Greg In The Desert

• Risk of mad cow disease from farmed fish? | Science | Reuters – Three U.S. scientists are concern about the potential of people contracting Creutzfeldt Jakob disease — the human form of "mad cow disease" — from eating farmed fish who are fed byproducts rendered from cows.
• Tucson rainwater harvesting law drawing interest – Under the nation's first municipal rainwater harvesting ordinance for commercial projects, Tucson developers building new business, corporate or commercial structures will have to supply half of the water needed for landscaping from harvested rainwater starting next year.
• N.M. teenager shot in head with Taserby town’s top cop – The Denver Post – TUCUMCARI, N.M. — Authorities say a teenage girl is recovering at an Albuquerque hospital after being shot in the head with a Taser dart by Tucumcari's police chief.
• Gizmodo – CatGenie Litter Box: The Clean Fresh Smell of Civilization’s Discontents – Catgenie review – We all know there are plenty of products that cause more problems than they solve. As a professional technologian, my job is to sift through innovations to see which ones make for an improved life, and which ones are too troublesome for their own good.

  CatGenie—pardon the pun—gives me pause.

• The Recession and the American Airline Industry – Here is a handy guide to each airline’s pricing for additional services to help you know for what you are going to have to pay, before you buy your ticket.
• One Confirmed Shot at Arlington Apple Store|ABC 7 News – ARLINGTON, Va. – Police in Arlington are on the scene of a shooting at an Apple Store on Clarendon Boulevard. It happened shortly after 10 a.m. at 2700 Clarendon Blvd. One person was shot and transported to a local hospital, police say.
• www.KOB.com – Scorpions out for ‘09-10 – The Central Hockey League announced the New Mexico Scorpions will not play in the 2009-2010 season.
• Evidence mounts that Mars was once habitable – Scientists with the University of Arizona-led Phoenix Mars Mission are publishing research today that advances the theory that water once flowed and the Red Planet was once habitable. Researchers found a lot of the basic ingredients that life needs to survive, including water in the form of ice, various minerals and a salt called perchlorate that microbes on Earth use as an energy source.
• Ford Ranger sales are up for June – New Mexico Business Weekly: – The Ford Motor Co. sold 8.8 percent more Ford Ranger pickup trucks in June than in the same month a year ago, according to data released by the automobile manufacturer Wednesday.
• Evidence mounts that Mars was once habitable – Scientists with the University of Arizona-led Phoenix Mars Mission are publishing research today that advances the theory that water once flowed and the Red Planet was once habitable. Researchers found a lot of the basic ingredients that life needs to survive, including water in the form of ice, various minerals and a salt called perchlorate that microbes on Earth use as an energy source.

• Sleep May Prepare You for Tomorrow by Dissolving Today’s Neural Connections | 80beats | Discover Magazine – Sleep may be a way to sweep out the brain and get it ready for a new day of building connections between neurons, according to two new studies of fruit flies. The studies support the controversial theory that sleep weakens or entirely dissolves some synapses, the connections between brain cells. “We assume that if this is happening, it is a major function, if not the most important function, of sleep” [Science News], says Chiara Cirelli, a coauthor of the first study, published in Science.
• Hoping to Make iPhone Toys as a Full-Time Job – NYTimes.com – fter the project was finished, Mr. Nicholas sent it to Apple for approval, quickly granted, and iShoot was released into the online Apple store on Oct. 19.

  When he checked his account with Apple to see how many copies the game had sold, Mr. Nicholas’s jaw dropped: On its first day, iShoot sold enough copies at $4.99 each to net him $1,000. He and Nicole were practically “dancing in the street,” he said.

  The second day, his portion of the day’s sales was about $2,000.

  On the third day, the figure slid down to $50, where it hovered for the next several weeks. “That’s nothing to sneeze at, but I wondered if we could do better,” Mr. Nicholas said.

• There’s Twitter the company, and twitter the medium | Technology | Los Angeles Times – Last year, Leo Laporte became a Twitter quitter.

  The host of one of Silicon Valley’s most popular podcasts was none too excited that of all the names in the world, the burgeoning message service had picked one that hit piercingly close to home. The online broadcasting network that Laporte owns and runs a short walk from his house in Petaluma is called TWiT.tv, after his company’s flagship show, “This Week in Tech.”

