Where’s the peanut butter?!

i noticed something interesting on my way to the bus this morning. i’m passing the budget car rental when I spy this woman across the street. she’s probably in her mid 50s or so and bursting at the seams with smiling, walking tall, mary tyler moore confidence. it was the flying white-puffballs that attracted my attention. they turned out to be her hands in oversized mittens with a huge fluffy trim. then I took in the whole experience. she had on bright red fleece pants, one of those outlaw josey wales ponchos with fringe reaching from her waist to her knees (same red fleece), and a matching hat with an 8-12″ brim. and she was sporting late 70s 3″ lens sunglasses. it was awesome. then I had to ask myself “when was the pimp wardrobe co-opted by the elders among us?” the masters’ tools will never bring down the master’s house.

I got the href="http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103922&cp=&kw=2133&parentPage=search">6-in-1
Kameleon universal remote from Radio Shack a couple weeks ago
(also known as the URC-8060) and have been very happy with the
results. The remote controls my TV, 5 disc changer/5.1 sound system,
Windows Media Center (but only by training on the buttons I want it to
learn), and xbox. My TV remote is sort of universal, meaning it can
mostly control my xbox (but can’t traverse up a directory in xbox
media center) and it controlled an old Sony home theater system but
cannot control my new Samsung system, and my home theater system
remotes have also been semi-universal. The net is that until getting
this new universal remote, I’ve needed 2-3 to control my four devices.
No more!

The one major drawback with the Kameleon is its light up screen and
vibration sensitivity. It is designed to turn on its display backlight
when it detects movement (when you’re using it) but the movement
detection is so sensitive it just winds up burning through batteries
every couple months. Worse, when the batteries are getting low, it
doesn’t die like a normal remote where you gradually lose
range. Instead the Kameleon choses to occassionally lock up and
brightly illuminate all the buttons, but with no obvious range
degradation. David Pollard was kind enough to href="http://kameleonrc.blogspot.com/">find and post a solution to
this annoyance - basically you open up the remote and cut the
vibration sensor connection. Once this is done, to turn on the
backlight you first press a button (which is thankfully processed only
as “turn on the screen” and not “turn on the screen and do whatever I
happen to press”) and you’re in business.

Zippity-do-dah! I’m all jiggy with real href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha">captchas now (courtesy
of the fine folks at href="http://www.captchas.net">capthcas.net) and use them for
comment verification. Give it a try!