Okay, so I got the headphones, and I wasn't all that impressed with the range, and the full ear covers bothered me after eight hours. So I went and moved up a notch and ordered a Jensen transmitter system.

I'm simply stunned by the range on these things. I use them at work, and where the big clunky set wouldn't send a signal to the next cubicle, the Jensen set will send a signal downstairs and down the hall into the bathroom (yes, I don't bother taking them off). I was even able to pick up a signal most of the way to the next building where I work. Very very nifty system.

I can even plug them in at home and pick up a decent signal anywhere in my yard, which was one of the reasons I wanted wireless in the first place. No more chintzy little 32 meg Rio for me while I'm doing yard work, now I get to listen to streaming J-pop while I work!

Oh, cheap plug time - I finally went and opened a premium store at CafePress, so stop by and have a look around. The major bonus to this is that I can have all my stores better organized, and I don't have to manually cross-link them all to each other.

I have no clue why I'm mentioning this here, but...

I'm getting a set of wireless headphones :)

For $10 + $7 shipping, I'm getting an RCA wireless set from an eBay power seller. I was looking at something from SpectraVox that's basically a converter kit - you plug whatever audio component you want into the belt-clippable receiver - for $50, just so I could use earbuds instead of the big over-the-head phones, but this was too good a deal to pass up.

If they work out well, I could get another pair for home and still pay less than for the other "converter" kit :) The idea for this first set is to use them at work, since I'm tired of being tethered to my iBook by a short leash to listen to my mp3s at the proper volume. Or, I could decide I don't like the big RCA set and get the Jensen set anyway; guess I'll have to see how it goes.

I should note that this purchase is being funded by my personal toy fund.

So we all know the keynote was Tuesday, and a pile of nifty Apple goodness spilled out into our laps. I'm liking the iLife integration thing, but there's just one problem:

I can't really use it all properly.

Right now, I'm typing on my work-provided iBook 600 (running OS X), while my feet are propped up on the desk that's holding my desktop G3/233 with a G4 / 400 upgrade (running OS 9). All the iLife stuff is OS X only, and my desktop machine simply refuses to accept an OS X install. I do iMovie (and Photoshop, and UT) on the desktop, because it runs stuff so much smoother than the iBook - better video, Altivec, etc. The problem is, Steve's left my desktop for dead, as have the developers. This leaves me with two options at the moment - well, three: do even more personal stuff on the company laptop, blow off the new iApps and make due with iMovie 2 and no functional iTunes on my personal machine, or hack the living bejeezus out of the G3G4 to try and get OS X running on it.

*sigh* The burdens of being a fiscally responsible father and husband... I *could* order a new G4 tower in a heartbeat - the credit cards could easily cover the expense - but then I'd get to deal with the wrath of the missuz for the next eleventeen years. If only some more people would be willing to hit my cafepress pages and buy something... I could start to sock away some money to put towards a new machine :)

Okay, maybe I'm getting into this slashdot thing too much, but I just discovered the depth of this whole friend / foe thing (I've got fans? l33t!), so I figured I might as well dump something into the journal space and really get into it. No witticisms, nothing profound, just a "Ooh, what does *this* button do?"