Mulled Marc

After months with no word about where in West Michigan we can expect SONIC to pop up, the Grand Rapids Press has new information. According to a July 16 news article the planned location for the first West Michigan location (supposedly the East side of the state beat us to the first Michigan location) is just off 54th Street and Clyde Park. For those familiar with the area, it would be near the Stake and Shake that is in front of Menards. It’s also across the street from the first Meijer I worked at when I moved to Michigan.

So, now we wait again. In the meantime, the nearest SONIC to West Michigan is now in South Bend, IN. It’s just under two hours, and if you’re heading to Chicago it doesn’t add significantly to the trip (or round-trip if you need to stop twice). Not saying we’ve done this, but I will say that I have a very patient and understanding wife. If you stop, bring me back a SuperSONIC Breakfast Burrito and a Cranberry Coke (it may sound weird, but I’m sure Cherry Coke sounded weird when it was first invented).

This is a post from Gizmodo that Marc ran across on his RSS reader. He thought was interesting enough to share, but couldn’t be bothered to write actual content about it.

view post at Gizmodo

Well, I’m going to try something new. I setup this blog to share my worthless thoughts (everyone else does it) along with things I ran across that I found interesting. While I run across a lot of interesting things, I apparently have near zero motivation and never post about them. I’m sure I have impressive numbers of deep thoughts as well, but they appear to be so deep that I’m not even privy to them – or I’m lazy (see above).

This is why I’m trying something new. I still read hundreds if not thousands of blog post and news articles a day and a smattering of these are actually worth reading. To this end, I setup my RSS reader so I can quickly post articles to my blog that I found interesting, enlightening, bizarre, etc and posts that are likely messages from off-world.

This won’t increase the quality of this blog, nor will it make it worth reading. It will, however, allow me to fulfill one of the original missions of my having a blog – sharing things I read that I believe are worth sharing. Perhaps in the future I will fulfill the other mission and actually post original mulled content.

This new type of post will be by the author LazyMarc. If you wish to follow my blog, but are not interested in the interesting part, you can just follow the posts by Marc.

Enjoy!

FRITOS® Chili Cheese Wrap, Wacky Pack® Kids’ Meals, SuperSONIC® Breakfast Burrito….Could life be any better?

For the uninitiated, SONIC is “America’s Drive-In“. From their history page: “SONIC® Drive-In Carhops have been serving up beloved American food and signature SONIC® favorites at “the speed of sound” since 1953.” Having grown up in the south, I lived on SONIC tater tots and Happy Hour Route 44 Cherry Limeade Slushes. The SONIC Cheeseburger with mayo is easily the best fast food hamburger available anywhere.

I’ve been deprived of the goodness that is SONIC since I moved north, excepting the trips back to Arkansas or down to Florida. I’ve even tried to convince my wife that Fort Wayne, IN is “on the way” between Cedar Springs, MI and Ann Arbor, MI (not even close BTW) so we could swing by the nearest location.

Well, this commercial has been brought to you because the Grand Rapids Press has a story (via mlive) that Grand Rapids is to get it’s first SONIC Drive-In by September 2008. From the article:

Sonic franchise holder Joyce Lunsford, president and CEO of Trigo Hospitality in St. Joseph, disclosed her plans for the restaurant at Friday’s event, where she was one of the panelists.

Lundsford plans to open the drive-in/drive-through restaurants initially in Kent, Calhoun, Jackson and Kalamazoo counties by September.

“We’re going to be building one in each county, then come back,” she said. Trigo, which also holds the franchises for Pizza Hut and Panera Bread in the area, has a deal for 12 Sonic locations, but Lunsford said she hopes to bring that up to 20.

Bloomberg is reporting that Russia is considering building a tunnel under the Bering Strait. The 64 mile corridor would contain communication fiber, an oil pipeline, electrical grid connectors, a rail line, and a highway. The project is in the preliminary feasibility phase and would cost $10-12 Billion and take 10-15 years to complete.
via Gizmodo

So I was able to Wii today. That sounds bad, maybe that’s not quite a verb for gaming yet (although Nintendo did ask for this with the name). I was able to game with Nintendo’s Wii console today. I’ve watched the announcements and read about the fancy controller and was ready to write it off as a joke. The features weren’t powerful, the controller seemed like a gimmick, it didn’t impress me. Then I played it…..

The controller is not a gimmick. It takes a little time to get used to it’s sensitivity, but it’s a very intunitive interface. The sports games that it comes with work very well with the controller and you can almost believe that you’re really participating in a sport rather than lounging at home playing a game. Dispite rumours, I did not almost knock over a TV while gaming, but had I actually been bowling it would have been a fault..

