Scrambling Eggs Is Easy

On Steve Jobs

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 05:58:41 GMT

In 1992, I was working at the computer lab help desk in Sweet Hall at Stanford. A woman came up to the desk in tears. She explained that she was an art grad student, and had been randomly selected to participate in the beta test of Stanford's new online class-registration tool. The registration deadline was fast approaching, and she couldn't figure out how to use it. After helping her slog through the terminal-based, command-line, completely non-intuitive tool, I realized that there had to be a better way. I had come to believe that computers could -- and should -- be tools that anyone can use, and this wasn't the way to do it. That experience led me to focus on human-computer interaction for the rest of my time at Stanford, and eventually led directly to my current career.

I was reminded of that today thinking about Steve Jobs, and the impact he had on my life and so many others. Had Steve not driven the development of the Lisa and the Macintosh, what would have given me the idea that computers could be used by "normal" people? Had Steve not driven the development of the NeXT cube and NeXTStep, would we have the Web today? Without the Apple ][, the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, where would we be?

Steve Jobs wasn’t an inventor. Steve Wozniak was the one who created the Apple // hardware. The modern graphical user interface was invented at Xerox PARC. And of course, there were plenty of MP3 players before the iPod, plenty of smartphones before the iPhone, and even tablet computers long before the iPad.

What Steve Jobs brought to the table was an uncanny sense of how these technologies could be put together in ways that people could actually use them, and, more importantly, how they could be packaged up in ways that people would buy them. He didn’t always succeed, but when he did, he transformed industries.

Steve’s idea of selling the Apple ][ as a complete package – a case with a built-in keyboard where you just had to plug it into a TV -- was untried in the computing world. It is credited with creating the home computer industry.

When he visited Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1979, Steve saw the value of the graphical user interface that Xerox’s own management never quite got. He incorporated those ideas into the Lisa, and then the Mac – and no matter what device and operating system you’re using to read this, those ideas are still very much part of it.

And of course, the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone, and iPad have already had profound impacts on the music, communications, and (again) computing industries – not only because they have made Apple billions, but because they have shown the path that just about everyone else follows.

When Steve failed, it wasn’t for lack of boldness. His insistence that the Apple /// not have a fan meant that it had a nasty tendency to overheat. The Lisa, and later the NeXT Cube, were just too expensive to go beyond a niche market. One might surmise that he learned from those mistakes – certainly the Apple of the 2000’s has been extremely successful at bringing out the right products at the right price point at the right time.

Perhaps Steve Jobs’ biggest strength was his drive to strip his products down to their essentials. Technologists mock him for insisting that the Mac mouse have only one button, but in hindsight, his decision to drop the no-longer-necessary floppy drive and serial ports from the iMac was brilliant. And the sleek design of the iPad and iPhone are possible in no small part to the simplification down to one big “home” button. Other companies have always tended to think in terms of feature lists – Steve thought about the product as a whole. He may not have been a designer himself, but Steve Jobs certainly personified design sensibility.

In the end, Steve Jobs’ greatest legacy isn’t Apple alone. It’s the way that, by succeeding, he has driven the leadership of the rest of the computing industry – and, honestly, every other product industry from automobiles to kitchen implements – to FINALLY TAKE DESIGN SERIOUSLY. Steve proved that good design, combined with good technology and good execution, can actually sell.

Steve Jobs inspired an entire generation of technologists to think differently about computers and computing devices, and pushed everything in our lives – not just Apple products – to be better. Thank you Steve, and may your memory be a blessing to your family and loved ones, to your colleagues and coworkers, and to all of us who want life to be just a little bit more elegant and a little bit more fun.

Prop 16 is everything that is wrong with the initiative process.

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 06:18:31 GMT

If you live in California and watch any TV or listen to the radio at all, you’ve probably seen or heard ads encouraging you to vote yes on Prop 16, the so-called “Taxpayer’s Right To Vote Act.” The basic claims of the ads are:

Local governments currently don’t have any limits on how much public funding they can put into going into the electricity business (as some cities have done, and others are considering doing).
Local governments can do this without the approval of taxpayers.
The state government is in a massive financial crisis.

