cblounge*blog

“Out of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you are the Charlie Brownest.”

Sunday, August 21, 2005

New Gadgets in the cblounge: Part 2

Welcome to the second part of the "New Gadgets" series. This time I will be highlighting my recent purchase of a new cell phone. I will begin this tale of 'electronic gadgetry' starting in spring 2005. My cell phone of 3 plus years, which has been such a trooper, began to show signs of retirement. I began to notice that sometimes the phone would not ring when a call came in. Later it even began to turn itself off. This was really weird. I guess it was trying to tell me something. When I was in NYC, my signal was not very strong and calls kept dropping. I passed it off as being the old technology. At this point the battery would not even hold enough of a charge to last a somewhat-long conversation. With all these factors, I still could not find enough motivation to go get a new one. I guess I am lazy. That changed in late July, 2005. It was a Friday night, not too late, not too early. When checking to see if I missed any calls, I noticed that my phone was not even on. And I am positive that I did not turn it off. So, I try to turn the phone on to check my messages and low and behold, it did not turn on. I think to myself, what kind of tricks is this thing pulling on me. So I try the charger, still nothing. My cell phone was officially dead. Now I had the proper motivation to get a new one. So that following Sunday I trekked down to my local store and found a new trooper (cell phone). I purchased the Sony Ericsson z500a (pictured below).



And now I am caught up with the new cell phone technology. it has a color screen (so cool), a camera, internet access, and on and on (most of which I will not use). The best part is that this phone rings and the sound quality is much better. After having the phone for about a month now, I must say it is great to be back in the loop.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Look, Ma, No Schoolbooks! - Taking eLearning One Step Further

A high school in Vail, Arizona is starting this school year with out the use of textbooks. They achieve this progressive approach with the help of iBooks from Apple. Click here to read more.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

And the eagle has landed...

The Space Shuttle Discovery landed successfully at 5:11 a.m. PT at NASA's secondary landing site at Edwards Air Force Base in California. This is the first successful mission since the tragedy of Columbia. Click here for more.

Sunday, August 07, 2005

New Gadgets in the cblounge: Part 1

Welcome to the first part of a new "irregular" series of the cblounge*blog. This new series will include details, specs and general ra-ra of new gadgets acquired/desired by cb and the cblounge. I want to begin by saying I have always been an anti-Apple/pro-IBM person. That was until a couple of years ago. I really began to see the beauty and sweetness of what Apple was doing. When OS X first came out, me and a friend happened to be visiting a new Apple store near my apartment. As we were drooling over the awesome Apple displays, we noticed a demo was beginning of the new OS. I was sold from the beginning. It seemed so stable and everything was where it should be. Wow! A new image began to form in my head. There ARE computers out there that don't crash every other minute! Blue screens did not have to mean death anymore! It took some time for this dream to actualize, mainly because of one barrier: no funds. Well, last May I made the plunge and bought my first Mac! And I love it! I can't believe I waited so long.





I purchased a 12" iBook G4 from MacMall.com. They shipped it out to me really quickly and I was on the Mac highway. I have not looked back yet. It connected right up to my network and my new life began. My web site and this blog were both done on my Mac. Macs rule.

Monday, August 01, 2005

Rome, Italy - a Haunted Library

My Amigo Luke sent me this really cool blog about a haunted library in Rome. The blog itself is about Rome - "A Rome full of mystery and legend." This is especially cool for me since I currently reside in library land.

Click here to visit

Pretty neat stuff. Gets that travel bug going again...anyone want to take a trip to Italy? France? Spain? No takers I see...well if you change your mind, you know how to reach me.