Technology « Page 5

My MoFo MoBo: The Sequel. It’s over.

Feb 20th

Just in case you were curious, I actually got the new Motherboard to work. I had to buy a 300W power supply (instead of the recently purchased 250W one I just bought). Once I got it, it powered up a-ok.

I connected all the cables and restarted the machine with the Sysprep utility from Microsoft. It worked perfectly. It’s like having a new computer.

Woo Hoo!

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My MoFo MoBo

Feb 17th

Posted by admin in Technology

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I’m having a major cow with my home computer’s MotherBoard. It’s mostly broken:

The power light doesn’t turn off
The parallel printer port sometimes doesn’t work
The floppy drive doesn’t work
The COM Ports doesn’t work.

But, everything else about the computer is fine.

Of course, all of this happened, literally, one week after the warranty expired. Arggh.

So, what to do?

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Yahoo! Music: A Great Music Value

Feb 3rd

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I’m obssessed with music.

About a year ago, I digitized all of my (and Marni’s) music. We had enough music to play songs continuously for over 25 days! It’s amazing what one can acquire over time.

While most homoapiens would be satisfied with that, I, of course, am not: I need more. Marni and I installed speakers into our ceiling so we listen to radio constantly. We’re NPR junkies listening to news programs, talk shows (Fresh Air), and music programs. We find that it’s a great backdrop for our home.

Because of this exposure, we get introduced to tons of interesting music that intrigues us to explore more. For example, earlier in January, we heard a great interview on Burt Bacharach about how, at 77, he’s completely outraged on the state of affairs in our countries. So, after writing tons of love songs, he decided to write politically charged songs. We heard a few tracks during the interview but wanted to explore more.

Enter, Yahoo! Music to satiate our thirst. Yahoo! Music is one the Internet’s latest forays into online music (Napster, MusicMatch, iTunes being others). For, literally, $5 a month, you can play, as many times as you want, any song that is on their system. You can even download it to a computer and play it without connecting to the internet (if you want to download it to an audio player, it costs $10 month). There are over a million songs on Yahoo! Music.

Does it have everything? No, not even close. And, with eclectic tastes like ours, there’s a lot that isn’t there.

Still, it has a ton. For example, I’ve recently been obsessed with Verve Records Remix albums Unmixed//Remixed series where they take some gems from their amazing catalog and let some of the world’s best electronic musicians modernize them. Yahoo! Music has the whole series on there. Marni and I could have saved a Hanukkah gift each: Matisyahu’s Live at Stubb’s and Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor were both on the service.

The other great part of the experience is that it is immediate. With Burt Bacharach, we didn’t have to run out and get the CD. We were able to listen to the album over dinner right after hearing the interview. (BTW – We decided we didn’t to like it)

What’s the downside? You don’t own the music. So, once you stop the subscription, you can’t listen to the music. Still, for $5 a month, it’s practically free.

Convinced? Try it out for yourself. They even have a free 7 day trial.