What you want is irrelevant, what you have chosen is at hand
Another Great Ride
Had a late start on a another great ride with Kent today. Left home about 2:30 PM and got home about 7:15 from a really great ride through NE Illinois. Illinois and Iowa take alot of flack for being the flat lands, and that is true, but with all the corn and bean fields green and full, it is still a beautiful drive, especially when its in the mid 80’s and light clouds. Not too hot, not too cold.
Back to work tomorrow and an all day strategic planning retreat on Tuesday… wish it was time for another ride instead.
Tags: Motorcycle, Illinois, Ride, Kankakee, Dwight, Morris
Another Ride today
The rain has held off today once again and I thought I’d take advantage of the bounty of God to head out on another ride this afternoon. About two hours and 75 Miles later I did a nice little loop in the Kankakee River Valley.
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Tags: Kankakee River Valley, Motorcycle
Freedom Ride Today
My buddy Kent and I took a ride out to Marseilles, Illinois today to check out the Middle East Conflicts War Memorial. It was a nice easy 30 mile ride from my house and I’m glad we got an early jump on things. Rather than joining the riders at Route 66 and riding out with the group, we went out ourselves. Had some breakfast and then walked around a bit. Kent and I both bought leather vests, a necessity for high-speed summer riding (espescially without a windshield). They had a nice setup going with an expected 35,000 motorcycles in attendance from a wide range of manufacturers. After the ride I took some pictures of the bike in the driveway. I should have brought the SLR to the event. Need to remember to do that next time.
Tags: Motorcycle, FreedomRide, Eric
Barenaked Ladies Perform at the WWDC Bash
The week took a distinc turn for the better Thursday night at WWDC. Tim and I had pretty much finished eating and walked up tot he upper level of the Yerba Buena Gardens park to get a bird’s eye view of how many people they could actually pack into this relatively small park. 5200 people attended WWDC and I didn’t think they could all fit, but apparently they could, but it was very tight. While eating our Klondike bars and people-watching, Phil Schiller came on the music stage to announce the band for the night. I was expecting a local SF group, to stay for a few songs, then head out. When he announced it would be BNL, I turned to Tim and said “We’re Staying”.
What a great show. I wish the set was longer, but the extra value of the show was that the band are real Mac-heads and related extremely well to the crowd with some inside-politics types of jokes that only Apple fans would get. They made a real connection that even people who didn’t really know their music (Tim) enjoyed. In the video below (not taken by me) they tell Phil Shiller to stick around after he introduces them because “They will need him for some product demos later in the show”.
This morning when I woke up, I Google’d “Barenaked Ladies WWDC” and the first hit I got was of someone’s Flickr posting of this image.
Thats the back of mine and Tim’s head. I think that is our better side.
I guess in the end all I wanted to say was “Great call Apple!!”
Tags: Barenaked Ladies, WWDC 2008, Yerba Buena Gardens
WWDC… Not so Impressive So Far
Currently I’m sitting in the “Information Technologies” lab at Moscone West at WWDC waiting for a session on OS X administration and….. NOTHING. No planned session it seems. It’s all just window dressing for some open Q&A time. This is fine, but that needs to be said… somewhere…
Yesterday was the Keynote, which is heavily covered all over the web and was about on average as far as Stevenotes go. The OS X state of the Union and OS X Server state of the Union sessions, which lasted the rest of the day, were below average from what I would expect. Little useful information was given. They were quite dissapointing the more I think about them. The only useful piece of info for me was… well.. I can’t say. NDA… But even that one thing wasn’t earth shattering or covered in any sort of detail at all.
At the end of the evening was the welcome reception with a few tables of food, with 5200 people trying to access them. It was totally inadequate for the numbers of people involved. For $1500 I’d expect a bit better treatment, espescially from Apple. I wonder if they are becoming victims of their own success.
So, in-short, long lines, sketchy information, inadequate facilities and poor organization have been they halmarks of the conference so far. I hope it gets better…
Tags: Moscone, Snow Leopard, WWDC 2008
Good Day in California
Spent the day yesterday hanging out with on of my gaming buddies, Jeff Lanza, in San Francisco. He lives in San Jose and came up and picked up Tim and I at our hotel and showed us the sights from San Francisco on up to Napa Valley. Along the way we went to the Golden Gate Bridge, saw some redwood forests, stopped at a roadside stand for some fresh peaches and Ranier Cherries (YUM!!), cruised up the 101 and Highway 1 and got an In-and-Out burger (not sure what everyone out here thinks is so great about them other than the atmosphere in the resturant), then up to see wine country through Sonoma and Napa.
After we returned to San Franciso we dined at the Stinking Rose, a garlic resturant, then got some gelato in Little Italy. It was a fun day checking out northern California.
Tim and I just registered for WWDC and are hanging out in Yerba Buena Gardens 
enjoying the great weather and clear blue skies. Heading to Alcatraz this afternoon. Glad I talked Tim into bringing the SLR (and not having to carry it 
Thanks Tim!!)
Also enjoying the AT&T USBConnect 881 HSUPA card here. Got a new driver for it yesterday that allows OS X to support it natively and its working well. Just wish I knew how fast I was connecting at. I’ve downloaded files at up to 220kbs with it out here.
Tags: Alcatraz, California, Golden Gate Bridge, Napa, Sanoma, WWDC, Yerba Buena Gardens
San Francisco - 1st visit
Started my first visit to San Francisco last night. I’ve been to Santa Clara via the Oakland Airport before, but never in SF proper. So far I’m unimpressed. Tim and I got in late, about 11:30 or so to the airport and back to the hotel around midnight local time. We hadn’t eaten since lunch so we went out looking for some food. Now I realize it was midnight, but our hotel is right off of Market and 8th Streets. I would expect something to be open… 4 blocks one direction and all we found was someplace that sold cold sandwiches. Not what I had in mind. The other direction… a Carl’s Jr. with some less than hospitable co-diners. It was really the late night crowd. So a Jalapeno burger it was at 12:30 A.M. Local time (2:30 AM to me).
How can a big city like San Francisco not have a decent late night eatery on one of it’s main streets for a 7 or 8 block range is beyond me. Left coasters… go figure.
Back up and running
Amanda Congdon… has been?
I really liked Amanda Congdon when she was at rocketboom but her latest project seems to be trying too hard to recreate lost magic. While rocketboom was always campy, the promo video for the Sometimesdaily beta makes a stab at social networking, being part of the “in” crowd, and even some sexual inuendo to try to attact viewers to the new show. It just looks bad to me.
Tags: Amanda Congdon, Rocketboom, Sometimes Daily
3G for OS X
I was just reading the BoingBoing gadget blog where they talked about a new USB EVDO modem that is OS X compatible and fits in the USB connector of the MacBook Air. These are good things to be sure, but I’ve been running an AT&T USBConnect 881 which uses the AT&T 3.5 generation HSUPA network as well as HSDPA and EDGE where those services are available.
The software required isn’t native to OS X like some of the other PC card slot solutions, but the SierraWatcher software that runs it is easily available form the Sierra Wireless website and works well. Occasionally the software doesn’t detect the modem, but unplugging and replugging it into the computer fixes that problem. Performance is all that I expected it would be in 3G areas of Chicago and Salt Lake City and I will be using it extensively at WWDC in June. The best part for MacBook Air users is that it fits into the flip-down USB slot without using any kind of adapter, hub, or extender. I’d reccomend it if transfer performance is your priority in areas that have the HSDPA or HSUPA coverage.
Tags: Apple, AT&T, HSDPA, HSUPA, USBConnect 881
Come Back soon...