Mc Donalds skimping on the cheese

Yum! Mc Donalds! I visited my local McDonalds yesterday for a nice fish fillet sandwich with no mayo/relish sauce. It came in the std. hamburger bun with a greasy fish fillet and cheese. What I found odd was upon further investigation I noticed I got a 1/2 slice of cheese instead of the full slice. My roommate eating the same thing only with sauce noticed the same thing only his cheese was clocked beneath a tidy helping of mayo. My question is this....is McDonalds skimping on the cheese in these economic hard times or do they always come with a 1/2 slice. Maybe the crazy clown with red hair thought he could hide it in all that mayo...not this time my clown friend....not this time.

Don't Drink the Koolaid

Everyday, I hear someone say "OMG, Apple Product X is coming out tomorrow! I NEEDS IT!". I'm here to tell you: no, you don't need it.

Apple does a great job of marketing products to a cult like following that seems to get larger with every release. I agree that Apple products look 'cool' and that if you want to be a trendy hipster who drinks coffee in the quaint coffee shop with emo glasses with no frames, you definitely need to adorn your electronic wardrobe with Apple products. But in general, Apple products are overpriced and over-hyped.

The product du jour this time around is the new iPhone. I have to admit, it's looking a lot better in terms of value. Between the 3G network, lower price, and new app store, it's admitedly a much better offer. However, I started doing some thinking about how much the iPhone plan is. I think it's something crazy like $70/mo. Now I don't really care about these types of plans, so I don't know how that compares to other offerings, but regardless, that's a lot to pay for internet on my phone that I might use for like an hour per month.

Not surprisingly, Apple has also once again underestimated the size of their cult, and it's clear that the 'authentication' or whatever you have to do with the iPhones was woefully inadequate. Nothing sucks more than dropping a few hundred bucks on a new device, only to leave it in the box because you forgot the batteries... or the publisher's servers couldn't handle the load. Granted, AT&T is probably at fault as well, but it doesn't take a genious to realized the Apple lap dogs would be lapping up the iPhone Koolaid.

Seriously, just look at the other offerings. Phones, mp3 players, laptops, everything. You won't be as cool of a hip trendsetter, but you'll get the same product for cheaper, and can take solace in the fact that you aren't funding a diabolical cult of Steve Jobs worshippers.

Telescopes! Meade DS-80 vs Celestron 127EQ...noob scope review

I just recently acquired two very simple and very cheap telescopes with the idea of taking them into the hills since silicon valley is oh so polluted these days. Anyone in Nor-Cal knows what I mean. I picked up a Meade DS-80 $85 (craigslist) and a Celestron 127EQ $118 (OpticsPlanet.com) and they are very different scopes. The Meade is an 80mm achromatic refractor on an Alt. Az mount and came with a bunch of noob eyepieces + barlows that are adequate. Celestron pumped out a 127mm newtonian reflector on an GEM mount again with some adequate eyepieces and a 3x barlow. Skies around here have been anything but clear but I've had some shots to use them farther up north recently and both seem to be capable scopes.

The Meade does a pretty good job with 12mm and 25mm eyepieces...even a 3x barlow on the 12mm is tollerable, even though the mount doesn't lock well. The mount is far too unstable for the 4mm and frankly the arpeture of the scope isnt physically enough to provide enough light for the eye piece.

Celestron gave me a set of 20mm and 4mm eyepieces which work pretty well. The extra arpeture helps out alot with the 4mm eyepiece over the 80mm scope. As with all reflectors they occasionally require collmination and thankfully it looks like this was pre-collminated pretty well as I can see jupiter with good clarity. My only gripe is the barlow seems to be a waste and has been annoying to use...could be me though. The GEM is good enough for the money but I find its slow motion RA to be annoying to use.

Overall these seem to be very capable scopes for the money and I certainly intend to watch some intresting things with them. My favorite is far has been the DS-80 as I find it more managable, but I suspect my opnion will shift to the Celestron once the smoke clears out of the valley. I have found out two very important things...what you mount your scope on is just as important as the scope itself and eyepieces are highly important, just make sure you have enough arpeture to realistically support them.

Google Docs vs Microsoft Office Live: Round1 (Word like editor)... FIGHT!!!

Today I had a gander at Microsoft Office Live's 'note' functionality which seems about the closest online free offering Microsoft has to the beloved Word. It seems very similar in its approach to Google's Document found in Google Docs. Below are screen shots of the two with a little non-exhaustive comparison of each.














As you can tell from above the are both quite glamorous text editors with similar functionality. Both will allow you to version and share your documents. Google allows for multiple people to work on the same document at the same time, I haven't tested Office Live but it looks to offer the same. Google offers more fonts and more odd ball functions like word count etc. Microsoft has a better UI IMO and convenient ways to organize everything. Office Live shows ads while Google leaves us in peace.
My initial opinion based on the first 5 min run through is that Google still has a better offering, but if Balmer's boys step up their game they could quickly have Google docs as a close second place.