N Baby Mascot == Good Candy
My package of Conguitos came with a free plastic Sambo!
According to their web site:
Conguitos, roasted peanuts covered in chocolate, have been on the market for over 40 years. Their mascot, the Conguito, is a familiar and endearing character.
Due to evolution and the changing times, our mascot has also evolved and slightly changed in order to adapt to the present day.
When the “Conguito” was born in the sixties the mascot was perceived as a tiny character covered in chocolate and it has slowly evolved and been updated.
Um, okay. We’re not making fun of black people, honest! It’s a tiny character covered in chocolate. Or tar. Wait, chocolate.
This all makes much more sense after listening to their kickin’ theme song. Okay, well, perhaps not.
cc: Revs. Jackson and Sharpton
15″ MacBook Pro 7200rpm Drive Upgrade
After reading this report at Xlr8YourMac, I decided to try the same for myself. That guy had a brilliant idea — buy a portable case with a 7200rpm Seagate Momentus already in it, which saves you a few bucks and gives you a home for your stock 5400rpm drive after the upgrade is complete. (Instant portable backup!)
I can’t emphasize the importance of faster drives. It’d opt for more memory and faster drives over a few hundred MHz any time I bought a new machine. This MBP upgrade is well worth it, just as a RAID for your Mac Pro really makes it a Pro machine.
The installation took less than 30 minutes. I have a few caveats:
- Carbon Copy clone your stock drive onto the new drive before beginning
- Clear off a table — give yourself plenty of workspace. Lay down a towel to protect your precious Book, and protect your Book from yourself and static electricity
- Create a way to organize the screws you remove. I labeled a few ramekins from the kitchen.
- Watch the OWC install vids as recommended. This is key and only takes 15 minutes.
- Make sure the little plastic notches in the front above your optical drive don’t pop out when removing the keyboard mechanism. I heard something jiggling around inside my case after I had nearly closed it all up. So I re-opened the whole thing fearing it was a screw that could short something out only to find the little plastic piece floating around between the motherboard and keyboard.
- Make sure you have the right screwdrivers: a Phillips Head #0 and #6 Torx. Need a PC set? This $15 set from RadioShack should suffice.
- The Seagate runs a bit hotter, and these machines run hot anyway. Give smcFanControl a shot. I keep both fans around 4000rpm and the drive is still a bit warm under my left arm.
Direct from Apple you can only get 7200rpm drives with the 17″ models. Those Books are just too large and impossible to use in anything but first class on a plane, which is why the 15.4″ers are my sweet spot. It’s a damn shame because the faster drives make all the difference in the world. My Core 2 Duo MBP “felt” slower than my previous last-gen PowerBook (which had a 7200rpm drive) until I gave it this vital organ transplant.
And no, I’m not going to post a bunch of Xbench results. It’s all about how it feels to you. If your machine feels “fast enough” for you today, then don’t waste the money.
Comcast: Why Must I Count the Ways in Which you Suck
A typical night lately with Comcast’s Cable Internet:
> ping comcast.net PING comcast.net (204.127.228.15): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 204.127.228.15: icmp_seq=2 ttl=45 time=45.688 ms 64 bytes from 204.127.228.15: icmp_seq=7 ttl=45 time=44.837 ms 64 bytes from 204.127.228.15: icmp_seq=17 ttl=45 time=45.918 ms 64 bytes from 204.127.228.15: icmp_seq=44 ttl=45 time=44.433 ms ^C --- comcast.net ping statistics --- 79 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 94% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 44.433/45.219/45.918/0.607 ms
That’s right — 94% packet loss.
All my queries to Comcast result in lame form responses, all ripe with denials about how it’s not their issue. So fuck ’em, I’m gonna start my own personal jihad against Comcast until I can publicly shame them into admitting they’ve got issues and engage in egregious amounts of false advertising. I’m keeping a detailed XLS of outages. And I’m not even complaining about “slowdowns,” I’m talking a total lack of availability.
As Colbert would say, Comcast: you’re on notice.
Palo Alto? Really? For Shame.
Palo Alto was the most surprisingly sexed-up burb in the whole mix. It turns out that 1 in 5,000 in Palo Alto are seeking anal. compared to San Francisco, where 1 in 4,000 are looking for backdoor action, Palo Alto may seem paltry for the anal enthusiast and lube salesman alike (in both cases, 27 percent are M4M). But considering that in most Bay Area cities in my survey only 1 in 10,000 are seeking anal, Palo Alto is actually seeking twice as much anal action as the rest of the Bay Area.
When you ride MUNI, thank me Bitch!
…ugh, property tax day. A mere week ahead of income tax day!
This will be a marathon bending over week.
Spain Photos
…starting to put a few up on Flickr, of the 2900+ that I took.
I’ll be posting more over the new few days, weeks, whatever.
Get your Gaudi history here. (This is not where the word “gaudy” comes from, as it dates back to the 16th century, but many think Gaudi is gaudy.) And interesting Gaudi tid-bit:
GaudÃ’s abandoned plans for a New York skyscraper hotel were re-proposed for the redesign of the World Trade Center after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
So Long Spain
…aside from the biblical rains the last day and my cafe con gamba (yes, somehow a whole prawn ended up in my coffee at a tapas bar), you have a mighty fine country there. (What I saw at least…)
Oh, and thanks for all the signs and menus in English.
…oh, and to the family yesterday on UA 901 who made me give up my nice window seat so your precious little family could all sit together, that was a serious dick move. You knew I’d be seen as some horrible child-hating bastard if I didn’t give up my seat, and you took advantage of it. If you want to sit together, book in advance and pick out your seats like I did, you assholes. The aisle seat I got in exchange had two old people on the inside who needed frequent restroom breaks — and all your shit was in the bin above my head which you accessed no less than 17 times. (I counted.) Just because you spawned does not give you license to run me over with your stroller, ruin my movie and dinner and especially steal my plane seat for a 12hr flight.
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