So, the ads continue, you should vote yes on Prop 16, which requires a 2/3 taxpayer vote for any attempt of local governments to go into the electricity business. Because it’s your money and you should get a say of how it’s used.

WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP.

First of all, guess who’s funding this campaign? Shockingly, it’s Pacific Gas and Electric, the largest private electricity supplier in California. Because, again shockingly, this initiative would make it harder for local governments to compete with them, by requiring a 66% majority of voters – pretty damn hard to get.

Second, local governments also don’t have any legal limits on, say, spending unlimited public funds on building an escalator to nowhere. Or a monorail. (Monorail!) They do, however, have budgets, and practical limits on how much money they actually *have*. And, oh yeah, they have city councils. Guess how those city council members are chosen? By voters. Don’t like what your city council is spending its money on? VOTE THE BUMS OUT.

Third, the attempts of local governments to compete with private electricity providers has just about zero impact on the state budget, crisis or no crisis.

Why not just be honest, PG&E, and run an initiative to make it illegal for local governments to compete with you? I’m sure you could make a cogent argument on free-market grounds; many would agree with you. Oh, right, but MOST WOULDN’T. So you’d LOSE.

And that, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with the initiative process. PG&E has managed to put an initiative on the ballot to preserve their commercial advantage, while couching it in terms of taxpayer’s rights. And they’re spending about 1,000 times what the only organized opposition has managed to raise, blanketing the state with their ads. I fear that people who don’t bother to look past the surface are going to vote this thing up in big numbers. I’d love to be wrong.

I hope a future version of the California constitution will require a simple majority vote in the state legislature to pass a budget, and a 2/3 majority of all voters to amend the constitution. Because we have the opposite right now and it’s killing us.

Gizmodo, You Suck

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 05:52:49 GMT

When you work for a tech company, especially a high-profile one, at some point in your career you end up with access to information that your company would prefer not be public. Sometimes it’s stuff that nobody would care about, and sometimes it’s a prototype of the next generation of one of the hottest products on the market.

Companies have all sorts of reasons for keeping product details secret. Sometimes it’s for competitive reasons. Sometimes it’s because companies are scared of the so-called “Osborne Effect”, where pre-announcing a new product might adversely hit sales of what you currently have on the market. And sometimes it’s just because the products aren’t done yet. Anyone who’s worked in technology knows that features sometimes get cut or radically changed at the last minute. If those features are secret, nobody misses them. But if everybody knew about them, then they are made more important by their absence – which can ruin the impression one might otherwise have of the product that’s left, which might still be great.

At the same time, I can totally understand why people are excited to find out what’s coming next from Apple, and why journalists are so dogged in pursuing their stories. It’s the companies’ job to make products that people care about, and it’s the journalist’s job to report what people want to know about those products regardless of what the companies think. That’s the role of a free press.

What sucks is when those journalists go and reveal the identity of the otherwise perfectly innocent person who screwed up by getting drunk and losing his phone in a bar – irresponsible, but hardly criminal. Apple almost certainly knew who he was. Whether his coworkers knew as well is between him, his management, and his coworkers. As is whether they fired him or not (it appears that they didn’t, for which I’m glad for his sake). But frankly, the rest of us don’t need to know who he is. He’s just an ordinary guy in the Valley who now has the infamy of being the guy who lost the 4G iPhone. For him, it might be a huge trauma, or it might just be a funny story at this point – but that should’ve been for *him* to figure out.

Revealing the identity of a criminal can serve a public good. Revealing secret information can certainly serve a public good. But bringing worldwide attention to a relatively minor, if embarrassing, situation, making it into something much bigger than it is – that’s just rude.

