(iGrill Probe)

With Father’s Day almost here, I’d like to think there are plenty of wives, daughters, and girlfriends putting some serious thought into their man’s gift.  But if you have any semblance of the life and relationships I do, that’s wishful thinking.  I’m sure my step-daughter will forget me on father’s day as she did on my birthday, and my wife will probably get me the standard bottle of Maker’s Mark…if I’m lucky (she didn’t get me anything for my birthday either). 

Yeah, that little bit of information may seem bitter and trite coming from me, but in all honesty (since this is Cocktail Confessions), I AM STILL bitter about that.  Lord knows I try my hardest to put some thought into their gifts for their special days, but hey, I still believe in family and traditional roles…so call me stupid.

ANYWAY…..it’s been a while since I talked about gadgets around here as well, so I got something that may be right up your mans alley, especially if he’s a techie as well.  It’s called iGrill, the progeny of taking an iOS App (read: iPad, iTouch, iPhone) and mating it with our favorite backyard sport of grilling. (*Android users will have to be patient…it was supposedly going to hit 2nd quarter 2011 and so far it hasn’t).

Starting at $99 (which includes a thermometer, probe and the ‘app’ itself), and coming in either white or black options, iGrill works via long range (200+ ft) Bluetooth technology. In a nutshell you stick your probe into your meat which is connected to the Bluetooh thermometer, and wirelessly monitor your BBQ or Grill via your iPad, iPhone, or iTouch.

Now via your electonic device you can monitor upwards of two seperate probes, review recipes and tips, use it as a kitchen timer, monitor by temperature (upwards of 400 degrees), and more.  Thier website even has a section called iGrill University which has some cool tricks of the trade that are applicable year round.

(My wireless probe - $35)

All in all, it’s a pretty cool idea if you don’t already own a traditional wireless temp probe (I actually do) and like cool techie animations and detail to wow your friends, but the price is a bit steep in my opinion. 

My own remote basically does the same thing but only cost me about $35.  The only really new thing they introduce here is a slick front end GUI and the ability to monitor two probes at once, (but if you’re an Apple fan…you’re already used to paying top dollar for stuff you can buy at half price anyway).  Still, I won’t deny, when it come sout for Android….I may take a second look.

Saber Astronautics Australia has teamed up with the Four Pines Brewing Company to develop the very first beer that can be consumed safely in space in preparation for the supposed space tourism industry that is expected to start very soon. While perhaps a novel idea, I can’t help think this is slightly premature and more of a marketing gimmick than anything else.

Jaron Mitchell, founder of Four Pines, said the creation of space beer was an event for the history books.

“Wherever humans have journeyed to throughout history in the last few thousand years, we first worry about water, food, shelter and clothing,” he told Aussie news website news.com.au. “In many cases beer is the next consideration soon after the above four.”

“This is a modern day voyage, similar to the voyage and creation of the ‘pale ale as prepared for India’ in the 1800s, or what is now referred to as the India Pale Ale.

The brew gets its name “Vostok” after the first manned spaceflight back in 1961.

Apparently, according to the article, human biology changes in zero gravity conditions. The tongue swells, the senses dull — altering the way food and drink tastes.

“We also wanted to make the beer good to drink on earth as well. So the idea is you can drink this beer anywhere in the universe,” said Dr Jason Held, director of Saber Astronautics Australia.

Saber picked a high-flavored beer as a baseline recipe to ensure that space travelers could enjoy the full flavor of the smoky Irish-style stout, no matter how long the flight duration.   Too bad they didn’t spend as much time or effort on the logo (looks pretty lame if you ask me…but chances are, you aren’t).

Four Pines Brewing Company is a microbrewery, bar and restaurant based in Manly, Sydney.

I’ll be working on a new entry dedicated to my sausage making shortly (maybe even later today).  I just off-loaded some pictures from my Droid phone that I took while in the kitchen while making them, and they turned out pretty good for not having touched a meat grinder in over 5 years.

