Posted by Max Dunn Sat, 08 Apr 2006 14:31:00 GMT | 3 comments
So what is the “college experience”?
This was a topic on this week’s O.C. that got me thinking that maybe some people had a much better experience in college than I did. Without going into too many details, here are some of the highlights of my Berkeley experience:
Posted by Max Dunn Sat, 08 Apr 2006 06:42:00 GMT | 1 comment
Suzanne and I enjoy finding and drinking good wines, and especially when we can find a great wine under $20, or better yet, under $15. However we often will drink a wine and then forget if we liked it or not, so we are going to blog about some of the wines we liked.
The first wine is a Synergy 2002 from Richardson Vineyard which is a blend of 66% Syrah, 15% Merlot, 13% Zinfandel and 6% Cabernet. Overall, we really enjoyed this wine. It had a nice overall complexity with some earthy tones. The one drawback was that it was a little to acidic for drinking by itself, which is how we usually drink wines.
This wine received a gold medal at the Finger Lakes International Wine Competition
We bought this wine at the Wine Club, but they don’t have it on their web site anymore. Wine.com and BevMo also do not have it
The only place I could find it on the web was at The Cellar Door restaurant. However, Wine Club sometimes has some wines in stock that don’t show up on their web site, so check out their store and grab a bottle or two if you see it.
4 out of 5 stars
Posted by Max Dunn Sun, 12 Feb 2006 18:25:00 GMT | 1 comment
None of us are right all the time. Even the smartest person is probably right only half the time. But the only people that are truly foolish are those that don’t know this, and think they are always right.
Posted by Max Dunn Tue, 10 Jan 2006 06:50:00 GMT | no comments
HDTV (High Definition TV) is so cool, once you see it, you will never want to go back to regular TV. It is like the difference between listening to a weak radio station in the car that has a lot of static, and listening to a crystal-clear CD.
Watching Lost in HDTV, you can see the pores on the actors faces (luckily, there are some nice looking faces you don’t mind seeing close up) and the scenes of the ocean and jungle makes you feel like you are there in Hawaii with them (whoops, I mean some uncharted island) feeling the ocean breezes and tropical humidity.
We don’t watch any non-HD shows—it just isn’t the same. Conversely, there are some shows we watch just because they look gorgeous in HDTV, that we wouldn’t normally watch (like Las Vegas).
The kicker is that we don’t need to pay for cable to get HDTV; we just put on antenna on the roof and get all the local stations for free!
Now setting up an HDTV system is a little complicated, so here is some information on how to do it.
Posted by Max Dunn Mon, 26 Dec 2005 19:35:00 GMT | 1 comment
I haven’t written much in this blog about what our family is up to. So here is a Christmas letter Suzanne wrote to fill in the details.
Posted by Max Dunn Thu, 15 Dec 2005 19:13:00 GMT | no comments
Here is an article that discusses how the advent of ad-free TV on video iPod is terrifying advertisers:
This provides support for my theory that the video iPod, PVRs and TV-on-demand will cause major and fundamental shifts in the way companies do advertising.
For years, advertisers have kept their heads in the sand when confronted with the reality that many viewers are simply not watching TV commercials. However, these new technologies will force them to confront reality when people start paying for their TV to be ad-free.
And where will companies put their billions of advertising dollars once TV is no longer a viable way of delivering their message? Why, the Internet of course!
It is already starting to happen. If you read your news on [CNN](http://www.cnn.com/) or [USAToday](http://www.usatoday.com/) you will see ads in many strategic places. And unlike TV, they can track exactly what you see and click on, or even force you to view the ad before showing an article or video clip. This provides a way to customize and target the advertising message that was never possible on TV.
Ads work. That is why billions of dollars are spent on advertising every year. And when TV is no longer a viable way to promote those ads, those dollars will shift, mainly to the Internet, causing a huge upheaval and tremendous opportunites for those Internet companies that can capture these ad revenue.
Posted by Max Dunn Tue, 13 Dec 2005 00:43:00 GMT | 4 comments
A friend asked for a few recommendations for single-malt whiskeys to give as a gift this holiday. However, like I often do, I couldn’t stop myself and ended up going on-and-on about all sorts of whiskeys that I like.
In case anyone else is interested, here is my little tour of single-malt Scotish whiskeys.
Posted by Max Dunn Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:09:00 GMT | no comments
When we moved in September, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to keep the Internet connection to my home server going continuously, so I transfered all the email and web accounts I was hosting to a 1and1 account. I also wanted to update to the latest Mandrake Linux, to get rid of the hodgepodge of application versions I was currently running. So over the last few months, I wiped out my server, updated to Mandrake 2005 and proceeded to reconfigure it, especially as an router with web filtering software.
There were a few tricky things that took a while to figure out, so I wanted to document them in case I have to go through this exercise again.
But rather than clutter up this blog with all the excruciating details, I am going to add them as extended content to this entry. I doubt these notes will be of much use to anyone else, so consider this just an entry of me talking to myself. ;-)
Posted by Max Dunn Sat, 10 Dec 2005 07:23:00 GMT | 1 comment
I had a weird thing happen today where I started to feel dizzy.
At first, it wasn?¢‚?¨‚?¢t a big deal and as long as I didn?¢‚?¨‚?¢t move my head too much I could deal with it, so I proceeded to setup my Linux box as my Internet firewall and router. However, this meant that I was not connected to the Internet for a few hours this morning. Then I started to feel dizzier - but you know, getting the Internet connection going is a bigger priority than my health ?¢‚?¨‚?? so I kept working on it. ;-)
By the time everything was working, I was feeling really bad and had to lie down. But that didn?¢‚?¨‚?¢t help, and I got even worse. But I discovered that it got worse if I lay on my left side, and better if I lay on my right side. So I spent most of the day today dozing in bed on my right side.
My kids have been sick, and my right ear has been buzzing and feeling weird, so I am guessing it is just an ear infection that is causing this and that it will go away in a few days.
Posted by Max Dunn Thu, 08 Dec 2005 18:46:00 GMT | no comments
We have a tradition in our family that on our birthdays, we can do anything we want (within reason). We call this our “Anything Goes” day.
Maxie likes to spend his birthday playing video games and eating ice cream all day long and Claire likes to spend hers watching TV and eating ice cream all day long.
My birthday was yesterday and it was a little different from that. For breakfast, Suzanne made me eggs benedict and for dinner, flank steak rollups with a nice bottle of wine and chocolate torte for dessert. The kids were on their best behavior and didn’t fight during the day and offered to walk on my back. The day was a little rainy so I wasn’t able to go surfing and I couldn’t reach anyone to go go-carting. So the only special thing I did during the day was to get a massage.
In the afternoon, I started to get a little depressed because I wasn’t doing anything very special for my Anything Goes day.
But then in the evening, I thought about the fact that I was living in a nice, warm house, I had my pick of whatever food I wanted to eat and wine I wanted to drink, I had a wife and kids that loved me and were going out of there way to do whatever I wanted, and we were all healthy and happy.
So I started to realize how incredible it was that nothing particularly out of the ordinary needed to happen on my birthday to make it special, because God has blessed us in so many ways that everyday is very close to my ideal Anything Goes day.