Probably one of the funniest articles I’ve read on programming all year.

Every friend I have with a job that involves picking up something heavier than a laptop more than twice a week eventually finds a way to slip something like this into conversation: "Bro, you don't work hard. I just worked a 4700-hour week digging a tunnel under Mordor with a screwdriver." They have a point. Mordor sucks, and it's certainly more physically taxing to dig a tunnel than poke at a keyboard unless you're an ant. But, for the sake of the argument, can we agree that stress and insanity are bad things? Awesome. Welcome to programming. from Programming Sucks

(via Khürt, Thanks, man!)

Update: whoops forgot the dang link!

I’ve been out at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference all week in San Francisco drinking from the fire hose of new information related to all the goodness they released on Monday. Music always plays a big part at almost every Apple event from the music they play between sessions to the guest band that plays the wrap up “bash” at the end of the week. This year Bastille played a set.  They weren’t bad. Not a band I would seek out but they have some quirks that intrigue me. The band is obsessed with the TV show Twin Peaks and are fond of doing covers. Last night they played TLC’s “No Scrubs” and just for fun they mash that up with the guitar riff and a verse or two from The XX’s “Angels”. Anyhoo, I couldn’t find that track on Spotify so I’m throwing in “Laura Palmer”. Not my typical pick but what the hell it’s catchy and it was fun to pogo too at the show.

open.spotify.com/track/6pk…

Black Moth Super Rainbow member, Tobacco dropped a new album “Ultima II Massage” a few weeks ago and my pick for the week is “Eruption (Gonna Get My Hair Cut at the End of The Summer)”. I really like BMSR and Tobacco seems like he’s a major component of their sound. I especially dig some of the more throbbing-spacy-wavy tracks. The video for “Streaker”, directed by Eric Wareheim, is NSFW and pretty disturbing. Watch it with the lights on.

open.spotify.com/track/2Qf…

I’m just getting around to listening to Woods April release “With Light and With Love”. I like what I hear. My pick for the week is the title track. It kicks off with a McGuinn-esque guitar riff that weaves it’s way through the various structures the band has erected in this song. I’ll ask for forgiveness in advance. It’s a bit long but it is complex enough to hold my interest through the full 9:07. Another less lengthy track which I also dig is “Moving to the Left”. I can’t wait to hear more from the band. I’ve been a fan since their 2011 release “Sun and Shade”. Enjoy!

open.spotify.com/track/6QD…

I’ve been trying to make sense of Apple’s acquisition of Beats by Dre. This Verge article made me understand that the Beats hardware business is very similar to Apple’s. They sell well designed hardware at high margins. That makes perfect sense. Then I started thinking about how do you deal with two iconic brands merging together like that? Will iPhones suddenly be packaged with a little sticker or stenciling on the back of the phone itself that says “Audio Powered by Beats”? I don’t think so. But you can’t just buy Beats and toss the brand. Then it hit me. What if Beats becomes the core of a new iTunes? What if Beats (the brand, the headphones, the music service, the execs, their relationships, everything) becomes the new music eco-system for Apple? .

The Beats acquisition is the beginning of the end of iTunes. iTunes is a bloated desktop app which is overloaded with functions. It’s how we buy music, movies, etc. It’s how we used to buy books and apps before the iBooks and App stores. iTunes needs to be broken up. It is being broken up and this move by Apple is how they handle the music aspect of this transition.

If this is Apples intent are there other media related companies Apple could buy in TV or the movie industry? Do the try to build as in iBooks or buy as in Beats for the rest of what’s left of iTunes? This will be fun to watch. Maybe as fun as hearing Dr. Dre say a few words at a WWDC keynote.

