The Column

Motto: The ultimate Nexus of software and hardware. Today, I write you two columns. A Windows flavor (below) and a Google flavor (here). This is the Google edition. If you are only interested in me as a person (mom) you might as well skip both of these columns, they are sparse on details about my life. Google was supposed to have a grand unveiling event today in New York, New York; but hurricane Sandy decided for them that it wasn’t going to happen. When I heard the news, I was upset. That is why today, during my lunch break at work when I pulled up The Verge (as I do on a multiple-times-per-day basis) and read the headline “Google’s future now: LG Nexus 4, Samsung Nexus 10, and Android 4.2” I literally yelled a bit with excitedness.  The next hour, I read every single piece of literature on that website, on Google’s own Play Store (where I’ll be visiting soon, more about that later), and any other 3 rd party source I could find. Here’s the news and my impressions: ...

Motto: (Windows) 8 million form factors Today, I write you two columns. A Windows flavor (here) and a Google flavor (above). This is the Windows 8 edition. Last Thursday (Friday? I don’t remember and am too lazy to Google it) Microsoft held its formal keynote, unleashing Windows 8 unto the world. Today, they did much the same with their new mobile version of Windows: Windows Phone 8. Windows broke off everything they were doing with the release of Windows 8. It’s entirely different than any of their previous offerings. This is neither explicitly good nor explicitly bad. I have had no face-time with an actual Windows 8 phone or computer, so take this review with a grain of salt.  I am intrigued, but pessimistic about all of Microsoft’s newly announced products. Windows 8 without a touchscreen seems entirely dumb. Considering something like 99% of laptops out there right now don’t run touch screens, your upgrade to Windows 8 had better be with a new device. Having said that, th...

Motto: "Apple iPad Mini" is an anagram of "Animal I Pipped" - and I'm not sure what that means. This needs to be short because it's a weeknight and I have a job. I have a tendency to ramble on about things in general, and it's worsened when I talk about something I'm really interested in. This post is about things I'm interested in. Not like all those other boring posts. Today, Apple announced nearly all of its non-iPhone products to be released for this holiday season. Later this week: Microsoft officially announces Windows 8 & Windows Phone 8 and Google announces "something" which may be/definitely is a trio of Nexuses. I will cover all those announcements with my skewed opinions like I have this one. THE NEXUS 7 VS THE IPAD MINI (in the most condense way possible) Note: I pulled this image from  this article on ComputerWorld . I like to give credit where it's due. Outline of the iPad Mini's advantages: A muc...

Motto: Save ALL the things! Due to my geolocational luck, I have recently had the pleasure of signing up for Google Fiber. Due to my extraordinary luck, the 1 terabyte of Google Drive storage offered with the internet service has already started for me. It has become official, I have more cloud storage than I do local storage (if you don't include my external hard drive and myriad of flash drives). With that, came a new opportunity, which I viewed (almost frustratingly) as a new obligation. I had to change up my notetaking system. A brief history of my notetaking strategies (insert a "and then" between each of these lines): I used nothing. I used a physical notebook. I used Microsoft Word documents. I used Microsoft OneNote. I used Evernote. I used Microsoft OneNote. I used Springpad. I made a note on all possible systems comparing each, ad nauseam. I used Catch.com. I used Mircosoft Office + Dropbox. I used Springpad. I used Evernote. I wrote about my not...

Motto: Aaron's Telecommunications & Technology job Three weeks of work down, hopefully many many more to come. Once again, I intend on keeping where I work relatively vague, as I do not ever want to give the impression my writing is in any way on the behalf of or in any way affected by the company for which I work. This company, I will refer to simply as: Aaron's telecommunications and technology employer. My impressions from my first three weeks of work: I like it. I am still in the training portion of the job, so I can't yet say exactly what my day in and day out work is going to be like... but I am getting a pretty good idea. So far, it's very positive. Anyways. Training has eaten up a lot of my time and energy, so it's been a while since I wrote a column. I refuse to be one of those people whose only updates are apologies for not updating more often, so I'm just going to change the subject. There have been strong rumors of the announcement of new N...

Motto: I sat in the theater of Looper with a camera. I looked at myself in the camera and watched myself watching myself watch myself watch Looper. Life is too awesome - and I'm seriously worried about that. Things just don't go this awesomely for extended periods of time. The last time I can remember being so happy for an extended period of time I wound up with a permanently messed-up back despite the fact I did nothing to it. I spent the next year getting out of that funk. Being this happy, having this much to be happy about, I know it just gives me a long way to fall if something were to happen. The pessimist in me wrote that portion of the column. He's now going to go lay down and read A Million Little Pieces by James Frey and weep and wallow in a pit of despair. Alright this column is getting too weird. I have worked for one full week now at my new job. My first "Big boy job". And I must say, I really do feel like a big boy. I live in my own place i...