Weekend Trip, Cute Story, Search Wars

My parents were going away for the weekend, and I had a choice: Go with them or stay home and have the house to myself. For the first time in a good while, I decided to go with them. So I didn't get laid this weekend, (though there was some eye candy tanning by the pool, and another cute boy working at the pizza shop). But it was a nice weekend. Good to spend some time with the family. Relaxing atmosphere.

I got a ride back with a family I didn't know. They were determined to avoid traffic at all costs. So they avoided NYS Route 17 and drove through Pennsylvania, taking something like U.S Route 209 to U.S. Route 206 to NJ Route 15, etc. It seemed absurd, but if they had done it right Google says it should only add about 3 miles and 25 minutes. If it avoided potentially hours of traffic on the 17 it could have been a smart move. However, all that fails to account for the difficulty of driving on dark, winding, country roads in the fog and heavy rain, making wrong turns and generally not knowing where you're going. In the end, the trip took a "respectable" four hours or

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Crazy question: Why is West Milford, PA east of Milford, PA?

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My grandfather told a cute story, a "chassidishe ma'aseh": There was a Rebbe (Grand Rabbi) who had a custom to toss apples into the crowd of his followers who would gather at the close of the Festival of Tabernacles. The men would eagerly grab for the apples, as there was a tradition that anyone who catches one would be assured a year of wealth. Over the years, the crowd grew and men would fight and push to get the blessed apples. The Rebbe's assistants warned their master that the situation was becoming out of control and with all the shoving, people might get hurt. The Rebbe sent a message to the people, "There should be no more pushing to catch the apples."

The next year, the pushing was even worse. Now, as each man shoved his neighbor out of the way, he would taunt him, "Have you not heard the words of the Holy Rebbe? He said not to push, and still you push for the apples!" The Rebbe's assistants returned to him with the news. The Rebbe responded by issuing a stern warning, "Whoever pushes to catch the apples will be cursed with five years of poverty."

The next year, there was no pushing. The crowd was smaller than usual, and everyone who came stood rigid, afraid to push for fear of the Rebbe's curse. As the Rebbe began tossing the apples, however, one frail elderly man ran frantically through the crowd grabbing as many apples as he could. After the event, people came over to the old man, incredulous. "Is it not foolish to risk five years of poverty for the chance of a single year of wealth?" they asked.

"Ah, but where else can I receive the Holy Rebbe's guarantee that I'll live out the next five years!" responded the old man, a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his lips.

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In other news, Microsoft's much-touted Bing search engine, well, sucks. Just as a random example: I was searching for information about the world's largest green-energy project, DESERTEC. So I typed Desrtec [sic] into Bing (actually into the Firefox search box, which happened to be set to Bing at the time). What I got was this page asking if I perhaps meant to search for Bachelorette News or maybe Shooting in Pittsburgh or Vanessa Hudgens Nude. Google's first result was Desertec.org. Even spelled correctly, Bing gave the $500 Billion pan-European consortium's plan one link, and then listed results for "Deserted".

Oh it was Microsoft!

One thing I didn't understand for a long time about the new netbooks that are all the rage: Why do they all come with only 1GB of RAM? The screens have gotten better on new models over the past several months. The hard drives have gotten bigger. Intel just released a faster processor that many manufacturers plan to include in new models. Prices have dropped. In short, netbooks have been obeying Moore's law. Except when it comes to RAM. The machine all seem capped at 1GB of RAM. For $20 to $50 they could add a gig or two of RAM and improve performance so much. What's holding them back?

And then I found the answer: Microsoft. The Evil Empire refuses to sell Windows XP to anyone under 21 on any machine that meets certain specs. If you're powerful enough to run the bloated ugly OS (Vista) you have to use it. So manufacturers keep the machines below the limits in order to license XP.

And that's not all. The Evil Empire has also bullied HP and others into pulling their Linux-based netbooks.

Looking Forward to Vista

I'm looking forward to Microsoft's next-gen OS Windows Vista, whose delayed launch has been scheduled for January 2007. I don't mind the delay, though. If it's still buggy and you need to fix things, by all means delay it again: Launch it when it is ready. Nobody benefits from a bug-infested product, even if it's loaded with great features. That said, there is much to anticipate in Vista. One major advance is multiple-screen support. You can hook up several monitors and have programs running in each. So you can have your e-mail always open on one monitor, without cluttering your other monitor on which you are typing or whatnot. Many cool products are on the way to take advantage of this feature, including all manner of Bluetooth-enabled gadgets that sync to your computer. A photo frame (if anyone starts calling these things phrames, you saw it here first) that gets pics from your comp (or from your friends on flickr, picassa, etc.) and also runs a stock ticker on the bottom. Here's a scenario from the not-so-distant future: You are at your desk at work, when your Bluetooth wristwatch alerts you that someone rang your doorbell at home. You use your cell phone to speak with the visitor, realize it's your brother, and let him in by typing a code in your phone.