Who needs an iPod?

Disclaimer: I work for Disney and heard about this product at work.
Zoe and Mira, my daughters, had been talking about wanting iPods for a bit now. I really didn’t want to do that. Mainly because of the issue that they’d need to run iTunes to manage feeding music into the iPods and dealing the syncing and other iTunes specific issues.
At work I saw a demo for Disney Mix Sticks, a new MP3 & WMA player that is hitting the shelves now. It’s a basic mobile MP3 player with a few neat features.
Last weekend the girls and I picked up a pair at Target and they have been a big hit.


Like a Shuffle the Mix Sticks don’t have a screen. The buttons are in a familiar Mickey shape and the headphone plug is on the bottom. The girls picked up on how to operate them quickly without any instruction from me.
They come with headphones and matching lanyards. Since they are Disney products the lanyards are special child-safe ones that break away to avoid the possibility of injury. Someone has got to think about these things…

The bottom cap comes off and you can see the USB connector. To charge the battery and transfer files, the Mix Stick simply plugs into a USB port. The Mix Stick appears as a standard disc drive. Open up the directory and drag in the files you want. There’s some software that came with it, but I didn’t even load that up. Simplicity is best.
I can plug these into any computer at home, open up the media share and drag in what ever music the girls want. No software, no syncing, no restrictions.

The innovative feature is the ability for the Mix Stick to take a SD or MMC flash memory card to expand up to 1 GB of storage. Disney is selling albums on MMC cards in DRMed WMA format for kids that want Disney music without having to rip CDs.
I took a spare MMC card I had and loaded a few MP3 files onto it and inserted it in the Mix Sticks. The songs played fine and the memory was expanded.
I did the math and was a little suprised. The Mix Sticks sell for $50 with 128MB of memory. A 512MB SD card costs between $25-$35.
Disney Mix Stick expanded to 640 MB = $75-$85 ($50 + ($25-$35) )
Apple iPod Shuffle 512MB = $99
So you get more memory for less money with the Mix Sticks. Who woulda thunk? Not to mention the idea that you could keep several flash memory cards and swap them in and out of the player as needed.

I don’t have a Shuffle to compare size with, but here’s how they compare to the new iPod.

21 Months and kaput

In February 2004 Michele and I both got new mobile phones. The Nokia 3650s served us pretty well.
My phone started to die this summer and we ended up getting Michele a new Samsung SGH-D500 and I took over using her Nokia. Last weekend we were over at friend house and their two year-old dropped my phone in the toilet it seems. The Phone was soaking wet and after several days, it still refuses to function.
I’m in the market for a new phone and I call upon Loyal Cruft Readers for advice. What phone should I get?
Things I want in a phone:
Tri-band – good radio
Sound – good audio quality on calls
Bluetooth
Camera – 1+ Megapixel would be nice, flash would be cool
MMS & SMS messaging
Things that don’t matter to me in a phone:
Email
Ringtones
PDA capability

Winter at the Zoo

On Saturday, I took the girls to the Los Angeles Zoo. They had four reindeer on display that we wanted to see and there was a discount on the family membership.
We saw all kinds of good stuff like the tiger cubs playing with their mother, the monkeys swinging around, and almost every other exhibit in the place. We forgot the Koala exhibit, but we’ll catch it next time.
Starbucks was sponsoring some of the winter activities and giving away free coffee. As we were leaving the Zoo, there was a barista with a special coffee dispensing backpack. It was truly impressive with a cup dispenser and spigot on a hose connected to large coffee tanks on his back.


I need to find a way to borrow one of these. I’d love to wander the halls at the office dispensing coffee from a special backpack.

Weirdest eBay delivery evar…

Tonight at 10:48PM local time, the doorbell rang. The porch light was off and the dog went bananas.
I opened the door and saw a young man with a package.
He said “I have package for Michael Pusateri.”
I said, “That’s me.”
He handed me the package and walked away without another word.
I bought some software last week on eBay. Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 & Premiere 2.0 in a retail box. It turns out that the guy hand delivered my software.
I’m sure the kid was thinking “I’ll save some time & money and drop it off.” and I was thinking “Where is my bat?”
I’m not sure what to leave as feedback on eBay. I was thinking “Fast delivery, but scared the shit out of me.”
What do you suggest?

Things I am thankful for…

Rather than a smaltzy Happy Thanksgiving post about being with loved ones, I think I’ll post a slightly different list of things I am thankful for today. Not that I don’t want you Loyal Cruft Readers to be with your loved ones today, I do, but posting that is a bit boring.
Ten Things I am thankful for today, in no particular order:
1) Google
2) Cheez-its
3) Union Bakery and their ham & cheese croissant
4) HBO
5) Tivo (with HD, of course)
6) Driving a hybrid in the carpool lane
7) Ikea
8) Rice a roni
9) DJ Riko
10) That George Bush cannot be re-elected

Michele’s new office



Michele’s new office, originally uploaded by Argyle.

After a few weeks of talking about it, I took advantage of the girls being out of town to redo Michele’s side of the office.

I surprised her with it today when we got home from the airport. Happily, she loved it.

The price

In life you need to be careful that you understand the price of things.
Work has been keeping me exceedingly busy these days. It’s been a slow but gradually ramp up of things to do, but now I find myself completely out of juice when I get home. There’s lots to do and I power up at the office to get things done, but the to-do list never seems to get any smaller. When I do clear out some space by finishiing something it invariably is replaced with a stack twice as high.
I’m not complaining. With my personality, I crave the challenge and power of this kind of job, but it does have it’s price.
At home, I focus on the girls, the one I married and the two I helped make. They really don’t care about my title or job or the latest project, they just want me to do the daddy thing and pay attention to them. Even when I think I’m out of juice, I crank up the reserves and try to get the job done.
Once they go to sleep, I have the brief time when I’m free. Stacks of crap surround my desk. A site redesign sketch lays untouched for months. Multiple projects await my attention. Rants that course though my brain on the daily commute don’t get written. Even the escape of video games loses it’s allure.
Not that I’m sad, but I notice that I’ve hunkered down. Scaling down life to the bare essentials: family, work, and a brief decompress. The world passes me by. Emails go unreturned. Phone calls don’t get made. Friends grow.
So the cost of success appears to be losing track of many things. Today I realized that my best friend lost 100 pounds and I had no fucking clue. What the fuck? I mean I know I’m not good about keeping in touch with people. That’s where Michele backstops me. But I mean really how can I miss out on something like that and it catch me unaware?
Everything in life has a cost, it just sucks that you don’t always realize the price until you’ve paid it.