At this point I don’t know how I feel about the criminal investigation that the San Mateo County DA’s office has instigated. The freedom-of-the-press media-literacy junkie in me is bothered by the severity of the raid into a Gizmodo editor’s home, but the citizen-of-Silicon-Valley in me can’t muster much sympathy for these guys. Publishing the guy’s name – in a fairly smarmy, self-congratulatory article – was just a dick move.

[Of course, as always, these views are mine alone, and should not be taken to reflect those of my employer, family, friends, or anyone else affiliated or not affiliated with me.]

We did ok, I think.

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 00:22:42 GMT

Warning: this post contains a bit of Obamamania.

I just finished reading The Audacity of Hope, our president-elect's 2006 memoir/policy reader. The quick review: every page left me thinking "how did we get so lucky to elect this guy?".

I've been a big fan of Barack Obama since his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, but the Obama of this book comes off as even more intelligent, more nuanced, and just plain more honest than I would've expected from any politician. Simply put: at least from my perspective, he Gets It (tm). I certainly don't agree with everything he says -- his opposition to gay marriage is the most obvious example -- but throughout he comes off as a guy who tries to live a meaningful life, is grateful for what he has, and has learned a lot from his own challenges and mistakes.

I truly hope that President Obama will stay true to the Barack Obama who wrote this book. If so, we're in good hands.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

What I'm thinking about

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:32:05 GMT

I haven't posted in forever, but I keep thinking about things that I'd actually like to post. For example, I meant to post after Prop 8 passed, on the theme of "life may suck now, but life is long." I've been glad to see the nationwide protests and the court challenges, and I'm still optimistic that gay marriage will be legal in California in the next few years. In the meantime, I've adopted a simple credo - gay marriage is valid and recognized in my book. I have a few gay friends and coworkers who got married recently, and as far as I'm concerned they're as married as I am. This may seem like an obvious statement to other gay marriage supporters, but as I see it it's a critical statement to make. If we, as members of our society, recognize explicitly that gay marriage is valid, then eventually the law will have to follow.

Anyway, I also wanted to post about what I've been reading lately. It's mostly centered on politics, which admittedly surprises me post-election. I guess this year I'm finally not burned out. The book I'm in the middle of is actually Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope. I'm a little embarrassed not to have read this before the election, but the farther I get into it, the more excited I am for the man who we elected. He's not only smart, but in this book shows a true sense of honesty, humility, and a recognition that politics should be more than just horse races and gamesmanship. I'm halfway through, but highly recommended.

On the less serious side, I just reread RA Candide's Articles of Federation. This is basically The West Wing set in the Star Trek universe after the events of Nemesis and some subsequent books. It's a fun read, although most of the non-human characters seem to sound like the same Aaron Sorkin characters as the human ones do. But the author does a pretty good job of creating a plausible political system from what we've seen of the Federation government in tv and movies.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

A personal plea to vote NO on Prop 8

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:51:55 GMT

I've been meaning to write this post for a while, thanks to hermetic and another friend for prodding me to do so. I'm also emailing it to a bunch of family and friends.

On November 4, by means of Proposition 8, California voters will decide whether or not to add the following words to the California State Constitution:

"Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

I don't think anyone who knows me well will be surprised to know that I'm opposed to this proposition. Some of you may be surprised, however, that I consider this the single most important item on the ballot this year. More important than alternative energy, more important than Congressional races, and even more important than the presidential election. Yeah, you read that correctly -- I am more concerned about Prop 8 than about who our next president is. (*)

The simple impact of Prop 8 would be to override the California Supreme Court's decision in May that stated that, according to the equal protection clause of the California State Constitution, the state cannot prevent people from marrying simply on the basis of sexual orientation. Gay people who have freely chosen to commit themselves to a life partner, and accept the rights and responsibilities of being a married couple, will be told that their commitment is neither "recognized" nor "valid."

