June 29th, 2007
I arrived around 1am and am now at the back of the line. I gather that I’m around the 40th or 50th person in line. I’ll do a full count once I get setup and take some photos. Thank goodness, Santa Monica has free wi-fi in this part of the city. Good for them. Here’s a few pictures of the scene right now.
[Update 1:30am]
First incident. Employees leaving the Adidas store started taunting the group of Apple fanboys who had setup a little camp midway in the line. While it started out friendly, the Apple fanboys got really riled up for being “stupid enough to wait in line”. Of course, the fanboys started pulling the “elitist” angle by retorting, “Hey, you work in a shoe store. Enough said.” Part of me thinks that was a clever if not elitist comment. Adidas employees didn’t like that and started telling the fanboys to stop looking at porn on their MacBook and MacBook Pros. From there it got juvenile and I tuned out…adidas employees finally left. I think I’ll take a nap. More to follow…
June 6th, 2007
The last week has been slow as I’ve been furiously doing a data migration by integrating the original Sony TR World forum into this site. I actually started planning this over 2 years ago but I didn’t have the time to do the move or plan the data migration. Over time, the move became really necessary because the phpBB software I was using was so prone to be attacked by site spammers that I was spending so much time cleaning out bad messages and user accounts.
Even with some time freed up and some careful planning, I knew it was going to be a lot of work; however, it ended up being even more difficult than I imagined. There was lots of data massaging I had to do to get most things working. The end result is the new forum section on the site! All of the old forum posts now automatically map to the new, more easily readable urls so Google and other search engines should pickup on it soon. If you register on the forum then you can more easily leave comments for postings and reviews. I’ll get to cleaning up the front page with forum information and account info in the next round of updates.
I also spent a lot of time optimizing the site so it should be loading a little bit faster than before. Performance was killing me as it was difficult to update the site when developing on the live server. Hopefully, it’s fast on your end.
I’m almost finished collecting data for my Nike+ vs. Sony S2 Sports review so that should be interesting to read. It’s been an interesting experience switching back and forth between products. By interesting I mean frustrating since getting used to different interfaces has been maddening. Anyways, expect by next week and check your feeds!
May 25th, 2007
It took way longer than expected but the Sony Ericsson SE W850i Walkman Phone is now up. There’s a lot of information so enjoy. I tried to keep it more focused on actually usage than a full description of every possible feature since the phone does so much.
Next up, I’ll probably do some quickie reviews on simpler products while I finish up my big comparison article on Sony’s S2 Sports Walkman and Apple iPod nano/Nike+ combination. On deck is a review of Plantronic’s Discovery 655 Bluetooth headset, Sony’s S705 Walkman, and some interesting software that I use everyday.
Thanks and have a great weekend!
May 10th, 2007
So, I went to Fry’s Electronics today because I had the “perfect storm” of running out of color ink and laser toner at the same time. And, for whatever reason, the inkjet, a 6-color Epson Stylus Photo R300, had all 6 inks running equally low. I always loathe buying the cartridges since it’s the one time where you know you’re getting fleeced and there’s really nothing you can do about it. Granted, if I was only buying one cartridge at a time, it wouldn’t be that bad. Of course, in my situation it ended up being $85 worth of ink.
Ouch.
I also really needed a toner for my laser printer (Samsung ML-1710) but I decided to wait since I didn’t feel like spending another $80 on that in the same purchase. Yeah, I’m crazy like that. I’ll probably end up buying it next week anyways and a single laser toner lasts a long time so it’s decent investment.
Ok, onto my Fry’s story. After placing my cartridges in my basket I decided to just wander through the store and look around for a bit. While looking at a display that had some Sony products presented, a Fry’s sales associate came up to me to ask me and the following transaction occurred:
Read more.
May 4th, 2007
Based on various responses, there’s a lot of interest in the Sony Ericsson W850i phone review so that will likely come first. I may throw in a bluetooth headset (Plantronics Discovery 655) review also since that one will likely be a shorter review. The Apple iPod nano/Nike+ vs. Sony S2 Sports Walkman review is coming as well but that’s going to take some time since I’m having calibration issues with the Nike+ kit. So, once those are squared away I’ll be able to do a fair comparison.
Thanks for the feedback and know that the reviews are coming!