Work has been slow….mind numbingly slow…so slow in fact, I’m fantasizing about other careers.  The good news is (and don’t tell my boss), it’s allowed me to start reading in earnest again and I’ve been able to finish a true crime book in about two weeks, and I started a new science fiction novel two days ago and I’ve already been able to get through the first 100 pages…just at work (albeit most of it has been during lunch breaks).  I’m getting more and more interested in buying an Android tablet (when the price is reasonable…they are just too expensive right now for a 10″ tablet) and start carrying digital books around, much like a Kindle.

My diet is still plugging along, although this past weekend I cheated a bit more than I would have liked to have and it affected my Sunday weigh-in for sure.  Saturday I spent the afternoon with a few friends ‘beering’ at a local brewery, Cismontane, and had a few pints of some heavy handed beer.  This included a rare chili-cheese dog for lunch.  Dinner that evening consisted of having a ‘sausage’ party (Yeah, I can hear all the jokes right now).  I grilled 4 different types of sausages for my friends and neighbors and this was followed by a little Jack Daniels drinking and some Oreo cookies.  But when it was all said and done, I came in the next day at 224.8 lbs, still slightly down from the previous week.  However, earlier in the week I did have two days where I was 223.8 which had me excited, but it didn’t last. 

Speaking of beer, I’m still on track to go to Brew Bakers with my friend Brian on March 12th, about 2pm and we’ll be brewing and tasting some beer.  My friend Joe had an excellent play on words for a beer, and after massaging the idea a bit and brainstorming some visuals, he came up with an excellent mock-up picture for the label.  I liked it so much that I’m going to give him a few suggestions to tweak, and I’ll end up using it for my own.  I don’t want to reveal it hear just yet, but I am excited to debut it later…it’s pretty damn funny and a collaborative effort, but Joe for sure came up with the spark.

Finally, I also started my train benchwork layout after many months of sitting idle. 

Two weekends ago I bought most of the wood, except the actual table top as Home Depot’s arm-saw was broken (I’ll go back at a later date), and other hardware.  This past Saturday I got up and started measuring, re-measuring, and then triple-measuring before I made cuts with my miter saw and began the first stages of assembly.  I ended up with a 3.5′ x 6.5′ butt-joint assembled frame (pictured) .  That’s a pretty decent beginner size for a N-scale (1:160) train layout.  I’ve already cut the legs too, at 3.5′ tall when fully assembled.  I’ll attach those this weekend and maybe get the side bracing done, then finally back to Home Depot to get the actual top.  From there, it’s trying to find sheets of pink extruded insulation foam, and then the real fun/project begins.

We also got a new TV about a week back as the old plasma died.  Well, it’s finally mounted on the wall and had Cox Cable come out and got a new DVR (more storage and HDMI compatible).  This has allowed me to ditch some cables and finally get rid of my VCR as well, so we’ve freed up some space and got rid of about a third of the cables.  I have an idea to hide the rest of them, but that’s a project for another day.

Overall, not too shabby of a start only a month and half into the new year.  Big items left to tackle is getting involved (volunteering) at an animal shelter in the area, actually take a few days for a mini vacation, cleaning out a bit more of the house and purging stuff we don’t use anylonger (there’s been a discussion of a neighborhood garage sale in the coming weeks), and a few other smaller things (like a new podcast entry).  But so far, so good, but I still feel like I need another day in the week to catch up for everything I either want to do, or just rest because the other days seems so busy.

A cleverly crafted letter, or a direct phone call to the people that matter (without losing your cool), that spells out logical points and is based on a solid argument generally works out in your favor more often than you’d think.

Over the years I’ve been able to get out of a myriad of CC late fees, fraudulent billing statemnts, and other similar infractions that had any semblance of being in a ‘gray’ area. 

When it comes to actual product mishaps, disappointments in performance, design flaws, or whatever, the same principal also applies.  I have gotten my share of free meals, charges reversed, complimentary samples, upgrades, shipping credits, etc. based on solely on my confidence and persistence.

