Last post of 2004

Its great being on vacation this week although not as restful as I'd have liked. I'm spending most of each day writing furiously so that I can get ahead of my book schedule.

A quick update on the book is that it's title has been shortened to "Professional BlackBerry". So far it is still around 500 pages in length and due out in August 2005. If I can, I'm going to try and finish it ahead of schedule so that it arrives in book stores in July (maybe sooner). At this time it should be about 15 chapters in length and I'm about to turn in Chapter 5 on schedule. I've started writing Chapters 6 and 7 already.

Now on to the goodies that I received for Xmas.

Karen bought me a lot of cool stuff including the 10 disc Ultimate Matrix Collection on DVD (yes I know I already have all of the movies plus the Animatrix but I'm a sucker), the complete 3rd season of Star Trek (the original series) {I already have season's 1 and 2), the Office Space DVD, some excellent Terminator 3 model/toys, and a Robosapien... Phew!

I bought myself a Suunto n3i watch, an Archos AV420, and a few software titles.
I contemplated buying a new graphics card so that I can play DOOM 3 but decided to just wait until it ships for the XBox. Its kind of sad because I am a HUGE DOOM fan and played it on the PC before I even owned a Sound Blaster so you know what that was like, but as a "responsible adult" I have to prioritize :-)

Before I go I just have to say a few words about G4TechTV. I've been watching this station since before it was called TechTV (I can't actually remember its original name) and my TiVo has had season passes to XPlay, The Screen Savers, Fresh Gear, and Unscrewed for a very long time.
Now that G4 TV has purchased them (or merged or whatever) it seems like the goal of the merger was to kill off the original Tech TV shows. Maybe TechTV was giving G4TV too much competition and they had to do the old Microsoft trick, absorb and obliterate.

Firstly, Fresh Gear has been in reruns since the beginning of the year it seems. Can't this network please just hurry up and create some new Fresh Gear shows!? I'll come down and host them for crying out loud! They are playing stuff that's a year old now and as you know in the technology space, 1 year is a VERY long time.
The Screen Savers sucks now too. They kicked off Leo LaPorte for some unknown reason and got rid of Patrick Norton and got Kevin Rose and Sarah Lane to host. Not a bad duo I might add but why kill off the previous 2 hosts?
Then the show finally moves to LA and is still bearable, but then they change it again and so now its this crappy show that is more about games than technology and has the 3rd or forth set of hosts.

Unscrewed got cancelled! What were these people thinking!? Martin Sargent and Laura Swisher were the best things on G4TechTV. I loved that show. I hope that Martin and Laura take the show to another network because it has real potential.

I'm really thinking about canceling all of my TiVo season passes for all shows on G4TechTV. Its really sad how people can screw things up.

Someone I know may just be saying ... "Touching Story" ... :-)