Cell Phone Bill I got my first full month’s bill with AT&T. Something tells me I’m not a typical customer: Minutes used: 85 of 450* Text messages sent: 3 Text messages received: 345 KB data used: 126,043 * This seems extraordinarily high to me. Oh, and random crap added onto my bill? Regulatory Cost...

Photography Just a quick reminder: while the MBTA appears to have actually outlawed photography on their property, it is, in general, not illegal to photograph trains. But try telling that to the Amtrak police, who arrested a contestant taking photos for an Amtrak photo contest. Incidentally, the photographer has...

Runs Cool Water-Cooled I’ve been toying around with potential desktop computer configurations again. I love my Thinkpad but the screen is way too small, and there’s not nearly enough hard drive space. It’s got decent-enough specs (2GB RAM and a dual-core 1.83 GHz processor), though an upgrade’s always...

Link of the Day Lifehacker has a helpful, Everything You Need to Know How to Do in Windows post. Maybe it doesn’t cover everything, but it still looks like a really helpful link for people still using Windows.

Chevy Doesn’t their slogan, “The best is yet to come,” imply that one should wait on purchasing a Chevy? It’s kind of like Microsoft’s “Life without walls” slogan, to which someone aptly pointed out: without walls, why would you need windows? It sounds like a good...

Presidential Limos Came across this Washingtonian article today. It includes a sneak peak at what’s rumored to be the next iteration of the Presidential limo. First impression? It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. Yes, worse than the Pontiac Aztec. But there are some neat facts (well, likely facts:...

Errors My check engine light came on today. (A couple weeks after I had it serviced…) I happened to be right near the dealership where I always have my car serviced, so I stopped in to see if my car was about to blow up, or if I could safely drive to Boston and back. She told me that as long as the light...

Competence I just went to the bank to talk about loans, primarily to see if I had any chance at all of getting a mortgage, or if I’d have to rent a substantially more expensive, less-nice apartment. The guy spent about 10 minutes trying to remember his password to access mortgage information, before finally...

UFOs Have you ever noticed a common thread with all the UFO sightings? No, no, not crazy people. The ones that seem at least a little credible. They’re all near Air Force bases or other military research facilities. Edit: This is why you don’t whip out a quick post on the spur of the moment. My...

Better White Balance with the Expo Disc Santa must know that I’m both obsessive-compulsive and a photographer, having brought me an ExpoDisc. It can almost be thought of as a filter that you hold over your lens. You use it to take a sample of incident light, which you then use to set your camera’s custom white balance. Most modern...