Someone recently commented that he was surprised I don’t use a Macintosh computer. Macs are the cool things to get these days and i can understand why he would assume I’d want to use one.

At the same time, I take immense pleasure in researching and buying the best things in the world, so I’ll explain why the Mac didn’t make the cut.

I need a laptop. Considering my perpetual state of traveling, this is an obvious one. If I had a desktop there’s an excellent chance I would have a Mac.

The OS

The strongest asset that the Mac has is it’s operating system, OS/X. This operating system is light years ahead of the competition. Vista is a total piece of junk. I like Windows XP just fine, but I’m well aware of it’s many shortcomings relative to Mac OS.

In fact, if I could run OS/X on my laptop, I’d do it in a second. I tried this unsupported transplant once but it didn’t quite work. From what I understand it all works now except for suspend and hibernate, which I can’t live without.

So none of this a criticism of the operating system. There are a few Windows programs that I’d hate to give up, but the software for the Mac is generally very high quality and quite often superior to its PC counterpart.

But let me make one thing clear - Windows XP is totally fine. I have software that does everything I could possibly want to do. I have modified my themes and such to make it look as minimal and neat as I could possibly want.

People like to whine about it because it’s old, but it works. It does almost nothing that I don’t like or couldn’t fix.

Yes, Mac OS is better. It’s more fun. I like linux. But not having MacOS is not impacting me in any negative way.

In my opinion, Macs have ZERO other benefits. You can talk about all the little things like the built in cameras and good bundled software or design, but at the end of the day, none of those things matter to me at all.

There are two major things preventing me from getting a Mac. There are little things I don’t like too, like the general form over function attitude (yeah yeah, argue all you want), but these two things are showstoppers.

#1 Terrible Screen Resolution

I need high resolution. I like to see a lot of detail when I’m working in Photoshop or Lightroom. I keep all of my fonts and UI elements insanely small. This looks terrible and unusable on a lower resolution screen.

My 12″ laptop screen does 1400×1050. I would like it to be higher, but that’s pretty good. A 15″ Macbook (which is WAY too big for me) only does 1280×768 TK

Could I get used to a lower resolution? Kind of. I had a backup laptop that I used when I had my main one repaired. It was usable but very annoying. Screen resolution is a real productivity increaser in the real world, and I’m not ready to give it up.

#2 Terrible Pointing Device

I hate trackpads. Not just the Mac ones (from what I understand, they are the best trackpads you can have), but all trackpads.

The trackpad is a terrible way to interact with your computer. The eraserpoint that ThinkPads have is perfect in every way. It is the ideal pointing device. I like it much better than even a standalone mouse.

Here’s the main reason: I barely have to move my hands to use it. My wrist pivots and my thumb and forefinger use the eraserpoint while the rest of my fingers stay an the keys.

With a trackpad I have to move my whole hand down and back. This sounds like no big deal until you master the eraserpoint and experience the sheer joy of effortlessly moving between keyboard and mouse without moving your hands.

This is another gamestopper. I will not use a laptop with a trackpad. I’ve had them before, used them for months, and still hated them.

And I don’t need this fancy multitouch crap. This is another example of flash over function. It doesn’t make things faster, it makes things cooler. One matters, one doesn’t.

So that’s why I don’t use a Mac, and probably never will. I believe that they will eventually increase the screen resolution, but I don’t think that they will ever get rid of that ridiculous trackpad.

The problem is that the trackpads are much easier to use for new users. Laptops with them sell better because the laptop is immediately more usable. Then these people get hooked on them, not knowing that if they spent a month or so with the eraserpoint, they would like it a lot more. Not everyone, mind you, but most people.

This phenomenon has caused trackpads to become the dominant pointing device, and I doubt that will change.

Maybe they will eventually allow OS/X on PCs and I can have the best of both worlds.

One post that people request occasionally is a post about how I go about finding the best of something to buy. It’s a bit of an obsession for me, as you may know.

I’ll write that post some day, but right now I’m on an airplane so I don’t have the necessary internet to get all of the links and such.

