The last few years, since the RIAA has decided it was good practice to sue it’s customers, the Grammys have pretty much sucked, as an award show. And this year was no exception for another lackluster show.

But, as with each year, there is one stand out winner that puts a brief smile on my face. Green Day never ceases to amaze me in the quality of music they produce and to be the voice of protest and rebellion in a world of comforists. Last year they took the Rock Album of the year. This year is was the top prize (as far as the Grammys are concerned) of Record of the Year. Congrats to them. For the rest of the winners, click here.

Adding another computer in the house is always someting of a joy, sometimes a burden. In this case, it’s a Macintosh replacing a PC. As my personal reliance on Windows systems disolves, the need for another Mac becomes evident. Last April, it was the Mac mini, which is my main computer (my long promised blog on my switchover will eventualy get done). And my Umax c500 clone from 1997 is still in operation (running Mac OS 9.1 with 64Mb RAM and a 6gb hard drive).

This time, it’s an iMac 500Mhz indigo – click the photo above to see the specs. This one has 320Mb of RAM and a broken CD-RW, which I am replacing with a DVD/CD drive (slot loading). Found it on eBay and went locally to pick it up (saved $35 shipping). I’ve had it apart, cleaned the inside, the keyboard (each and every key had some weird spilage on it) and am getting it ready to sit at the desk next to mine for general use by the rest of my family.

I will still have one PC left in the house – my aging Toshiba Tecra 720CDT (specs) and it will have to do if for some reason we need a real PC to do something on (my mini runs Virtual PC 7.0.2, running Windows XP Pro).

And I am hoping sometime later this summer to replace the above Toshiba with at least an iBook. As a long time Mac user (got my first Mac 512K in 1985), this has been a goal of mine to remove Windows-based systems from my personal life. It’s not that I hate Windows… my entire IT career depends on it. But to be perfectly honest, when I come home, I would like to have a computer that I don’t have to constantly tweak or the need to remove spy/malware from. I just want to sit down and use it. The Mac fits that bill perfectly.

So where will the current PC go? It’s not a bad system – AMD 1.5ghz, 512Mb RAM, 40gb hard drive. Most likely it will go to my daughter, who if she is reading this, we need to talk about another incentive deal before I make a final decision on this.

So some 26 years after my first venture into the Macintosh world, the Mac has finally taken over as the computer of choice at home. And i’m pretty happy about that.

So January 31st (which would have been yesterday), the nominations for the 2006 Oscars were announced. You can get the main list here.

This last year was a great year for film and a lot of pictures covered all sorts of different topics, most of them fairly controversial. Who will win? Watch on March 5th on ABC.

It’s that time of the year where I rush out to see the hottest films that are generating the buzz. So far, i’ve got a few films to see still. Just saw BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN tonight. Here’s a link to a review I did. Still need to see MUNICH, CAPOTE and several others.

The nominees gets announced at 5:30ish AM on Tuesday January 31st (normally televised on E!). The big night is Sunday March 5th. Check Oscar.com for all of the details for this year’s Oscar candidates after January 31st. (the current site shows previous year’s winners, details and other related Oscar info)

After 29 years on the air, Howard says farewell to old-fashioned radio. Check out Yahoo’s coverage of the day. See the Wack Packer’s in picture. Hear his speech (Clear Channel fans may want to avoid this).

And if you are not ready to follow him to Sirius, the you need to check it out. I’m ready here and will enjoy that first day on the air.

I rarely open up IE 5.2 on the Mac, but there are some web sites that don’t do so well under Safari (i’m still running OS X 10.3.9 on my Mac mini), but today I decided to fire it up. The default page is set to msn.com. Imagine my surprise when I was greeted with the message “Why does MSN look like this?”. Click the graphic above and it will take you to a new window with a screen shot of the entire message.

I just think it’s wild to to see Microsoft suggesting you use another browser other than IE to access one of their sites.

That’s me above in the dark green fleece jacket

The grand opening was very cool. Click here to access the offical site.

I never expected so many people to be at this opening. I got there around 7:40am and was about 80th or so in line. The store opened up right at 10am, with a “10…9…8…7…6…5” countdown to when the doors first opened. I spent about 90 mins walking around in the store and playing with all of the iPods, Powerbooks, iMacs and cinema displays…. pure heaven for a Mac nut like me. Even caught up with a good friend I hadn’t seen in some years, who was there in line with his daughter. (see first picture in the linked SLTrib article)

Check this site for the best coverage. And thanks to Kelly for granting me permission to post the above picture that he took of me (second person from the left) inside the Apple Store (not intentional, just being in the right place at the right time).

UPDATE: Found another link to KSL news on the Apple Store opening. The picture in the lower right corner has another shot of me in the store (last person on the right) Yeah, I know.. another shameless plug… what can I say!