I’m not a big fan of country and western music. But when I came across Sturgill Simpson’s “Turtles all the Way Down” I couldn’t just toss it onto that heap of music reserved for cowboys crying in their beer. I mean how can you ignore a song with lyrics like:

There’s a gateway in our mind that leads somewhere
far beyond this plane,
Where reptile aliens made of light open you up
take out all your pain

Posting “Rattlesnake” by St. Vincent from a self titled album that dropped late last year.  St. Vincent (aka Annie Erin Clark) has had an interesting career so far. She’s been a member of Polyphonic Spree and performed with Sufjan Stevens, The Mountain Goats, and David Byrne. “Digital Witness” has been making the rounds on commercial radio and you should definitely check it out. “Rattlesnake” written after her walk through the Texas hill country (sans clothing) was interrupted by an actual rattlesnake.

open.spotify.com/track/4gr…

I woke up in a hotel room in Cleveland Ohio yesterday morning. Mid way through my morning routine I discovered my iPad 3 was missing. It wasn't in my bag but it only took a fraction of second for me to realize where it was. The night before I had flown to Cleveland from Chicago on a late flight. Minutes before I had dozed off I had placed the iPad in the seat back pocket in front of me.  It happened to me once before but in that case someone from the airline called me thirty or so minutes after I left the airport to tell me I left it behind.  I received no such call this time.

I had configured the "Find My Device" feature of iCloud on this iPad which has helped me locate it a few times when I've misplaced it or left it at the office.  So I thought I would just login to iCloud and see if my iPad was at the airport locked up in some lost and found cabinet with dozens of other similar devices, scarves, gloves, pens, sunglasses, etc. I was flying back home that night so I figured I could just pick it up on my way out of Cleveland. I clicked on the link to show the map with the location of my iPad. There it was indicated on the map as a bright green dot but it wasn't at the airport. Crap. It was at a residential address in a suburb of Cleveland, a bad suburb of Cleveland. Shit! It looks like someone involved with turning that airplane around last night decided to take it home.

I called the airline.  Explained the situation.  I filed a missing property report. Gave them the current location of my iPad. While they were sympathetic they advised me to call the Cleveland police. At that point a bunch of thoughts entered my mind.  Maybe the person brought it home because lost and found was closed?  Maybe they were going to bring it back to the airport when their shift started again? If I get the cops involved would I be making someone's already difficult life way more difficult? Damn it! Who's dumb enough to steal an iOS device and leave it on! Since my iPad had a lock screen the person who took it couldn't just get in and wipe it. I decided to use the "Lost Mode" which allows you to send a message to the device. I wrote, "Hi, I want my iPad back. I won't press charges." and I included my phone number.  Within minutes someone shut the device off.  The green dot on the map turned into a grey one.

I called the police and filed a report. They asked me all the details. They also took the address that I had obtained from iCloud. The officer who took the report mentioned that this has happened before and they didn't have any luck getting the device back. He said he would get back to me. I felt bad involving the police. They probably had way more important stuff to deal with than this kind of petty crime.  But they took all the information and said they would follow up.  I thought that would be the last I would ever talk to them again.

I was in town with one of my account execs to meet with a customer so I was in meetings most of the day. It was in the back of my mind the whole time.

About an hour later, during a customer meeting, my phone rang. It was a Cleveland number.  Since I was with the client I let it go to voicemail. During a break I called the number back.  The person who owned the phone had set up a "ring back tone" which is basically a song that plays instead of the normal ringing sound.  The song the person set up was the theme song from Hawaii Five-O by The Ventures. I laughed out loud because I had a pretty good idea this was the number of an officer from the Cleveland PD.  Turns out I was correct.  After he picked up my call, he said they had looked up the address, talked to the airline, and confirmed that a cleaning contractor lived at that address. He said he didn't have a warrant or anything but he was going to go over and "knock on the door" and call me when he knew anything.  My hopes of getting my iPad back were lifting at the same time my thoughts about the person who took it were sinking. They were in deep do-do.  At this point even if they brought it back to the airport lost and found the airline and the police knew they had walked off with it.  This person was going to lose a job over this at a minimum.

Fifteen minutes later my phone rang again. I couldn't take the call so I called back when we got to a break in the customer meeting.  I called back, listened to the the Hawaii Five-O theme, and then the CPD officer picked up. He said he had no luck getting anyone to answer the door but he had a feeling someone was in the house.  They probably knew they were in trouble.  He said he would try again later. I went back to my meeting.