• Brewing Compost Tea – Fine Gardening Article – Why go to the extra trouble of brewing, straining, and spraying a tea rather than just working compost into the soil? There are several reasons. First, compost tea makes the benefits of compost go farther. What's more, when sprayed on the leaves, compost tea helps suppress foliar diseases, increases the amount of nutrients available to the plant, and speeds the breakdown of toxins. Using compost tea has even been shown to increase the nutritional quality and improve the flavor of vegetables. If you've been applying compost to your soil only in the traditional way, you're missing out on a whole host of benefits
• TopatoCo: Time Traveler Essentials Shirt – This shirt has how-to information on all of the low-hanging fruit of our modern age. Go back in time wearing this and you'll invent heavier-than-air flight! YOU'LL discover penicillin. YOU'LL be the first to isolate aluminum. Did you know aluminum used to be more valuable than gold? YOU'RE GONNA BE RICH.
• New Mexico Independent » Roman Coliseum to be lit in honor of New Mexico – On Wednesday, the Roman Coliseum, one of the most recognizable buildings in the world, will be lit in honor of New Mexico repealing the death penalty.
• Cost Of Living Now Outweighs Benefits | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source – A report released Monday by the Federal Consumer Quality-Of-Life Control Board indicates that the cost of living now outstrips life's benefits for many Americans.

  "This is sobering news," said study director Jack Farness. "For the first time, we have statistical evidence of what we've suspected for the past 40 years: Life really isn't worth living."

• 10 years later, the real story behind Columbine – USATODAY.com – A decade after Harris and Klebold made Columbine a synonym for rage, new information — including several books that analyze the tragedy through diaries, e-mails, appointment books, videotape, police affidavits and interviews with witnesses, friends and survivors — indicate that much of what the public has been told about the shootings is wrong.
• Driver logs 9th DWI arrest in 3rd state – The more Rio Rancho police dug the more DWI arrests in three states they found for a man stopped for a traffic violation Saturday and charged with drunken driving for the ninth time.
• Piñon pines in danger, Biosphere study shows – Piñon pine trees, a foundation of ecosystems in the Southwest, will die faster and in greater numbers as rising temperatures from global warming intensify the effects of even short droughts.

  Working in the famed Biosphere 2 lab, University of Arizona researchers for the first time isolated heat as a factor in tree deaths. They found that an increase of only about 7-degrees Fahrenheit could trigger piñon die-offs five times more frequently than under existing conditions. Many climate studies say temperatures could rise that much by the end of the century.

World 1st Scrub Game for Girls version is starting right now and will become new addictions for all of you!
If you scrub monitor cover, you can see the background pictures.
All are cute girl images.
Curious? Scrub and try to find out!!

While you avoid obstructive enemies, use the showing items.
You will clear the game if you can scrub all completely before time limit!
Increase Combo numbers, aim high score without separating your finger from the screen!
——————–
1$-GAMES is a brand for games that cost each 1$ only.
They will be brought to you at Apple Store most of every weeks.

Watch our official website at http://1dollar.yudo-games.com/ and find new ones there!
You will find your favorite games there!

Cutie Scratch -Girls- 1.0.0 on iTunes.

Wow, I’m really ruining my reputation as a Apple Fan Boy and early adopter. I didn’t buy the first iPhone when it first came out (instead waited for the 16GB version) and I haven’t purchased a iPhone 3G. I had no desire to stand in line for one on launch day. I’m not really a people person and I’m not interested in socializing with strangers.

I did look into it last week. The Albuqueruque Apple Store was out and while I was in Portland for a few days, all three of those stores were out.

I can live with the EDGE network speeds. The killer feature for me is the GPS. Since there are no real GPS realtime navigation software out for the iPhone, yet, I think I will hold out. If I hold out long enough a 32GB version might be available.

16GB iPhones released today. Took Apple long enough. If the retail Apple Stores have them, I will be buying one today.

Update 10:15 am: I was at the Chandler fashion mall Apple Store at 10am. They had them but had not processed them yet. They said come back in a 1.5 – 2 hours.

Update 02/06/08 6:19 am: I got the phone yesterday and have been playing with it all day. I was especially impressed with the box. The whole process of setting up an account and transferring the phone number from T-mobile was a terrific experience (I assume T-mobile will automatically cancel my account?) Yes, i know this is old news. I’m late to the iPhone game after all.

I have 3.61 GB left, therefore I was right in thinking I needed to wait. I’ve also watched some video podcasts which I didn’t think I would do much of. Maybe I should have waited for the 32GB iPhone?

CompUSA is going out of business. I’m not sure what it is, too much competition, high prices, they can’t figure out what it is they sell? Back in the day (early 1990’s), they were one of the few places one could find Apple computers and accessories. My second Mac, a Centris 610, was purchased from a CompUSA in Arizona. I recall writing on a AMUG BBS about this computer’s 20MHz 68LC040 being “blazing fast”.