Like your mama may have told you as a life lesson:  ”It’s easier to catch flies with honey than shit.”  Well, on second thought, that’s probably a bad analogy, because I can never recall a time where a fly turns down a nice fresh pile of steaming shit, BUT, the principal is there:  Striking while the iron is hot and fresh and doing it in a calm and rational way will generally give you the results you want.

I could launch into a plethora of examples for you, but let me combine my most recent one with a product review at the same time.

About 6 or 7 months ago, possibly longer, I purchased a set a ‘cheap’ headphones from Best Buy by a company called Skullcandy.  I spent all of $19.95 on a pair of Ink’d earbuds for my Zune player as the default pair that Microsoft includes with their players are cheap and very uncomfortable in their own right.

Anyway, as it turns out, Skullcandy earbuds are pretty much like all other earbuds out there other than the fact with a few jazzy color schemes, some slick marketing and a creative name, they seem to command a slightly higher price.  That doesn’t mean they are actually any better than other OTC earbuds under $50, but they make the consumer ‘believe’ their product is superior through an above average presentation.  Another selling point is that they supposedly have a good warranty program in placeas well.  But let’s be honest, we aren’t talking about a personal computer or new plasma television set.  How many people actually fill out the warranty card or even take the time to register $19 earbuds with any company?  I’d wager to say less than 10% and I even think that’s being generous.  Most people don’t register hardware products under a certain value as it just seems easier to replace them by buying new ones.

Now before I get into the meat of what I’m dropping here today, let me do a quick review of the Ink’d earbuds themselves:

I read an article not to long ago that led the reader to believe that all OTC earbuds and portable earphones are pretty much supplied and manufactured by one company in China.  That’s right, in the end it doesn’t matter if you buy “ABC” brand’s metallic glow-in-the-dark, or “XYZ’s” Shiny Sound 2000′s….they are all made by the same company, they just get fancy names and pretty paint jobs by those that sell them domestically.

I’m not sure if that also rings true for mid-level and high-end earphones, but all the ‘low-ends’ are pretty much the same.

My experience with my Ink’d's are as such: they sound a little ‘tinny’ or hollow to me.  Don’t expect deep bass sounds (there’s no huge magnet driving these puppies).  They come with three different size silicon ear inserts, and by default the mediums are installed.  I did find these a bit uncomfortable after long periods of wearing them.  I’m a tad lazy in swapping them out for the smaller inserts, and for all I know the smaller ones may fit my inner ear better and be more comfortable in the long run.  But I give Skullcandy credit for including three different sizes….most brands don’t, so they must figure everyone has the same size ear and thus just accepts the feel.

The wires themselves are coated in a silicon like rubber that aren’t smooth and give the earphones a feel that they may be a bit more rugged and weighty; an impression that they may be more durable.  It’s my experience there really is no added protection to the internal wiring underneath this sheathing.  I noted that after a few months, something exposed a little piece of copper wire and they get just as tangled up, if not more so than all other brands.

The biggest problem with all these damn earphones is where the wire meets the RCA jack itself.  I’d say 90% of all earphone failures all happen here.  No one has been able to design a rugged enough ‘sleeve’ around the RCA plug itself and the internal wiring.  Overtime this thing just gets bent and disconnected somehow.  You’ll sit there like a dolt wiggling the wire back and forth, trying to tape it in place for a few weeks, but eventually they’ll give out.  This happened to me and to just about every other headset I’ve ever owned in my life. 

What Skullcandy does have for it, as I mentioned earlier, is a vast array of color schemes that go beyond the standard black or white ones that we’ve all seen 1000 times. 

So my final take? Eh, you end up buying them for their color schemes first, and maybe the ear insert second, but I see no real difference in sound quality themselves, which makes sense, if they are indeed all made by the same Chinese company.

Now back to my initial issue.  My headphones broke at the common point of failure where the wire meets the jack.  I can’t even remember when I bought the damn things and the simple thing to do is just to buy another pair.  But since I wanted to try my hand at the warranty and see if I could get a free replacement, I went ahead to the Skullcandy website.