Our meeting with the customer was over and we had a lot of time to kill before our flights home, so we decided to take a quick tour of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  As we were buying the tickets I noticed I missed a call.  It was the CPD officer.  I called his number back, listened to the Hawaii Five-O theme, and the officer picked up. He told me he had recovered the iPad from the person who stole it. I was blown away.  I thanked him profusely. He told me he was going to drop it off with the CPD at the airport. I would need to fill out some paperwork but I could pick it up on my way out of Cleveland.

I consider myself lucky. This wasn't a cheap iPad. It was a 64GB model with wifi and cellular.  It would not have been cheap to replace.  I did have iCloud "Find My iPad" turned on but a more competent thief would have turn the device off, making it impossible to locate, and just DFU restored the device back to factory settings. (iOS 7 would have eliminated that but I did not upgrade that device. It was still running iOS 6.) Finally, the CPD did a great job connecting the dots and retrieving the device. I am very grateful.  As for the person that took it, they have probably lost their job over this. I feel bad but taking that iPad was dumb. It would have been so much easier to have done the right thing. Hopefully they won't do it again.

Oh... one other odd thing happened. Toward the end of our tour of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame we entered the Hall of Inductees.  There is a film loop of all the Inductees accepting their awards, performing and giving interviews playing in the hall. When we walked in the inductees from 2008 were up on the screen.  One of the bands inducted that year was The Ventures.  Life is weird.

 

 

Ever since it’s introduction in iOS 6, the iOS Passbook has become an indispensable feature of my iPhone. At any given time it contains at a minimum 3-4 passes and at times I have as many as 10 items stored in Passbook. I put everything I can into Passbook. Airline and train tickets, museum and event passes, and store loyalty cards all get stored in one convenient place. I’m delighted when I interact with merchants that support Passbook and I try to avoid those that don’t. Using Passbook has eliminated having to print boarding and other travel related passes, which has probably saved me quite a bit of money on paper and ink jet cartridges over the last few years. Typical boarding passes print in color. The extra info junk printed on every airline boarding pass, even though the boarding pass doesn’t take up one full sheet of US Letter sized paper, typically results in two sheets of paper are used for a single pass. All of it wasted. Not so if you are using Passbook. Passbook even ensures that the right pass is available on the lock screen of my phone just when I need it. This feature works great with travel or timed event related passes. When it’s time for me to hop on a train the train ticket is just there on my iPhone lock screen. Because I travel a lot, this reduces travel stress and anxiety. Before I leave home I don’t have to remember where stored my printed boarding pass (”Is it in my bag or my jacket or on the printer?!?”) In boarding lines, I’m not fumbling around looking for the right ticket. As someone involved in the business of software and technology, I like to think I’m making the world better and delighting customers with the work I do. I can wholeheartedly proclaim that Passbook has simplified and enhanced this small part of my life. I hope someone at Apple picks this up and forwards it to the team responsible for creating this magical feature of iOS. I’d like to let them know how great that product is and buy them a few beers.

I recently returned from a three week, three country, trip in Europe. It was a family vacation, no contact with the office, and we had an amazing time.

I’m a firm believer in packing light. I try to stick to the “one person, one bag” rule which is difficult to achieve when it’s your wife and teenage kids you are trying to convince. It was practically impossible when we first started traveling  but over the years I’ve been winning them over.

twitter.com/stevegio/…

My iPhone goes with me wherever I go but this trip I decided to leave the laptop behind and travel exclusively with the the iPad. At first my family protested and even I had some concerns, but other than my wife and daughter missing a full keyboard, it was a big success. Here are some take-aways for anyone on the fence about further lightning your load by traveling all iOS.

Gear and Cellular Connectivity

I took my iPhone 5, my old iPhone 4s, an iPad 2 and an iPad 3. I left my US AT&T SIM in my iPhone 5.  I have an international calling plan on this phone normally, but I only used it sparingly to call the US.  I also took along an old iPhone 3 for my wife.

