It was just one of those weekends that was needed, I have a friend from out of town I’m hanging out with for a bit. Other then that if I’m not riding I’m pretty much at home.

I managed to watch a few movies, a lot of Japanese Animation, and I took a 2 – 3 hour nap on a couch on Friday. It was well needed, and I still slept early that Friday night because I knew I was going to go riding in the morning.

I also passed by the Coop and picked up one month’s supply worth of KDD ice cream, not really for me, but for friends to have a selection when they come over. Usually a friend of ours keeps getting us KDD, so I’m addicted again to KDD. The surprising thing is that Petra and KDCow have taken up a lot of marketshare and shelf space while KDD has dropped back a bit and thats disappointing.

Back to being lazy, I wasn’t that lazy just relaxing at home reading magazines and catching up on some books. Organizing a few things on my PC and seeing which series I haven’t watched and so I downloaded them to make sure I have them for later reference such as The Wire, Bleach, Naruto, and a few other shows. I would be active in the mornings and lazy in the afternoons, it just felt good to relax for the past two days.

Since purchasing my iRiver Clix2 I have been sorting out the music in my mp3 player. I have been doing a decent job of organizing the music on my computer but there are probably lots of duplicates in different hard drives, but the one thing I have decided to do at least for you mp3 player is to adjust the ID3 tags to reflect the correct information.

I tried a few different softwares but nothing really managed the music correctly and easily, until I stumbled onto MediaMonkey thanks to Lifehacker. This software does a really good job of music library management, and fixing ID3 tags with a little help from the user.

You can batch edit ID3 tags if they are from the same Album to get all the Album Art, they get all the Album Art from Amazon and you can get the ID3 information from Amazon as well as FreeDB. It is a bit of tedious process but once its all done you do a lot of music organized with a lot of the Album Art attached to your music, and I really do enjoy having all my music organized, so at this point I’m going to have to do that for all my music. For a about 100 songs it took me about an hour and half, it would easily take a couple of days for all the songs that I have. There are two version available the free and the pay version, the free version is perfectly good to organize all the music you have so need to go for the pay version and it can integrate with many different music players, but I still prefer to drop the music into the player myself.

Link: LifeHacker

The search started early morning, I usually place my work phone on the pile of books right next to the door since its the farthest it could be from me and I won’t forget its location. One morning I put my hand where I thought it would but it wasn’t there, so then I thought it was in my car but it wasn’t there either, so I came back and searched the room and I kept calling it. The phone was ringing but I couldn’t hear in it in the car.

I tried searching the car again even though I thought it wasn’t going to be there. I could hear it ringing when I called, but no sound in the car. So at that point I tried tracking my own steps and the places I could have taken the phone out. Lucky for me I only take out my phone at work or at home, not at random places or when I’m visiting some place. So there were only a few locations I could have left the phone.

Possible Locations:

• Work Location 1
• Work Location 2
• Home
• Car

There were only two places left, and after getting to location 1 and it wasn’t there so there was only one more place or the damn thing was lost. Lucky for me when I went there I found it under a pile of papers that I was going through in office location 2 when I was working late in the evening. I’m lucky that all my contacts are in Outlook so I just have to sync to get things going back again, it just really is bad to lose a phone.

I do this every once in a while, I save up all the items I want from Amazon, then I sift through them and adjust the items. Sometimes I take things off, and sometimes I add a few things. There were some really good deals on HD-DVDs, and there were some classic movies that I had to have. The funny part is I haven’t seen Blade Runner even though I am huge sci-fi fan so this is something to watch. I’m also picking up a lens I have been looking at for a while, I have a few lenses in mind but this Canon fixed lens will do a great job for my need.

• Alpinestars SPS Gloves
• Blade Runner (Five-Disc Complete Collector’s Edition) [HD DVD]
• Army of Darkness [HD DVD]
• The Italian Job [HD DVD]
• Highlander – The Search for Vengeance (Animated)
• The Bourne Trilogy (The Bourne Identity / The Bourne Supremacy / The Bourne Ultimatum) [HD DVD]
• M*A*S*H – Martinis and Medicine Complete Collection
• Harry Potter Years 1-5 Limited Edition Gift Set [HD DVD]
• Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM Digital SLR Lens for EOS Digital SLR Cameras

Now I just hope I get my items in the next coming weeks.

After passing by Alghanim Electronics I remembered that they sold iRivers, so I decided to check out if they had the Clix. It turned out they had the Clix 2 with 4GB space and it was being sold for 67 KD and came with its docking station. The 8GB version is sold for $233 on Amazon, so I thought to purchase it and try it out, the size is honestly perfect so I thought it would be easy to use.

