I have seen lots of friends and respected news sources bashing Microsoft today with the announcement that the CEO, Steve Ballmer, will be retiring in the next 12 months. First and foremost: I am not a microsoft fanatic. I am a Mac user, and am far more productive on the Apple platform, so take this with a grain of salt. Many of the messages I have seen are lamenting that Ballmer should have...
My grandfather on my mother’s side passed when I was pretty young. I don’r remember when, but I do remember fishing trips, and an annual weekend in Yosemite to play in the snow. Driving the big Ford pickup truck, with a camper on it, we would head out. And there was always an adequate supply of Necco wafers in the cab. We would probably go through 2 rolls each way. All us kids would...
On our trip last week, my wife (again) dropped her laptop. After that, it stopped working. Oops. First thoughts were that it was a failed hard drive. All my utilities failed to find it. So I replaced it with a known good drive. It had a clean install of OS X Lion on it, and was pretty lightly used before I replaced it. I know it was good. The system wouldn’t boot. So I thought maybe that...
With all the buzz lately about the NSA revelations by Edward Snowden, and the surveillance state, I thought I would pick up my copy of 1984 and re-read it. Set in the year 1984, it is a masterful piece of fiction that is remarkably prescient in many of its predictions, given that it was published in 1949. The two way telescreen is particularly poignant, with the amount of listening that is...
I got an email in my inbox today that seemed to imply that I ‘missed’ a big announcement last week. Well, I certainly didn’t remember any big announcement, but if I had I probably would have ignored it. This startup has called themselves “Alpha Software”. Really? ‘Alpha’? Now I love playing with new and edgy things on my ‘puter, and have installed...
Yesterday was my 30th High School Reunion. I hadn’t been to any of them prior, so this was my first. I was unsure what to expect, but I did look forward to it. I am so glad I went, because it was a blast. 30 years is a long time, and it turns out that we all had a lot more in common that we did in school (or apparently). Great to see some old friends, to meet many more people, and to have a...
I have wholly embraced the eBook revolution. As a long time traveler, and SciFi aficionado, I have assembled a large collection of books that I continue to read to mark them off my to do list. Being a fan of science fiction, I have been forced to acquire some of my books by extra-legal means. Since many of the classic tomes of the golden era of SciFi are out of print, and have no official ebook...
As a road warrior, I spend a lot of time on the road, sleeping in hotel rooms. I have learned to deal with loud ice machines, obnoxious families with kids tearing up and down the hallways at all hours, lumpy beds, and loud air conditioners. Doesn’t matter if it is a $90 La Quinta, or a $300 Hilton room, they all have warts. Usually the one thing that grinds my gears is the bed in the room...
I am back in the south bay for my high school reunion, and I visited two places that I have always loved. The good: Guitar Showcase Way back when I first started playing guitar, I was introduced to the legendary Guitar Showcase in Campbell. It is an iconic music store, and naturally has a wide selection of guitars (as well as other instruments). They have greatly expanded the store, and added a...
I manage a couple of facebook pages, one for my employer, and one for a non-profit that I work with (Southern Arizona Greyhound Adoption). I am constantly barraged by Facebook to “promote” a post to extend its reach, and get more responses. We recently took in a hound who had an injury on the racetrack, and we are doing some fundraising to cover the not insignificant vet costs. Our...