Friday, August 20, 2004

GMail Notifier

Google's free email service, GMail, now has a small tool you can download and run on a WIN2K or WIN XP computer. It sits in your system tray, and notifies you when you've received new mail in your GMail account. Download it here.

Interesting news

This article about a major medical study hits close to home for me - since I have Type II diabetes. The study recommends that all Type II disbetics, regardless of their cholesterol levels, should consider taking cholesterol lowering drugs (like Lipitor.) It is interesting that Lipitor's manufacturer, Pfizer, provided some funding to the study, though it is noted that the study was supported primarily by the British government and the British equivalent of the American Diabetes Association and was conducted independently of the companies involvement. It's an interesting idea, but I don't know if just one study is going to convince me that taking MORE drugs is a good idea - I'm already on plenty of medication, thanks.

Thursday, August 19, 2004

Garden State

Just saw Garden State last night at The Drexel - it was a sneak preview since the movie hasn't opened here yet. Both my wife and I loved this movie, it was really very funny, well written, and better than I expected. Who knew Zach Braff from the TV show Scrubs could write and direct a pretty darn good movie? It wasn't perfect - but it was witty, and engaging, and filled with great performances from Braff and Natalie Portman, and from Peter Sarsgaard. Go see Garden State - you won't be disappointed!

Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Star Wars Original Trilogy DVD's

Here's an article about the September 21st release of the 4 DVD Star Wars set. I'm getting it, but I'll admit that the rumor of additional "tinkering" by Lucas worries me. Some of the added elements in the "Special Editons" were alright, but some (Greedo shoots FIRST??? WTF???) were horrible.

In case you hadn't noticed, Windows XP Service Pack 2 is delayed - again. The company statement is that it was delayed "after receiving feedback from IT groups saying they hadn’t had time to implement a tool for temporarily blocking the automatic download of SP2." Since SP2 causes conflcit in several applications, like Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Veritas Backup Exec, and some of Microsoft's management tools, this tool is a necessity for many companies. Also, SP2 is certainly not perfect - there's already one hotfix available for it. The SP2 delay is (so far) just for corporations - home users should be able to get SP2 from Windows Update starting today.