The interface is nothing short of fantastic, very easy and simple to use. I watched a couple of episodes of 30 Rock on it, and it integrates seamlessly with my Kenwood Headunit in the car. The battery has lasted a while now, and I just keep on filling it with new music. One thing I noticed about it more the any other mp3 player I have used, its loud and clear, the volume goes from 0 to 40 and most mp3 players would stop at around 28 – 30 of the Clix volume, but this just keeps going. This is a perfect feature for when I read since I need it be loud from the wind. Right now I think the best interface possible with amazing features it the iRiver Clix 2, but I will have a full review once I go through it completely. When they fix my Creative Zen I will see what I will do with it.

The past few weeks have been a bit hectic, between all the work responsibilities and social commitments. In Kuwait you have that extra amount of work where you have to go family or make sure you spend enough time with family or visit a friend’s wedding because you have to. I do enjoy doing most of what I do, but sometimes there just isn’t enough time in the day.

The other day I was falling asleep while having lunch/dinner (coming late from work as usual) and I had things to do so I had to go out, by the time I get home and finish up all the other tasks its already 12 am so I wouldn’t get to sleep until 12:30am or 1:00am at that rate. It just keeps going around until one day I just completely shutdown and I have to sleep no matter what I wanted to do. Trying to find that balance point is nearly impossible, I seem to be walking around it and sometimes I can balance things out and sometimes I can’t seem to get the balance and I lose on sleep.

I got this warning from my laptop that my battery is reaching a point where it should be repalced since its life span has shortened. This battery lasted me about 1 year and 3 months now which is pretty good for everyday use. I knew this was going to happen at a certain point, in the beginning the battery would easily last 4-5 hours now it barely lasts two hours which isn’t too bad, and its dropping below the two hour mark at this point.

Since I had an idea about this I ordered my spare battery a few months ago, and I’m going to start using when my battery is barely able to be used, even if I get an hour out of it I don’t think thats bad. The one thing about the Dell Latitudes that I like is their ability to control screen power so you can maximize battery power, you can almost completely switch it off.

I can’t imagine my luck with this product. My first MP3 player in 99 was a Creative Player and it has 32 MB which was huge back then. Now I got the Creative Zen 8 GB from the Virgin Store in Mall of the Emirates. I thought it was going to be great and I could use it without any issues, I tried it since their were a lot of them available to tried at different Electronic stores int he mall.

I read online that a lot of people were having software and hardware issues with this player but it also got a lot of good reviews so I thought to try my luck.

I just had no luck with the product:

• I picked it up on Friday night and charged it for four hours as stated, and I kept getting a white screen. I tried everything to get out of the white screen but nothing happened.
• I took it back to Virgin on Saturday and when I gave it to them, they immediately replaced it with a new one.
• They tested the new one by switching it on and trying it on a plug which seemed to work and I could see the interface and everything was working.
• I picked it up on Saturday and charged it, while charging it went into recovery mood.
• I didn’t have a chance to get out of that mode until getting to Kuwait.
• There was no solution to get out of Recovery Mode, except to upgrade the Firmware
• So I erased the current Firmware and tried installing the new Firmware which I downloaded from the Manufacturer.
• After 99% of the installation of the Firmware and rebooting, it did this all on its own. Everything seemed working fine until it said “Firmware Problem”
• The only solution based on the website is to send it to the main reseller which is difficult since I am in Kuwait and I am not aware how it is in Kuwait.
• Now the Search Begins!

Avoid the Creative Zen

Link: Amazon

After some deliberation and looking into a few options I went with the Creative Zen and picked it up from Virgin in Mall of the Emirates. It had all the features I was looking for all in a small package, and it was readily available in every electronic store in the Mall of the Emirates.

There were two versions but I went with the 8 GB version, but there was also a 16 GB and 32 GB version which were only available online. It fit perfectly in mind hand and it is very thin, so I was very happy with the purchase.

Price: 899 AED (67 KD)

Checkout of the hotel, everything was pretty much ready. I wanted to make one stop before going to the airport but I was running late. I wanted to pass by the Tristar in Dubai and see their setup but didn’t have a chance, it would have taken over an hour to go to the shop and come back because of traffic but I wasn’t sure I had the time.

There wasn’t too much traffic on the drive to the airport, and it was really nice and cool on the way there. This time I was checking into the Business Class which has a different entrance, made things a lot quicker. After checking in I decided to go get the E-Gate Card since it would make entering and exiting that much simpler.

The airport was packed full of people, after security there is that long walk way from the security to the checkin, I don’t think they could make it any damn longer.

When I got to Kuwai the airport was packed with people, the immigrations were over flowing. It felt like it was friday market and it was a free for all, just pure insanity. I managed to get my bags quickly and got to my car in the parking pretty quickly.