I got this new crockpot to replace one that died when I was making lunch for me and Pious B (it’s OK, a Dutch oven saved the day). I like it because it’s programmable so when I make a shabbat cholent, which is a stew that cooks forever, aka, 12-18 hours, I can have it just keep warm for the rest of it. My first recipe, unless there’s a big sale on brisket, will be this one from Alfa’s blog. I love baked beans.

FYI, the disembodied hand did not come with the slow cooker.

I also received some money and so I finally purchased a decent phone, the Galaxy SII from Samsung. I spent five days setting it up. I didn’t really use my last Android phone as anything but a phone and wireless hotspot for my Apple devices so there was a steep learning curve in how to configure this thing to be The Device. But I put all my music on it and it has Freecell and the subway app, so I guess I am good to go. By the way, if you remember how much I complained about the ineffectual indicator light on my last phone, you will be interested to know that this phone has no light at all. I no longer have any dealbreakers with phones; I just go with the best of the lot that’s out there. Or maybe I’m still sort of in “whatever” mode.

This book about the history of MTV is fascinating if you are a person who watched a lot of it back in the day. I have it on Kindle and I have taken to reading right on my computer which means I can watch all the videos as they talk about them. It’s really important so that when the guy from Ratt says he nailed the landing on the table, you can check that out, or for when Martha Quinn says she had a cameo in Going Back to Cali. So far, the thing that amazed me the most is that the woman from the Kajagoogoo video ended up marrying Dennis Miller. Did not see that coming.

Funny thought:it is a good thing I no longer do iPod Song of the Week, as for the first time since 2002, I am not using an iPod to listen to music on the go. Weird. And speaking of former aspects of this blog, it’s David Nalbandian’s birthday. He has hit the ripe old age of 30. To mark the occasion, I’m taking down his page, since I no longer update it and there are far better sites on the web to find out his schedule, which there weren’t when I started. (This is my favorite site and it has a good listing.) But it had a good run, and God knows it brought me far weirder searches than I would have expected (or wanted). ¡Adiós!

I leave you with this video, which Billy Squier says destroyed his career. I don’t remember it at all, but it would seem that’s a good thing, since Squier would like everyone to know that he is heterosexual. Happy new year!

And I probably would have stayed with the BB, hoping by the time my contract was up that either a new model would have the things I liked from iOS and Android devices or that an iOS or Android device would have the things I liked from RIM. But something else happened in between to tip the scales and that was that everyone in my family chipped in together to get me the one thing I wanted for my birthday/Hannukah: an iPad. So now I had two WiFi devices that would frustrate me to no end to not have service on: an iPod Touch and an iPad. I thought about various solutions. I considered trading in my WiFi iPad for a 3G one so that I could get wireless service on it. But that involved a $100 outlay and an extra $15 a month. I thought about getting a portable hotspot but that was the same thing except a $25 charge per month plus carrying around yet another device.

But some Android phones can act as portable hotspots so that seemed the best solution. Just push a button and have the phone spread its WiFi goodness to all my iOS devices. No extra fee and no extra device. So I bought the cheapest Android phone available, the Comet. It’s kind of adorable for all its cheapness (it costs as much off-contract as your phone probably cost subsidized). I didn’t feel so bad about this splurge because I spent 48 hours baking ten orders of rugelach as a special holiday thing for two of my most delightful previous customers and earned almost exactly as much as the Comet cost. Happy Hannukah, Becca – Love, Becca.

As an aside, every time I type or say or think the word Comet, I remember this little ditty from when I was in Summer camp (sing with me!):
Comet, it makes your mouth turn green
Comet, it tastes like gasoline
Comet, it makes you vomit
So eat some Comet and vomit today!

It turns out, these lyrics are only slightly off the standard. But I digress. I really thought I could use the BlackBerry and Comet interchangeably and just pop the SIM card in and out as needed. That turned out not to be the case, since T-Mo, my carrier, has you listed under one or the other. As yet another aside, I cannot say enough good things about T-Mobile. If they have good coverage in your area, use them, if only just to hear them trip over themselves on the phone to please you. It’s like someone promised them a steak if they could get you to say, “Wow, thanks!” Bottom line, they gave me the cheap Android plan, even though it no longer exists, just because I already had the cheap Blackberry plan which no longer exists. And if I want to switch back to the cheap BB plan which no longer exists, I just have to call back. Steak for everyone!