I'm a happily married straight man, so you might wonder why I care so much about a law that would never affect me personally. The answer is that it will and does affect me personally, and very deeply so. To put it simply, I do not want to live in a society where the rights of my friends and family are curtailed simply because they are gay or lesbian. I believe that gay relationships have no less potential to be loving, caring, healthy, and ultimately society-benefitting than does my own marriage. I believe that gay relationships are just as "valid" as my own.

I'm usually pretty good at finding the rational fundamental assumptions on both sides of an issue, even though I disagree with one or the other. I don't think it's irrational to believe that higher taxes on higher-income people are unfair (although I disagree). I don't think it's irrational to believe that affirmative action does more harm than good to minorities (although I firmly disagree). I don't even think it's irrational to believe that illegal immigrants, because they are illegal, don't deserve any access to health or educational services (although I really, really, really disagree with that one).

But frankly, the only fundamental assumption that I can find that allows Prop 8 to make any sense is that gay people, and their relationships, are inherently inferior to straight people and their relationships. That gay commitments are less valid than straight commitments. I more than disagree with that viewpoint -- I find it fundamentally irrational and morally wrong.

I know that many religious people believe that homosexuality is immoral. However, I know many other religious people who believe that gay relationships are just another expression of God's love. No church, mosque, or synagogue should (or, I believe, will) ever be forced to perform a gay marriage, but neither should they be *prevented* from doing so.

I am asking you to do at least one of the following, but if nothing more, please do #1 (I am doing all of them):

1) If you live in California, please vote NO on Proposition 8. If you're thinking to yourself, "I already was going to do that," then please consider doing either #2 or #3 also. If your conscience simply does not allow you to do so, please abstain from voting on the measure.

2) Talk to other people you know in California and ask them to vote no on Proposition 8. Even if you know that they are voting no, please still talk to them and make sure that they vote. If they don't live in California, they have friends or family who do!! Please make sure to talk to the people who are most likely to vote yes and see if you can change their mind.

3) Make a donation at http://www.NoOnProp8.com.

Feel free to send this message on to anyone you want or to use parts of it in your own appeals to others. Everything you can do to help defeat Proposition 8 is greatly appreciated.

If you would like to talk to me more about Proposition 8, please email me or call me. Please help me and so many others in defeating this measure.

All my best wishes,
Adam

(*) I'm still very concerned about who our next president is. Just not quite *as* concerned. :)

Big money + Incredible Complexity = DISASTER

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:10:47 GMT

I finished watching "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" last night. I read the book last year, but figured this was as good a time as any to watch the documentary.

The situation with Enron was, of course, reminiscent of what's been going on in the news in the past few weeks and months. A seemingly solid company all of a sudden collapses because of rot on the inside -- overly complex financial transactions that seemed to be worth billions, but turned out to be virtually worthless.

Now, what happened at Enron was at least partially due to outright fraud, and I'm not particularly convinced that the failing banks and other institutions are guilty of anything that simple and specific. But it's clear that, just as with Enron, bankers, traders, and executives gambled big money on transactions whose incredible complexity disguised their actual risk. Financiers saw huge upsides, and ignored or missed the huge downsides.

It seems to me that these problems would be greatly lessened if finance could somehow be simplified. You get a mortgage from a bank, that bank is responsible for collecting on the mortgage. You put money in a mutual fund, that mutual fund invests in stocks, bonds, and other securities that are CLEARLY linked to reality. One or two levels of indirection max before you get to someone who actually sells *stuff*. Risk is part of capitalism, but in order to work, it has to be understood.

You have got to be kidding me, part deux.

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:47:00 GMT

Apparently, Wasilla was charging rape victims for rape kits and forensic exams while Palin was mayor. She says now that she was opposed to this policy. But did she stop it? No, it took the Alaska State Legislature to stop this practice.

Yeah, *that's* the kind of change we need.

Personally, I've had enough of an administration that pursues heartless policies to the point of moronic absurdity. If you like This American Life, you should listen to this show -- even if you don't, it's worth taking a look. It's the little things that matter.

