Archive: December 31, 2009

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Thursday,  12/31/09  09:39 AM

Time and past time for a filter pass...  Happy New Year's Eve y'all!  I have been on deadline with a project at work, and yes, we made it, barely, and that was good.  I was up most of the night Tuesday and crashed last night, and am now back to normal (well, what passes for normal for me anyway :) wearing a big smile.  Today features cookie eating, dinner, and later on a wine tasting at friends at which I can celebrate 2009 properly and blast into 2010 in style...

In the meantime...  let's see what's happening out there, shall we?

Obama and Iran: this is a moment in history, and he's missing it.  Yeah, too busy golfing in Hawaii I guess... 

On the TSA: "their obsession with fighting the last war is so strong that I expect any day to see them building wooden forts at our nation's airports in order to keep the redcoats at bay".  Ridiculous, as Christopher Hitchens notes in the truth about airport security

NewScientist: the year in space, 2009

So I upgraded my little Pre to 1.3.5, and I love it.  The whole OS feels faster, again.  How great that Palm can keep rolling out meaningful updates.  There is also this: Exchange syncing on huge folders now works (which means my Sent mail is now available, and searchable), and when you have more than one number for someone they are all referred back to one contact, which is great.  Texts are now searchable too; increasingly important as I have some friends who use text as an alternative to email :) 

So I say "I love my Pre", and iPhone users say "yeah but there are no apps for the Pre".  Which isn't true, there are now about 1,000.  But really, a Pre comes with everything I need out of the box: phone, contacts, calendar, browser, email, texts, camera, GPS, you name it.  And check out Wired's list of their 20 favorite iPhone apps.  They're all junk!  Games and stuff.  Nothing "real".  I grant you the iPhone is an incredible platform, but if you didn't already have one you would never buy one for the apps.

Matt Haughey is selling PVRBlog, and has made his last post: the decade of the DVR.  He will be missed.  Indeed Tivos and their brethren have fully taken over... 

Gravity wells for the solar system, scaled to Earth's.  Very cool.  You can see why plotting planetary travel is complicated... 

Uh oh: women can sense attraction in men's sweat.  Crap.  I guess we create our own gravity wells :) 

We are not alone: 85 years ago, Hubble discovers Andromeda is a galaxy rather than a star, and Wired marks the moment. 

Are you ready?  Tonight will not only be the end of the year, and the end of the decade, it will be a Blue Moon!  How often does that happen? 

Looking forward to seeing the new Sherlock Holmes movie; the blogosphere seems to like it, including Eric Raymond... 

To be fair, that's a lot of decline to hide.  Wow.  A lot... 

Marrying RSS and Twitter?  Huh.  Not sure I get it, but will continue to track...  

Picture of the day...  awww... 

Okay, people, listen up: it's twenty-ten.  Got that?  Not two-oh-one-oh, nor two thousand ten.  So be it.  See you over there!

 

 

my last naughty post

Thursday,  12/31/09  05:45 PM

My last "naughty" post... of the 2000s... aka the naughties?  Not clear yet how they will be remembered, but they were eventful to be sure.  My life certainly went through a large number of changes in the past ten years, wow.  It seems like only yesterday I was concerned with Intuit's bill payment service making it through Y2K...  and AOL buying Time Warner, and the dot-com bubble in full swing.  Amazing.  And then we had 9/11, certainly the defining event of the decade (I think history will agree), and all the rest that followed...  and of course the great depression of the late naughts, from which we are only just emerging.

We moved back to Westlake Village and I spent most of the decade helping build Aperio from a three-person startup into a real company, and watching my kids grow up, and having a pretty good time eating and drinking and cycling and sailing.  I can't complain though sometimes I still do.

And of course on 1/1/2003 I did something momentous, I made my first post to Critical Section.  And now, 2,030 posts later, I am *still* posting.  It is pretty cool to have my own personal record ...

And so what will the 'tens hold for us?  So hard to say, isn't it?  The future is cloudy but bright.  The immediate future holds a wine-tasting party, and then a day of eating and football.  That's always a great way to start the year.  And Saturday I'm riding a 200K, starting off the year right...  After that we'll see, please stay tuned!

 
 

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