But here’s the rub. I like the Comet and Android very much, just as I thought I would, but I ache for my BlackBerry. My BlackBerry was a workhorse. It was that guy who gets to the office at 6 and leaves at 9 and you just have to glance over to see him working away at his task. There’s no need to bother him! He’s hammering away. And at the end of the day, right on time, he brings you that report you wanted with no typos and no mistakes. The Comet is like… well, me. It sits around and waits till you really need something and then maybe it has it and maybe it doesn’t and you can never really be sure if it’s right. (This post will not be on my resume, thanks for asking). I mean, why do the work before it’s really needed? And if you don’t have it at that point, maybe no one will notice.

The BlackBerry, as anyone who has been near someone who has one can attest, has a little light on the top. It flashes a slow and steady green when it is connected to WiFi or a mobile signal and then switches to a slow and steady red if you have a message of some kind. The Comet has a light but does nothing if nothing’s happening and then flashes green if you have a message. The trouble is, sometimes nothing’s happening because the Comet is just hanging out and having a smoke. It hasn’t really tried to see if you have any messages. Maybe it lost the connection, but as far as you know, it’s just that no one’s trying to reach you. But maybe they are! And the Comet is like, “hey, you know that one time at band camp and… what? Connection? I don’t even really remember what that is.” Sometimes when you wonder if maybe there is a message despite no light and you unlock the screen, the Comet gets busy, like it knows the boss entered the room. Then it frantically checks for e-mails and Twitter mentions and Facebook comments. Sometimes, it doesn’t even notice the boss is around. “Oh hey, remember that time… anyone got a light?… when Sally and Jimmy had that fight and….”

As Pavlov could tell you, it’s this kind of unpredictability that drives a person mad. But there are some predictable things. If I send myself an e-mail and line up my devices, here’s how it goes: the iPad and Touch will ping, one right after the other, then my computer will chime, then…. nothing. Then I get myself a smoke (well, no, that’s hyperbole) and then the light on the Comet starts to flash. Ugh. Even worse, when the Comet is charging, its light is dedicated to showing you that it’s charging and no indication of a message at all occurs. Now, I can’t be having that. My entire psyche is geared to glancing over and seeing the light flashing, knowing something in my world is constantly scanning the atmosphere for messages, and will soundlessly indicate when I have one. I still find myself looking over all the time at the Comet to watch it blink and of course, it won’t do that. But then, sometimes in the morning after I had packed my BB in my messenger bag, I’d glance over at the spot where it had blinked all night. It’s a reflex.

I have been told that there are apps for Android phones that will accomplish this, but so far, none will work for the Comet’s lame little light. It’s funny, before the last post, which was a bit sentimental, the Comet Conundrum already reminded me of that time. I remember being in a foreign land, literally and figuratively, and before going to sleep in a cold bed, I’d put the BlackBerry on the side of it. That flashing light seemed to hum to me that I was still connected to people who loved me. And that’s the power of our electronic devices. Not the games or the turn by turn navigation, but the connections to people not by our side. I need to know that I can count on my little friend to tell me that it is constantly reaching out to see if anyone is reaching back and to let me know reliably if they have. I need to be able to trust it.

I should also mention that the Comet’s battery runs out in less than my typical 15 hour day, and that’s with just average use. In a normal BlackBerry day, I wouldn’t even lose the first bar on the battery scale unless I left it off the charger all night. So you can add that to the “I can’t really count on this to be there for me” column.

It’s funny, I was going to write about a NY Times article/podcast on the subject of the mobile phone being an extension of the self. But instead, I found that I need one that isn’t like me at all. I need one that completes me. This one seems to just turn my mouth green.

Here is a photo taken by the Comet of the most expensive clock radio ever, my iPad. My co-operating tech teacher can’t believe I do this. But I can’t be the only one or they wouldn’t have this app, would they?