Today will be a sneak preview of the steps I took to decide which RV to buy and how I will get the best price on it.

Ebay is always a good place to start. They don’t always have the best prices, but they do have pretty much everything. Also, they always have tons of pictures, especially for vehicles.

I was very happy with my old RV, but if I’m going to do it again I may as well start the whole process again. I have now actually lived in an RV so I have a better idea of what matters and what doesn’t.

I went to the Ebay motors section, which lets you browse all of the RVs. On the left there are little selectors that let you choose attributes to filter the vehicles by.

16-25 feet. I wouldn’t want anything larger than that. My last one was roughly 22 feet.

Motorized. There’s no way I’m getting a truck to pull this thing around.

That’s about as specific as I want to get now. Sure I’d rather a diesel, but I also know that I’m not going to pass up a good RV just because it uses gas.

Next I go through the entire list. I middle click links to open them in a new tab in Firefox. Some get skipped over, for example really crappy looking ones from the 70s. I don’t filter by age, though, because you never know if someone restored a 60s one and now it’s a really unique RV.

I also skip over RVs that are exactly like other ones I’ve already clicked. I think about it and decide that for the absolute perfect RV I’d be willing to spend 25k. Less would be nice, but I can swing that much without screwing up my finances.

I go page by page, clicking and then checking out the RVs.

I see some like my old one. Now that it’s a year and a half later, there are slightly nicer versions available in my price range. I see a lot of van conversions. I wonder if they’re too small to really be comfortable in, but I like the 15mpg they get.

After a page I stop clicking on the bigger 24 and 25′ RVs that look like shrunken down buses. They’re more than I need and probably can’t be parked in a single parking space.

Then I see one called a LeSharo. The buy it now is only $5000 and it gets 20mpg. That’s insane for an RV. Most get around 10-11 at best.

The inside of it is disappointing, though. It’s plastered in dark woodgrain and thick fabrics. It’s still a contender, though. Good price, great gas mileage, and it looks like a spaceship from the outside. Maybe I could get into it and redo the inside a bit.

Then I see one that looks similar, called a Rialta. I remember seeing this one last year but deciding that it was too small. Now that I have way less stuff it’s more appealing. It also gets 16-20 mpg.

Hmm… it looks really nice on the outside, and the inside is a good size too. It has retractable bathroom walls, which I’d never seen in an RV before. The bathroom literally compresses to make more room. That’s a good idea.

In the front are two captain’s chairs behind the two front seats. The back has a dinette that collapses into a bed. That’s not ideal. I have no use for the four place seating in front. The price is around $20k which is a bit much, but not totally unmanageable.

After seeing the LeSharo and Rialta I stop looking at anything bigger. Soon I stop looking at the straight van conversions. They’re just a little too small to be comfortable.

I see another Rialta, a 95, with a much better floorplan. The front has a kitchen and a comfy looking barrel chair. The front passenger seat swivels around and a table pops up between the two chairs, making a nice little area to eat for two.

In the back is a full sized bed (also known as a double) with a REAL mattress. Wow! I’d never seen a real mattress on such a small RV.

Now I’m really excited. It has a great place to sleep that I don’t have to fold up every morning, plus a good area in the front where guests can sit or use their laptops.

At this point I pretty much have my mind made up on the Rialta with the full bed in the back. I go through the next few pages and briefly consider a Mercedes Unimog that has been converted and a rare RV with a cult following called the Phoenix. Both are weirder and cooler, but less functional.

Now that I know I want a Rialta or maybe a LeSharo, I start reading everything I can about them. I search for all of the Rialtas on Ebay and read the whole listing. I go to all of the forums and read what they have to say about them. I go to Winnebago’s site and download the PDF brochures for every year. I then read them sequentially up to 2000 (when they start going over $25k) and make note of the yearly differences.

