of my music and isn’t giving me much trouble. That said, I really like this NAS system I have set up and the combination of the two allowing me to finally sell my insane CD collection to the used stores to free up space.

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DME: Bloody Marys

( @DrinkingMadeEasy, #BloodyMary )

Drinking Made Easy FINALLY posted my article about bloody marys! I am pretty proud of this post because I inserted a little more of my personality than my previous efforts. Please give it a read:

Drinking Made Easy: Bloody Marys

Update: DME’s likes are broken, here is the whole story…

Bloody Mary recipes are like assholes…everybody has one (except for a kid I knew in 4th grade, but that is a whole other story). The tomato and vodka based drink is universally recognized, yet encourages massive variation. Last month I read a short story about the American Chemical Society (ACS) publishing guidelines on making the perfect bloody mary. I was going to do a simple article and call it a day. When I started mentioning the idea to friends and family, everyone chimed in. Suddenly I was caught in a deluge of suggestions and my head started spinning.

Where did the bloody mary even come from? The drink seems to have an unlikely origin: actor George Jessel is credited with inventing an early form of the cocktail in the 1920s. He basically mixed equal parts tomato juice and vodka. Jessel befriended a French bartender named Fernand Petoit who added salt, pepper, spices, and Worcestershire sauce. The drink caught on and people started putting their own spin on it. The origin of the name is cloudy to say the least, but could also have roots in Hollywood (named after actress Mary Pickford). Eventually the New York School of Bartending published the “definitive” recipe as:

1 oz. to 1½ oz. (30-45 ml) vodka in a highball glass filled with ice.
Fill glass with tomato juice
1 dash celery salt
1 dash ground black pepper
1 dash Tabasco sauce
2-4 dashes Worcestershire sauce
1/8 tsp. horseradish (pure, never creamed)
Dash of lemon or lime juice
Garnish with celery stalk.

While the ACS doesn’t refute any of the ingredients, from a scientific standpoint they suggest using fresh ingredients stating that the concoction deteriorates quickly. They suggest using cheaper vodka since the other ingredients will mask the alcohol’s flavor. Finally, the ACS recommends spending money on superior tomato juice since it makes up the bulk of the flavor in the drink.

I decided to test out the recommendations and invited a few respected drinking buddies over to sample. One of my guests threw a curveball by bring a pre-made bloody mary mix (sans vodka) called Zing Zang. Of course there is a backstory to this mix: it is not available in the East Coast and he had to have his brother-in-law ship him a case from Chicago. I pushed my pitcher of homemade bloody mary aside and made myself a drink using the Zing Zang. It was good and not for those with weak hearts. The mix is spicy and features huge chunks of salt and pepper floating around. It tasted fresh and was very good.

I then shifted over to my own mix. All the ingredients were highlighted: the spice of the Tabasco, the sweetness of the Worcestershire, and the sinus clearing of the horseradish. Basically, the homemade drink was really good too, and it probably helped that I knew what was in it. The question remains, which one was better?

There isn’t a right answer and there never will be.

If you grew up tossing sea salt and jumbo shrimp in your Bloody Mary, who am I to judge? If you prefer a salad in your glass over excessive amounts of vodka, that is your prerogative. If you want a drink so spicy that it melts the glass, you do what you got to do. The important thing to remember is the bloody mary allows for drinking to be socially acceptable on Sunday mornings which I am sure everyone can get behind. The next time someone hands you this delicious cocktail, don’t think about how you would have made it or what is missing. Just appreciate the fact that if an old Hollywood drunk had not shared the recipe with a French bartender, you would probably be drinking fruit punch.