While the website itself may look ‘cool’ and relatively simple in design (less is more), all the darn pictures take a bit longer than I’d like to load.  Doesn’t matter what PC I use (work vs home), or what browser (IE vs Firefox)…it just takes longer than you expect to load, but no big deal, unless you use the forward and backward buttons to check out individual products…then the page refresh gets old fast.

First I had to create an account, validate my email, blah, blah, blah.  Then I had to register my product, but since I can’t remember when or did I keep the receipt, I made one up in the probable time frame.  So far so good.

The problem starts when you have to get an RMA number.  They pretty much discourage a calling at this point  and request you fill out a warranty claim and get an RMA number via email.  You then have two choices for a claim: 1) aggressive enjoyment (?) -or- 2) manufacturer defect.  I didn’t know what to select and since there was no guidelines I chose #1 (mistake – more on this later).

Once you get your RMA, your instructed to place your damaged earphones in a padded envelope and mail to them along with a tracking number.  Thank goodness the tracking number is optional, because if I had to pay for Fed Ex to give me a tracking number, it’s already too much work and additional investment for $20 headphones.

I press on.  I mail my earphones and am instructed to wait for an email upon their receipt.  Should take 3-4 business days, but for me it took at least 6 – 7 business days (not weekends either).  My email said it would take 4-6 weeks processing.  Stop right there.  4-6 weeks to process a request for a replacement of $20 ear phones….after waiting for over a week just to get confirmation they received them?  Buying a new pair seems highly plausible as this point.

I call them up and am put on hold for a good 10 minutes until I get an actual person.  To Skullcandy’s credit, I will say that everyone I spoke to was both nice and spoke English, and for those two facts alone, I hung in there.  I told the first guy I spoke with that this 4-6 week processing seems unreasonable.  You look at the earphones, you plug them in to see if the work or not, and you make a determination on the spot.  There are no moving parts here, nothing radioactive or needs DNA screening to my knowledge.  He said it’ll probably be faster just hang out a few more days, so I agree.

Sure enough a few days later I get an email stating that my claims was processed and I’ll get 50% value credit to their online store.  Okay, that’s ‘cool’ I guess, but why not 100%?  Not my fault that the internal wiring breaks.  I call up again, wait another long period of time and this time get a young lady who is equally nice.

Now here’s the moral of the story folks….this is where persistance pays off (note: the first time)……I remainded very cordial and made my case and she agreed.  In realtime right then and there, she credited my not only 100% ($20) but gave me free shipping as well.  When I asked her why I only got 50% the first time, she said because I chose ‘aggressive enjoyment’.  If I would have chose ‘manufacturer’ defect, I would have most likely got 100% credit the first time around (read: they don’t check or test their claims…probably not worth the time and effort for a quick cheap replacement).

Armed with online store credit, I chose a new pair, but then here’s where I ran into issue #2.  Again, whether I tried either IE or Firefox, their website rejected my home address and asked me to ‘try again later’.  Well, I tried off and on multiple times over the course of two days, each time double checking my own address which I lived at for the past 7 years, and each time my address was rejected.  Screw this, I’m calling back.

And yet again, I get the nicest guy on the phone.  I tell him the issue, and he says he’ll be happy to fix it and push it himself…which he does and even before I hand up the phone with him, I get an email confirming my address and….get this….an additional 20% off my next purchase.  How awesome is that?

So while I may have had to jump through a few extra hoops, and do the leg work myself, in the end I got a full replacement plus a 20% coupon to boot.

In the future, I probably wouldn’t buy a new headset unless it was in the mid-tier ($60+), but Skullcandy customer service was a positive experience.

My Droid phone is a year old now, and I still love it.  I’m passing on getting the Droid II or Droid Pro for now.  With Verizon now beginning to rollout their LTE network and with dual core smartphones in the pipeline, I figure I can wait a bit longer.  Not sure I’ll jump on the iPhone bandwagon or not.  Yes, I understand people call it the ‘Jesus phone’ and I do realize it can do a lot of things, but Apple is so over-priced and so proprietary, it’s become almost a personal mission statement for me not to get anything Apple.