I didn’t get a chance to try out the classic controller, but it looks perfect for the downloadable classic games the Wii gives you access to. Buttons are laid out nicely, directional controller appears to be a nice 4-axis variety, although the colors could be more Nintendo-esque instead of Wii-like.

The fact that the console comes bundled with Wii Sports means that out of the box, this could provide a decent amount of enjoyment. $250 worth of enjoyment? I’m not sure, but there are other games and if Lucas provides a nice Star Wars light saber game, it might just seal the deal.

There’s not a lot to say about this, except that it’s been released. Full details about what it includes is available on Michael Swanson’s Blog.

The joy in this depends a great deal on Microsoft’s pricing, but apparently Microsoft is planning on offering video downloads on Xbox Live. Not just trailers and game video, but actual network television shows and theatrical movies; Not just standard definition, mind you, but real High Definition beauty. According to engadget the TV Shows will be purchased and the Movies will be rented, all using Microsoft Points. I question the TV Show “ownership” without an archive ability, but they say you’ll be able to delete and redownload any TV Show you’ve purchased. Movie rentals will last 24 hours before they have to be repurchased, but can be viewed multiple times within that 24 hours….if you wanted to.

If Microsoft and the content providers can resist being greedy, this could become a big deal. We’re seeing more and more alternate distribution channels opening up for video content and the A La Carte, always available method Microsoft is setting up makes a lot more sense than broadcast networks attempting to program what I want to watch at 9:30PM every Friday night.

If anyone from Microsoft is reading this (however unlikely that is), here are the keys to success:

• Price – Even though the format is superior they need to price the TV Shows on par with iTunes. Consumers now have a precedent for what a single episode should cost and I’m not sure this brings enough for the average consumer to convince them that it’s worth more.
• Price – Allow a season pass type purchase of TV Shows. Ideally this would include a DVD Set automatically sent to the user at the end of the season.
• Teasers – This is more for the content providers, but they need to give free sample episodes to get people hooked. Remember that we’re not talking about just getting people who missed tonights episode, we’re trying to replace NBC and the other networks entirely. There needs to be a new way to get people to try new shows.
• Portability – Select a show in the video blade, choose “Send to Zune”, magic happens to make sure that the video can be viewed and is optimized for the Zune, the user is alerted that they can plug in their Zune to their Xbox to transfer the video. Obviously none of this can effect the usage of the Xbox so rather than on the fly re-encoding, perhaps there could be a non-purchasable Zune optimized version of all video that the Xbox could download when needed.
• Space – 20GB…..please
• Stargate – The announced Stargate SG-1 movies should be pre-released in High Definition on Xbox Live at least a week before the DVDs hit stores.

via engadget

AT&T has announced that they are creating a broadband service offering 20 cable networks to any broadband user (in the US, with Windows, using Internet Explorer). The service will run $20 a month and AT&T plans to add more channels over time. The service will be the same video service as cable with all of the commercials and AT&T has no plans for banner ads or special frames – the video can be made full screen.

While the first iteration of this doesn’t sound like it will have a great cost / value ratio, if they can pull it off it could be interesting for the whole net neutrality debate. I’ve gotta think cable companies won’t be too happy if people were to cancel video service from their cable company keeping only the broadband connection, then sign up for a video package from AT&T. To have any real impact AT&T needs to offer some kind of ala-carte programming at a reasonable price, a built in method to time-shift wouldn’t hurt either.

While it’s a small step, this is a necessary step to two previous theories of mine:

1. At some point in the near future everyone will have an IP address assigned to their ass. No home phone vs cell phone, no cable package, just an IP address that follows you wherever you go and allows you to view your video content, make and receive phone calls, etc. In the longer term, we’ll all be assigned IP addresses at birth by our robot masters to make our categorization and eventual enslavement more effecient.
2. The concept of cable television and television networks is doomed. This concept will be gone once television producers figure out that they can skip the networks and distrubute themselves using iTunes, online streaming, direct-to-DVD, etc. Perhaps you will still subscribe to a television “network” in the future, but it’s more like a playlist or one of Amazon.com’s “Listmania!” lists. I’m hoping that the producers of Stargate SG-1 fire the first salvo in this battle now that Sci-Fi Channel has canceled their show.

via TVSquad
Engadget
Yahoo! News

A Federal Court judge has ruled that an online website may be sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act if their website is not accessible by the blind. The ruling stems from a suit against Target by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB). The class action lawsuit charged that Target’s online site was missing features that would allow a blind person to use the site and that a purchase could not be made online without the help of a sighted person. The NFB has stated that they previously contacted Target to resolve the issues with their website, but that negotiations broke down, leading to the suit.