i was skeptical. MSRP of $300 for a pair of earphones!??! well, these aren’t just any earphones. the shure scl4 single low mass energy drive earphones have renewed my love affair with music… no joke. they’re THAT good.
the scl4 is the equivalent of the old e4c. i knew i wanted some e2c’s way back when i got my first iPod but just couldn’t justify the price tag. furthermore, i saw all sorts of non-musician people running around with shure’s (this particular pricepoint is meant for pro audio as in-ear monitors for the stage) and all i could think was POSER. well, now i’m the poser because we don’t run in-ears at my church.
the scl4 is shure’s one step down from top of the line earphone (there’s an scl5 that msrp’s at $600 that are considered “reference” earphones) and i just can’t explain how big of a difference it is. faithful reproduction of bass. sound isolation. it’s like the music is coming out of your head.
amazon has them here for $159 + shipping supposedly in white, but white is discontinued so you may be getting the black ones… if you’re local i’ll unload my extra pair of white ones for $120. if not, they’re going to eBay soon.
thinking of making my carputer eee pc based instead…
did anyone else think that communion crackers just existed? i don’t know, like manna from the sky or something. never really thought about where they came from, so it blew my mind that someone MAKES them.
“Some customers say the Cavanaghs have such a big market share because their product is about as close to perfect as earthly possible. “It doesn’t crumb, and I don’t like fragments of our Lord scattering all over the floor,†said the Rev. Bob Dietel, an Episcopal priest.”
-nyt
ht: vw @ j’aime.. jeg elsker..
my stepmom and i are watching CNBC. she comments, “look at how big Kramer’s head is”. and a few seconds later, “geez, look how big his head is. he must be really smart.” my reply, “no, he just has a lot of storage room for lots of crap”.
a culture of consumer spending/debt abounds in Korea and you may even see it manifest itself stateside with your Korean-American friends. is this what the future holds for the US?
“According to data released by the Bank of Korea last week, South Korean household debt climbed 10.7% in the third quarter from the same period a year ago to a high of 676 trillion won. That amounts to 40 million won, or $29,300, per household.”
-WSJ.com
read the rest here while you can.
no, seriously…
source : logodesignlove
Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer on reduced advertising dollars and their push to gain market share from the GOOG:
“On the other hand, relative to building share and position in search and portal, and share of advertising, I don’t think the economy is really a factor for us. I don’t know if you know the old story about the two guys out in the woods who see a bear, and one guy says, boy, we’d better really run fast, or that bear is going to get us. We’ve got to run faster than the bear does. And the other guy says, no, I’ve just got to run faster than you do. In this economy, maybe that’s the right way to think about it.”
thoughts later.
source : wsj
“The colleague had been touring the young democracies of Eastern Europe during the American election, and he found it wasn’t so much Barack Obama that immediately knocked out observers but Mr. McCain’s concession speech. This is the first American transfer of power they’d seen in eight years, and they couldn’t get over the peacefulness and grace with which Mr. McCain accepted the people’s verdict. “It really impressed them,” the colleague told Mr. McCain, and later me. It gave them a template, a guide to how the older democracies do it. When he told me of this, I remembered the observation of a journalist who had covered Russia. The Russian newspapers had generally played down Mr. Obama’s victory, she said, because it got in the way of the establishment line: that the corrupt American democracy is composed of two warring family machines that have the system wired and controlled with the help of their corporate oligarch cronies. It’s not a real democracy but a pretend democracy, and a hypocritical one. This helps the Russians rationalize and excuse their infirm hold on democratic ways and manners. And then the black man from Chicago with no longtime machine or money is elected . . .
So the Russian press muted its coverage. Mr. Obama’s victory upset their story line. They have to think up a new one now. They will.”
source : wsj.com
i haven’t had to iron my shirts in over 5 months. someone does them for me and they come back perfectly starched. tonight happens to be the first time i’ve used the washer/dryer at my apartment in the same amount of time. the only reason i am doing so now is out of lethargy and the fact that i ran out of clean dress socks. i don’t feel like carting the sack to the fold and wash, even though they’re open until midnight. laundry is a time suck so i’ve outsourced my life. in 15 mins i can drop off my clothes and they come back smelling nice and neatly folded where as before i had to wait around for hours and spend another hour or so a week folding the stuff. folding is busywork if you ask me.
at the advice of tim ferriss, i’ve outsourced my life and i couldn’t be happier. time truly is money in the fact that i will pay someone to get my time back… and it’s worth every penny.
over the last two weeks i got “busy” and managed to let my google reader overload. well, really that just means i got stuck doing time sucking tasks and didn’t make keeping up on things a priority. the unread items counter simply read “1000+”. bblee suggested i “jubilee” some feeds and i did that tonight. i even went so far as to unsubscribe from certain feeds. i canned my “top post only” lifehacker feed as well as some random design blogs. it felt liberating. i did, however, take the time to read every post of my friend’s personal blogs… so don’t think i don’t read your brainfarts people. but i often read the other clutter to stay “busy”.
as the holidays approach, it is usually a busy season for all of us, but busyness is when you waste your time.  i run in to people sometimes who tell me they’ve been busy and that’s why i haven’t seen them. for some, i know this means they’ve been getting a ton of stuff done and making progress towards their goals. for others, i know it means they’ve been wasting lots of time essentially doing nothing. having a calendar full of events does not mean you’re being productive. activity does not translate to productivity.
i’m going to make this holiday season different. when i return from the city of angels on sunday, there will be no busyness for the rest of ’08. granted i still have to go to work, still have a worship ministry to coordinate, and still have enterprises to build… i’ll take care of that without being busy. i’m even taking a week off of work to spend in the desert to write my book. ok, not really the desert, but moreno valley might as well be the desert. and i’m going to do it with copious amounts of stone brewing company ales and all without being busy.
pun intended. someone flickr’d this photo i took over labor day weekend and it is going to be featured as part of an ATL tour guide. 