You have got to be kidding me.

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:56:05 GMT

The more I hear about Sarah Palin, the less impressed I am.

I'll admit, when I heard about McCain's VP pick I thought it was a bit of an obvious grab for disaffected Hillary voters, but that it was still a pretty gutsy move. Now I'm just disgusted.

I'll ignore the stuff with her family. Any sane person knows that you can't control what a 17-year-old does.

What pisses me off most is her so-called stand against government waste. She didn't stop the "Bridge to Nowhere" -- she supported it until after it gained a notorious reputation. (see here for more info). She's not an anti-waste crusader, she's just an expedient politician. Selling the Alaska governor's luxury jet was a good idea (even if she didn't actually manage to sell it for a profit), but who's paying for the private jet she's now using for the campaign? Expedient politics.

And, of course, there's her mocking of "community organizers." ("I guess the mayor of a small town is like a community organizer -- but with actual responsibilities.") Mayors run cities & towns, and most of the time probably do a fine job. But community organizers and the movements they create have been the actual agents of real change in this country. Think suffragettes. Think the civil rights movement. Those were grassroots community movements that actually accomplished major changes in our government and in our society.

And finally, she's a religious-right, put-government-into-my-bedroom (while taking it out of my pocketbook) ultraconservative who would take the country in, I think, the wrong social direction.

Sarah Palin may or may not be "qualified" to be vice president, but I'll say one thing -- were she to end up in the White House, the changes she'd bring are pretty much the opposite of the changes we need. At best she's just another expedient politician, and at worst she's an ultra-right-winger who wants to impose some idyllic notion of the 1950's on our society.

In conclusion, go Barack. :)

Reasons why my wife thinks I'm a goof, part XXXVIII

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:38:02 GMT

I woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare. Seems that in the dream, the Stanford Athletic Department had decided to move our basketball seats around. While all of my friends chose to pay extra for pretty decent seats on the lower level of the arena, I decided to save a few bucks and got cheap seats that appeared to be in the end zone area -- but when I arrived at the first game (against apparently-#1 USC), I discovered to my horror that they were actually outside the arena entirely, and offered a *very* obstructed view of the game -- couldn't even see the scoreboard.

So I went to the ticket office in the arena to complain, and the best they could do was to offer me general admission tickets that didn't guarantee any seat at all -- basically, I'd just have to find empty seats and hope that their rightful owners didn't show up. By the end of the dream, I was so pissed off that I started hitting tables and walls.

The fact that bad basketball seats qualifies as a nightmare says a bit about how nice life is for me right now. :)

A Slide Show Of Peruvian Kids Using One Laptop Per Child Computers.

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:10:37 GMT

This is the first time I've actually seen OLPC machines used in the real world for their intended purpose, and it's pretty amazing to see. I admit to being a bit skeptical as to how big an impact OLPC will really have -- I'm sure that these kids are amazed and have their eyes opened up to a bigger world around them, but wouldn't it be more useful for them to have, say, food? Still, seeing it in the real world gives you a visceral feeling of how powerful these things can be to change outlooks.

A Slide Show Of Peruvian Kids Using One Laptop Per Child Computers.: "Geri Smith did a remarkable job in Peru for the Old Laptop Per Child story in the current issue of IN--Inside Innovation. Check out her narrated slide show of the children. Amazing photos...."

(Via BusinessWeek Online -- NussbaumOnDesign.)

Halfway to 70, a third of the way to 105...

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:33:04 GMT

So far, so good. Had a nice little get-together on Saturday (yay home-made whipped cream :), and a lot of fun hanging out with the guys in the evening in honor of a guest appearance by former SinDex guitar player Stu.

