Let’s go Pens!
Got my new ipad today, after my old one, an original I bought when they first came out, had a tragic death when I dropped it down the stairs. In the Ipad’s defense, there are only so many web searches for Kate+upton+cat+daddy that any self respecting computing device can make, so it may have thrown itself down the stairs in an attempt to escape.
Mistermix does a lot of reviews of computing devices, but it really just boils down to this for me. I maintain a top of the line PC for a variety of uses, including gaming, not to mention the fact that I really just like working at a desktop station. But for handheld devices, if you want to pull me away from Apple, you need to make a better phone/tablet/laptop combo than what Apple has to offer. I use my mac mini to sync all my devices, I have several multiple terabyte external HD’s holding all my music on the mac mini hooked up to the tv and stereo, and it took me all of three minutes to fire up my new Ipad and install all my apps and have it hooked up to my wireless, and then I was done as it transferred files.
Beat that, and I will give you other tablets a look. But for now, there is simply nothing superior to the design, feel, and operation of Apple products. Sorry Chinese kids.
One last thing. My brother’s cat Speak (he’s the male, Whisper is his sister) is going on 12 and has lost a lot of weight and is in the kitty hospital tonight. The vet thinks it is a virus and not something horrible, but regardless, cross your fingers and think happy thoughts for Speak. My brother just loves those two, and the idea of Whisper not having her brother she has spent her whole life with makes me upset.
Linda Featheringill
Hugs to Speak and Whisper.
Diana
I will cuddly my kitty and tell him to use his feline mojo, after first reassuring him that he will never have to actually meet this cat…Meanwhile, is anybody else getting freaked out by the weather lately? We’re having a hell of a storm here in NYC today and it’s June.
Jebediah
Hope kitty will be OK.
wmd
I feel like I was rickrolled – not that the cat daddy video was that heinous, but why would anyone watch that multiple times when there’s better pRon available?
BethanyAnne
Best 404 ever: http://hellobold.com/404/
Anne Laurie
@Diana:
Remnants of Tropical Storm Andrea (we’re getting the fringes here in New England, too). But meteorological hurricane season has always started on June 1, so this is perfectly normal weather, AGWC libtards! (/snark)
For a couple hundred years, the rhymn went:
April, come she will;
May, she will stay;
June, too soon;
July, stand by;
August, come she must;
September, remember;
October, all over…
… but who are you gonna believe, a bunch of patois-mumbling peasants, or the finest denalists megacorporation money can buy?
ulee
Did old ipad fall down the stairs or did you murder it in a drunken rage?
Maude
Nexus is good, if not great. Steep can tell you about it.
I don’t need a tablet, so, I don’t know.
When I used someone’s ipad, I almost dropped it. It was slippery. My Nook has a soft case and I don’t drop it.
If it’s a virus, kitty will be okay. Vets give honest predictions of pets.
BethanyAnne
Oh, and for any other folk following Game of Thrones, the Season 3 DVD Extras are out: http://disquieted.tumblr.com/post/52416976885/in-this-mysteriously-leaked-dvd-commentary-for
hodor
Mnemosyne
I got a small bonus at work in the form of an Apple gift card, so I have my eye on an iPad Mini. The regular iPad is too big for my tiny hands.
PsiFighter37
Part of the reason that Apple holds onto customers, even thought (I think) their devices are really losing ground quickly to competitors is that iOS and iCloud has really helped integrate the entire experience. Changing devices either means having more than one account and double-managing your stuff, or you have to change everything wholesale.That’s part of the reason I’ve hung on with Apple so long.
That said, the Galaxy S4 looks mighty nice…and unless Apple steps up and really does a big job on the iPhone instead of incremental steps, my next phone probably won’t be by Apple. I think this is part of the problem with Tim Cook as CEO…he’s an operations guy. He’ll please the shareholders (even though he hasn’t done that), but he has zero vision. That’s what Jobs provided that is sorely missed.
ETA: Part of why I like Balloon Juice is that you make a joke about Chinese kids making the Apple products and no one bitches about it…although this is early in the thread, so we still have time.
CaseyL
Many positive, hopeful thoughts for Speak; I hope his illness is something quickly and completely treated!
My Oscar, who’s been playing Jungle Kitty in the nearby greenbelt and not coming home at all for nearly a week, did not respond when I went to go visit. He does this every summer, and every summer I go over and visit every couple of days and he always comes to me. This time he didn’t, and if he doesn’t turn up by tomorrow, I’m going to be freaking out with worry.
