For quite a while the internet has been available wirelessly at locations known as “hotspots” which can be found in places like Starbucks, McDonalds, and airports. GPRS and EDGE have allowed people to get on the internet anywhere that they can get a digital cellphone connection. Take the availability of cellphone networks, replace the necessity for a cellphone with a wireless card (much like 802.11a/b/g), and up the speed to almost twice that of a T3 connection: that’s 802.16.
This isn’t the only new technology that’s competing to be the next thing home users will use for their internet connection, but with speeds and convenience on this level, whatever technology end up becoming widely adopted will take the internet to a whole new level.
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I go through these phases of researching different areas in technology in depth so that a) I can explain it to people if they ever ask me about it, and b) I can make a stronger argument for getting that technology in our house. :) Anyway, the latest of these research sprees I’ve gone on has been Bluetooth. I remember about 1-2 years ago when this technology was first starting to be advertised by manufacturers, but one of the major problems then was that products made by two different companies were not guaranteed to (and often didn’t) work with each other. Just another example of why I think standards are one of the best things that can happen in the tech industry.
The uses for Bluetooth are very impressive even though it is only considered a “wire replacement”. Have a laptop and cell phone both enabled with Bluetooth? Instant wireless modem via either GPRS or EDGE. Bluetooth headset? Acts as a speaker on pretty much anything that makes sound.
More and more products on the market are staring to incorporate Bluetooth, and I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually every single peripheral is completely wireless via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or some other wireless standard.
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Aka, How to Make my Life Miserable. So, want to know the secret?
Subway. No, I’m not kidding. I had Subway for lunch on Monday, and Thursday was the first time I could manage to even look at my computer monitor since then. I’m still not completely better (although I can eat pretty much whatever I want to now), and every once in a while I’ll have issues walking straight or standing up since I’m still a little dizzy. Oh well, at least it’s better than spending over 2 full days doing nothing but lying in my bed. Summer and I really need to have a talk about what I’m supposed to be able to do and how I’m supposed to feel (Hint: This isn’t one of them).
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Yep, I’m done with all 14 days of summer school now and (hopefully) have credit for Communication Applications (Speech) now. Nothing left for me to do this summer except sleep, play video games, and go watch movies. Oh yeah, and hopefully be able to update this more often than once per week.
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3 speeches in a week should not be allowed. But unfortunately it is, so that took up the majority of my time this past week. Friday I saw The Chronicles of Riddick (which surprised me by being a pretty good movie, more on that tomorrow) and worked on my grandparents’ computer. Then I had to take the ACT yesterday, go work on 2 different people’s computers, and then today I went back to my grandparents to show them how to use the computer after I made the changes to it on Friday. Tomorrow I begin my last week of summer school (which hopefully won’t involve a lot of speeches). Life? Lighten up a little…..please.
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Yeah, been a few days since I updated. Lots of stuff going on, though. Anyway, let me think about what’s happened…
Yesterday I had to give my speech over HDTV. I think it went pretty will; everyone seemed to enjoy it, and someone in my class even told another one of my friends how good it was. I get to give another one tomorrow over King Tut which has to make use of a visual aid. Hopefully that one will go just as well.
Tonight I tried to log into Star Wars Galaxies to play (even though I don’t particularly like the game and enjoy playing FFXI much more), but I ran into an interesting problem. Somehow my account has been cancelled, and I know that I’m not the one that did it. My only guess is that Sony cancelled it after an inactivity period (of what, 3 weeks??), so they got an email from me tonight asking them to “un-cancel” it. There’s probably not a great chance that I’d be renewing my account anyway once my current subscription expires, but if I have to jump through hoops to get my account activated again, there’s no way that I’m going to be playing this game that much longer.
Oh yeah, and there’s been way too much rain here recently. Make it stop!!
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Yep, this is been a “1,2,3″ weekend for me (as indicated by the topic title). Now for some more in depth discussion of each of these things:
1 Week of Summer School Down: Friday marked the end of my first week of summer school (and the equivalent of the end of the 1st 6 Weeks). My first real speech is on Monday, so I have to finish preparing for it over the weekend. It has to be an informative speech with no visual aid, so I decided to do it over HDTVs. My second one will be on Wednesday which is an informative speeck with a visual aid, and I think I’ll do that one on either the Egyptian Pyramids or the Sphinx.
2 SAT II Tests: Today I took my first two SAT II tests, Writing and Mat IIC. I could have done a third, but I didn’t feel like doing Spanish and there was no way I was going to do Physics. I’ll probably do 1 or 2 more at the start of next school year.
3 for 3 on HP Movies: Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban definitely gets two thumbs up from me. It left out quite a bit that was in the book, but since most everyone that is going to see the movies has already read the book, the stuff they left out was fine. I don’t know if I would say it was better than the second one (Chamber of Secrets), but there’s no way it was worse.
That about covers my weekend so far. Nothing big planned for tomorrow except for working on my speeches, but who knows what could pop up at the last moment.
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So, I get out of summer school today to go eat lunch. Wendy’s, long line; Whataburger, long line; Chick-Fil-A, extremely long line; McDonald’s, 4 cars? Maybe they’re having problems due to the massive power outages we’ve been having, but I went over there since I figured I could get my food faster.
Yeah, it went faster, but I was very impressed by the system they have set up. Instead of using the normal speaker, there were 2 women standing outside with PDAs in their hands. 2 cars at a time would give their order, and it would be transmitted wirelessly into the kitchen. Then, they had a manager with a money belt standing near the first window so that both cars could pay at the same time. Then, each of the cars head to the second window to get their food right as the next set of cars is coming around. No wonder there’s no line, even Chick-Fil-A’s dual lane system doesn’t work as well (or else they’re about 100x as popular).
Still, the point remains that I think this is an awesome use of technology and that more restaurants should make use of features like this. Not just fast food, but also places like Chili’s and other sit-down restaurants. Waiter is ready to take your order? He sends it back to the kitchen to speed up the process. Need a refill on that drink? Give something to the customers so that they can signal when they need one. If restaurants started to embrace technology with ideas like this, I’d gladly pay a few extra dollars each time I went there to help support the costs. 10 years from now, no telling how we’ll be getting our food, but I can assure you that it will rely on technology much more than it does now.
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Yeah, so 18 hours with electricity is the best way to spend the first part of summer in Texas, right? RIGHT?? Actually, that would be a “no”. We had a huge thunderstorm cell come straight through the Dallas area last night (while I was out seeing Miss Saigon) which knocked out our power until 4:00 this afternoon.
2 days of summer school down, and the class is turing out to be fairly entertaining. Our teacher makes lots of jokes and tells us stories, so it doesn’t seem like we’re really there for 5 hours and 15 minutes. We start giving our first speeches tomorrow, though, but hopefully this trend will hold…
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