As I began looking for players, I was quickly struck by how limited the MP3 player market is these days. I suspect this is due to so many people using their phones for music these days, but that’s not a great option for me for a variety of reasons:

• Limits to battery life on my phone make a 12 hour flight (or a 3 hour flight, then an 8 hour flight, then navigating a foreign city…) a bit tricky.
• While I do use my phone for runs (yay for running apps) I don’t like using my phone in the gym, because it’s bulky and I’m afraid of breaking it.
• Finally, my desire for an FM tuner hasn’t changed, and I’m quite fond of the range of formats my Fuze supported (flac, ogg, etc).

So I found the SanDisk Clip Sport MP3 Player. Since I’ve been happy with my SanDisk players throughout the years and the specs pages seemed to meet my needs, I didn’t hesitate too much about picking it up for $49.99 on Amazon. Obviously I got the one with pink trim.

I gave the player a spin on my recent trip to Philadelphia. Flight time: 5 hours each way. I’m happy to report that the battery life was quite good, I forgot to charge it while in Philadelphia but the charge level was still quite high when I turned it on for my flight home.

Overall, I’m very happy with it, but no review would be complete without the details!

Cons:

• Feels a bit plasticy – the Fuze had a metal casing
• I can’t figure out how it sorts music in file view, doesn’t seem alphabetical…

Pros:

• Meets my requirements: FM Tuner, multiple formats – my oggs play fine out of the box, the Fuze required a firmware upgrade
• Standard Micro USB connector for charging – the Fuze had a custom connector
• File directory listing option, not just by tags
• Mounts via USB mass storage in Linux
• Micro SD/SDHC expansion slot if I need to go beyond 8G

We’ll see how it holds up through the abuse I put it through while traveling.

Keyboards have always been tricky though. Ones that come in pink tend to be princess or Barbie themed for little girls, which means they are either too small or of poor quality. I have found some larger, adult-ish pink keyboards, but they have never been mechanical, which is my strong preference. I’m on my keyboard all day, a good keyboard is important.

Then my friend Karen McLoughlin Largent posted a picture of her custom-colored keyboard from WASD Keyboards. It was pink! And mechanical! Be still my heart!

I went with the WASD V2 104-Key Custom Mechanical Keyboard with Cherry MX Blue switches (though Brown was also a contender), no sound dampeners, and all the keys in pink, with Classic layout and function keys, just like my current IBM keyboard.

I was going to crop my messy desk, but if you look close, I have the following pink items peeking into this photo: pen, mini swiss army knife, earbuds, USB cable, USB stick

Oh, and the final thing that made me spend over $150 on a keyboard? They let you have a custom OS key, and Ubuntu (as well as Linux Tux) were part of their default options.

Even better? I live near where they put them together, so I ordered it Wednesday and with no rush and standard shipping I was plugging it in to my computer on Saturday.

I love it. It’s much more clicky than the Model M successor IBM keyboard that I had previously used, which had dampeners, but after an hour I was quite at home with my noisy new friend. Hooray!

I was completely surprised up until the moment he asked. The whole proposal was quite an amazing undertaking, complete with a limo, a professional photographer, a winery rented out for the evening and private catering for our dinner in a wine cave. The evening ended with another surprise: a long, luxurious weekend stay at The Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa.

Once we have the copyright released photos from the photographer I’ll write a more complete post about the whole beautiful evening. The ring also deserves its own post, MJ picked out the diamonds and had it custom made, and yes, those are three pink diamonds.

It arrived today!

It’s really nice, and she does custom colors and makes modifications based on your model of phone. My Nexus One is happy in its new home.

Unfortunately work tore me away from my new toy and I sat it next to my desk. Then, while doing some upgrades this afternoon, I glanced over and noticed a penguin. Yes indeed, on the left hand edge of the case Barbie has a big penguin on her shelf!

Now I’m even more excited! Hooray Tux!

But I can’t take credit for finding these goodies, when Melissa was visiting a couple weeks ago she picked up a pair at Claire’s at The Westfield Mall in San Francisco, when I saw them I knew I had to snag a pair for myself. I tend to describe Claire’s as “that store where all the 12 year olds get their jewelry” but for those of us who like kitsch (and for earrings that match your Ubuntu release codename, yes, those are koala earrings) it’s a wealth of fun earrings and accessories, while I was there I also picked up some more penguin earrings.

And while I’m on the subject of pink laptops, Computer Engineer Barbie (complete with her pink laptop!) has gone on pre-sale and is currently scheduled to start shipping on November 24th. I bought mine!

4 stories of M&Ms merchandise, insane! But most notable was the “My Color” Wall which has M&Ms in all kinds of crazy colors.

Including pink!

So of course I got some.

Pink ones taste better than the other colors, of course.

Now? Thanks to the sharp eye and generosity of Mackenzie Morgan I have an actual pink wiimote!

Thanks for such a thoughtful gift Mackenzie! And also thanks to Mark Terranova for getting it to me, all the way from SELF.

The flashlight in the case is pretty cheesy (my pink Mini Maglite, pictured next to it, is WAY better!), but the rest of it will be quite useful as a case I can toss in my purse for trips to the datacenter, and elsewhere.

While wandering through the aisles MJ spotted this gem:

I bought two. There will now be no question as to which cables on our network go to my desktop!