Peter Gabriel – Mercy Street – Live in Milan 2003

I must see Peter Gabriel in concert someday. One of the greatest musicians of our time.

SanDisk, where are the G3 SSDs?!

http://www.sandisk.com/business-solutions/ssd.aspx

I’ve been waiting for these puppies since their announcement at CES in January. Availability was slated for mid-summer. Well… it’s August, so where are they?!

Many people don’t realize that the biggest bottleneck in a computer is not the processor, or the speed of the memory, but the hard disk itself. Below, you can see the difference between a hard disk and SSD.

Once they come out, they will immediately start pushing down SSD prices

After 9 years, Pismo G3 still going strong

It’s amazing how well this thing has held up since getting it for college in 2000.

Under the hood is a 500Mhz G3, 768MB RAM, a 60GB hard drive, running OS X Tiger 10.4.11 with Safari recently updated to 4.0.

It can still do your Gmail, Google Maps, and load complex sites as ESPN and the NY Times.

Not fast enough for playing YouTube videos without being choppy, but that’s ok.

A fine machine, and still a first-class citizen on the Interwebs.

Ready for iPhone 3GS

Apple’s servers were overloaded as usual today from all the WWDC announcements, so it took me a few tries to reserve a new iPhone. But I finally got through, so I’ll be picking one up 19 June at the SoHo store probably around lunchtime. The confirmation e-mail said that it would be available anytime during store hours, and that I should be on the lookout for concierge staff wearing orange t-shirts to help me checkout. Maybe I should take a half day or something.

This was really good timing for me since I partially shorted out my 1st gen iPhone from the rain in the Five Boro Bike Ride last month and have only been using it as an iPod.

Also, my predictions came true for the Snow Leopard upgrade priced at $29. I was betting that it was going to be made free, excluding S+H, but this is close to it.

Home for the week

I’m taking some time off and came back home Tuesday night.

Work last week was pretty bad and I really needed time off to get out of NYC and back to my safe harbor, my refuge. I’m pretty sure that I was close to having a nervous breakdown.

So far, so good. I’m feeling better and I’m making good use of my time to do the things that I like.

I think I’m late to the game in realizing that personal productivity is important to one’s mental health. Historically, in the countless number of time I’d come home from college or work, I wouldn’t have a real agenda of things to do. If there’s friends in town, then go out and get drinks with them and stay out late. If I couldn’t think of stuff to do, just browse the web until late at night and sleepin the following day, virtually squandering it.

But this time, I’m playing it differently and made some plans. I have a reading list of stuff to read, and am making plans to go places this year. Last night, I watched the Dreamers on the train ride home, and starting reading some of Paul Graham’s essays, as well as before going to bed. Today, I met my sister for lunch, got my bike tuned up and took a 7 mile ride around home (more on this later), drove around town to get stuff and see how much the area has changed. My motivations for biking probably would’ve been nonexistent had I not signed up for the Five Boro bike ride on 3 May (Nerd will be participating) as well as a similar event in Chicago on 24 May (Nerd present). Having not biked in over 2 years as my bike was sent back home after moving to Brooklyn, and to do a dry run on the day of the 41-mile Five Boro ride I figured, would be futile.

More thoughts to come shortly, including my mother’s reaction to me being bald.

Steve Jobs’ Successor

Ever since the news of SJ’s medical problems, I’ve been thinking long and hard about who could potentially succeed him, should he ever decide to step down.

I started with a list of usual suspects and began narrowing it down rather quickly. In a nutshell, there were several that once worked for Apple, but haven’t been with the company for ages, so I don’t think Jobs would be interested in them. Crossing those two out leads to a handful of possible candidates that are currently on Apple’s management team.

Of that handful, the group consists of former NeXT executives that were brought over from the Apple acquisition in 1997, and the rest are industry veterans from other major companies.

Keep in mind that SJ’s brain trust is not entirely known to the public, and for good reason (preventing his team from being poached away by other companies). These guys don’t even have bios on the Apple website. Pretty clever if you want to keep your crown jewels intact, and out of the limelight.

Recently, he was seen running the iPhone OS 3.0 media event. And no, I don’t believe it’s Scott Forstall.

My bet, is on Greg Joswiak.

(If this were to happen, it’d be great to have Steve Wozniak back as well, for the sole reason of having similar last names, Joz and Woz! )

Visiting the Statue of Liberty while deprived of liberty at the same time

On Sunday, our family took the ferry over to visit Liberty Island and Ellis Island. Every immigrant has to do it at least once you know?

Well earlier that morning, I considered whether or not to take my swiss army knife with me. I usually don’t carry it around, but just felt compelled to take it along anyway. It was lightly used and was part of my picnicking kit. Guess I was thinking there could be a MacGyver moment.

Turns out that the police state is alive and well when I realized that we had to go through a security checkpoint and that pocket knives, among other things, were prohibited.

So along with along with my wallet, keys, iPhone, etc, I place the knife in the plastic bin that’s going to get X-rayed. I pass the metal detector test, and not surprisingly, the screener finds the knife in the bin. They summon the police officer nearby and informs me that it’s going to be confiscated. Asking if I could get it back later, they said no.

And this wasn’t the first time either. Several years ago, I forgot to pack away my Leatherman Wave before checking my bag in at Charles de Gaulle airport. I didn’t want to cause a fuss, so I voluntarily gave it up.

I should’ve known better that this type of shit was going to happen.

But the best part will be hoping that when we get assigned to work on government farms that there will be a buddy system in place so that we can work side-by-side with our friends and family. Pretty pretty please!

Holiday Party 155

Holiday Party 155

Originally uploaded by ronpaul2008

The Real McCoy.
An American Original.
The only Conservative running that will cut government in half and END the income tax.
The Mr. Smith of our time.
The Thomas Jefferson of our day.
RON PAUL.

Good Luck Jomy

This week,  we pay tribute to Jomy (AKA the Jomster) and wish him good luck as he starts his new gig at Columbia next week.  He used to work for a company that was within walking distance from my flat, so meeting up for lunch was always fun.

But we’ll do lunch again once I move up there.  Discussing the skunk works over a nice curry would be prime.