Every person on the Internet who has some form of bully pulpit is probably going to write about the much-ballyhooed iPad that Apple announced today, so I may as well throw in my two Abe Lincolns.

In short: I have taken an immediate disliking to this iPad.

It’s expensive, considering how little it does — $499 for the cheapest version, which is only 16GB. You can get up to 64GB, but that costs $699. And then there’s all the extra Apple-exclusive crap that they will nickel-and-dime you for: apps, iBooks, etc.

You can’t multitask with it, since it’s not running OSX, but only the stripped down iPhone OS. So you want to run iWorks and do anything else? Sorry, out of luck.

It’s an ebook reader, yes — but only if you purchase the books through the iBookstore. So if you have other DRM-free or PDF ebooks, you’re screwed.

Boing-Boing has a short summary of the iPad’s major features that is pretty good, though I disagree with them on the theory that it will kill the netbook, if simply because of the keyboard issue.

The iPad has a full on-screen QWERTY keyboard, similar to the iPhone, which is fine for typing in a quick Internet search or sending a short message, but as far as doing any real typing? No, no one who has to do any serious amount of typing is going to want to use an on-screen keyboard. The tactile dichotomy between a virtual keyboard and a physical keyboard is just too awkward for any extended use.

There’s more that I could go on about, but I think that’s good for starters. And as a small note: this post isn’t coming from some hatred of all things Apple. While admittedly I am a PC person, I do own an iPod (sadly, Microsoft’s Zune is a flawed product) and wouldn’t complain if a MacBook magically showed up on my doorstep one day.

My issue is with the annoying fervor of the hype and speculation that has been going on for the last six months regarding the announcement of the iPad, not to mention the perception of Apple in the general public.

Like I told my sister earlier: It’s not that I hate Apple; I just think that they sell overpriced products which uninformed people automatically “know” are better, simply because they cost a lot more and are shiny. People who have no idea how a computer actually works will go on and on about how their PC is slow and has nineteen hundred viruses on it, which is certainly not because they’re an idiot and click on malware links or have 900 programs running or still download music from Limewire, but because “PCs suck.” They think owning a Mac will suddenly make their computing life so much better.

So Apple: I already own two computers — a desktop and a notebook — and I like my books analog. Tell me why I need this product?

I had a whole entry typed up last night, recapping what I’ve been up to lately, and it was all good to post . . .

And then my computer farted and reset itself, and my pretty little entry was gone. I immediately turned the computer off and went to read to a book, lest I do something I’d later regret.

So here I am now, attempting to recreate that lost entry.

Tuesday night, I conducted a small experiment involving a cheap bottle of wine, my computer, and my imagination.

And before anyone asks, no, it wasn’t anything like this:

Instead, I attempted to do something that I had never done before: get drunk by myself and write. I realize that drinking, especially with the intent to get drunk, with only one’s self for company, is not generally the most admirable or lofty of goals. In fact, such people are usually termed “alcoholics.” But I wanted to find out, a) was I even capable of being productive whilst hammered, and b) if I were capable, would any of that prose be good?

So around 22:30 Tuesday, I cracked open the finest bottle of $7 wine that Kroger sells, and stared at the computer screen.

Three hours later . . .

I finished the last of the wine, stumbled drunkenly to the bathroom to pee, came back to the computer, and surveyed the damage. I had completed some serious outlining of an upcoming section of the Project of a Novelish Nature, and written a good thousand words or so of that section. I AM TEH R0X0RS! I gloated to myself. Then I dicked around on the Internet for a while longer, and went to bed.

The next morning I checked out the prose, and it wasn’t bad. It needed a little fixing: I omitted a fair number of words, used the word “transmit” three times in a sentence, and almost exclusively used pronouns instead of character names, which made things a little confusing. Some really good dialogue made up for these negatives, so overall I was pretty happy.

All-in-all, I would call the experiment a resounding success. Apparently alcohol and writing mix very well for me, which is about the only thing that Hemingway and I have in common. Not that I plan on doing this sort of thing very often. Drinking, like sex, is much more fun when someone else is doing it with you. That being said, drinking and writing is a fun way to spend an evening, so I’m sure I will do it again at some point in the future.

2010 — and that’s pronounced Twenty-Ten, just to be clear — though we’re not yet a full two weeks into it, is already off to an auspicious start.