I dropped a Vodaphone pre-paid SIM in my iPhone 4s and the iPhone 3 for local calling in Europe so we had a low cost way to call each other and to make local calls. I paid a bit extra to get data on the iPhone 4.  This worked well but Vodaphone was not the best carrier for data.  There were some areas where the data wouldn’t work and we covered a lot of ground.  I guess I could have called and debugged the situation, I was on vacation, and it wan’t the end of the world. Paper maps, train schedules, etc still work fine in the modern age.

Power and Charging

I took the iPad 2 and 3 so I needed the small power brick to adequately charge these devices. Fortunately the brick deals with the different voltages all I had to do was buy the Apple World Traveller Adapter Kit to get the plug adapter I needed. It’s a little pricy but it comes with any possible adapter you would need in the world and it does work to adapter you laptop power brick if you need it.

Network Connectivity

While I did use European SIMs for two of our iPhones, I did not do that with the iPads.  So we were limited to WiFi only. Don’t let this discourage you. WiFi is pretty ubiquitous in Europe.  Each of the two apartments we rented, the three hotels, and the one B&B we stayed at during the trip, all had free WiFi access. Many cafes and places you’ll find on-the-go also have WiFi.  That’s handing for looking up train or tram information while dining al fresco. We had zero issues finding good bandwidth for email, web browsing, and uploads. It made researching places we wanted to see and getting map directions easier.

Photo Upload/Backup

I take a lot of pictures when we travel. This trip was no exception. This was also one of the reasons I felt most apprehensive about leaving the laptop behind. After a day of picture taking I normally sync my SD card to iPhoto, then use iPhoto to upload to Flickr. Since I’m not doing a lot of photo editing while I’m on vacation I do this primarily to make sure I have a backup of my raw photos in multiple places and to clear out my SD card.

To interface my iPad to my SD cards I used the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit. Getting the photos to Flickr turned out to be slightly more complicated. Flickr upload is apparently broken in the iOS version of iPhoto.  I searched around the App Store and discovered PhotoSync and it worked just fine uploading all my photos to my private set for archive.

Local Apps

One thing we discovered is that many European museums, cities, and points of interest have iOS and Android applications that you can download.  Some of these apps help plan you visit, get the latest information on special exhibits, and even enhance your tour.  The Louvre in Paris, for example, had an audio guide you could download for the iPhone. We found a number of these applications very useful.

Other Travel Apps

Trains, Trams, and subways are the way to get around European cities and almost all of them have iOS apps to help plan your trip. Some have English versions if you don’t speak the local language but most can be operated with minimal local language skills. I found it fun to try to figure out some of the advisory notices.  I found these apps indispensable and many worked without a network connection. Also get local weather apps! They are more accurate than the ones you depend on in the US. Most US based weather apps will not have good coverage for some areas.

Entertainment/News/etc.

We filled our days with sight seeing but in the evening it was nice to come back to our temporary home read books, news, catch up on email, or play a game. For this kind of down time it goes without saying the iPad excels at home and it worked just fine outside the US. The only thing to watch out for is that most video services like Netflix and HBO Go would not work overseas.  One notable exception was MLB At Bat which allowed my son to witness the collapse of the Phillys much to our chagrin.

Mailbox

You can imagine what you email inbox looks like after three weeks of vacation.  I cheated a bit here and did check my personal and work email every day for anything urgent.  One tool I found made it so much easier was Mailbox. I’ve been using it on my iPhone and iPad to make processing emails for actions and I love it.  The killer feature for me on this trip was the ability for Mailbox to “snooze” messages until a later date.  That meant I could scan all my work email, respond to the critics, delete the junk, and then “snooze” all the other messages that could wait. This kept me with a clean inbox, and conscious, for the entire trip. Of course when the “snooze” date arrived so did all that email. All good things must come to an end I suppose.

Conclusion

Leaving the laptop behind was no problem for us. I think our iOS devices were more than adequate to help us travel and keep us connected and informed. The web and apps are everywhere.  They make our lives easier at home and enhanced our travel experience abroad. The reduction in weight and bulk of dealing with an extra laptop bag was worth the trade off of not having a full sized keyboard and access to non-iOS apps. It kept us light and agile which made traveling from place to place easy. I think we made a great decision.

