Went to Waikiki with Fr. Lan – Bought Hot Chocolate from Seattle’s Best and then sat on the Beach, talking about our assignments.

Went to Wallmart and bought fireworks… The BIG kind. Sigh… Reminds me of my childhood before they banned fireworks in California.

I’m so happy! — My best friend in the world, also one of my Jesuit brothers, is in Hawaii!

Yahoo Mail has been down for more than two hours… hmmm… really?

Haven’t been able to sleep at night for the past 2 months. It’s nothing serious, I just can’t sleep when somebody’s wrong on the Internet!

Putting together a new project and I was able to register ALL important web properties using that name…. hmmmm….

If I were to ask you to guess what the fastest Remote Controlled (RC) aircraft was, you might first think of a turbine-powered beast that mimics the mechanics of our most powerful full-sized fighters. Perhaps you might consider a super-tricked-out miniature-scale turboprop with swept wings and a specialized airframe. Whatever might come to mind, it most likely isn’t a picture of a glider…

yeah… a GLIDER!

You know… the “cross-country-skiing” analog to powered RC flight. Gliders are unpowered craft that rely on thermals, wind currents and the skill of their pilots to keep them aloft. They may be majestic and require a special touch on the controls to make them do what they do, but the certainly are not considered to be among the speedster elite of the skies…

Now watch this!

More after the Jump »

Baptised a meth-addicted baby right before she died. She only weighed 19 ounces. — Hard day.

15.6″ widescreen LCD display, 320-500GB of storage with the capability to add a second hard drive, 4GB of memory, 2.1+Ghz CPU, HDMI output, 6-Cell 4400mAh battery, and a design that screams style. — Anybody need an entertainment monster?

Gateway just released their new line of NV notebooks aimed at those who want horsepower and style at a great price-point. These new machines sport fast processors, plenty of storage and a pedigree that guarantees quality.

It’s no secret that we at TTS enjoy Gateway’s notebooks, (in fact, I’m typing this post on a Gateway UC) but even I have been pleasantly surprised with the design changes that they’ve made to their products over the last 6 months. We’re going to try to get a NV into the lab and into a ‘gadget’ episode to let you know if this might be the notebook for you.

From the press release… IRVINE, Calif., June 25, 2009 – Gateway today debuts its new Gateway NV Series notebook, a workhorse entertainment notebook that pairs the latest notebook technologies and important one-touch buttons with excellent style at an affordable price. Packed with premium performance features that deliver a stellar entertainment experience, the new Gateway NV Series is ready to deliver multitasking performance to take on the most popular everyday tasks with the latest technology including processors and graphics from either Intel or AMD. At the same time, the notebook’s incredibly affordable price points, starting at $499.99, make the Gateway NV line ideal for anyone on a budget.

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Super uberGeek Alert!

Put away your lunch money and get a pocketful of quarters ready, cuz’ Netgear’s new NAS box is going to steal your sandwich and make you call home to mommy! Yeah… too much? We think so too… In any case, Netgear’s new ReadyNAS 3200 is their latest entry into the business-oriented segment of Network Attached Storage. This monster-of-a-box may not beat you up and take your lunch, but it definitely seems positioned to be the class of the SMB NAS market and even give the big enterprise-class guys a run for their money. (Imagine a box that can give you the reliability, expandability and performance just shy of an EMC or IBM product, but at 1/10th the price.)

Details are a little sparse at the moment, but from what I can gather the 3200 sports upgraded ReadyNAS Pro innards in a 2U, rack-mountable, chassis that can accept up to 12 hot-swappable SATA drives. It shoudl have dual-ethernet, support of iSCSI, Netgear’s line-wide operating system, full integration with cloud-storage solutions, and all the other uberGeek candy that we’ve come to expect from the ReadyNAS line.

These NAS boxes are going to start at ~$5k so I wouldn’t reserve one for your bedroom or home-theater system just yet. But if you’re running a Small-to-Medium business (or even a small enterprise) this could be the cost-efficient solution you’ve been waiting for. — We’ll try to get a 3200 in our lab to see how well it stacks against the competition. Till then… stay tuned!

More after the Jump »

I know it’s now summer in Hawaii because my laundry will smell like wet cat if I leave it in the washer for more than 30 minutes.

First his clerics abandon him, (http://www.thetechstop.net/?p=3110) now one of his commanders. What’s an Ayatollah to do? http://bit.ly/ …

Damn… Getting too many requests to review iPhone gear. Does this mean I have to get an iPhone? (Or wait 6 months for the next version?)

Powerline Ethernet has really matured over the last 5 or so years. The first few commercially available units were slow, unreliable and sometimes more expensive and more difficult to deploy than running a dedicated cable. Today however, powerline networking has become a “plug and forget” bridge between your existing wired/wireless network, and your hard-to-reach network appliances. Still, even some of the best units that TTS has reviewed were limited to full duplex 100Mbps with bursts up to 154Mbps. — Fast, but pushing the edge if you want to use your powerline ethernet bridge to connect HD video or multiple broadband devices.

That’s why I’m a little excited by Belkin’s announcement of of a powerline bridge capable of 1 Gigabit speeds. It works like all other powerline adapters, simply plug your ethernet network into one side, your ethernet device(s) into the other, then connect both adapters to a continuous electrical circuit. (i.e. no power strips, breakers or line-conditioners between the powerline adapters.) This will allow you to extend your network to parts of your home/office where running dedicated cables in problematic and wireless performance is too slow or intermittent. The nice thing about the Gigabit rating is that the device could now technically be used to bridge two gigabit ethernet “segments” within your network without sacrificing speed. For example, if you have a switch connected to multiple desktops and wireless access points in one part of your office, and another switch connected to your router, printers and NAS boxes in another part, the powerline kit could connect the two as if there were a length of copper running between them.

The best part about this new kit? It starts at $150, which puts it in the same range of similar quality 154Mbps powerline adapters, meaning that for just a few dollar more, you can get 8x as much speed over the bridge. — We’re going to try to get a set into the ‘gadget’ lab so that we can see if it lives up to its paper specs, so stay tuned!

More after the Jump »