You may or may not have heard that a fourth installment of the highly successful Indiana Jones movies has been announced. Assuming they get around to filming this thing prior to Harrison Ford retiring, I have been having fun trying to think of what the title and tagline will be. So, in David Letterman style, here is my top ten list:

10. Indiana Jones and the Millenium Falcon - George Lucas brings his two most successful movie frachises together to weave this tale he "always wanted to tell from the beginning"

9. Indiana Jones and the Maltese Falcon - Just like the Last Crusade, but replace the Holy Grail with the Maltese Falcon

8. Indiana Jones and the Depends of Doom - Indiana Jones faces the last challenge of his life

7. Indiana Jones and the MI6 - Indy and his father (secret agent James Bond played by Sean Connery) team up again, this time to stop the evil Neo-Nazi Doctor Doom.

6. Indiana Jones and the One-Armed Man - Dr. Jones and Dr. Kimble (both played by Harrison Ford) join teams to solve the mystery of who killed King Tutankhamen; their only lead is the one-armed man.

5. Indiana Jones and the Vice President - Join Indiana Jones and sharp-shooter Dick Cheney as they rain hell on Nazis

4. Indiana Jones and the Chinese Sweat Shop - Indy helps liberate 50 Chinese children who constantly remind him that there's "no time for love, Dr. Jones"

3. Indiana Jones and the Chocolate Factory - Dr. Jones and Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) get fat together

2. Indiana Jones and the Lord of the Rings - Indy and Gimli the Dwarf (John Rhys-Davies) battle the evil Lord Sauron

1. Indiana Jones and the Social Security System - Indiana Jones goes to Washington to find out why he isn't getting his social security check that he needs to suppliment his fixed income.

Harrison Ford is old...

Happy Valentine's Day (I'm looking at you, Heather)

The last time I wrote a personal Rambling was back in November, so I've got some summarizing to do.
Thanksgiving: Mom and the family from New Mexico came to visit.
Christmas: Mom and the family from New Mexico came to visit.
New Years: nada

I got some nice gifts for Christmas. Heather got me a leather jacket, and I used money from Ginny along with some of my own to finally buy a surround sound system for the living room. I got a shirt I wanted from my parents as well as a cool pair of pants. I also got some books I'd been wanting to read from Jenifer and from my Dad & Teresa. Since then, I've already finished reading them. I also received a cool hat from Holly. For me, this Christmas was clothing and book day. Just to make it clear, I'm not complaining. I probably tend to spend my money on "toys" throughout the year, so getting clothing for Christmas helps balance that out...

On the topic of toys, I still absolutely love my iPod. It is just so nice to have something small enough to carry around with me everywhere that can provide nuggets of entertainment in the form of Podcasts or music. There are a few things that, while minor, bother me a bit about how media files are managed by iTunes/the iPod:
1. Podcasts. Whenever you download a Podcast via it's feed the audio file is properly marked as a podcast and is organized in the podcast section on the iPod and is kept out of the music shuffle. However, if for some reason I need to download a Podcast manually and add it to the iPod there is no easy way to perform this same organization. I can mark it as a podcast, but I feel I should also be able to say it goes with a certain podcast feed and that it should not be included with music when I listen to shuffled music.
2. Managing Multiple Synching Locations. It seems that Apple does not understand that I would like to sync my iPod with more than one computer and synchronize different things. I was surprised to find that the synchronize settings are carried with the iPod, instead of being configurable by each installation of iTunes. Ideally I would like to sync my music at home and my calendar at work. However, this is not easily done given the current configuration. It is worth noting that none of this would be a problem if Apple let me do a complete synchronize (uploading songs off of the iPod into iTunes).

I spent a day and a half of the weekend before last cleaning out and organizing our garage. I have a few projects I've been wanting to do that require a workspace that I haven't been able to start because our garage was so trashed. I really didn't have a good place with a clean workspace that I could use. I ended up spending $80 for a couple of plastic shelving units that allowed me to organize a bunch of stuff that was just lying around. The week before I had finally brought all of our books inside and put them on our bookshelves. I moved my workbench to a location that minimizes the possibility of random crap getting stacked on it, and hopefully now that I have a location to work at I will finally get around to my projects. I also finally organized my tools into my tool chest, and that made the work I did this weekend much easier.

This weekend I finally wired up the shelving unit that I posted pictures for in this post. I wired up a power outlet, and an ethernet/cable outlet on the same level as the shelf. This greatly improves the look of this shelf as I no longer have wires dangling off the front edge. As always, Heather helped by telling me when I had flipped the right breaker and feeding cable up to me as I was pulling it through the attic. The next person who buys this house is going to either think that it is awesome that the house is wired for ethernet/cable/power or be utterly confused as to what the hell the previous owner was doing.

I'm such a big Geek, and I love it.

I am officially dubbing 2006 as The Year of Tech. Regardless of my year naming rights, it's on the internet, most likely cached in Google, and there's nothing you or I can do about it.
With that aside, let me get into why I have bestowed such a knightly crest upon this infant year:

1) Enter the Format Wars. Not since Betamax vs VHS has there been a format war like the one we are going to experience this year.
The Warriors - Blu-ray and HD DVD
The Battlground - Your DVD players, computers, gaming consoles, and other disc-based media players

Blu-ray is Sony's champion, and they have won over Disney, 20th Century Fox, Apple, and others.
HDDVD was created by Toshiba and their big hitters are Microsoft, NEC, Sanyo, Paramount, Universal, etc.

The Good: High Definition DVDs for your High Definition TVs
The Bad: A universal player is neither in the works and would be cost prohibitive
The Ugly: This is going to be a bloody battle, and we're the cannon fodder. Lets just hope the dust settles sooner rather than later.

For more information: BluRay, HDDVD

2) Next-Gen Consoles. The XBOX 360 officially came out last year, but until you can walk up to a store and buy one I'm not counting it as technically available yet. Later in this year Nintendo will be coming out with their new console (currently codenamed Revolution), and even later in the year Sony plans on releasing the Playstation 3.

Now, I'm more of a computer gaming guy than a console guy, but I would like to own one of these new consoles at some point. Based on current information, that will most likely be the new Nintendo. The XBOX 360 is currently priced at $400, the Playstation 3 is rumored to be at least that much if not more, and the current buzz on the Revolution is that it will cost around $200 when released. Add to that a truly revolutionary controller and the possibility to download old NES, SNES, and N64 games and I'm sold. It will be interesting to see where the chips lie after all three consoles have been released.

For more information: XBOX 360, Nintendo Revolution, Playstation 3

3) Intel and Apple: strange bedfellows. Starting this January Apple began shipping computers using Intel processors. Currently, you can only buy the iMac or MacBook Pro (a laptop) with the new CPUs, but eventually Apple plans on moving their entire personal computer product line into Intel's bed.

My opinion is that this is a good thing. I actually find myself eyeing Apple's computers more and more lately (especially now that I have an iPod). I will be interested to see what the new Mac Mini with an Intel processor performs like and if it is a substantial improvement over the currently available units, I may find myself purchasing one. I already have experience with Windows and Linux, so what's left but Apple's OSX?

More info: MacBook Pro, iMac

Coming up in Part 2:
4) A new version of Windows?
5) HDTV
6) My Tech

Be sure to vote in the new poll at the bottom of the page.