Why did I take this picture? I think it was the excitement over a new phone and the promise of a snowy day, not to mention I’m not really myself since I started having to wake up at 6:15am. I haven’t even turned the light on yet in this picture.

The Smiths – There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

Still, if there is a particular need for rugelach and you give me enough notice, I may be able to work it in occasionally, just let me know. Hopefully, you’ll be able to anticipate your pastry needs several weeks in advance. Thanks to everyone for making it such a successful baking year! I kept a careful spreadsheet (duh) and I cleared quite a bit all in spare hours between readings, so it worked out beyond my greatest hopes. You all rock!

Secondly, about that whole thesis. Originally, when I was studying how we live on the Internet in general, it was a fabulous excuse to do an ethnographic study on an online forum of which I have been a longtime member. Now that I have switched up my program a bit to be more education-minded, it’s no longer a good fit for the work I’m doing. Instead, I am pondering (with the help of my advisor) a study of iPads in the classroom. Since I’ve been assigned to work on that project for and by my placement school anyway, and I love gadgets, that also seems an attractive option for me. But either way, it means I will not be doing the online community study. Don’t cry! I did complete a project for a class last year on that site and it was fairly extensive and turned out beautifully. In fact, I kid you not, people have stopped me in the hallway to say they saw it and loved it. I am considering getting it published somewhere but, well, we’ll see how that goes. The professor who originally suggested that to me is extremely busy and there’s only so much prodding I can do. So whether you will see it or not remains an open question. Still, I was able to get the desire to analyze this community out of my system and in a way, it’s a relief. Now I can just be a participant without worrying about tainting my data.

And, lastly, on the iPad tip, now that I have my loaner, I was able to test this site’s mobile theme on it and it works fine. It’s not exactly optimized for the device, but the plugin authors say they are working on that for the next version so hopefully it will have more bells and whistles, and maybe even more extensive excerpts of each post on the home page, which is my biggest complaint. Because seriously, my opening lines seem to have not much to do with the actual posts and it makes things appear kind of comical. Sort of like those songs which have titles seemingly plucked out of the ether. Bizarre Love Triangle? Does that song have anything to do with a bizarre love triangle? Sex Type Thing? What is that, even? Man, that should have been my opening line.

Anyway, my posts are like a journey, a journey to a faraway place… in the middle seat of coach. And like that journey, they start with confusion and boredom and end with exhaustion and nausea. But should you be bored waiting on that long, long line to vote today, grab your iPad and give it a whirl. I am at least as entertaining as the ass of the person in front of you.

Anyway, title comes from nowhere – that’s the joke! Oh, I slay me.

INXS – Not Enough Time

1. Enough memory to not see a spinning beach ball every time I want to do three things at once.
2. No sound of processor wheezing when I watch a video on YouTube.
3. An N key that says N (N is the key that advances my RSS reader… I appear to read a lot of feeds, as I have rubbed that sucker completely off).
4. No more burnt leg (the older Macbook batteries were removable and closer to my leg).
5. Pleasant crunch of new keyboard design (plus backlighting for typing in the dark).
6. CD/DVD drive which actually accepts said discs.
7. Right click with one touch (the old trackpad didn’t have that).
8. More stuff fits on the same size screen.
9. Actual portability since the battery lasts 6x times as long as the old one (which I stopped unplugging at all, really).
10. Works with my iPhone headphones with mic so I don’t have to look like I’m taking your order when I’m on a video conference or class.

No, the best thing is that I get to use all the new software that my old computer (the very first Macbook Pro from 2006) couldn’t handle! I just got so used to saying, “oh. I don’t have that operating system” or “oh. I don’t have that amount of RAM.” But now I do! In fact, I spent a while trying to remember all the things I had previously been refused, like Google Chrome and Kindle For Mac and Blackberry Desktop Software. Yes, I could have updated my old Macbook with all the latest software but first I waited for the bugs to be worked out and then it didn’t feel worth it because I kept thinking I’d upgrade the hardware. But there is something so exciting about saying, “why, yes, I’ll take the version for the very newest operating system, the version with all the neat things.”

