An Inventory/Grocery Shopping Adventure

Awhile back, I attempted to change some details as far as how the URL for this blog was going to work.  I can safely say that it failed miserably; and for a while I even forgot if my domain name was still registered!  This morning I finally gave in and decided to see if I could fix what I screwed up, and Voila! I have things back the way I had them set up originally.

Now, if you head to http://erintotten.com you will end up here (on the homepage I'm sure) again through the magic that is url forwarding.  I'm not ready to try that whole mess where I remove the "forwarding" part, and redirecting isn't needed.

I had lots about the new X in my Stream today

What I've managed to catch in my G+ stream on the new Moto X today; minus the +Ingress related stuff.


50 Gig of Drive storage for 2 years...

Bloatware...

Vs. iPhone, SGS 4, and One...

The Verge hands on...


Motorola also threw in some really cool customization (But for now only if you use AT&T).

Oh Dear; Watch your step Niantic!

New weapons only hackable from certain Motorola phones; I never dreamed that I would feel blackmailed into buying a certain phone.  If there is no concession made for those of us loyal and "since the beginning" players, I may have to stop playing.  We were prepared for commercial portals, those only in the game because a business paid for the exposure, and I had even entertained the possibility that item codes might be included with purchases as incentive to spend money at one store over another; obviously, Google would make money by selling the codes to the business as advertising.

This development has a lot of people upset, and I don't blame them.  I do think that perhaps it's worth waiting to find out if Google is really using something that many have made a lifestyle to make the game much less fun without the purchase and use of a Motorola device (Maybe everyone doesn't know Google bought Motorola?).  Either way; I'm prepared to wait and see where this goes.

Chromecast

Last night; I sent +Joe Totten to Big Flats after work (in Rochester) to pick up a Chromecast from the nearest Best Buy store.  It added an extra two hours to his drive time, but he did it.  He then came home and set it up (upsetting because I missed that part).

Based on what I was told by my other half about set up, what I have witnessed for myself, and what I have seen others saying so far; this is Definitely worth the $35 price tag.  Very simple set-up; you plug it into the back of the TV, and there is minimal set up after that. Chromecast has awesome Wi-Fi connectivity (I value this especially because the Wi-Fi our router provides is constantly disappointing with EVERY other device in our home), Not even once did it need to stop and buffer once we got our router to play nice (I did say it was crappy Wi-Fi right?).

A note of contention has come up in relation to restrictions on the API; however I find myself in a position where I am able to understand this to at least some extent, and others seem to have an optomistic view as well, in this case, it's Gabe Stein of fastcolabs.com .  Another slight upset was the fear that we wouldn't be able to stream personal content through it, but this concern has been assuaged by Kellex over at Droid-life.com.

As we only bought it yesterday; it's likely that I will have more insight into this amazingly affordable and small device, but for now I'm giving it the "Tottenmom Stamp of Approval".

NOTE We have been able to use the usb port on the back of our tv to power the chromecast also making it self contained essentially.