Archive for July, 2008

Garmin Nuvi 760 vs 780

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

One of the big differences between the Nuvi 760 and 780 is MSN Direct traffic information. The 780 is expensive, but Costco had the 680 on sale for $349, and that includes MSN Direct, so I picked one up to try it out. For me it was the 680 or the 760, so the decision […]

SUV Prices

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

I bought a Toyota RAV4 in December, and after living with the RAV4 for the last 7 months, we decided we wanted to go back to a minivan. So I started looking around. I found a particular used Chrysler Town & Country I wanted. It’s about the equivalent of the 2001 Grand Caravan ES but […]

What happened to Size 13?

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

I wear size 13 shoes, and I can’t find ones that fit. For my life up till now, buying shoes was relatively easy. Walk into a store, see what they had in size 13, and then pick which of those I dislike least. But now that technique no longer works. I’ve been to at least […]

iPod Touch Crash Data

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

Apple apparently takes crash data seriously. Not only does the Mac offer to send crash data to Apple when bad things happen, but so does the iPod Touch (and, I assume, iPhone). Last time I plugged my iPod Touch into my Mac, iTunes popped up this dialog: Clicking “Show Details” brings up the Console app […]

Vista Insomnia

Monday, July 7th, 2008

I have a fairly decent old system that I am repurposing to use as a main floor computer, something that will be used occasionally for playing a video for my son or maybe playing music. The computer I’m using used to be my Media Center, and so never needed to go to sleep. But in […]

Labour and Contractions

Monday, July 7th, 2008

I wonder how many geeky dads have spent early morning hours while their wives have been in labour writing contraction timing apps. Too bad they haven’t come up with any good ones. The best one seems to be this one, but I think an Excel spreadsheet works better.

Popcorn Makers

Friday, July 4th, 2008

We had an old cheapie hot air popcorn maker that we bought for around $15, and it was okay. It would throw a lot of un-popped kernels out of the machine and into the bowl, and blow popped popcorn all over the place, but there was some fun novelty to popping popcorn this way compared […]

Disable (and Document) Menu Items

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

Joel posted a short article: Don’t Hide or Disable Menu Items. I think it’s bad advice. Consider Paste or Undo. If you click the Edit menu, you can tell from the enabled state of the Paste item whether or not there’s something on the clipboard that can be pasted. Same with Undo. If Save is […]