My old Macbook was called Big Mac because it was larger than my previous Thinkpad and, well, it was a Mac and that was novel for me at the time. My Dad worked at IBM his entire career and so I had only ever had Thinkpads and PS/2′s. Not even Dell or Gateway. I had one of the first laptops IBM produced when I went to college. Now, I am not one for naming electronics but I always named my computers because you could. There was an area to put the name and so I did. Nowadays, you especially need to if you have a network, unless you can remember offhand that M7978V68423 is your Slingplayer. I always named my laptops after musicians until Big Mac (only North of the City will remember these names, I think). But now it’s time to return to that and thus I name mine after a musician I miss very much, and like Malcolm, it’s quirky, takes old things and makes them up to date, and keeps me connected to good things everywhere.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But this is not the Queen in New York, this is Her Majesty at the RIM factory (that’s Research In Motion, aka the BlackBerry people) in the decidedly cooler climes of Canada. I’m posting this picture simply because they gave the Queen the same model as I just got! Thus proving that for the next 5-7 days, I own the most current and up to date model. And I am going to bust that thing out everywhere! Fuck your iPhone! The Queen and I are BlackBerry buddies!

And as soon as she gives me her PIN, I am going to totally message her that.

Title is a take-off of a DMX album title. And the temperature check at 2am? 83 degrees. I picked this particular track because it was produced by Swizz Beatz from whom I once received a group email that was both abusive and hilarious.
DMX – Ruff Ryders’ Anthem

1. USA! USA! (That was the soccer part, duh). I knew this because they announced it during the Wimbledon match I was watching which was…

2. … thirty hours long! I swear, I woke up late-ish as usual and since John Isner and Nicolas Mahut were carrying on from the day before and just finishing their match from the previous day (it had gone too long and Wimbledon doesn’t have lights or final tiebreaks), I figured I’d eat breakfast when it was over. Folks, in case you weren’t following, I had breakfast at 4:30pm. And they still weren’t done, it was like 118-118 in the final set or something. Maybe it was infinity+1 – infinity+1. I’m not really sure these guys are human, I think they might be comprised of those machines that just shoot balls at you across the net. And they finish today.

It’s the third day now and the longest tennis match ever. Actually, the fifth set alone is the longest match ever. The really important thing to note, though, is that suddenly tennis is on the news which it never is and even more so because soccer which never is has been using the last 30 seconds of sports time that is allotted to sports no one cares about. So, right, wow. But the pinnacle, I think, of shattered earth is the fact that Deadspin is reporting on a tennis event which doesn’t involve a shot of jiggling breasts or a view upskirt. Mind blowing.

3. The Yankees won in the middle of the night in an extra inning thriller. I made up the thriller part, it was actually a very poorly played game, but the ending was teh awesome.

4. Jonathan Papelass had his save blown in Colorado by a former Yankee. I’m sorry, I just don’t like that guy and I wouldn’t no matter what team he was on.

So right, that was all good. It was a good day to be a sports fan in New York. And even if you are a Mets fan, Jerry Seinfeld was calling the game at New Shea, so you had that. I don’t know who won that game, I only tuned in to hear Jerry call Lady Gaga a jerk and to see Keith Hernandez look embarrassed as they showed his old scenes from the show. And it was worth it.

In non-sports news, it was also an exciting day for me because I finally got a new phone. If you remember, my old one had a giant crack formed in its screen as I attempted to check email at 4 in the morning. You may think based on the timing that it is an iPhone but you would be wrong! That’s a red herring because I actually used the release of the iPhone to convince T-Mobile to give me a free smartphone since I was thinking of switching. In fact, I was thinking about having no money but you know, I might switch in a few years. They didn’t ask me when. And the Internets informed me that T-Mobile took that as a good reason to give away phones so I am now the new, proud owner of a BlackBerry Bold which I lovelovelove. Everything looks good and sounds good and moves quickly and it can do all sorts of fun things.

But this is also good news for you because I took that occasion to change my mobile theme to one that works on more devices. If you normally visit me on a mobile phone, you are probably looking at it right now and I hope it’s clear and legible, if lacking in the frippery of my normal theme. If you’re looking at a little screen and seeing my normal black & gray & flowers, please let me know in the comments what device you’re using so I can get on that. If it’s an iPad, I can’t help you… yet. But they say they’re working on it. You are very important to “them.” They will be right with you, please stand by.