Maude
@Anne Laurie:
The winds are starting. It has been raining steadily for about 7 hours.
p.a.
Best wishes to the kitty. iPad murdered when hentai-Upton let slip to Cole she is Browns fan.
PsiFighter37
@Diana: My feeling is that spring came a month or two late to NYC this year. April and May were surprisingly tame when it came to the amount of precipitation that actually hit the ground.
As long as it doesn’t ruin the BBQ block party tomorrow, I am solid.
JPL
Well if there is a god, there are flood warnings in MA where the game is being played. My analysis is that the Penguins can swim throughout the storms and the Bruins can’t.
MikeJ
@Maude: My nexus is awesome. Mainly because of the occasion when I need a bespoke app, I can bespeak the motherfucker myself.
@BethanyAnne: Here’s the 404 I use on my local network:
http://i.imgur.com/JMjEcOr.png
Bo Alawine
FWIW, my wife just took our 12-year old cat, the Mighty Mighty Sockie-Pooh, Holder of the Paw of Doom (as far as the dogs are concerned) for his 6-month check up. Ol’ Pooh has been eating like a horse as of late but is skinny as rail. Now we know why: He has an over-active thyroid.
So … we (meaning “she” so far) has to give Pooh oral meds twice a day in hopes of tamping down his metabolism.
We have two grown sons but, to us, all our cats and dogs are loved nearly as much (if not more) than our own flesh and blood so I can understand your brother’s anxiety.
magurakurin
@Maude:
(sorry to Maude I replied to the wrong post)
Nexus 7 is an amazing tablet. Never used an Ipad and after owning a Nexus 7 I have no desire to try. How it is better, I can’t imagine, so I see no reason to pay the extra money and be trapped in Apple’s garden. Whatever wiggles your waggle. If an Ipad get’s your rock’s off, good for you, Cole.
I would get on all fours and bark like a dog. I would do whatever it takes. Smoke some joints! Drink some wine! Whatever it is, to get off on each other and be happy. I mean, come on, look at the two of you! Where are you running? This is the time to be happy! Life is just too short! Too FUCKING short!”
BethanyAnne
@MikeJ: Niiiice. I wonder how often Bold updates the video.
Anne Laurie
@JPL:
Nope, today’s baseball game got rescheduled (doubleheader tomorrow) but the Broons play indoors. And the only ‘possible minor flooding notifications’ are for the middle of the state, so the Pengies won’t even have the excuse that their bus flooded out…
CaseyL
Sonofagun: No sooner do I post that Oscar didn’t come when I called than he turns up at the front door. Huge relief!~ here’s hoping it’s a good omen for Speak, too.
I’ve been thinking of getting a tablet. The only thing holding me up – well, two things: I spend way too much time on a computer already; and I have other uses for the few hundred dollars it would cost. If I were going to buy a tablet, I… have no idea which one I’d get. I’m a Mac girl, but I hear too many good things about the less expensive non-iPads. Then again, I’m so spoiled by my MacBook Pro, any other brand would probably lead to frustration, confusion, and disappointment…
ulee
When it rains this hard my dogs despise going outside. When I insist they go out, they don’t poop or pee. They just stand there like statues getting soaked and stare at me with mournful eyes.
Baud
Nice to see that whole NSA thing hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm for electronic devices. ;-)
BethanyAnne
@Bo Alawine: My Cheyenne had an overactive thyroid. It was bad enough that my options were radiation or surgery. I opted for the surgery, and she’s had a good 3 years since then.
JPL
@Anne Laurie: I was trying to give John hope and you came along to spoil it.
BTW.. I still love Bobby Orr.
Mnemosyne
@CaseyL:
If you don’t already have an iPhone or iPod Touch (ie another Apple device that uses mobile apps), you really can go either way. I already have both an iPhone and an iPod Touch, so getting an Android device would be a giant pain in the tushy.
Lots of people, including non-techies I know, love their Android devices, so it’s probably worth checking them out. They should work just as well with your MacBook Pro as an Apple device, from what I’ve heard.
ruemara
I’m doing the interview dance, because I got an interview with another local guv for video work, only this time, it’s back to management. Oh well, but I do like producing, so there. It’s 50/50, like everything else in this world, but when you hardly ever have stuff to celebrate, you should celebrate everything you can. But if Anaheim calls, this dance gets more pirouettes.
Also, healthy kitty vibes to Speak and comfort vibes out to Whisper.
