Everyone is looking for that elusive Black Friday deal to top all Black Friday deals, and I have found it in the form of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac. As TUAW pointed out yesterday, there are several deals on Microsoft Office going on today, but the most incredible comes from the New York based bricks and mortor store Tekserve. MS Office 2008 for Mac comes in three flavors. The most expensive of these is Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition. The retail price for this package is $500. The sale price today at most locations (online and in store) is $150. I bought my copy from Tekserve for $90 shipped–a $410 savings over the retail price! It just doesn’t get much blacker than this Black Friday deal.

As it turns out the Mr. Heater Big Buddy was big on looks, but not so big on heating a cold garage! I had actually started with the smaller Mr. Heater before upgrading to the “Big Buddy” because the smaller unit just wasn’t powerful enough. Well, the Big Buddy wasn’t up to the job either. I took one last trip to the store today and picked up the ReddyHeater RLP30 forced air propane heater. While it is quite loud because of the open propane burner and fan combination it warmed up the garage in no time and it came with a hose and regulator (something which cost extra for the Big Buddy). If you want to warm yourself by sitting directly in front of the heater (and moving to keep from cooking one side too long) go ahead and pick up the Big Buddy. It would probably be great for a deer stand or something along those lines. If, on the other hand, you want to heat an entire “space” go with a forced air propane heater. For that matter, go with the ReddyHeater!

My wife gave me my Christmas present early this year (not unusual). The reason it’s so early this year is because with the weather dropping to freezing and below I can start using it now. The Mr. Heater Big Buddy is a propane heater, and I will be using it to keep toasty warm this winter when I’m smoking cigars in the garage. Of course the added bonus for my wife is that I don’t smoke in the basement, but I don’t think she had that in mind when she bought it?

This semester has been difficult primarily because I’m not really very good at research. I don’t like taking notes. I don’t like the process of reading a little bit and then writing few notes and then reading a few more pages etc.  One solution to this problem would be using speech recognition software. Of course, this type of software does not always work the way one would like. Still, I figured it if there were something out there that would work good enough for me to take short notes as I read it would be a real help with the research. It turns out there really aren’t a lot of choices for speech recognition when it comes to the Mac. The one that is available is called MacSpeech Dictate and it is, shall we say, not cheap! Still, I figured that with many many future hours of research to come there might be a good investment.  As for how well it works, all I can say is that I am very impressed. As a matter of fact this entire post was written using MacSpeech Dictate.