I'm trying out Twitter now -- follow aelman if you're interested. I've had a lot of trouble motivating to do a full LJ post, and Twitter seems a lot more lightweight. Of course, so is Facebook status updates, so I'm still not 100% sure, but it's all fun. :)

One of the more interesting things about social networks to me is just how many there are, all good at different sorts of things: Twitter and Facebook for quick updates, Facebook for connecting to old friends, Flickr for photos, etc. Sites like FriendFeed and SocialThing seem to be trying to aggregate them, which is very much a good idea, but don't quite seem to have hit the mark yet. If anyone finds a really awesome social-network aggregation system, let me know!!!

Red States and Blue States

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 02:39:38 GMT

I first heard of Barack Obama when he gave a speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention. He was described as an up-and-coming star of the party, someone who might be a strong presidential candidate...in 2012 or 2016. I guess he got started a little earlier than that.

Anyway...when I heard that speech, I was pretty inspired. He spoke about the fact that our country isn't as divided as the pundits like to imply -- the fact is, we are one country, one nation, and we fundamentally care about one another, and that's how the United States manages to hang together. This vision really spoke to me, and I did what any budding musician would do with that inspiration -- I did a remix. For some reason, I never felt like I "finished" it, so I never posted it publicly before. Truth is, it's pretty well finished, and I think now is exactly the right time to put it out there and hope that somebody else finds it inspirational. So, without further ado, here's my remix of Barack Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention:

Red States and Blue States.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Update...

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:25:17 GMT

Ooookay, so I couldn't quite bring myself to dump Quicken, I'm going with the 60-day money back guarantee for Quicken '08 for Windows. So far it's light-years ahead of Quicken for Mac. Which is cool, but also depressing at the same time.

On the bright side, further screenshots of Quicken Financial Life do look good, so I'll probably end up going back in a couple of years when they hit feature parity with the Windows product.

Intuit has given up on me

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 01:27:26 GMT

So the thing I was *really* waiting for from Macworld this year was the announcement of Quicken 2008 for the Mac. Intuit has traditionally upgraded Quicken once a year, and I've generally skipped every other version. Quicken 2007 was released in 2006 as a PowerPC product, and I assumed that Quicken 2008 would be Universal Binary, and would have better UI, more online integration, and generally would be taking its cues from the Windows version. Since Quicken '08 for Mac wasn't released in 2007, I figured Macworld would be a good time to announce it.

As background, I've been using Quicken to track my personal finances since 1993. I started on Quicken for Mac, switched to Windows in 1998, then back to the Mac in 2001. One of my biggest frustrations was that a lot of features were implemented significantly better on the Windows version than on the Mac. Many of the features I enjoyed on Quicken for Windows in 2000 -- special handling for 401(k)s, for example -- STILL were not available in Quicken 2006 (some were added in '07, but not enough for me to consider it worth upgrading). Moreover, Quicken 2006 has a lot of irritating bugs. I've never lost any important data, but it often crashes on me, not to mention disabling buttons that should be enabled, which makes it hard to do certain things (editing an account or a scheduled payment, for example).

Anyway, the upshot is that, according to Ars, at Macworld, Intuit is showing a new version of Quicken for the Mac, called Quicken Financial Life for the Macintosh. QFLM is rewritten from the ground up, and takes a lot of design cues from the iLife suite and from Web 2.0 apps like Flickr, etc. etc. It looks really nice.

BUT. Two big issues:
1) Initial availability for the beta is scheduled for August. For the BETA. That's two solid years after the release of Quicken 2007 for the Macintosh.

2) The initial version of QFLM will be more limited than Quicken 2007 -- basically it'll handle basic checking/savings tracking, plus tracking investment holdings. Like the recently-announced Quicken Online, it will not track mortgages, 401(k)s, etc.

This is a showstopper for me. In the 14 years I've been using Quicken, I've gone from a college student with simple financial needs to an adult with a mortgage, stock options, retirement plans, and taxes to pay. Quicken 2006 is doing an OK job of tracking my finances, but every time it crashes when I try to modify a scheduled payment, I cringe and look forward to a new version.