I can’t tell you how happy I am that there’s even the potential that I can afford to exist.
SiubhanDuinne
Whenever you mention Speak and Whisper, I have to wonder whether your brother isn’t a fan of Thurber’s “The 13 Clocks.”
Hope the virus is minor and easily treatable. Scritches to him and his sister.
Maude
@MikeJ:
Well spoken
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
YAY!!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Great gobs of good thoughts for Speak and his sister Whisper.
@ ruemara: good thoughts for a happy outcome!
Maude
@ruemara:
Good thoughts to you. You deserve this.
Keith G
@MikeJ: This afternoon, I spent 30 minutes with a slow moving line at the county vehicle tax office.
I watched an episode of 30 Rock on my Nexus 7. I was the only one in the room giggling.
Love that “machine”.
BethanyAnne
@ruemara: Good luck!
and good kitty wishes to Speak.
Maude
@magurakurin:
I’m glad to hear this.
Apple is going to pay customers to turn in their old iphones for an iphone 5.
That means things are winding down on innovation at Apple. Jobs wouldn’t be able to change this at this time.
Enjoying life is vital to health.
I took a bus to the store that dropped me off right in front of the building on the return trip. It was so much easier that walking with groceries a block or so. Joy.
mike with a mic
Been using the ASUS transformer prime with HD screen for my tablet, I’ve also had a chance to play around with the MS Surface pro’s at work. Love em, work great for doing animation as well. And it’s the only tablet that’s fully fledged PC, though Razer does have their own version.
I’m not a fan of apples laptops, the specs are too weak for what I need and the hardware isn’t high end enough for my tastes. Laptops in general are vastly underpowered for me. I typically spring for the HP workstations with dreamcolor, best high end laptop from a main brand, bar none. Apples retreat for the 17inch market is going to cost them.
I’ve got an ipad and iphone, I just don’t really use them.
Frankly though I build and keep my own desktops as my primary and always will. Sitting on a XEON E6 8 core socket 2011, 64gb RAM, dual 680gtx, LSI RAID controller with 4x 258gb SSD’s primary, ASUS X79-WS, HT OMEGA E-claro sound, 4x 1tB drives storage, all custom liquid cooled and faster than hell. Drives 3x NEC 27 inch displays.
Once you get used to a large desk, mechanical keyboard, multiple displays, the juice to encode video files while you game you won’t ever give it up.
Redshirt
Not much team spirit tonight, Cole? What’s your analysis of why the Penguins are on the verge of getting bounced?
John Cole
@Redshirt: The Bruins are better.
schrodinger's cat
I hugged my 10 year old Boss Kitteh, I hope Speak recovers. Sending him hugs and purrs.
Redshirt
@John Cole: Perhaps, but the Penguins were the superior team in the regular season. What happened? They’ve barely shown up. Is it a clash of styles?
JPL
@John Cole: My little town in MA had a peace corp director and a wife of a senator of CT but what I remember is ice hockey. Everyone played ice hockey on Crystal Lake but those were the days of Espo and Orr and Derek Sanderson..
MikeJ
Checked out all 45 eps of Sports Night from the library today. It’s a Sorkin weekend.
Katie5
I recently got a new cat and she apparently gave a virus/bacteria to my 11 year old cat. He’s fine now but he lost 1/2 lb in one week and was spewing out both ends. After some intravenous fluid and injections he was better in 2 days. But that 1st drop into illness was abrupt and scary. So best wishes to Speak. They can recover from this sort of thing.
Bo Alawine
@BethanyAnne: If the meds don’t help then radiation and/or surgery were the next options.
Pooh has been with us since he was a kitten.
Yatsuno
@MikeJ:
There are treatments for that.
danah gaz
I had a 9″ (10″?) 16gb iPad which was given to me.
I have a 10″ Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 which I bought.
I think the latter was a better deal. I gave the iPad to someone because it was probably better than me setting it on fire and backing over it with my Toyota.
There were only three things I could get it to do well enough that I didn’t want to crush it with rock:
1. I installed a “level” app tool that I used to hang a mirror. Once.
2. I used it as a music player, which worked, but it is a HUGE mp3 player and I hated having to put itunes on my PC. Also it has no SD slot because apparently Apple has never heard of SD, and has no idea how great they are. Either that or they actively *hate* people.
3. I played GTA III with it, badly.
The rest of the things I tried to do with it, including browsing the web would make me terribly angry, and so weren’t worth it for mental health reasons.
