Preemptive snow day

I told my boss this morning that I'm declaring a personal snow day for tomorrow. The forecast is 9 to 16 inches. I'm not going on the roads in any kind of a vehicle in that if I can help it (OK Erik, if I had a Pugsley, I would definitely go out in it)

Since I can work from home, and I have some fraction of a vacation day I need to use or lose by the 31st anyway, I'm just camping tomorrow. I think there's a good chance of a school snow day too, if the forecasts hold.

Sansa Fuze gets even better

A week or so ago, Sansa released the second firmware update since I got my Fuze (MP3/video player). Today I was having playback issues with the WGBH Classical Performance podcast - it was clicking twice a second during playback. That's when I went looking for new firmware and found the new version.

It not only specifically fixed the playback issue, but it addressed a personal irritation:

They now not only bookmark your current location within an audiobook file (they did that before), but they remember what file within the book you were on, for each audiobook. I'm happy about this because this was one that I asked for on the Sansa forums.

Sandisk is incredibly responsive to users of their players. Questions, even about future firmware features, posted to their forums get answered by a spokesperson usually within an hour, and features that users request and bugs they report are usually addressed in the next firmware release, which are happening fairly often.

This is notably different from so many companies that either never release updates to their products, or don't comment on upcoming releases, or are not helpful or communicative on bugs and feature requests, or even withhold features from a device to try to artifically create a market for a more expensive device, that it's a real breath of fresh air, particularly since their players are among the cheapest on the market, and yet compete very favorably from a look and feel point of view (they're "nice" or even "sexy" devices).

Book finished

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

Again, not much to say. If you have read it, you know, if you haven't, you won't understand anyway.