June 12, 2008

Saranac Thursday Night.


Flickr Link.

Tonight I went to my first Saranac Thursday Night of the season. Earl was out to dinner with his boss so I made the trek alone. I met up with friends from work.

It was two weeks ago that there was a good sized fire at the West End Brewing Company. The fire took out the bottling area of the plant. The F X Matt Brewing Company is in the process of rebuilding. Saranac Thursday Nights didn’t miss a beat and it seems like there’s more people there than ever. Throughout the city and neighboring villages, business have signs up that say “Get Well Soon Schultz and Dooley!” Some details of the fire can found on my blog entry from that night.

One of the things that I love about Saranac Thursday Nights is that people from all walks of life are there: blue collar, white collar, executives, biker chicks, gay, straight, fat, thin, big, small; it doesn’t matter. I feel a sense of community whilst I’m there.

Tonight I chatted with my friends Shirley and Christine and John while I downed three Utica Club drafts. I recently replaced Christine at work, she is wicked smart and is pursuing new employment opportunities after earning her Master’s Degree from the New School. Shirley and John still work at the telecommunications company I work at. I enjoy chatting with them off hours. I need to get better about not talking shop.

I’ve posted more pictures from tonight’s fun; I tend to take random shots with my iPhone when I have the opportunity. You can see them here on Flickr.

Here I am all duded up for the occasion.

Flickr Link.

Tech Thursday.

Today is all about the multitasking. Not only am I folding laundry, vacuuming the house and doing other odds and ends that need to be done; I am also watching and listening to podcasts, rebuilding the home server and engaging in other geeky activities.

As you may have heard (now there’s an understatement), Apple announced a few things at the WWDC conference during Steve Jobs’ keynote speech on Monday. Even though we were swamped with tech calls at work during the speech, I was constantly refreshing various sources on the web to see what was up. Later on Monday night I watched the keynote from my home studio. As expected, Steve announced the release of the next incarnation of the iPhone, the iPhone 3G. Though still tied to AT&T here in the States, the iPhone 3G will use faster technology to do it’s internet magic. The current model uses a slower technology called EDGE. For the most part I’m pleased with my current iPhone so I’m going to stick with what I have. If someone were to buy me an iPhone 3G I wouldn’t complain, but I don’t feel that I can justify the cost right now. I also have to admit that I like the metal casing on my iPhone. I am disappointed that MMS messaging was not mentioned in the iPhone 2.0 software upgrade. I have a lot of friends that like to send me pictures via phone (and I like to do the same as well) and I can’t using my iPhone; I have to resort to sending them via e-mail.

Another announcement during that same keynote was the conversion of .Mac to the new MobileMe service, which is expected to hit the ‘cloud’ in July. I have had a .Mac subscription since I switched to OS X platform earlier in the oughts, but I don’t use it as much as I could. The MobileMe platform is a complete revamping of it’s predecessor and includes ‘push’ technology: I don’t need to go out and fetch the information, my information comes to me. This is wicked cool. If I update a contact, calendar entry or photo on my iPhone, it’ll be on my MacBook, Mac Minis and other computers in a matter of seconds. If I had a Windows computer here in the Macinmanor it would also be there. Microsoft Office users are familiar with similar capabilities through the Microsoft Exchange technology (when coupled with Outlook or Outlook web interface). I’m looking forward to my .Mac account being converted to MobileMe and have already started migrating away from the myriad of free services I currently use to .Mac in preparation for the conversion. This brings up another topic.

I’m changing my contact information, again!

My e-mail address is now
imachias-at-mac.com

imachias-at-gmail.com will continue to work indefinitely but I will not be using it as my primary account. Please update your address books. I’ve always been a little cynical about using the free service of gmail, even though Google has done nothing to make me distrust them, ever. On the other hand, why I trust Apple with my information is beyond me, maybe it’s paying for the service that gives me a false sense of security.

The bigger home server here at the Macinmanor crashed last week after I tried to apply routine upgrades to the Ubuntu Linux OS. I lost most of the information on the hard drive. The hard drive is fine, but Ubuntu did something to the file system that prevented me from doing anything with it. I discovered a Linux distribution called SystemRecoveryCD that allowed me to boot the server off the CD and rescue some of my data. If I had found this earlier in the troubleshooting process I probably could have rescued all of my data. I guess we all live and learn. Today I am rebuilding the server and have opted to use FreeBSD as the operating system instead of one of the Linux variants. Let’s see how helios 2.0 (the server is named ‘helios’) does.

Dance Already.

As the weekend looms on the horizon, I feel it’s fitting to get your toe tapping.

This single is from 1996 and still does quite well on the dance floor if there’s enough alcohol flowing. Only a few rarely believe who is singing when they ask.