Kristine
Good thoughts on their way to kitties.
Raven
I ruined a MacBook Pro and an iPad 2 this week.
PopeRatzo
Live with a Nexus 7 for a few weeks. You’ll leave your iPad at home. And if you haven’t bought either yet, note that the Nexus is less than half the price of the iPad of similar size.
For me, it’s cheap enough to not be paranoid about what happens to it (getting dropped, stolen, etc). For some reason, I never wanted to tote my iPad 2 around because of the size and its cost. The Nexus fits in a coat pocket.
The games on the Tegra processor for Android Jelly Bean are spectacular. Plus, you can install whatever you want on it – get apps from whomever you want. You don’t have to cower behind Apple’s Walled GardenTM.
And Go Blackhawks! Bring on the Bruins.
JPL
Is there anyway I can stream the game online?
danah gaz
@Raven: Hey, you just made the world a better place, I think. =)
p.a.
@John Cole: goaltending, and the Pens previous series was tougher; their 2 on home ice were poor efforts. They have found their legs now. Julien gets grief here in New England for how much ice time his 3rd & 4th get during the regular season but that means their top lines are fresher in the playoffs. And the 1st line, Krejci Horton Lucid, were unimpressive in the regular season (well not Krejci, he played well); his wingers seem to have been coasting until the playoffs.
I can’t understand why hockey isn’t more popular in most of the US. It’s fast and violent; everything we like. The league administration however sucks.
tybee
@MikeJ:
i’ma gonna steal that one. :)
Raven
@tybee: Great couple of days in the storm!
tybee
@Raven:
did they skip when you threw them into the river?
tybee
@Raven:
i was on bryan street this week. i waved to the westin in the gaps but didn’t see any one waving back…
schrodinger's cat
Meanwhile, in other news GOP’s outreach effort continues..
michelle
My boy is going through this exact thing right now. He only ever knew his girl — from 5 weeks old and now she is gone. Her collar is here and he gets excited when he finds/smells it. But she is gone. He will survive :) though he’s still waiting for her at this point.
Narcissus
Hey, Kate Upton is in my spank bank, too
small world huh
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@efgoldman: Defense and a hot goalie wins championships.
schrodinger's cat
@efgoldman: We is in your Congress wasting our time and your money.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@p.a.:
It’s expensive to play, and there aren’t enough rinks in most of the country. A goalie’s equipment can run over $1,000, and teams don’t provide goalie equipment, or sticks, or anything else for youth players.
Redshirt
Bruins score 1-0.
Also, can we back away quickly from spankchat?
Cacti
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
The southern half of the country doesn’t get consistently cold enough to play it out of doors either.
Its lack of popularity in non-ice holes is similar to the lack of surfing found in non-coastal areas.
Uncle Ebeneezer
Another AR-15 moment in Santa Monica :(
http://ktla.com/2013/06/07/shooting-reported-at-santa-monica-college/#axzz2VaRGxw4W
Cacti
@Uncle Ebeneezer:
I blame video games.
burnspbesq
@mike with a mic:
Depends on what you do for a living. What you can’t live without would be massive overkill for me. To practice law, I need Office, Acrobat, and an internet connection, and I need 99.999999 reliability and NO DRAMA, because I am my own IT department and I am hellaciously unqualified for that job.
You can have my MacBook Air when you can pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
longtime lurk
I’m a cat person, and so I can’t help but wish the kitties well.
but O/T:
in my very whiniest voice: “but is it leeeeegahl??”
you kind of have to read in the whimpering sound.
different-church-lady
@efgoldman:
Yeah, but how do you blame the goaltender when you score just 2 goals in 4 games?
Comrade Luke
@Bo Alawine:
I literally just picked up my cat today after her hyperthyroid treatment. It was a one-time injection of a radioactive isotope. She had to spend the night at the hospital, and I have to limit contact with her for a couple weeks, but after that she should be perfectly fine. Cost about a grand, but it beats having to give her medication constantly and/or special food.
Hope yours works out ok.
BTW, the actual treatment was an injection, just like you’d administer an antibiotic, between her shoulder blades. Didn’t have to knock her out or anything. Easy peasy
Redshirt
@Comrade Luke: So your kitty is radioactive?
schrodinger's cat
@Redshirt: I is Lolcatus of the Borg.
different-church-lady
So I totally nailed that.
Comrade Luke
@Redshirt:
Yes, a little bit.