The actual purchase of the computer was not so blazing fast. I went to the salesman and said I want to buy that computer. The salesman goes to his little WYSE dumb terminal type machine and comes back with paperwork for me to fill out. I fill out the rather long form then wait like an hour to actually get the computer brought to me. Then i take it up front to pay for it.

Once in New Mexico, CompUSA was the only computer store to sell Apple products. Despite it being on the other side of town, sometimes taking a hour to get there, I used to visit frequently. I actually bought Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger” there when it came out since there was no Apple store in town at the time. It’s probably been a good year since I’ve been there, prices are too high and their selection was poor.

The FedEx guy arrived at about 9am on Friday to deliver my copy of Leopard. I’ve read different things that suggest that Apple requested FedEx to deliver copies of Leopard as soon as possible or to get them as close to 6PM. I doubt either is true. In any case there was no T-Shirt in the box. I would have loved to go the Albuquerque Uptown Apple Store, but what a pain in the ass it is to get to that side of town. Thanks Mom, for going to the San Tan Apple Store in Az and getting one for me!

The first thing I did once getting it installed was to hook up an external hard drive and get Time Machine running. I haven’t yet been able to allow it to copy the entire drive yet. I really like that Time Machine quits gracefully and without complaints when I disconnect the drive.

Spaces is the other feature that I have been using heavily. How i did I ever live without it? I love uncluttering my desktop with windows by moving them to separate windows.

UI wise, I don’t have a lot of complaints. Chris Pirillo has a long list of issues, which I agree with. They don’t bother me that much however. I don’t like the transparent menu bar. It’s very distracting and I will use the first hack to disable it. I used NextStep in the 1990’s for a programming class pretty heavily. This is the most NextOS looking UI yet. It’s interesting to see the core ideas of the early Mac OS (and much of that was in the NextOS) start to show themselves after so many years.

I’m looking forward to using iChat’s screen sharing to fix people computers, as soon as they all get Leopard installed. Using Apple Remote Desktop was a pain.

According to Apple’s iPhone availability checker, they are still available at the Apple Store at Albuquerque Uptown. I’m still waiting for iPhone 2.0 but it’s sooooooo tempting after reading the reviews.

All of the Apple laptops I’ve purchased have had one problem or another. My Pismo Powerbook G3 shuts off if it’s jostled too much. My iBook G3 caught on fire when the power cable running through the hinge shorted out. My Powerbook G4 has this weird graphical glitch. It’s hard to blame Apple though, all three of these computers served me well, took my tourture and are all still in use with 10.4 (the iBook was in use up till a few months ago). Except my MacBook Pro which is broken again.

I just had to have the first Mac with a Intel chip in it. Three months after buying it had to be sent back into Apple where they replaced the motherboard, fan assembly and battery. A year later it’s out of warrantee and I’m having battery problems again.

It started when the battery would be down to about 50% charged, and the computer would shut down. Slowly that number would get higher. Today it will shutdown when the battery is charged 99%. I took it to a Apple store and they thought it was a internal wiring problem. I wasn’t convinced after all reported battery problems Apple has had. I bought a new battery but the computer reacts the same way. So it’s not the battery.

It’s probably a motherboard. It’s out of warrantee so Apple won’t repair it for free, in fact they tell me it will be quite expensive. Not to mention that I’ve already had to replace a hard drive that died. The cheapest non Apple repair I can find is $695. I think I’d rather hold onto the money so I can buy a iphone.

Apple product delays seem to be a bit better nowadays, with Intel providing the chips. But this is still annoying.

“Wrapping up Apple TV is taking a few weeks longer than we projected, and we now expect to begin shipments mid-March,” spokeswoman Lynn Fox said by email.

My order status still says Ships by: Feb 28, Delivers by: Mar 6. Perhaps they are trying to get these out for people who ordered them on the first day?

Update: Guess I was wrong. Got this email.

To Our Valued Apple Customer:

Thank you for ordering the new Apple TV, an easy to use and fun way to wirelessly play all your favorite iTunes content from your Mac or PC on your widescreen TV.

Wrapping up Apple TV is taking a few weeks longer than we projected, and we now expect to begin shipments in mid-March, not in February as originally anticipated.

You may check the status of your order any time by visiting our online order status website at http://www.apple.com/orderstatus.

A shipment notification, with tracking information, will be emailed to you as soon as your order is shipped. There is no need to contact us unless you choose to change or cancel your order.

We appreciate your business and thank you for shopping at the Apple Store!

Sincerely,
The Apple Store Team