So, screw it. I've been a loyal Intuit customer for a long, long time. I'll probably continue to use TurboTax Online for my taxes, and I may even return to Quicken someday -- but for now, I'm going to try running Microsoft Money under Parallels. If I have to use Windows for my personal finance software, I might as well try the software that I get an employee discount on.

It's not that I don't understand software development -- it's hard, and it takes a long time. I do understand that Intuit has to make decisions about their priorities. But if Mac users who actually have adult-complex finances aren't a high priority for them, then I also don't feel the need to continue giving them my business. Sorry.

Macworld: Time Machine tidbit

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 21:09:11 GMT

Apparently, the Time Machine feature page now indicates that you *can* back up to another computer over a wireless network, as long as it's running leopard. This makes me feel good, since I'm using that to back up my laptop right now (I thought using an unsupported feature, but maybe not...)

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:45:51 GMT

Is it just me, or are the rules for online video rentals (Amazon Unbox, and as of this morning iTunes) just stupid? It's great to have 30 days to start watching a movie, but 24 hours to finish means that if you're wont to falling asleep in the middle, you're completely screwed.

At least if you had 48 hours, you could watch in two successive evenings. Stupid studios. They're leaving money on the table -- I'd be happy to rent if it were 48 hours instead of 24.

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:19:08 GMT

Thanks to mschlock for tagging me on this :) 2007 in 24 words:

Company got bought. Can't complain about transition. Celebrated one year anniversary, YAY! Learned about real estate, bought house, will likely be unpacking throughout 2008. :)

Anybody need a desk?

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:00:36 GMT

So the new place (did I mention here that we're buying a condo? We're buying a condo!) has a lovely built-in desk unit in the basement bonus room, so I'm getting rid of my beloved tri-level computer desk. Free to anyone who can haul it away in the next week or so. :) Photos are here.

9 years, ~120 gigs, thousands of songs played...

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 20:19:24 GMT

And it all comes down to tonight. 9PM at the Cardinal Lounge in San Jose, CA, Patrick and my last gig as regular members of Sinister Dexter. For those of you who can make it, see you there, and for those who can't, I'll be thinking of you. :)

Earthquake!

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 03:21:06 GMT

Wow -- that was definitely the most I've ever felt an earthquake. Apparently a 5.6 centered in east San Jose, about 11 miles east of Milpitas.

It took me a little bit (and Tobi saying "Earthquake") to realize what was happening. We got under a doorway, it lasted at least 30-45 seconds. A little freaky.

If you're tone deaf, this isn't funny.

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 02:46:03 GMT

Via Create Digital Music:

Apparently, a few days ago, Van Halen did a show in Greensboro, NC. The last song on the set list was their hit "Jump." For some reason, they didn't actually have a keyboardist; rather, they played a recording of the signature keyboard track. Unfortunately, the recording was recorded digitally at 44.1 kHz, and was played back at 48 kHz, thus creating a whole new tuning that the guitars couldn't *quite* match.

Doh!

Sinister Dexter this weekend!

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:17:40 GMT

So I always forget to post here, in case any of you might be interested in coming -- but not this time!!! :)

Dexter returns to his favorite South Bay bar!

Friday & Saturday, September 28 AND 29, 9pm - 1am
The Cardinal Lounge
3197 Meridian Ave, San Jose
no cover, 2-drink minimum, 21+

And keep your calendar open for the following shows...
October 26 - Grant & Green Saloon, San Francisco
November 9 & 10 - Cardinal Lounge (again!)

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 22:03:11 GMT

Seen on Google Quote of the Day:

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
- Albert Einstein

Sinister Dexter Live in San Jose TONIGHT!

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 20:10:35 GMT

I keep forgetting to post gig announcements -- we haven't been playing much lately. Fortunately, we're in the middle of a 2-night set at the Cardinal Lounge in San Jose, so I can actually remember to post that we'll be back there TONIGHT from 9PM-1:30AM. Come by!