Despite the fact that I just got over being sick a month ago, some kind of flu-like thing came back to rape me last Friday, and did so with a vengeance. Thusly I’ve spent the last sixty hours or so doing almost absolutely nothing except watching television and wishing I were dead. Over the weekend I managed to watch the excellent fifth and final season of BOSTON LEGAL, a couple of the HARRY POTTER movies, and a terrible film called DEATH SENTENCE (which was a new adaptation of the book that was originally adapted in 1974 as the Charlie Bronson masterpiece, DEATH WISH).

Today finds me feeling a little bit better. Not good enough to really do anything that might risk setting back my recovery, but at least good enough to be getting bored from all this laying around. Always a good sign, in my opinion. So I shall dick around on the Internet for a bit, and contemplate being well enough to see friends again soon.

Until tomorrow, then . . .

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(This is for part of Technorati’s verification process.)

There we go: just finished porting the blog and everything from joshbales.net to its new home at joshuabales.net.

I had the opportunity to buy the joshuabales.net domain last month for one dollar, so I did. GoDaddy had some sort of sale going on so I thought I’d nab it before some other rapscallion Josh(ua) Bales came up with the idea. Then I thought to myself, Self, now that we own this lovely domain, why not make it our new home on the Web? After all, it might help differentiate us from that other Josh Bales.

And here we are.

If you’re like me and are too lazy to edit your bookmark and add an “ua” to the URL, no need to fret. You can still reach this blog via joshbales.net; it’s forwarded to joshuabales.net, and probably will be for the foreseeable future. I don’t ever intend to give up the rights to my venerable domain. And should anyone else ever decide that they want to own it, well . . . I’ll give it up when ICAAN takes it from my cold, dead hands.

One last thing: as I’m sure you’ve noticed, this joint has a new look to it. Per what has become my semi-annual tradition, I spent the last couple of weeks redesigning the theme. I like it. The minimalist theme suits me.

What do you think?

Head is hurting so bad I wish it would fall off, but I wanted to share with you the Quote of the Day:

“A gentleman’s todger should never be larger than the fine cigar he smokes.” –Winstonchurchil

Sage wisdom, indeed.

Ah, New Year’s Day. A day when many Americans indulge in watching football, and a day when I try to catch as much as I can of the Sci-Fi Channel’s marathon of THE TWILIGHT ZONE.

It’s odd: even though it’s fifty years old, the special effects are dated, and some of the acting is a little on the nose and over the top, THE TWILIGHT ZONE is still an incredibly effective and entertaining show. I’d be blathering during a commercial break one moment, but when the show would return, I’d shut up and just stare rapt at the television. I probably watched four or five hours straight tonight, and could easily have done more had I not started to get a headache.

SyFy — still a truly moronic name change — kept advertising the complete DVD collection during the commercials, but it’s not something that I’m tempted to buy. Part of the fun of TZ is watching it late at night, or during these holiday marathons. I think it would lose some of its charm if you could watch it on DVD whenever you like. I know I’m already looking forward to the next marathon over the Fourth of July.

Edited to add: This post was somehow set to “Draft” status when I wrote it early yesterday morning and didn’t initially appear on the main page. Total web fail, me.

Another year, and, strangely, another decade have come and gone.

2009 was mostly a blah year where nothing interesting or good really happened. I drifted through it like a zombie. Not even an awesome zombie, but more like some zombie that was apathetic about eating brains. It’s like there were opportunities to eat tasty brains passing me by, but I didn’t give a enough of a damn to reach out and sample a medulla oblongata or cerebellum.

And then October 23rd happened: the office where I had worked at for the past three years closed, and I was out of a job. As weird and scary as it was at first, this was the best thing that could have happened to me. It rended me from this unhappy, depressed rut I had been in. Suddenly life got good again. I was writing steadily again. Hanging out with friends again and doing stuff. Going to the gym regularly. And the bone-wearying tiredness that I’d felt for the last couple of years was gone, because now I was able to sleep through the whole night without waking up for several insomniac hours in the middle of it. As I’ve said on this blog before, I was happy again. And still am.

There’s still this whole job situation to sort out, but 2010 is already looking like it will be a much better year than 2009. Or 2008. Or 2007.

I hope yours is, too.