Me Monster

Although there are still three days till Christmas, It is a little depressing to be at work. My Christmas spirit is slowly being killed. 

Thankfully emusic.com has a solution. Free Christmas music to download. 

FREE MUSIC

Hope this helps those of you that have to work this week and don’t get to stay home and  wallow in Christmas cheer.

Almost everyone these days owns an iPod, right? Well if you do then you know you spent some hard earned money on that little thing. I have had a couple in my life and everyone of them, I have treated with extra special care. I haven’t purchased some sort of jelly cover or steel case. Instead I purchased a Invisible shield. These shields protect the iPod and its screen from scratches. Since I was so impressed with its ability to protect my little iPod I decided to buy a shield for my laptop. And now that I recently acquired a Canon 40D, I will be picking up a shield for the 3″ LCD display. If you have something you love and want to protect you should definitely pick up an Invisible Shield. I have had a lot of friends and family go out and buy knock off versions of the Invisible Shield with bad results every time. Some didn’t protect it like they should have. Some have peeled off (which the Invisible Shield is warranted for). If I could wrap my kids in on of these things to insure their safety I definitely would. But for now I’ll stick to my toys. Invisible Shield is owned by ZAGGand can be purchased from their site or from many kiosks in our local malls.

For those that live in Salt Lake City have visited or have heard of Red Iguana. City Weekly is constantly giving it the best of mexican food award. But the review that finally convinced us to drive downtown just to give it a try was from the show Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.

Our personal opinion was mixed. The wait was a longer that I thought but due to the small size of the restaurant and its widespread popularity it is understandable. We waited outside for 25 minutes, something we couldn’t have done if it was a cold day. I ordered the mole negro featured in the video above. It was very interesting. It had both a spicy kick and a sweet taste to it. It was good but not amazing. I wouldn’t get it again, especially for the $14.90 price tag. My wife tried the Tacos Don Ramon (also in the video). If it was a battle to see whose dish was better, and it always is, she won hands down. It was around $9.00 but that aside, It was both fresh and delicious. We both are big fans of spicy food so we could have had it a little bit hotter but for the average Utahn it was probably spicy enough. When and not if we go back I she will definitely get that again.

MTV just released a new website dedicated to actually playing music videos. I haven’t spent much time there but so far I’m impressed. No adds, no need to set up an account, you just type in an artist and song and start watching. I searched for Foo Fighters and found over forty videos, many of which I had never seen. If you have some time to kill check it out.
Here is the first music video I remember watching on on MTV when I was a little kid. Still a great song and video.

This is one of my all time favorite videos starring Christopher Walken

iTunes has added some well overdue features supporting audiobooks. Before, iTunes would support any audiobook purchased through the iTunes store, but those ripped from your own cd collection would be recognized just as any other music file. So besides putting the audio book in its own section within iTunes whats the big deal?

Well first off iTunes understands that with audiobooks, you might listen to half of a track and then have to stop, and when you come back to it, you don’t want to start it all over. So if a file is recognized as a book it will always remember where you last left off. Second if you want to speed up the reader’s voice or even slow it down iTunes will let you do that as long as its recognized as an audiobook. Now that we see the need for converting it, how do we do it?

Step 1: Highlight the file or files.

Step 2: Right click the file or files and choose “Get Info”

Step 3: Choose the Options Tab.

Step 4: Under “Media Kind” select the audiobook option.

Step 5: lastly check the “Remember playback postion” box, then press OK to exit.

Those files will then appear under the audiobook section in your iTunes. This is a much faster way then the previous method of converting them to .aac files then running an apple script.

About a year and a half ago I was taken to Ginza, a sushi restaurant downtown, for a business lunch. Before that day I had no idea what sushi really was. I had eaten california rolls here and there and wasn’t ever really impressed. Ginza had a huge list of of funny named rolls that overwhelmed me. Luckily the people I went with knew what they liked and offered me some great suggestions. We tried five different rolls, all of which absolutely blew me away. The sushi in my past was no longer sushi to me. I now consider that day, the first time that I ever had sushi. Because most people fear sushi I’ve had a really hard time getting back to Ginza, plus the fact that its downtown not too many people are willing to drive that far for it.

A couple of months ago Ginza opened a new location just a couple blocks away from our house. I was so excited and thought for sure we would go there the opening day. Well simply put, we didn’t. Last saturday we finally found time to drive a couple blocks for some legendary sushi. We were not disappointed. This new location in Sandy is much more aesthetically pleasing, but just as delicious. My favorite roll is the x-roll, with tuna and crab with its own special sauce. I’m sure most people know this trick but my wife’s uncle taught me to mix my wasabi in with some soy sauce for an extra little kick. (Thanks Paul) I’ve been to a few sushi places since my first experience with Ginza and have had some good experiences, but Ginza still reigns king in my book. If you go there let me know what you had and if you liked it.

Ginza, 715 E 12300 S

Although mac is at this point still void of viruses, it is not void of scammers. Here is a product that brings nothing to the table except a false sense of security. MacGuard claims

Macguard’s high-tech system scanner will search your hard drive for malicious objects such as Adware, Spyware and Trojans, cleaning your files, eliminating the threats, and securing your privacy in just a matter of minutes. Its Real Time smart protection will also ensure new threats will not even reach your desktop.

Many switchers still feeling the pain from their previous virus infected windows machine, will see ads like this and buy it just to be safe. But the download button isn’t linked to anything at all. ars technica is a techy site that reported that 30 million people have fallen victim to bogus antivirus software just like MacGuard.

It isn’t difficult to find good photos online but I just wanted to quickly mention one site that I have been really enjoying lately. I like this site mainly because its the quality of the pictures are great but also the images are big enough to really enjoy. Heres the LINK let me know what you think.

I chose to read this book because solely because it was one of the best selling fictional books at the time, and I have very mixed feelings about this it. The book itself was smooth and very well written, and I enjoyed learning about this amazing breed of dogs, the Sawtelles raised. If these dogs were real I would definitely buy one. I didn’t like however, how long it took to realize the plot of the story. I was about halfway through it before anything really happened. I liked it but I didn’t see why its a best seller. I was a little surprised to see that Oprah just added it to her book club, and now there are stacks of them at costco. Link to book on Barnes&Noble