By the way, and back to sports for a moment, people sometimes ask me why I’m a fan of one person or another. Is it their nationality? A big forehand? Hotness? Sometimes! But not usually. Most often it’s by personality (see the Papelbon example above there) and I find that out by sitting through my yearly matches at the US Open and seeing who appeals to me. Someone determined and classy, who respects the fans and doesn’t argue with the linespeople, and who seems to be having a good time. I know, it’s a tall order. A few years ago, in fact, I saw Nicolas Mahut play and he was an ass. I even mentioned it in a post. But see, if you can maintain your composure and give it your all for ten hours (and counting), I will become your fan. Of course, I was already a fan of John Isner because of Twitter. If you are funny on Twitter or even just talk to your fans on Twitter, I will be your fan. New rule. Also, tiebreaks. That should be a new rule. But of course, then I’d just be reading articles about Venus Williams’ underwear on Deadspin, so there’s that. Hooray for week long matches!

Heaven 17 – Play To Win

I went to the T-Mobile store, just to play with the phones to maybe get used to the idea of simply replacing my BlackBerry with a newer, better, faster BlackBerry. Not to buy one. But the guy talked me into it! Really! And maybe in my heart of hearts I really did want it. Then something went wrong and as they were ringing me up, the credit card literally in my hand, the transaction couldn’t be completed because of my cheap and ancient plan. I felt disappointed, but, whatever, I could just phone up T-Mo and get it done. But that’s the thing: I haven’t. And I doubt I will. I probably will just keep on waiting for the Perfect Phone to come along and in the meantime use my sad Curve with the cracked screen. I have worked in retail sales, although never on commission, so I have a vague idea of the psychology of this. But a big purchase like this one is something I never imagined letting myself be manipulated into making. Weird!

The other thing it made me realize is why the Nexus One, the phone I covet (although it doesn’t fulfill all the requirements either) has less than 2% of the market. Because it’s only sold on the Internet! I can’t go into a store and play with it and feel like I can’t leave without it and have the slick salesguy convince me that this promotion will end TODAY and I need to get it NOW. I think Google, which does so many things right, has done this thing wrong. When it appears in the store next to the lesser Blackberry or G1 or whatever, then people will want it. Now, it doesn’t work this way for Apple, but people didn’t run out to buy the original iPod either. Apple had to build that “I’ll buy this sight unseen” fanboy clientele and Google hasn’t accomplished that. Not to mention, I also coveted an iPad and happened to have a torture session dentist appointment this week which put me next to the Apple Store. All through the drilling, I kept saying to myself, “survive this and get to go see an iPad!” Well, I did survive and I did go to the Apple Store and guess what? I didn’t like the iPad. It didn’t feel comfortable in my hand and there wasn’t multi-tasking, at least as I’m used to. So now I don’t feel bad that I can’t afford one because I wouldn’t buy one. But I had to try one to figure that out. And I had to be in a physical store to do that.

Zappo’s comes closest to replicating that, by sending shoes overnight and allowing you to send them back free with no repercussions. But if you’ve seen even one episode of Sex and the City, you know people can be talked into shoes like a tech nut can be talked into a 3G BlackBerry. But not by websites… yet.

There is a story to this post title. When I started the baking business, while I was still at the record label, I told a co-worker about it and he said, “Good idea! You know, you can’t download a cupcake.” There are some things that the Internet still cannot provide.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory Sdtk – I Want It Now

And because the port was broken, it also couldn’t be connected with my computer so nothing on it could be saved. That is, nothing on the actual unit, as my music, photos, and contacts were on a memory card. Those were safe. But all my preferences, settings, and downloaded programs were gone daddy gone. I spent a bit of time writing all that down and yes, it has been a royal pain in the ass to download everything again, try to remember what my bookmarks were, have to hunt down my WiFi key again, change permissions, etc.

But the worst thing that happened was this: my BrickBreaker high score was reset to zero. Oh, the humanity! I may have to spend the next few weeks working it back up there. It’s a tough job but someone has to do it.