• The LeSharo is out. It uses a Renault engine that breaks all the time and can’t easily be repaired. Yikes.
• The Rialta gets a bigger motor in 98 which drops the mpg to 18. Some people complain that the 95-97 models are underpowered, but others say it’s fine. I don’t get worked up about stuff like that, so I’d prefer the slower but more efficient engine.
• In 1997 I notice that the bureau next to the bed gets an additional closet slapped on top of it. This makes the RV feel a bit more closed in, and I don’t need the space. One of the things I liked was the really long counter that ran parallel to the bed. This wrecks it.
• A few people gripe about the shower being too small. I’m skinny and have taken a shower in a sink before, so I don’t really care.
• The shower drains into the toilet tank instead of the sink water tank for some reason. I don’t use the sink much for cooking, so that would be inconvenient for me. Someone mentions that he rerouted them. I can probably do that.
• The AC is underpowered. I again imagine that this is a complaint of fat people who have a little more insulation than I do. Even if I’m wrong, I went a whole Texas summer without AC in my last RV, so I don’t really care.
• The RV got one foot longer in 1998, maybe due to the new motor.

So by the end of all of this I’ve got my mind made up. I want a 95-96 Rialta with the full sized bed in the back.

Next I search for places to buy the RV. I find a few classifieds sites as well as 11 RVs on ebay. I search big city craigslist sites for  them.

The best one I find is one with 95k miles on Ebay. After reading so much about these things and probably viewing 80% of the ads for them across the internet, I have a very good idea on the pricing.

The one on ebay is priced with a Buy it Now for 20k. That’s a bit steep for so many miles, although the RV really does look great. If I can get it for $17.5k I’ll probably take it.

The auction ends before I learn enough to make a reasonable bid, but it didn’t reach it’s reserve. I e-mail the owners privately, but they won’t budge their price down low enough that I’m willing to buy. I’d like to get it for $16.5-17.5. They won’t get below $18.5.

They relist the RV again. I’m hoping it doesn’t sell and maybe I’ll have a bit of leverage to get a better price. In the meantime I’m looking at other sellers. Most have them listed at around $15k for a similar model, but they don’t seem to be as immaculate and well maintained as the Ebay one.

Many of those people don’t write me back for some reason. Those that do often tell me that the RVs are already sold.

To be continued…

I’ve never smoked pot, or even a cigarette. I think it’s a stupid thing to do, and I think less of people who do it. I know people will probably start arguing about that in the comments, and that’s fine.

At the same time, I think that governments banning marijuana is beyond stupid.

Let’s be realistic. Marijuana is probably better for the population than alcohol. I can see arguments each way, but to me it comes down to how it affects other people. Stoned people aren’t exactly a danger to society. If anything they help the economy - especially the fast food sector. Which one is worse for you is pretty much irrelevant - people can do whatever they want to their bodies as far as I’m concerned.

Yet alcohol is legal and pot isn’t. This makes no sense. We can’t ban alcohol, because we know from experience what a disaster that is, so really the only right thing to do is legalize marijuana.

Then, like everything else, let’s tax it. That way instead of spending untold millions of dollars on trying to get it out of our cities, we can earn money from it. As you may know, the US is in terrible financial shape. Turning a liability into an asset wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for us.

Crime would go down too. I doubt there are many deranged potheads committing crimes, but it is a big money business for drug dealers and they do commit actual crimes. Take away their business, or force them to go legit, and now you don’t have to worry about them.

I’d personally be in favor of legalizing ALL drugs. How about if we treat our adult citizens like adults and let them make their own choices and live with them? Want to get liberal and hippie? Make all of the tax money on cocaine go to state sponsored rehab programs.

There is absolutely no way to force drug users not to do drugs. It won’t happen ever, no matter how many scary cops we send into the ghetto. Why try? Why not accept peoples’ desires and try to use their tax money to fund education?

And I’m not talking about the insanely bad “look… I smoked pot and now I killed my baby sister” ads that we have now. Those ads are so ridiculous that it actually makes me think “well, these anti drug people are total morons. Maybe drug users are the smart guys here.”

Instead let’s send the message that pot is bad for your lungs, but that the real negative effect it has is that it makes people lazy, is a waste of money, can lead to dependence, and tends to make people do stupid things and eat junk food. In other words, it’s not the end of the world, but it’s probably not something you want in your life.