Last night I dreamt that I arrived at the office early. No one was there. I plugged my laptop into the monitor on my desk and refreshed my browser to access my Gmail account when, instead of the normal inbox view, I was greeted with a slick splash page.

"Welcome to Google+ Messages!" blared the interstitial. As I clicked through the slick web tour, festooned with beautiful photos young people, I read how I would be enjoying a new social messaging experience! Google had taken the next step in the evolution of messaging (which looked oddly like Facebook Messages) and integrated Gmail into Google+. I could now share messages with people in my circles, who could comment on every thread. My entire email inbox was splayed out into an activity stream with +1 buttons.

Like Taylor on that beach far in the future I screamed, "YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! OH, DAMN YOU! GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!"

Then I woke up. It could never happen...right?

I hope that thought went through everyone’s mind when Google launched Keep. It certainly was on James Fallows’ mind when he saw the announcement.  The name of this product must seem like a cruel joke to Reader users. What incentive do they have to keep any of their free (or even paid) products running?  The free products don’t bring in any revenue and what they consider strategic today may not be tomorrow.

A better proposition for end users is to depend on paid products from a smaller company that wants to build a sustainable business. Beware of free. Why invest in Keep when Evernote exists?

“Officially, Google declared that “sharing is broken on the web”…As it turned out, sharing was not broken. Sharing was working fine and dandy…“ – James Whittaker “Why I left Google”

Whittaker’s exit post is an interesting look into one person’s take on what’s going on at Google right now. The few lines above really struck a chord with me. Whittaker goes on to state that sharing is happening a lot, mostly on Facebook, which is true but it doesn’t have to be that way. Yes, it’s easy to share on Facebook (maybe too easy) but starting a blog and publishing on your own site isn’t that much more difficult. Discovery isn’t a problem either since Google search indexes everything and if you want notifications services like Twitter, or better still App.net, can replace the wall/activity stream of content gulags like Facebook and Google+.

Whittaker quotes his daughter as saying “social isn’t a product…social is people and the people are on Facebook.” Quite true. But the people are also all on the Internet and it’s full of great ways to connect and share that don’t involve turning your life over to one company. It might be easier but why give them all the power? Because everyone is there?

I’m playing with Writing Kit and I think I love it.

There Is No Non-Human Moral Authority

All moral laws are humanly produced. The question is which set of human-created laws we should follow and why.

Excellent essay. I wasn’t aware of Big Think until today. Making it part of my regular reading. That’s probably a great way to start the new year.