Queen – Another One Bites the Dust

*This is a lie, my alarm is actually this song. Could there be a gentler way to get up?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yeah, I have a beeping alarm clock go off ten minutes later.

You will remember (or be reminded) that I have said that I tend to listen to The Cure’s Disintegration on rainy days (I’m so melancholy and dramatic, what can I say). Today was a rainy day and that figures into this story because I was carrying an umbrella in my hand. Sure, I have two hands but I had my iPod stuffed into a pocket. It stays dry that way too. I take a really crowded subway to work, the #1 (we’re #1!) and as my train stopped at 50th Street, a lady pushed past me to get out of the car. This is not unusual. In fact, I push past other people. It’s not like there’s anywhere for people to get out of your way. You just have to use your elbows. Well, the cord to my headphones got caught on one of those elbows. Or it may have been her coat. Or her bag. It all happened so fast.

Wham! The cord came out of my pocket. So I put my hand in to plug it back in. NO IPOD. I looked and there it was, face down on the ground next to the tracks. Yes, it had managed to go flying into the three inch gap between the car and the platform. I was kind of stunned. No, I was utterly stunned. And then the chime ding dinged and the doors closed. Holy fucking hell. There went my iPod. Gone forever in the space of three seconds. No one seemed to have noticed at all. I said to the lady next to me, “that was my iPod. My iPod fell onto the tracks.” She looked at me and said, “really?” in the tone of voice you might use if I told you that cereal tastes better with raisins. I went on with, “that was $200!” Actually, I have no idea if it was $200 because it was a gift from a dear friend, but that’s how much I estimated it would cost to replace it. More on that later. But the important thing is, she just gave me a kind of, “mmm hmmm” look. These are the moments, ladies & gentlemen, when you just want to reach out and bash people in the head.

When I got to work, the universal comment was, “why didn’t you just go get it?” Excuse me? I’m not risking my life for an iPod. Unless it was really new and I didn’t have the music backed up. Plus, if you think I’m going to be reusing a device covered in puke and rat droppings, you are sorely mistaken. Some track worker is probably having a look at it right now. It’s probably still playing the Cure, I have the whole discography.

The funny thing is, I just bought a shiny new toy with my Hannukah money yesterday. It’s called a Slingbox and it allows me to watch my home TV on any computer or even my Blackberry. Yes, live TV or programs I’ve recorded on my DVR. Waiting for the bus. At work. In hotels. In the kitchen. The sky’s the limit. As long as they have Internet access in the sky. But, well, this really put a damper on things. “Look, I have a fun new gadget!” has turned into “holy hell, I lost my beloved old gadget!”

But now I have this difficult task of replacing Old Faithful. I was sure I would buy a refurb. Every Apple device I’ve ever purchased, including the MacBook on which I am currently typing this, has been a refurb. Fantastic bargains. But there were no iPod “Classics,” as the one I had is now called, on offer. Then I made the mistake of looking at iPod Touches. This put that Bloodhound Gang about doing it like they do it on the Discovery Channel in my head the whole day. That’s because it’s called The Bad Touch. I basically spent the whole day dithering over whether to get a Touch or a Classic or a Nano. Or should I just get an iPhone and not carry around two devices all the time? Stupid flying iPod. Why did it have to rain today? I, I’d really like to know. That just put another song into my head, it’s by APB and those are the first two lines. See how crazy this has made me?

This evening, I went to the Apple Store (the cheerful Apple guy said mine was the saddest story he had heard all day) where I spent twenty minutes doing the exact same dithering I had done the whole day, only this time it was in front of the actual objects. I really did want a Touch. But did you know? The Touch is exactly like an iPhone except it costs more and does less. Yes, yes, I don’t need to pay $70 a month for it, but I already pay $60 a month for the Blackberry! And when I stood in the Apple store playing with it, I realized that it would make me want an iPhone every day. Because I’m never near WiFi except in my own home and I can check my e-mail and surf on an actual computer there. It’s for when I’m out. And then I’ll be using my Blackberry and its tiny little screen. Now, I do love my Blackberry and I wrote an ode to it a while back, but, well, surfing on this screen is really awesome.