Give people good and accurate information to make a decision, and maybe they’ll make good decisions. Lie to them and force your morals on them, and maybe they’ll rebel.

Wow… I can’t believe you guys found both of the things I was looking for. I consider myself a fifth level black belt of finding stuff online, but I’ve been humbled.

Scott found the angle adapter here: http://www.igo.com/product.asp?sku=3776087

Cassius found the splitter thing here: http://www.moons-power.com/

Mine was black, but those other colors are awesome! I love the black/red one.

To buy the black one in the US, go here: Splitter

It’s twice what I paid in Japan, but a great deal anyway. I love that thing.

Again… thanks a ton for finding these things for me!

P.S. Just to make this post worth reading for those who don’t care about these things - my best story EVER (in my opinion) will be posted by the end of the month. Better than the pool, tunnels, or any other popular ones. I can’t post it until the end of the month though… you’ll see why.

Every time I leave a movie I always think, “I should never watch movies again.”

And then I remember that I told myself the exact same thing last time I watched a movie, but ignored it. When we were in Thailand we went to a really cool theater in the Siam Paragon to watch Indiana Jones 4. I had fond memories of the first three and even fonder memories of the video game.

Within about ten minutes I knew that I was not going to enjoy the movie. I gave it the benefit of the doubt until about halfway through and then I walked out and went down to check out the mall.

A few days later the guys were watching a movie on TV. Again I watched part of it and left to write halfway through.

Sometimes the movies aren’t even that bad, but I realize that even if it’s mildly entertaining, it’s still a waste of time.

Today Todd and I watched a movie that has Kristen Bell in it. I loved Veronica Mars, the TV show, so I thought I might like it. It was better than the previous two movies, but was still terrible.

So why do I keep watching these movies occasionally when I know that I’m going to think that they’re terrible?

It’s because once in a while they’re really good. And when I see a good movie, like the Godfather movies that we just watched, I think “Hey, if I had stopped watching movies then I wouldn’t have seen this one.

But the problem is that I probably dislike nine out of ten movies. That means that I’m spending 30 hours of my time to see one good story. That can’t be worth it.

Anyway, I’m really only writing this because I just saw a movie. I probably see 5 or less movies in a year besides documentaries (which are almost always worth it), so it’s not actually a huge problem.

Maybe now that I’ve written it down I’ll be a bit more selective about movies that I watch.

I am going crazy trying to find two very small pieces of gear that would make my life a whole lot easier. I can’t find any trace of them online, but I KNOW that they exist because I have had one of each at some point.

The first one is an ingenious little chunk of plastic that I found in Akihabara, Tokyo. A week or two ago I lost (or maybe it was stolen) my small bag full of power cords and accessories. I’ve since replaced everything but this. I can’t find it anywhere.

Here’s a picture I drew that should give you a rough idea:

So basically it’ is a tiny box that you plug between your laptop’s power brick and the wall cord. It lets you plug two additional things into it.

This is good for a few reasons. First’ if you only have one plug available, you can charge your other stuff at the same time.

Second, you only need one foreign plug adapter to charge all of your stuff.

Third, if you and a friend can’t reach an outlet, you can use both of your wall-to-brick cables and this thing to make a longer one, and then take turns.

So cool. Please help me find one (or two… Todd wants one too).

The next thing is closely related. Many years ago I got a Targus slim universal power adapter. It was awesome except that it was shoddily made and overheated and broke. BUT… it came with one of these.

I have no idea where it went, but I would really like to have it back.

Here’s a picture I drew:

That picture came out worse but basically it replaces your wall-to-brick cord with a tiny right angle piece of plastic. One end goes into the wall and the other goes to your laptop.

When you use it your power brick hangs from the wall. It’s good for when you know you’ll be really close to outlets and don’t need the extra few few feet that the wall-to-brick cord gives you.

I really want it because I can then charge my camera battery at the same time as my computer without having to carry around two cables.

If you have any idea where I can get these things, please let me know. I have spent hours searching for them online and in Hong Kong’s computer centers with no luck. If you see one of either, please buy it and I will buy it from you.