When the first plane hit we only noticed the lights flickering and the chirping of the power supplies attached to our computers. A few minutes later the phone calls started coming in from family. Something hit one of the trade center towers. I was on the phone with my wife listening to her telling me to leave the city and come home, when the second plane flew past our building and crashed into the second tower. This time we all heard the plane hit and we felt the blast. I went out into the street to see what was happening. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. Both towers on fire, paper and other debris was raining down from the damaged floors above. My first instinct was to run to the site. I had friends there in those buildings and I wanted to lend a hand. My heart was pumping and I felt numb. The only thought in my head was to help. Get to the towers and help. People I passed were in shock. Some were crying. Sirens were screaming everywhere. A woman fainted her friends caught her. I didn’t understand why, what did she see? When I got a block away from the south tower entrance I saw a police officer. He was directing traffic and people away from the area. I asked him where the people in the building who were evacuated being taken. He didn’t know. I asked him how I can help. He couldn’t say because he didn’t know. I looked up and for the first time I saw people falling from the buildings. It was like time stopped. I had never seen anyone die before now I was watching, helpless, as many people were losing their lives violently at their own hands or in the fire raging 80 stories over my head. At that instant I was enraged and impotent. I wasn’t ready for this. There was something horrible happening that was out of control and no matter what I did there was nothing I could do to make things better. Then I looked back at the police officer and he said the best thing I could do would be to go home to my family. I walked/ran back to my building. I went back upstairs to the 7th floor. I called my wife to tell her I was safe and that I was going to try to make it to the Staten Island Ferry and leave the city from the south. I started to get off the phone with her when I heard her say, “Something’s happening….”. I felt our building shaking. “I’m coming home. I’ll be OK. I’ll get in touch soon.”, I told her just as the phones went dead and the power went out. I walked out into the hall. I knew the elevators would be down so I made my way to the stairs. I opened the door to the stairway and it was pitch black. There were no emergency lights. Feeling my way down and trying to count the floors as I went, I started down from the seventh floor. As I got down to about what I had estimated to be the second floor, I met three other people who were making their way down. Thankfully they had flashlights. The doors weren’t marked but we got to the bottom of the stairway and opened the door out to what we hoped would be the lobby. We stepped out into the room and it was still dark. “Maybe we’re in the basement?”, one person said. I noticed the marble on the walls. “No.”, I said. “We’re in the lobby.” “Why is it so dark?, another person asked. Then I heard someone shouting, “Help us!”. I spun around. Where was that coming from? “Help us!”, I heard again. This time someone came around a corner. It was a black woman. Maybe a police officer. I couldn’t tell she was completely covered in dust. She was having difficulty breathing. It was in her eyes. “Water!”, someone called behind her.There were people streaming in from the street. They were also covered in dust. “What happened?”, I asked. Another police officer passed by and said, “The tower fell.” Just then a janitor came from behind us in the hall way. The second officer asked him where we could get water. He fumbled for his keys and opened up one of the ground floor offices. There was a small kitchen in there. The few of us who were not choking were helping people into the kitchen, getting their eyes and throats clear, and helping the people who were coming in from the street. A person in a wheelchair, a woman with a baby, a British film crew. When things stabilized I opened an office door that faced West Street. I looked out the window and saw the entire street, as far as I could see covered with grey dust. A few people were stumbling, half/running, down the street. I banged on the window trying to signal them to go to the front of our building. Someone walked in to the office with a handheld camera. He was looking at the video he shot only moments ago as the tower collapsed. I couldn’t believe my eyes. By then people were talking about this as an attack. Quick rumors were circulating about more planes in the air. Someone said the Pentagon had been hit and the White House. As I turned away from the video and walked back to the window a police officer burst into the office and shouted,“Everyone away from the windows! The second one is coming down!” We all ran out of the office and back into the hall. I felt a shudder, like a small earthquake. When it stopped I ran back to the office and looked out the window. I couldn’t see anything. Just brown/grey dust blocking out the sun. I decided as soon as this dust settled enough that I would try to make it to the ferry. I walked back to the office with the kitchen. I grabbed an empty water bottle, filled it from the tap, and put it into my bag. I found some coffee filters and wet them down. They would do as dust masks if the dust didn’t clear completely.I walked to the lobby entrance. The dust still choked the streets and I could almost make out the trees in Battery Park only a hundred feet away. Someone had a radio and was listening to the confused reporting in those first few hours. The Pentagon had been hit but not the White House. There were still planes unaccounted for but no other buildings have been hit. It was definitely a terrorist attack. Cell phones were useless. No one could make any calls. Someone walked outside to smoke a cigarette. They walked outside into that terrible cloud to smoke. A few minutes later the dust settled some more. I decided to leave. I walked outside. There were no sirens I could hear. It was strangely quiet. I walked down into Battery Park. A merciful wind was keeping the western side of the park closest to the the water free from smoke. People were congregating into this small oasis of clean air. A police officer announced that they were going to try to evacuate people from this area by boat. The injured would go first. So I decided to wait. As I was waiting my cell phone rang. It was a colleague. She asked if I was OK. I told her I was fine and if she could call my wife to let her know where I was and that I was safe. She said she would and we hung up. I tried to make an outbound call but I couldn’t get a signal. At least my wife would know I was safe. I waited a few more minutes and tried the phone again. This time I got though to my home. I told my wife my situation and bits and pieces of what happened. I told her how I was getting out. I told her I loved her. People from the crowd started asking me to use my phone. I was afraid if I hung up I wouldn’t get another signal so I asked people to give me their names and the phone numbers they wanted to call. I relayed them to my wife and we got messages to about a dozen families, including two NYC Firemen who had just escaped the tower’s collapse.Finally some tug boats pulled up to the seawall. One by one they loaded up people who were waiting in Battery Park and they took us over to Liberty State Park in New Jersey. During the short ride across the bay no one spoke. We all just looked back in horror and grief at the spot where the World Trade Center had been standing and was now burning ash.

