I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out of cooking lately and have officially upgraded it to hobby status. For me that means looking for better equipment online and getting excited when it comes. Today I received a Shun 8″ Chef’s knife and I am impressed. Shun is from Japan and with this blade I feel like a Samurai.

The Shun is wow sharp. I almost don’t trust myself with something this deadly. They say a sharper knife is safer because there are fewer slips, but I’m afraid if there is a slip there won’t be anything stopping the knife before it hits the board. I did some dicing as soon as UPS dropped it off (figured I can use the carrots and onions for something this weekend) and it didn’t feel like I was cutting. The weight of the blade dropped my new steel right through the veggies. My old chef’s knife feels like a saw now. Not even a very sharp saw.

While I haven’t put the new tool through all of its paces yet, my first impression is nothing but positive. Great construction, a solid weight but not too heavy (like German knives often are) and a wickedly sharp edge. I might have to go ahead and get the paring knife now too. If you’re unhappy with your current knives, definitely check out Shun. Or really just consider high-end cutlery if you haven’t before–there is a huge difference.

Now I just have to plan a meal where I get to dice everything.

Will It Blend? is one of the best viral marketing campaigns ever. It’s a more exciting version of David Letterman’s extremely bland Will It Float? gag. An old man with a lab coat puts crazy things in a blender and watches the results.Crazy things like golf balls and a whole can of coke (aluminum and all!). The videos are produced by BlendTec, which sells high-end blenders for both home and commercial use. They are not average blenders, a quick look at any of the videos or a price tag (starting at $399!) makes that clear. Despite the price, I’m guessing they are going to sell a ton of them. The best part is there is almost no cost to the campaign, the videos are cheap to host and the host Tom Dickson is BlendTec’s CEO. Over at YouTube they are tearing it up.

Will it blend? That is the question.

I got a visit from FedEx this morning and finally got to play with this. It runs like a champ. There are only a couple case changes from the 1st gen MBP, namely FireWire 800 and a hidden status light for the built-in iSight (you can only see the light when it’s on, in the off state you just see the silver bezel). Windows Vista RC1 installed like a champ with Parallels Desktop, it can even run full screen while I use OS X on my desktop screen. So far so good, but I’m still busy copying stuff over and making it my own.

I’m an adult so I’m not sure why it feels like an accomplishment, but I have now read Atlas Shrugged. The only downside is that I’m now officially out of space on my novel shelf and will have to adjust the book case to sport two shelves dedicated to novels. This is what happens when you read dictionary sized books.

Overall I enjoyed the book. The 80-page monologue by John Galt was a bit much (I’m not a details guy, just summarize it already), but at least I’m not alone in that opinion. It was refreshing to hear support for laissez-faire capitalism, even if it’s not from a contemporary work. I recently purchased a rather large collection of essays by George Orwell, so apparently I’m going on an anti-socialism reading binge.

I had trouble with a package delievery (the unit number was left off) so I needed to call FedEx to straighten in out. I was amazed to find that on their website they post the phone tree. No need to wait through all the options. Some sites do this on their own, to help you beat the system, but FedEx just gives it to you up front. Kudos.

Just because I can. Nothing too crazy, we’re still on the ground, but nice nonetheless.

I finally bit the bullet and got an EV-DO card from Verizon Wireless. I use the term EV-DO exclusively thanks to covering this stuff every day for years, but the sales staff call it BroadbandAccess because that’s what VZW’s marketing team came up with. The flacks at the store looked at me a bit cockeyed when I asked for an EV-DO card, and even more so when I said that I use a Mac. But long story short, I now have broadband (130K/s) internet access anywhere I’m at.

I got the Audiovox PC5740 which doesn’t expressly have Mac support, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work. The PC5740 that I got has a much better antenna than the Kyocera KPC650 which has native support with OS X. I know people with both cards and it’s definitely worth the trouble to get the PC5740 working. Both cards install easily on Windows. I followed the directions here and they worked fairly well. The only snag was that the card needs to be activated in a Windows laptop which might be a deal killer if you have no friends.

I had to search around quite a bit to be able to find the directions for free, several shops seem to sell a Mac “BroadbandAccess” support package. It’s completely unnecessary. You don’t need any extra software to connect. I just open Internet connect and hit one key. Now the question is what will I do when I upgrade to a MacBook Pro?

In case the site that I got my directions from goes away, I have an abridged set of the instructions below. Remember you need to activate your card before this will work. (more…)

I was in Last Vegas this week for CES so that meant one thing–In-N-Out Burger time. As an East coast guy I get IOB very rarely, so it’s worth putting a little more effort into it. Driving in a cab to a fast food joint is pretty ridiculous, especially with a one-way fair being twice the cost of my meal.

However after I ate, it came to me that getting a cab back to the strip would be a hard find (it’s a bit off the main drag). Especially at CES time when the city turns into a bigger traffic jam.

I ended up walking back, here’s what it looked like when I started out. The arrow shows the Stratosphere which is what I walked to the left of and then around to get on the monorail. Quite a walk for a burger. But totally worth it.

When I was in school I wrote a few papers on globalization but it’s just now starting to hit home. According to Measure Map which I’ve only been running for a few days, MobileTracker has reached 155 countries. The list includes countries like Sudan, Iraq, Iceland, Congo and Ghana. The long tail holds true and most visitors come from the US (followed by the UK and Canada), but I still find it amazing to see so much of the world represented.

Yesterday I started to dabble in outsourcing for some programming that I just don’t have time for. Don’t worry, no US jobs were lost–it may just mean the project will actually launch in a reasonable amount of time. In about twelve hours there were bids from over a half dozen companies/programmers located around the world. We’ll both be getting a deal.

Normally I would be nervous about outsourcing a project like this, but since it’s stuff I know how to do it’s a different situation. I won’t be duped by hype because I know exactly what I want and can look at the code and see if it’s up to snuff. I’ll report back here on how it turns out, hopefully soon!

I recently purchased a round trip airline fare through CheapTickets.com and didn’t get the email confirmation. I checked my bank account and I was charged for the flight, so something just happened with the email. After filling out their email form the confirmation page says:

Thanks for contacting us.
We’ll do our best to respond within 4 hours.

Amen. Too many companies believe that if a customer emails for a problem, it’s a free pass to wait a business day before doing anything. Just like you shouldn’t wait long when calling, email should be used to provide fast customer service. It’s a lot cheaper for the company so why not?

(This was on Sunday night, the number of hours may change based on the staffing level and or email volume.) Also, in case you’re interested, the tix are for a trip to Vegas for CES.

UPDATE: My problem was solved in 30 minutes, great work!