Been spending money like a drunken sailor, it seems.
- I bought a set of Shure E2c headphones for my iPod. So far, so much better. I can hear more at lower volumes than I could with the standard earbuds. They are heavier and somewhat hard to manage, cable-wise, so I am still getting used to them.
More important, they come with 9 — count ’em — different sets of ear inserts. You get three different sizes of three different inserts: clear plastic ones (kind of firm and too slick/inflexible for me), some squeezable foam ones (look like earplugs for use in a machine shop, but with a hole through them), and soft black rubbery ones. My ears being small, I found the smallest one of this last type to work best so far. They sound good and as noted at lower volumes.
I need to try the soft foam ones, just to see if they fit just that little bit better. The best thing about these is that they fit in the ear and block most of the ambient din. So cycling with them might be a bad idea, but walking or sitting up late reading/writing is OK.
- At the urging of the family, I am taking exercise more seriously. To that end, I bought a pair of horrifyingly expensive cross-training shoes. Thoreau said it best, perhaps, but I may have to differ with him on this.
I did a circuit of Green Lake today and felt more comfortable, with less pain than usual (I guess Merrell Mocs don’t offer as much support), and now I feel some evidence of exertion in various parts of my legs. Slipping on the Merrells afterwards — it’s Merrells in the winter, Tevas in the summer — I felt like I was wearing slippers.
- I have bought but not yet received a Linksys WRT54G access point to replace my aging Airport base station. I use the network here a lot — my iTunes music lives on a different system and is mounted over the network, I backup over the wireless network, etc. — and 11 Mbits is just not cutting it anymore. Also looking into Power over Ethernet, though I want to use the built in switch: all my stuff is connected with hubs and I expect that’s not helping all that much. Putting in some inaccessible place will make that difficult. There are kits to add PoE to various access points, carrying the power over some of unused pairs in CAT5 cable, but there are ways to build your own if you’re so inclined. I could see doing that with the Airport if I wanted to contribute it to the SeattleWireless cloud.
- Also got a Mighty Mouse via eBay, my first optical mouse. We have some others here (both iMacs have ’em) but I have never had one. And my old ones with actual rolling ball thingies are too crufted up to work apparently.