Something horrible happened to me the other day.  The batteries for my Logitech Harmony 670 remote died and we were out of spares.  Trying to switch from the TV to the Xbox and back actually required my ass off the couch, a handful of remotes, and an Xbox controller…like in the cave man days.  Oh the humanity!

If you’ve never had the pleasure of a Harmony remote, then the above will sound like an over reaction.  If you have used one, you understand fully.  If you have one, but it’s a newer model with a recharging station, I hate you.

For the unknowing.  Imagine all 40 remotes in your house combined into one.  Imagine this one remote was intelligent enough to properly turn on all of your devices for any given activity and have them set to the appropriate inputs automatically.  Imagine you buy a new device, but you don’t have to worry about trying out various codes because the software which configures this remote has access to an always updated database of devices.

Now imagine an army of these “super remotes” and cringe in fear, while I for one welcome our new Remote Control Overlords.

How much freaking electronic equipment do you need to have running in your house that when the power goes out, the sudden, jarring sound of silence is enough to wake you up? It’s funny how quiet it seems until the ever present hum is gone.

It actually wasn’t until I noticed none of the clocks were working that I realized the power was out and that the outage is what woke me up. Luckily it was only out for about a minute and it was roughly the time I needed to wake up for work anyway. Oddly enough, an alarm clock is often unable to wake me up yet somehow this did.

I got a new toy last night. A SanDisk Sansa e250v2. It’s not the latest/greatest MP3 player around, but was a great value for the features it offers. It has 2GB built in and does the standard music thing, video, FM tuner, with voice recorder. The storage is expandable via a MicroSD slot (up to an extra 8gb) and the battery is replacable, which should allow this thing to last awhile. Also, should rockbox add support (the e250v1 is supported), there is all sorts of life I could squeeze outta this thing.

This new player allows me to move on from my old 20GB Creative Zen Sleek Photo which, while it was a good player with lots of storage, was anything but Sleek.