There are multiple rooms of various sizes. We had a group of 4 and paid $25/hour. The room was comfortable and had plenty of space for our group.

You could see the lyrics on screen easily from any location in the room. The sound system was good and loud, though this also meant you could hear sounds from other rooms if you didn’t have any music playing.

The selection of music in English was adequate. The background music for the songs wasn’t the best that I’ve heard, but it wasn’t the worst either. It definitely doesn’t sound as good as CD+Gs that you might buy yourself. Also, the songs were only listed by title. It would have been nice to have them cross-referenced by artist and genre.

They sell water, soft drinks, and beer at the front counter. It’s reasonably priced – water is $1. There’s no food.

The bathroom was clean.

You park on the street, so you might want to leave the big SUV at home.

Technology I used in 2001:

- Nokia cellphone for mobile and long-distance calls

- landline for local calls and Internet access

- dial-up Internet access

- company provided laptop with Windows NT 4 for work and for getting online at home

- basic cable

- standard definition 20″ TV

- cheap battery-powered alarm clock

Technology I’m using in 2010:

- iPhone 3GS for all calls, MP3 player, Pandora, yellow pages, maps, mobile web access, gaming, e-mail (personal and work), controlling my Apple TV, alarm clock, calendar, and contacts.

- NOTE: no landline

- cable Internet access with wireless router

- Apple TV

- Mac mini

- 17″ HP laptop with Windows 7 (personal)

- 10″ Dell laptop with Windows XP (work)

- Samsung Internet-connected Blu-Ray player

- 65″ Panasonic Plasma HDTV

- DirecTV with dual tuner HD DVR, NFL Sunday Ticket, and ESPN Game Plan (no premium channels)

- Hulu for catching up on shows that I may have missed

- Netflix for DVDs and streaming video (but I’m unimpressed with their streaming content, so I’ll probably cancel when football season resumes in Fall 2010)

- PS2 used primarily for Karaoke games

- Harmony remote that controls my Sony receiver, Samsung Blu-Ray player, DirecTV DVR, Apple TV, and Panasonic HDTV

They’ve got a great web site with access to all of their music. Here’s one of my favorite albums:

The process took 5-6 hours. It was easy, not a lot of hand-holding needed. I didn’t wipe the drive and start fresh. Rather I installed it as an upgrade to Vista.

After using it all evening, I’m underwhelmed. It doesn’t seem to boot any faster. It does wake up from sleep faster, but it also takes longer to go to sleep.

The OS assumes way to many things, like the fact that I would want to put all of my pictures and videos into Windows Media Player to be viewed at once. NO. I do NOT want to do this. It was a pain to undo this.

After installing, I decided to start uninstalling a bunch of software that came on my HP laptop. It took forever to uninstall things. This felt much slower than Vista and XP.

I wish I’d kept my $49.

I have 2 games recording and I’m watching the RedZone real-time highlight channel on my iPhone. RedZone is great!

Maybe I’ll stop complaining about how much this costs.

So I’m spending Saturday night with Def Leppard, my favorite band from when I was in Junior High. They were a great band even before Pour Some Sugar on Me, back when Rick Allen still had both arms.

High ‘N’ Dry had some great songs, most notably High ‘N’ Dry (Saturday Night) and Bringin’ On The Heartbreak. It came out in 1981 when I was still in Elementary School. But I remember these songs from the radio when I was in 4th and 5th grade. AC/DC Back in Black and For Those About to Rock were hot then too.

I was in Junior High when they really hit it big with Pyromania in 1983. That album kicked ass! Everyone was listening to it. Best songs were Rock of Ages, Photograph, Foolin’, Too Late for Love, and Rock Rock (Till You Drop). I still remember the first time I heard this album. I was at a friend named Carl’s house listening to the record in his older sister’s room. BTW, she was hot, but the album was hotter. Good times!

It was a long time before they released another album. Though they did release a single with remixes of Me and My Wine (previously only available as the B-side to the Bringin’ on the Heartbreak single from 1981) and Bringin’ on the Heartbreak (the original was much better). Me and My Wine sounded like it should have been included on the High ‘N’ Dry album. It was a great song and the video was pretty funny.

In the meantime, their story is a true VH-1 Behind The Music classic. I won’t retell it here, but you can read it here. Despite all their setbacks, their next album was even bigger than Pyromania. They released Hysteria in 1987. It was HUGE! It gave us Pour Some Sugar on Me. But I still prefer High ‘N’ Dry and Pyromania.

I got to thinking about some of the sites I used to check out all the time. One of them was Phone Scoop. I used to LOVE phonescoop.com. Checked it out all the time. Loved seeing all the new phones. Then came the iPhone. Since then, there’s no reason to look at anything else. Nothing else is even close. Game over.

I loved my old Nokia smart phone even after it died until the minute I got my hands on my first iPhone. I forgot about the 6620 pretty fast, despite the many years of service it gave me. Despite the fact that I had been through 3 Nokias and had positive experiences with all of them.

It’s funny how one product can change things so much. It’s that good. If only AT&T didn’t suck so bad.

I can’t wait for Apple’s next game changing product. Maybe it will be a tablet. Though I’m also waiting for the CrunchPad (do a search for it on TechCrunch). But I’d really love for them to do something cool with the AppleTV. Hopefully mostly in software so that my older model can benefit.

I think this officially makes me an Apple fanboy. But they earned it, so I’ll wear the tag with pride.

IPhone 3GS owners bemoan its battery life. The many capabilities of Apple’s iPhone 3GS are also a drain on the device’s battery. Buyers are finding that the device has trouble making it through a workday without a rest stop at the electrical outlet…

…Repair company IFixit.com, which specializes in Apple products… dismantled the 3GS on the day it was released and found that the phone’s battery was about 15% smaller than the one in the original iPhone.

The new model is smaller and sleeker, however, and Apple may have sacrificed some battery capacity in favor of a lighter phone, analysts said.

Considering the fact that my old iPhone’s battery was dying is the reason I upgraded, this bums me out. But I still think the 3GS is a great phone.