In a few short months, Motorola will offer up Olympus (aka Terminator) and it’s only a matter of time before the Google Honeycomb OS makes it’s official debut, so I’ll try to stick out until then.  I’m also looking forward to the day I can afford a nice 10.1″ Android tablet as well.  I can see myself reading books (ala Kindle), magazines, and playing a few social games and looking things up while I watch TV.  Plus it’ll be easier on my eyes.

Speaking of eyes, I’ve been wearing my reading glasses now for a few months, but am already thinking I may need to go visit the optometrist again.  My eyes have been very tired and sore as of late.  While the glasses do help and my mid range to long distance vision still seems really good, it does seem my close up abilities are even getting worse than when I had them first checked out a few months back.  I notice that things close up tend to be more blurry, take longer to focus and seem to put more strain on my eyes.  It’s not even the end of the day anymore where I just want to close my eyes for a few minutes and rest them.

Okay, back to my phone.  What a racket cell batteries are.  My battery isn’t holding a charge like it used to for my phone.  Whereas when I first had my Droid the battery seemed to last at least 2 days, maybe a tad more on average; these days it’s lucky to hold a charge for a full day under normal usage.  Of course, if I don’t look up anything, the battery will last longer, but that’s the whole point of getting a smart phone: reading emails, surfing the net, looking up restaurants in the area, shopping, taking pictures and updating Facebook.  So anyways, Verizon still wants $39.99 for a standard battery.  WHAT?!?  $39.99?  That’s ridiculous!  If you can wait a few days for shipping, buy on Amazon.com.  Here, I found a new battery (well, hopefully new and not counterfeit) for $5 +S/H.  Yeah, I’d rather spend a total of $8 than $39.99+ tax for the same thing.  It’s analogous to buying accessories at the car dealership.  The same floormats for $69.99 found at the car dealership can generally be found at Target or Walmart for $14.99, so why would you do the same phone accessories?

Even though I really liked the WP to Twitter plugin, I’ve been experiencing some odd, unexplained, and indecipherable formatting issues when trying to post to Twitter.  The ‘shortcode’ was always getting fouled up to one degree or another here when using the #url# fast code when publishing a new post.

Even though I re-registered my application with Twitter (successfully per the app no less), refreshed the API key, seemed to have ‘passing’ tests behind the scenes, as soon as I published live, the shortcode errored out.  After spending a lot of time going line by line, and various combinations of URL’s, API keys, and format tweaks and saves, the results would always end the same: in error.

So I downloaded a new plugin called ‘Tweetable’ and followed their instructions very closely for activation. I also deactivated ‘WP to Twitter’, and everything seems good to go on the back end.  So this entry is more a test run and I’m crossing my fingers.

For those that are interested, it is version 1.1.8 and it seems pretty robust.  It actually adds a few pages to WordPress which seem pretty intuitive and you’re able to track those Tweets you follow within WordPress itself and also you can post your own Tweets directly within as well.  That’s a pretty neat feature that seems to take the next logical step that WP to Twitter didn’t.  So hopefully this will work out.

I also noted a few other plugins also had updates available as did WordPress itself.  So….

• WordPress 2.9.2 to new version 3.0.1
• Askimet Antispam 2.1.0 to new version 2.4.0.  Hopefully this will cut down on the bogus crap I get all the time.
• WP to Twitter: upgraded to new version 2.2.1, BUT currently it is not working.  I need to go back and sign up with the new OAuth regsitratuion servers, get new API keys, blah, blah, blah.  Maybe sometime this weekend I’ll work on it.  I’m surprised there wasn’t more buzz or heads up on this.  It’s kinda a big deal.
• NextGEN Gallery to new version 1.6.1.  I have no idea what changes were made here.  Need to go and read changelog later.
• Bluebrry Powerpress to new version 1.0.9.  Would be something i suppose if I started podcasting again….but have been lazy to do such as of late.