Originally published on giolist.com

Mike Lofgren, Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

An unemployed worker in a breadline in 1932 would have felt little gratitude to the Rockefellers or the Mellons. But that is not the case in the present economic crisis. After a riot of unbridled greed such as the world has not seen since the conquistadors’ looting expeditions and after an unprecedented broad and rapid transfer of wealth upward by Wall Street and its corporate satellites, where is the popular anger directed, at least as depicted in the media? At “Washington spending” - which has increased primarily to provide unemployment compensation, food stamps and Medicaid to those economically damaged by the previous decade’s corporate saturnalia.

Probably the central political mystery of our time.

[youtube www.youtube.com/watch

“I don’t even care if they listen to what comes out. I’m concerned with getting it out. Just giving people the option of something other than the norm of American entertainment.” – Frank Zappa

I have been called a whore and a traitor by my friends, but I did it anyway. Last week I turned off my Motorola Droid, and activated an Apple iPhone 4 on Verizon. – Technology Viewer

This sounds a lot like how I felt when I switched from a Sony Viao 505 running Redhat Linux to my first G4 Macbook. Sometimes its just about getting stuff done.

About a week ago my family was gathered in the kitchen – all of us – a rare thing these days what with the kids growing up and all. We were talking about the coming new year and suddenly it dawned on me that when I was their age I thought that by now I’d be living in outer space. I explained that I thought I’d be shuttling back and forth between the Earth, Moon, and Mars, repairing computer systems, visiting friends and family, and generally cavorting in zero G. At first they all looked at me like I had suddenly sprouted another head. That was before they burst out into raucous laughter. I was puzzled by their reaction. They thought it was the most ridiculous thing they had ever heard. I didn’t probe as to where they thought they’d be in 10 or 20 years but I think their dreams are much more down to earth.
That makes me sad. Then again when I was a kid human space exploration was a big deal. The Apollo program, Skylab, Voyager, Viking were all big milestones for mankind. Today space exploration so mundane it hardly gets a mention on the news. It’s all but disappeared from the public consciousness, so much so that kids don’t dream of being astronauts. So today when we sit down to our New Year’s dinner I plan on asking the kids what they think their future holds. I’m curious what they will say. They are my time machine. They are going to see how this life, this movie, is going to turn out – at least the one I’m living in. I wonder how they think it’s going to end.

I fly a lot. It’s an occupational necessity. When the TSA was first introduced after 9/11 I though it was a good idea to have stepped up and consistent security procedures at our airports. So after years of dealing with the TSA, I believe we now have a system that is clearly out of control. We have all heard the TSA horror stories. At first they were few and far between but now it seems like I hear of these transgressions on a weekly basis. The latest incident at San Diego International Airport I find particularly distasteful and alarming. Full body scanners? Invasive unwarranted search? What’s next? The body scanners the TSA wants to deploy are slow, potentially harmful (especially for frequent flyers), and a violation of our rights. The TSA and other agencies say they can’t and won’t store those images, but there are no guarantees those scanner images won’t turn up on the Internet. It’s time to stop this madness. Start at Fly with Dignity. Get involved. Get educated. Then call you senator and congress person and ask them to take action. It only takes a few minutes to register a policy concern and it does have an effect. I had an hour of my live back when a customer cancelled a conference call so I called my senators and my congressman. I was done in 15 minutes and that includes contacting my state legislators. Here in NJ we have a local resolution to send a signal to legislators at the national level to stop the deployment of these body scanners in our airports. There has got to be a better way. Stepping up questioning at airports is probably a better idea.