I ended up buying a Nano (purple!) on the theory that my Blackberry contract is up in November and this will tide me over till then. But I haven’t opened it because I’m not sure. It’s really hard to fathom paying just a bit less than it would cost for an iPhone, which is a phone and browses the web and does e-mail and plays music and a hundred other things, and getting this… music player. If only T-Mobile would let me go. That’s a song by Heaven 17 and probably a lot of other people.

So, anyone want to take over a T-Mobile contract? Free Curve with memory card!

I’m only half-joking.

I could go with so many references in this post but here’s the one that rainy days sound like to me.
The Cure – Plainsong

If you are a non-tennis fan and PC user, today is not your day on J-Ball. Come back tomorrow. No, actually, many of these are available for PC. And they’re all free! I’ll go in alphabetical order.

Adium is the program I use instead of iChat. Adium is the sister-program of Pidgin for PC’s and I can see all my AIM and gTalk contacts in on place. It also plays Crowded House’s “I get your tongue in the mail” line when I get e-mail. But that was my customization.

Audacity lets me edit song files. Make your own ringtones!

Burn does just that. It burns CD’s and DVD’s. This is how I make DVD’s because I find iDVD clunky and full of all kinds of stuff I never use.

Cyberduck is yet another bird themed program that I use for ftp.

DoubleCommand lets me remap my keyboard. I use that for precisely one thing: to make shift-delete do a forward delete. The fn key is way too far away to make this convenient the way Apple has it set up.

ffmpegx is what I use to convert video from one format to another.

FireFox is the browser I use instead of Safari. Safari makes sites look prettier but FF has all those add-ons that I can no longer live without.

Gimp is the open-source (read: free) substitute for Photoshop, if you do Photoshoppy type things.

Handbrake rips my DVD’s to my hard drive so I can load them onto my iPod. Then people can look over my shoulder on the subway while I watch The Simpsons.

Max is a program that encodes CD’s. That is, I use it to rip CD’s to my hard drive because iTunes doesn’t use LAME, what I consider the best encoder. You can also use it to encode in lots of other formats, like Ogg and FLAC and others. Occasionally, I use iTunes-LAME, which encodes right in iTunes.

MPEG Streamclip is what I use to edit video. I find iMovie iAnnoying.

Quinn is Tetris. That’s all you really need to know.

Senuti (read it backwards) moves songs from my iPod to my hard drive. Sometimes I rip a CD at work and then I want to listen to it on my home computer. And there we are.

Skype is a “phone over Internet” program. It’s free to call people who also have Skype and reeeeally cheap to call those who don’t. You’ll need a headset.

SuperDuper! is the back-up program I use. I don’t have Leopard but even if I did, it doesn’t make bootable back-ups. It’s free for the basic and like $28 for the version with the bells and whistles.

Thunderbird is the e-mail program I use instead of Mail. I use it because it’s cross-platform, so I keep it on a USB drive and tote it around between my work PC and home Mac. You need a special script to do that but it’s easy. Even easier is if you have either two PC’s or two Macs.

VLC is what I use instead of Quicktime. It plays lots of video formats that QT can’t or won’t.

Wiretap Pro (I have the paid version but the free one does quite a lot) records any sound the Mac is making. This includes cassettes that I want to import and make into mp3′s, Skype conversations with sketchy customer service people (check legality in your state – in NY only one person needs to give consent), Internet radio interviews, etc.

I should also mention Songbird, which is Mozilla’s (the FireFox and Thunderbird people) alternate to iTunes. But it’s in Beta and is full of bugs. So I downloaded it but never use it.

I also have lots of candy in my menu bar.

Alarm Clock makes the most expensive one you’ll own. I use it as a kitchen timer, actually.

Google Notifier tells me when I have Gmail.

You Control Tunes puts the controls to my music in the menu bar so I don’t have to switch programs when I’m in another and want to change songs or pause.

Show Desktop is something I missed from PC’s (actually, that’s their slogan: “The only good pc feature, now on the macintosh”). It automatically hides all your active windows so your desktop is clear.

If you have any others, please share! I’ll need something to distract me from Nalby’s foibles this week.

Title comes from:
The Who – Substitute