Has anybody ever done a study on the affects of being constantly exposed to the sound frequency of an electronic beep? I mean, if they could come up with money for a study to see if dogs get jealous or cats only purr to get you to do what they want you to do, then you’d think somebody somewhere would pony up a few bucks for a study to see if incessant beeping is detrimental to your physical or mental health. I wonder, because it seem like everything around me beeps, and sometimes I feel like it’s driving me freakin’ crazy. My refrigerator beeps if I leave the door open too long, my stove beeps when the oven is done preheating (among other things), the microwave beeps for all kinds of reasons, the touchpads on all the appliances beep whenever you touch them – as do the buttons on my cellphone, the tv remote, and my Chumby touch screen – my cordless drill battery charger beeps (though I haven’t quite figure out why), and sometimes I hear shit beep, and I don’t even know what the hell it is. But whenever something beeps, I feel compelled to respond in some way shape or form (if for no other reason than to shut it the hell up; the microwave is particularly insistent on attention). Pavlov must be salivating in his grave.

I wonder if the iPad will beep at you, too? I signed up to be notified when the iPad is ready to ship, though I don’t think I’ll be picking one up anytime soon. They have some work to do on it before I’d buy one. For one thing, there’s no USB port, and with a meager base memory of 16-gigs, I think not having a USB port for plugging in an external storage device (or non-proprietary keyboard, etc.) is a deal breaker. I’d also want an SD (or mini-SD, or even micro-SD) card slot in it. I know Apple wants you to pay more for the extra storage space, but still. The iPad would also be a lot more appealing to me if it ran the Mac OS. Sadly, you’re stuck with an oversized iPhone/iPod Touch device, and locked in to Apple-approved applications. That’s fine for people who are happy to take what Apple is willing to give them, and it might even be fine for a phone (though I think I’d prefer my wife’s Droid – both for what it does now, and the future potential it has), but for what amounts to a “net-tablet” it doesn’t cut it for me. And, of course, if you want a 3G model, you’re stuck with ATT. I don’t care what the guy on the commercial says, the ATT network blows, and coverage (in my area, anyway) is pretty spotty.

I’ve been using a Macbook Pro pretty much exclusively at home these days, and I definitely like it – but more for the hardware than the OS. Frankly, I don’t find the Mac OS to be some crazy big improvement over Windows. I often hear people say they got all kinds of viruses and whatnot with Windows, but that’s never really been a problem for me. While I’ve always had some sort of AV stuff installed as a backup, I tend tro practice “safe computing,” and have never had the virus and spyware issues that other people do (especially people who let their kids use the company laptop at home).

As for the Mac, I’ve had the thing lock up on me two or three times. You don’t get the BSOD, of course. You get a message in several languages saying, “sorry, Charlie.” There are also times when the damn thing sits there and hesitates, too. Again, you don’t get the stupid hour glass – you get the stupid little multicolor pinwheel. And the patches! Holy crap, there are more patches for this thing than Windows has (and the patches are huge in size). I also don’t like that when you click the little red close thing, it doesn’t actually close the application you’re in. Granted, you can hit Command-Q, but if you’re not careful, you can leave a lot of shit open w/o realizing it. There are a few other annoyances with it as well, but nothing too major (no forward delete button, for instance – you have to use fn+delete instead – and the mouse gestures – or whatever they call it on these things – sometimes are annoying; anybody know if there’s a keyboard equivalent of Windows alt+tab?).

As for things, I like, I really like that it isn’t plastic, and is carved from a solid block of aluminum. The touchpad is great – very large, and I like that it does different things based on how many fingers I give it. Battery life is good, too (which it better be, because you can’t just pop in a spare). The maglock power cord is good, but can be annoying at times. And, while there aren’t as many things available for Mac as there are for Linux and Windows, you can find alternative apps to what for most things.

Well, time to get ready to go. Soon, they’ll be pulling that poor, drugged woodchuck out of his hole. I never really got that whole thing. Why don’t they just say if it’s sunny on Feb 2nd, then there’s gonna be 6 weeks of winter (or the opposite; I always forget which way that works).

Oh well, it’s tradition, I guess.