That’s “Yet Another Thanksgiving Entry”. Well, this one is different from the rest. This one is… late.
So my friend from Berkeley was in town, and I was busy showing him around. I can’t begin to explain what a relief it was to have a Californian to talk with again. I must have said the word “dude” more times than in ten back-to-back showings of The Big Lebowski. I previously hadn’t used it while I was here—it somehow seemed unnatural to say it to anyone who wasn’t from California.
I’m going to be true to cliche and start listing some things I am thankful for. Firstly, the nifty laser mouse my pal brought over for me. Now if I start raving about it I’m going to sound like a Logitech shill, so I’m just going to say this: if you have not used a laser mouse before—you have no idea what you’re missing. It handles so much more smoothly than an optical mouse. And I’m not even a gamer (anymore). I got other shiny new hardware of course, but those were boring purchases such as new hard drives (I’m approaching 2 terabytes in total storage – I really should consider getting a NAS soon).
Another would be the forthcoming release of Pain of Salvation’s new album, Scarsick, in 2007. And of course the world tour that accompanies it. Suffice to say I will make it for one leg of the tour, costs be damned.
Lastly, the rebirth of the Rio Karma. Honestly, with a name like “Karma”, you just knew it had to be reincarnated some day. It was sad that Rio was shut down – what they had in the Karma was a quality DAP that could handle FLAC losslessly on its default firmware (no Rockbox needed). Despite being ugly as sin and having a track history of hard drive failures to boot, it had a devoted, if small user-base. Many users even bought two of them, the second to use when the hard drive of the first had failed. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this one – it may well be the first DAP i consider worthy of my purchase.
