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! )

Raw and Wrong

I am absolutely loving the rawness of Depeche Mode’s new song Wrong. Nerd and I are going to the Borgata in August to watch them in concert. Looking forward to getting their CD in a few weeks.

The HD version is even better, and the music video is SICK.

I think the rawness very much complements how I’m feeling these days.

The Mechanical Universe and Beyond

The Mechanical Universe and Beyond (free-sign up required)

This is another great gem on the Interwebs for anyone wanting to learn about Physics. I remember watching only 1 or 2 episodes of this series back in high school Physics class. I’m almost done with it now and it’s been really fun and nostalgic, though I was only 4-5 years old at the time it was made. Considering it was made in the 80s, the CGI was pretty sophisticated for its day as the graphics were produced by Dr. James Blinn, who worked at JPL and is now a fellow at Microsoft Research.

As for Dr. David Goodstein, who produced and hosts the series, he’s still teaching at CalTech, and has come out with books in recent years on oil consumption and how much oil there’s left in the earth. By his calculations, we’ve used half of 2 trillion barrels of oil in existence with production to decline as we’re at peak oil stages with terminal decline in production.

In one YouTube, I recall him saying that burning deuterium from sea water could be a clean way of generating sustainable energy.

Lots of ideas to write about and I’m hoping that I can spend more time turning them into essays.

And liberty, will reign, in America!

I started watching the John Adams mini-series that was on HBO tonight, and it is nothing but documentary par excellence. I’ve watched the first three episodes back to back and I just can’t get enough of it.

The series is based on David McCullough’s book on Adams and a friend from work suggested that I also watch the series. I wanted to read the book first before watching it, but that’s midway down my reading list.

Another great quote is:

Liberty is not built on the doctrine that a few nobles have a right to inherit the earth. No! No!

But why bother reading it when you can watch it. This is from the first episode:

The intro music is also amazing. Think I need to get that, and the Join or Die Flag.

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!

Dr. Paul’s Wisdom

These days, I often look back to something Dr. Paul said many years ago, in which he said that the kind of government we get is never an accident, and that we ultimately get what we deserve.

In an age where people believe that the President will pay our mortgages, fill our gas tanks, solve all of society’s ills, and become the savior of last resort in all things, the struggle to change the hearts and minds of the ignorant to the informed will be a long and hard one.

I would wager that most Americans still have no understanding of what’s going on with our economy and the credit crisis. I for one don’t fully understand it myself. While some learn life’s lessons by heeding the advice of their parents or friends, others will always have to learn the truth the hard way.

To up the ante on the wager, I would bet that as long as people are continuing to work and get paid, without regard to what their wages can buy as inflation continues to rise, most will just accept this as a fact of life. Only is it when people begin to lose their homes, jobs, and find out their money can’t buy as much as it did before will it set brushfires in peoples’ minds.

Society teaches us never to ask questions or to ever question the actions of the state, but to just work, pay taxes, and consume whatever we want. The key to solving many of our problems can be found in trusting ourselves, and having the desire and curiosity to seek out the truth.

Indeed, Peter Schiff was Right

and Ben Stein, Charles Payne, and all the other talking heads were wrong.

To the victor goes the spoils!

VMware Fusion 2.0 + Counterstrike = Yes!

This is a moment I’ve been waiting for, for the past the several years. Finally, I can play Counterstrike in an XP VM with VMware Fusion 2.0. Give it a shot and you’ll be impressed. Just be sure to change the renderer in Counterstrike to Direct3D. The framerates are pretty decent too, but I forgot the console command to show fps. I’ll Google the command and post an update.

One small downside is that keeps the fan in my MacBook Pro running when playing. No biggy, I’ll probably get used to it.

Update, 24 Nov 2008: The solution can be found in an old version of VMware Fusion’s Release Notes. Add ‘vmmouse.present = “FALSE” ‘ to the end of the VM’s .vmx file, and also modify Fusion’s preference file in your home directory. Keep in mind that you will lose the ability to seamlessly go back and forth from the VM to OS X, but this was a great find!

Some thoughts of the day

John Gruber hits a bullseye in regard to Microsoft’s latest PR campaign.

Under the Bush Administration, the national debt has grown by more than $4 trillion.

Fed bailouts of Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, AIG, et al. show that we are a communist country. Look elsewhere for free market capitalism.

Some words to describe the two major parties: socialism, fascism, demagoguery, interventionism, jingoism

I won’t be voting for a major party candidate in the general election. Dumb and dumber.

M_Ca_n? Republican?

Maybe we all deserve to walk the road to serfdom?