So, this year we said, as always "a simple holiday, with few gifts". you know, like the whos in whoville. but it NEVER works that way. Like others, we are not done yet. Also like most people, we find it nearly impossible to stick to the plan. Before we beat ourselves up too much about this, I did point out that the number of people in the household (aka "the inner circle") can expect that modesty would still mean you needed to get 2 gifts for each person in the circle, and 2 more for the next circle - but only 2 for the next concentric circle of family. That is, my mom and stepdad, my dad and stepmom, my 3 grown brothers and each member of their family, and extended family, and my spouses parents, siblings and their family. For a moment consider the inner circle. If you get two gifts (NOT including the Santa gifts, which my wife pointed out I was remiss for not filling her stocking in addition to the other gifts, in addition to all the gifts that Santa brings the kids) for each member of the inner circle that means 2N(N-1) gifts for the inner circle alone will be purchased. My friends who are married without kids simply don't understand the exponential nature of this. For them, this yields 2*2(2-1)=4 gifts. If they had a single child this would be 2*3(3-1)=12. See the growth? By the time you have 4 children (like me) then you are at 2*6(6-1)=60. If you then add 2 more gifts for each of the 20 or so people in the second circle you are at 80. No wonder the economy is improving.

Well the network connection was far easier than anticipated, or far easier than it first appeared anyway (between XP and OS X). But, talk about starting over, as most know - far fewer mac titles work on OS X than Windows titles work on XP. Especially games on XP; most were written for 95/98/Me and were not supported in NT (and XP). Only those games that appeared to be set to play online at work keep ticking on XP. More sales for Knowledge Adventure!.

so, not only do we upgrade to XP on our home computers (except one, more later), but we are running a new G4867 with X10. It all seemed so easy in my mind: the X10 OS is SUPPOSED to plug and play with XP. not quite. more on that later, but first, the reason that I kept a maching on the dismal ME OS was to support games. that's right. there are many games that i'm finding don't quite run right on XP. I could list several, but the one that bugs the older kids the most is sim theme park world. It loads, sort of, and runs, for a moment, and then it has actually crashed XP, which turns out to be as uncrashable as the Titanic. but I digress. Well, this OS X with the cinema screen is pretty cool. When it can grab the stuff from one of the networked PCs I'll celebrate. happy Holidays!

So, the cryptic photo on the top of this page is a cellular phone store in Dayton Ohio. The sign says "Cricket is not here" as in Cricket mobile telephone. This is the sort of sign that smacks of reality: so many people have come into this store to purchase "Cricket" phones that they JUST CANNOT STAND IT ANYMORE and put a sign up telling such folks to go, well, somehwere that's not in their store. That's what I call a GREAT product! Well, not everybody is thrilled, but you can't please all the people all the time, and the sorts of people that live where coverage is not completed are the angry ones, the ones that write letters to places that rate service. Most people seem to love this service.

Ever tried IM on a phone? No matter how good you are at typing on a little keyboard, no matter if you have the panacea known as "T9", you will always lose to the person on the real keyboard typing with both hands. A few folks have proposed better keyboards on phones to do this, and yes, some companies have made blackberry devices that clip onto the bottom of the phone, but those aren't much faster. The fastap keyboard (on the right) is a novel approach to solving this little dilemma.

Well, after baby steps with the RealOne network, I had to re-install it this weekend. Seems that something in XP still didn't like Rob Glaser's company and had to be the first application that brought this OS to it's knees. And on a a gloomier note, movie downloading is percieved to be a "never occuring" by Roger Ebert. Ah well. With that in mind I had to buy one of my favorite films, now on DVD (but if you can believe the user reviews, a horrible transfer)

I did it. I signed up for that new realone network - you know, the one that nobody will sign up for? The one that lets you download music for a fee? A pay-for-play music system? I was a real goldpass member and thought I'd try this out...and...I really like it. So far. I don't think I'd like it without the broadband connection that I've had for the past 6 years (I'm so glad we've had cable modems here in San Diego for so long!). Pity the folks without broadband access - it should be in the constitution next to "pursuit of happiness". Well, I suppose it is!

From the "who's driving the bus" category, Cingular converting to GSM makes even less sense than AT&T's Armstrong blunder. Well, I guess you can forgive Big Mike once, but three times? Project Angel=dead, cable deals= dying/dead, Converting from TDMA to GSM? Priceless. This visionary should sue the doctor who did the eye surgery. In an era of declining voice pricing and lethargic mobile data use why would anybody convert to dated euro technology? Not only do these guys seem easy to fool, but they are getting fooled on the 1999 story! Oh, and here's today's shocking news: "Cingular, the nation's second-largest wireless provider, with 22 million customers, said in October that it planned to spend $3 billion on new equipment to upgrade its network. But details of the deals revealed Monday by Cingular's three major suppliers--Nokia, Siemens and Ericsson--put the value of the upgrade well in excess of $3.5 billion." Yea. $5B installed, which should be by late 2003. Well, if sending more US money to Europe for the holidays was the master plan - they are executing well.

random notes...China accounts for 15% of the total global mobilephone output making it hte largest sourceof handsets in the Asia-Pacific region....but... in 2000 only 10% of the total 30 mm handsets sold in China were made there (Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson supplied most of the rest). These are GSM handsets that are now entering their 10th year of life (i.e. the twilight years of low cost). CDMA handsets are only half way there and represent a better way for the Chinese to enter the game...and speaking of downloading music, I was surprised to read recently that the more money you have, the more likely you are to download music from the web. not what I expected.