Why I Don’t Take Medicine

I’m aware that admitting / proclaiming that I don’t take medicine sets me up to be bucketed in with the nutty religious people who handle snakes and let their kids die on rare occasions before allowing them to go to the hospital.

That’s not me.

My policy is to not take drugs unless it is a life or death situation. I’ve never even swallowed a pill.

I consider our current understanding of science, including medicine, to be both totally amazing and also way behind the wonder of nature. When I learn about how nature solves problems, I’m amazed at the beautiful simplicity.

When I see how medicine solves problems, I’m normally extremely wary.

What drug doesn’t have side effects? How many drugs that people take have side effects that we aren’t even aware of? How many of them circumvent natural bodily processes to the extent that we can’t possibly understand everything that goes on as a result? How much of older medicine seems barbaric now? How much of our medicine will seem that way soon?

Then there’s the immune system, which has been meticulously evolved over our entire existence as a species. Is it possible that our immune system has learned a trick or two in all these years? And MAYBE, since a core component of the immune system is it’s ability to learn to heal, we should just let it do it’s thing and build it’s repertoire?

I’ll let my immune system get a little target practice and build an internal pharmacy, rather than throwing it for a loop with some pills every time I get a cough.

Now don’t get me wrong, if it’s the choice between me dying and me taking medicine, I’ll go for it. Body processes be damned, I’m not ready to leave.

But when the choice is between any level of discomfort and taking medicine, I’ll take that discomfort.

As an example, about ten days ago I noticed a small rash on my leg. No big deal.

The next day the rash was bright red and very itchy. Upon closer examination I realized that it was behind my knee, on my upper calf, and on my thigh in a couple places.

The next day it was so itchy that wearing shorts hurt. At least it’s not spreading, I thought.

The next day it spread to the top of one foot and the bottom of the other. It was getting bubbly and very painful.

The bubbly rash on the bottom of the one foot was the worst part and made it very painful to walk.

The rash was so bad that I decided that once I got to Hong Kong I would see a doctor to make sure it wasn’t going to kill me eventually.

Then it spread to my chest and hands.

But I noticed something - the first places the rash showed up were by far the worst. Every new location was a bit more mild than the last.

I’m no scientist, but to me that seems a lot like my immune system learning and getting stronger. The rash on my chest was itchy but never bubbled up.

Now the rash is all but gone. There’s just a slightly red patch where it was on my foot. I didn’t even go to the doctor because it was almost healed by the time i got to HK.

Meanwhile, I didn’t have to compromise my body by slathering it with steroid cream, and I will probably never get that rash again.

Other than chewable aspirin that I accepted as a kid because I didn’t know better and because they tasted like candy, I’ve only taken medicine once. Oh, and I did the eyedrops (but not the pain medication or the valium) when I got my eyes lasered.

I was in college and got a sore throat. That expanded into a full blown fever and cough.

It was strep throat.

After a few days my throat swelled up so much that it was brutally painful to swollow. Then my whole mouth and gums swelled up to the point that chewing was agonizing.

I went to the doctor.

“It’s strep. You need to take this medicine.”

“I don’t want to. How long will it take to go away on it’s own?”

“If you let it go on for a few more days it will kill you and it will not go away by itself.”

I was pissed, mainly at my immune system for not handling this one, and agreed to take the pills.

A day later I returned and got chewables instead because my attempt to swallow a pill left one pill missing under a cabinet and the dining room table covered in water.

I took the chewables and the strep went away.

I wouldn’t necessarily tell everyone not to take any medicine, but I’d suggest not taking it unless it’s absolutely necessary, with you being the arbiter of what qualifies as absolutely necessary.

I believe that as a result of not taking medicine I have a super immune system. I tend to get illnesses last, if at all, when I’m around sick people, and I always recover very quickly.

I was messing around with Google street view for the first time today, and look what I found. My old house!

Link

Parked behind it is my old car. Aww, the good old days. Back when I had things.

I really do miss the RV, though. I loved that thing so much. When I go back to Austin in the winter I’m going to see if I can rent another one.