reviews

The blog is currently being ported from WordPress to over 12 years of static pages of content. If there's an article missing that you're hoping to see, please contact me and let me know and I'll prioritize getting it online.

Review of the Google Pixel XL and accessories

I’ve owned just about every Nexus device since the Nexus One, including the Nexus Q and the tablets. The only devices I’ve missed in my collection are the Nexus 10 tablet, and the Nexus 6P from late 2015. I ordered the Pixel XL the morning of the announcement and have used it as my daily phone since it arrived, and this is a really solid device and definitely worth the upgrade from the 2014 Nexus 6.

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Review: Dell Precision m3800 laptop

I purchased a Dell Precision m3800 laptop in late 2015 and haven’t been this happy about a laptop since my XPS13 Sputnik The initial build I purchased was the non-Thunderbolt edition, which I immediately exchanged (and paid the extra $150) for the Thunderbolt-compatible edition. It was a Windows-installed edition, which I quickly dual-booted to include Ubuntu. Dell, at the time, sold the laptop directly with Ubuntu pre-installed, but stubbornly refuse to make public the ISO to install Ubuntu on similar hardware.

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Review: Paribus.co

In the afternoon of December 2nd 2015, I signed up for an account at Paribus and started buying some Christmas gifts on Amazon. The following morning I got an Email from Paribus that they found a $12 price drop on what I just ordered the previous day. They get a small piece of that refund (25%) and that refund percentage lowers as you refer people to the site. Pretty sweet.

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Goodbye, Ingress

I’ve been playing Ingress since mid-November 2012: I got a beta invite a few days after the game was announced and I’ve recruited a LOT of people and got them excited enough to invite other people. Trouble is, I’m more of a solo player since life doesn’t always allow me to get out at regular times to meet up with other people. I’ve missed every single event run in Los Angeles and Denver because life just doesn’t work out like that.

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Project Sputnik XPS13: Initial Impressions

My XPS13 arrived today. While I hadn’t initially applied to Dell’s beta group for Project Sputnik, I’ve been pretty eager about it to the point of wanting to purchase a full-price XPS13 on which to test the software. The appeal of downloadable chef recipes to configure a box for programming different languages was too strong to resist. My hesitation was the limitation of 4GB of RAM on the laptop, which is an oft-asked upgrade.

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My Chromebook arrives Aug 3rd-10th 2011

This post was copied from my Google+ timeline for posterity. Followup: delivery will be EARLY!

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I should have become a tax accountant

I hate tax season. We paid Karin Langwasser’s office $350 for a 15-minute tax appointment this year. (Google Place page) In the past, they handled my freelance business taxes, but I closed that down TWO YEARS ago, and last year’s tax prep bill was still $400 “just in case they missed anything…” Our tax prep representative this year had no good reason to explain why our bill was only $50 less, and told us we had to pay $350.

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Review: Nexus One and Motorola CLIQ

My wife and I recently switched from AT&T to T-Mobile and we picked up some new Android-based devices. For me, the Nexus One; for her, the Motorola CLIQ. Both phones have a lot of really great features, most of which are Android-related. But each device has a handy set of features that made them good decisions for us. Her Pantech phone was ruined by our son dropping it in the dog’s water dish, and I just got tired of the closed mindset of the iPhone.

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Review: Rubicon Project advertising platform

Disclosure: I was an employee at The Rubicon Project for almost two years as a senior engineer working on core statistics and analytics data, including when I originally wrote this blog piece. <u>I was not asked or compensated to write this review.</u> I bought my stock options upon resigning and so was a shareholder for a time but sold my stake in the company after their IPO. Despite being an employee, I used the *exact* same interface that any other person uses when they sign up, and I pay Rubicon the same 10% of the managed advertising they bring to my site.

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