I didn’t want to doctor up their own advertisment too much, so here’s the cut and paste promotion from the dudes over at Android and Me:

This October marks the two year release of the G1, the first Android device many of us came to know and love. Soon, it will also mark one of the largest, wildest, most beef-fueled, community-organized gatherings of Android fans ever attempted. The Big TX Android BBQ will be thrown on October 3rd, at the Fiesta Gardens in Austin, Tx. The event is being hosted by the likes of Android Swag, Android Guys, @thedroidguy, @bigkeivan, and of course, Android and Me. 

For a measly $25 (until Aug 15) you get all-you-can-eat BBQ, a totally rad free tee (designed by our own Angie Strickland), all the Android fellowship you can handle, and maybe some special guests. Aaron from Android Swag has been wheeling and dealing trying to land solid entertainment and guests for the BBQ but so far has been keeping his surprises close to his chest. 

To make it as easy as possible to attend, Aaron even lined up a discount code for those flying Continental. Using the code ZJE9896123 will get you a cool 10% off flights and we are still working on lining up some hotel (or even some camping) discounts for people who want to spend a few days here in Austin.

For more attendance info, go ahead and check out the offical site here.

If any of you do attend, I’d love to see some pics.  Feel free to send them to me here: cocktails1@hotmail.com and I’ll post them and give you credit as well (.jpg format please).

Oh, and by the way, there is official rumor that the long awaited Adobe Flash 10.1 will be available sometime today (Aug. 24th) for Android based smart phones.  You may have to do a search over at the Android Market Place for “Flash 10.1″, but it seems our wait is just about over.  But don’t yell at me if it is delayed a day or two,…they’ve done it before, but this time looks like it is legit.

Clank

Over at Escapist Magazine (online rag sheet on electronics, gadgets, and games) they are sponsoring a fun little quiz on what sidekick you would be.

After answering a 10 question, multiple-choice quiz, it appears that authors of cyber-space deem me ‘Crank’, thus gadget carrying, smart-ass, comedic foil to Ratchet. Not too shabby actually. Thank goodness I didn’t come up as ‘Knuckles’ or ‘Yoshi’.

Anyway, if you have any hankering on who Clank, or for that matter who Ratchet is, here is a Wiki entry. And God help you, because you must be as bored as me then.

My next Droid may not be the Droid X or Droid 2 afterall.  With Droid 2 coming in the next 2 weeks (and a $199 price tag to boot), I was seriously considering an upgrade to my smartphone.  My Droid turns 1 in November.  However, those chaps over at Android and Me are hinting that a new ‘rumor’ may infact be the unofficial leak of the Droid Pro.  So, what are the hilights of the Droid Pro? I’m glad you asked:  Could be boasting a new 1.3GHz CPU (fastest yet), a 4 inch screen, and global roaming (taking advantage of the LTE Verizon network perhaps?)!  No other details at this time, other than it may be debuting in November, 2010.  I’ll share more as more info becomes available.

It’s also being reported that Netflix has signed a deal with EPIX, Lionsgate, and Paramount meaning that very shortly a whole new library of movies and television shows will be available via Netflix streaming.  I use this feature on my XBox 360 all the time.  I’ve recently been watching Sparticus, Weeds, Dexter, and many other shows through my Xbox and loving it. 

Speaking of XBox, I’m not overly “wow”-ed by yet by the newly announced MS Kinect.  It’s listed at a street price of $149 and will launch with 11 titles.  I just read a synopsis of the titles in the Sep ’10 issue of OXM, and none of them really stand out for me.  This may be one of those things where I’ll have to wait and see the reviews and reception of the titles first before I’m an andopter of the peripheral at all.

I still have a video I need to edit and post here on preparing a beef brisket, and I still have 2-3 podcast episodes saved on my hard drive I also need to edit and post as well.  I really need a day off in my normal life to work on this.