They keep them at the facility until they’re at an acceptable level to take home. The half-life of this is really short. It all depends on how sick they are, and how big a dose they need. Luckily, my cat’s problem was caught very early on, so she only had to stay overnight. The doctor told me that just in the last week they had to keep a cat there for 10d because she was so far advanced that they had to give her a much larger dose.
I have to limit my contact with her to about an hour a day, keep her away from pregnant women, and dispose of her litter in the toilet, while the rest of the radiation disappears. But all of that is just a precaution, to limit my lifetime cumulative exposure.
BTW, this is the same treatment that they sometimes give humans. Turns out that iodine is only absorbed by the thyroid, so they can shoot you up with iodine and be assured that it will go directly to the thyroid and nowhere else.
Oh, here’s the info if anyone is interested: http://felinehtc.com
Comrade Luke
I don’t quite get why people are worried about Apple’s “walled garden”. Despite all the rhetoric you read in tech heavy circles (like blog comments & forums), very few people in the real world hack their Android devices.
If you like an iPad, get an iPad. I’ve never heard of or personally met anyone that has been disappointed with the purchase.
If you like an Android tablet, get an Android tablet. You should probably stick to a Nexus, though; I don’t have a lot of faith in other vendors.
mainmati
@Anne Laurie: One of my favorite Simon and Garfunkel songs. Didn’t know it was a traditional ditty but that makes it that much better.
sacrablue
Hopes for Speak to have speedy recovery.
Today has been a rough kitty day here. Three out of the four are thoroughly pissed that I won’t let them out because it is still 96 degrees outside. Our noisy girl has something going on with her tail. It has been limp and droopy for two days. I can’t see any bite marks or feel any lumps. I’m just embarassed to take another cat to the vet with a problem tail. Our problem child with the recently amputated tail is trying out a third anti-convolsant/nerve pain medication. I gave him the smallest prescribed dose which was a challenge. It was even tuna flavored. An hour later he was stumbling and falling over. He’s been sleeping it off for about eight hours. I will wait until tomorrow to try an even smaller dose. I just want him to be pain and seizure free.
Mnemosyne
@Comrade Luke:
My co-worker’s wife had to get the same procedure for her cat in England — I think hers had to be at the vet’s for a week before they could bring her home, and they had to do the same disposal of the radioactive poop for a few weeks afterwards.
RobertDSC-iPhone 4
The one thing they ruined was iDisk. As big a Mac enthusiast as I am, taking iDisk away was fucking awful. In setting up many machines over the past several months, I could have used iDisk so many times. Grrr.
kindness
Energy to Speak, your brother and Whisper.
Jesus John, you don’t have to apologize for buying some Apple products. That’s like feeling guilty about owning a nice vehicle instead of the Ford Pinto you think you should have because….well because somethin’ commie. I don’t know, I hope you get over it & I hope Speak does too. 12 isn’t that old for a cat.
How much memory did you get in the iPad?
kindness
You Apple haters are funny.
Genine
Sending good vibes to Speak!
cs
Still have an Android phone (the excellent Nexus 4) but around five months ago I bought an iPad 4 and ditched my Asus Transformer. Originally I bought it for the 4:3 aspect ratio which is much better for using it as a PDF reader for my various technical docs. But I was really won over by the fluidity of the interface. There’s not been one second of lag and my old Android tablet was terribly laggy. The software selection has been much better as well, though Android is rapidly catching up. However, I do miss having the filesystem access I had under Android, the intents system which lets apps talk to each other. Miss the home page widgets and even miss the silly Android live backgrounds. So the iPad will probably be only a temporary diversion and will return to Android for the next one.
Robert Sneddon
Stairs? No problem.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/01/review_panasonic_toughpad_fz_g1_windows_8_pro_tablet/
TL:DR — the reviewers kicked the tablet down a flight of stairs and it just kept on ticking.
Jay C
@Bo Alawine: @Bo Alawine:
Good wishes to Pooh! The prognosis for cat thyroid problems has never been all that bad, and seems to be getting better all the time. Our beloved Major Max Deegan was also diagnosed with a thyroid issue when he was about 12: this was back in the late ’90s, and the options were: meds or surgery (which would have still required meds). We opted for the former, though it stabilized at one pill a day (a mercy – for us: Max HATED the pills and quickly learned a trick of a quick head-flick to toss them out: amazingly almost always to remote and/or inaccessible corners of the floor). They worked though: we got another 5-6 years of purring affection and cat cuddles before old age finally did for him: I hope you get at least as much more for your furry one…