Posts from — November 2007

I don’t get this.  Apple seems to be constantly updating iTunes, which I understand they must do for various reasons including updates to fix FairPlay exploits – but why do I have to download the whole freakin’ thing each time.  I got the update this morning about iTunes 7.5, when I clicked yes, it kicked off a 61MB download.  Seriously, WTF? Every update I’ve seen has been north of 50MB. Has Apple never heard of modular code?  Complain about Microsoft all you want and how there is an endless stream of security patches. At least I don’t have to download a whole new version of the software every time.

Oh yeah, that’s right.  Apple does no wrong.

I dropped my son off at school today. Normally I leave for work too early to do so, but I had time this morning.  On the way I was flipping through channels on XM in the car and he yelled "lets listen to this!" when I turned on XMU (the indie/college rock station).  I’ve taken pride in exposing him to music outside of the "children’s" genre and the fact that one of his favorite songs is by The New Pornographers ("Testament to Youth in Verse") is somewhat a point of pride. I think there was a Shins song on, then a break where they mentioned that channel 59 was now all Led Zeppelin.  No! Way! Asked him if he wanted to get the Led out and got no complaint.  I love my XM radio*.

I hate to admit it, but Led Zeppelin is definitely a guilty pleasure.  I’m not the type who’d be rocking out to it from the comfort of my Monte Carlo (or Camero) , nor do I have velvet blacklight posters at home, but Led Zeppelin serious kicks ass. My guess is the station is tied to an overall rise in Zep marketing – they’re doing a big reunion concert in London and re-releasing all of their recordings as a huge box set.

[* First one to leave a comment telling me how much better Sirus is since they have Howard Stern gets a boot to the head.  Why people want to listened to some dude tell a joke, then laugh at himself, or worse, have five others laugh with him for 30min before the next joke baffles me.]

As far back as I can remember, my oldest son has always wanted to take pictures, I’ve usually let him. One of the deals I use to get him to sit still and behave during a portrait is the promise that he can take my picture at the end. Few if any of these have turned out, but seeing him finally get how to hold a camera the other day (one hand cradling the lens, the other on the shutter) makes me happy.

One day I got the idea to set up our old digital P&S for him to use.  He is loving it. One of the first things we did was go out at sunrise to a local park a few Sundays ago to take some nature shots during the morning golden hour. I don’t think I got many shot that were keepers, but we had a fun walking through the park. I finally pulled the images off his card, and this was one of them:

We were walking down the path to a meadow I’d ran by the prior morning and though would be a cool shot. He kept dropping back and snapping shots and this was one of them he got of me. Not technically perfect, but give the guy a break, he’s five. It probably is one of my favorite photos of the year, mainly for the memories it brings back.

Over on Writer Zone, they make it official – Windows Live Write is out of Beta and is now Windows Live Writer 2008 (even after making fun of themselves, Microsoft continues with the lame product names.)

Dumb name aside, if you have a blog and are running Windows, this tool make it dead simple to post.  There is also a pretty good plugin community out there – I use the Flickr plugin a lot as well as a code formating plugin (which I don’t seem to be using as much these days.)

I’m not usually one for the gossip crap that pervades the interwebs, but from Runners World’s Daily Views blog, the news from the NYC Marathon is Katie Holmes ran it in 5:29.  Having finished Grand Rapids in 5:27, at least I’m faster.  Thing that I noted in this picture that had no photo credit is she is wearing headphones, which are usually prohibited in Marathons (according to the race director of the Grand Rapids Marathon, its part of the USATF sanctioning).

Congrats to all the finishers in NYC, including MS. Holmes!

My favorite lens developed a very loose front ring this weekend. This is right in front of the trademark red part that designates it as a Canon L series lens. Luck would have it that it happened right before I was supposed to go shoot a family portrait.  I was able to press on it a bit, and something seemed to click back into place, but it is still pretty loose, and the lens hood makes it worse (mainly do to leverage). I still shot with it, and the optics seem fine, but I figure better safe then sorry (besides, it’s still under warranty.) The service guy on the phone said it’ll probably be two and a half weeks.

Goodspeed my red ringed beauty. May the service be as fast as your 1.2 maximum aperture.

I don’t keep an eye on Microsoft stock like I used to.  As a cathartic move, I dumped most of my stock when I left, though I held on to a small amount from my final ESPP purchase.  I was firing up a browser to debug some code today and caught the quote for MSFT – 37.15 at the time.  Crazy.  When I started back in June of 2000, my strike price for my initial option grant was somewhere around $67 (so $33.5 split-adjusted).  Those options were above water, maybe a month.  Almost seven years later, and the share price is barely above that mark.  All I can say is I’ve had a good ROI on that final ESPP purchase.

Registration for the 2008 Hustle up the Hancock opened today. As of this writing, the full climb is sold out and I’d suspect the half-climb will be soon too. After the amount of money we spent on me the Chicago Marathon (hotels take it upon themselves to rape you that weekend), it just isn’t in the budget for next year.  Plus, if you’ve ever done this event, you know that the journey to the top of the John Hancock Tower is faster than your journey back down.  In years past, my time to climb has been in the 20min neighborhood, and the line for the elevator back down is in the 90min neighborhood.  That doesn’t make it the most kid friendly, so add babysitting onto the tab.

It’s a bit sad, really.  This was my first event, and completing it was my first realization that I could actually participate in strenuous events. I know there are a ton of great events in the Milwaukee area, and I plan on trying to find an participate in those. I still haven’t determine what they’ll be (probably at least a couple 5k’s and some longer races), but that is still a few months off.

Good luck to all you climbers that got in! I will say despite the long elevator line afterward, it is well worth it.  There are thousands of races out there, but only one chance a year to climb the 1632 stairs to the observation deck of "Big  John." Plus it benefits a great cause, and having also done Go Vertical! Chicago (climbing the Sears Tower, registration is still open today for the November 11th climb), I can say it is a very well run event.