Uselessly wasting this section of the web since 2002!

The History Channel has a reality-TV series by the name of Pawn Stars. It’s about a family that owns/operates a pawn shop in Las Vegas. I have seen many episodes of this series, and it’s pretty good. It’s definitely worth checking out.

However, the more I watch of this “reality” show, the more I find myself calling bullshit on it.

Some of the items that end up coming into this pawn shop are not items one would normally take to a pawn shop. For instance, I happen to have an episode that I purchased from the Zune Store in which an 1890s cannon was brought in. As there are only about 50 of them in existence, and it is a rare collectors item, I seriously doubt that the collector who owned it thought “Hmm, a pawn shop is where I should go to sell this!” And I seriously doubt that after being told that it was worth $40,000 he was more than willing to take just $30,000 like he was offered because the pawn shop “had to make some money off it.”

In fact, so many “rare and valuable” items seem to come into this shop that it makes one wonder if these people were specifically sought out by the producers and a “sale” recorder for the cameras only, or if there are really just that many dumb-ass, lazy people in Las Vegas who don’t want to bother actually looking for a better buyer.

If you collect rare and unusual items, there are about 9 million other places where you can sell it other than a pawn shop, whether it be in Las Vegas or Kallamazoo! The fact that so many of these pieces end up in his shop just screams “scripted” to me.

So, Pawn Stars is completely watchable, and “the old man” is a lot of fun – he’ll make you laugh your ass off – but just like any other reality show, don’t for a second believe that what you are watching is real.

That I never really wished anyone a Merry Christmas on the website. I did it on the other sites, but didn’t do it on my own personal site! How rude of me!

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and got everything they wanted.

I got a couple things for Christmas that I wasn’t expecting: A Zune HD and a LiveScribe Pulse.

First, the Zune HD. This thing is truly awesome! It’s 32 gigabytes, with the most amazing screen I have ever seen on a portable media player. The videos I put onto it to test it out were from the ’80s and not the best quality, but this thing makes them look amazing! Even though the screen is kind of small, I can see everything very clearly. And the music, of course, sounds completely great through the premium headphones I got with my last Zune. (The regular headphones are good, but the premiums sound about 100 times better.)

I have downloaded all of the apps for it that were available. There aren’t that many right now, as Microsoft hasn’t opened the platform up to outside developers yet, but those that are available work seemlessly with the unit. And unlike Apple, all the apps for the Zune are FREE.

Also unlike the Apple, when I hook this unit up to my HD television, it will actuallly play HD versions of the videos!

Now, on to the LiveScribe Pulse.

Chances are you haven’t heard of it before, or if you have you probably thought it was way too much money to spend for a pen!

But it is so much more than just a pen!

I have been playing around with it for the past few days and am truly awestruck over what this pen does!

First, it has a built-in voice recorder, so it will record whatever is being said around you. This is something that would come in handy during school to record the classes. But a simple digital voice-recorder would be fine for that. What makes the LiveScribe better than just a regular voice recorder?

Well, the LiveScribe also has a computer built into it. The reason for this is that the LiveScribe not only records sound, but when used with the specially designed paper, it also records everything you write and draw, and then matches what was written to what audio was recorded!

This works in the best way!

Let’s say I am sitting in class taking notes on the theory of relativity. I am recordiing the class as I am taking the naotes. When he starts to speak, I write down “relativity” on my notepad, and then wait for a few minutes and write the word “Einstein” onto the pad. When I go back later and review my notes, I place the tip of the pen to the word “relativity” and the pen starts to play back what was being said at that time. If I then move directly to “Einstein” it will skip those few minutes of recorded sound and go straight to what was being said as I wrote “Einstein.”

I admit, I talked to myself for over 40 minutes the other day, writing as I did so on the special pad and then went back and the pen played back what I was saying at the time I wrote the notes. It was just too cool!

And the best part: It took up very little space on the 4 gigabytes chip in the pen!

Once I am done with those notes, I can then download all of the notes and the audio to my computer using the LiveScribe Desktop software and remove them from the pen to free up more space. And the software works the same way as the pen, so if I need to review notes again later on the computer, all I have to do is click on a word with my mouse and it will play the associated audio.

While I LOVE my Zune HD, and think it is possibly the best yet in the Zune line-up, I am even more impressed and pleased with the LiveScribe Pulse. This is going to make my note-taking and studying that much more easy for me!