I’m excited that I have found a photo of the exact model of record player we had in our family room when I was growing up. I wonder what happened to that record player. It’s probably still at my dad’s somewhere.
Photo courtesy of Collector’s Quest
S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Night!
So I am sitting in our local Panera on a Saturday night. If I were just a smidgen more like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory, I’d be doing laundry, but honestly that’s just crazy. I do laundry on Friday night.
Such an exciting life to be led.
Earl and Jamie are on a camping excursion just this side of the New York-Pennsylvania border near the quant little town of Deposit. I was going to go as well but I didn’t know what the cell phone reception was like down there and since it’s my on-call weekend, I figured that having cell service was very important. So I have been home trying to amuse myself.
I had plans to write lots of code for a project I’m working on with my friend Jeff, but it turns out that sometimes I become insanely stupid (or insanely distracted) because I haven’t been able to figure out the simplest of tasks in that arena today. I can usually do these things with one hand tied behind my back (it’s a cute trick I like to show off with at staff meetings), but I don’t know if it’s because it’s Saturday and my mind just isn’t into it or what, but I couldn’t get any of my code to make sense today.
Perhaps my mind just needed to relax.
I did accomplish 121 minutes of cycling this morning. I was going to ride for an hour but I just couldn’t bring myself to head back home as I was too busy enjoying the summer weather. Summer officially starts in a week and it’s finally starting to feel like it will really happen around here.
I am happy to report that this Panera is one to never disappoint; there is a young tot screaming at the top of it’s lungs at a pitch usually reserved for Mariah Carey before she got über diva-ish. If I were a cocker spaniel my head would be cocked.
A man just kind of stared me down as he walked by en route to the beverage center. I couldn’t help but notice this as I saw his mustache and mustaches tend to catch my attention. (He looked like he could have been in the military at one time). This got me to wondering why I have this scraggly beard. I always have ambitions of becoming the next Dan Haggarty with a big, crazy beard but I just don’t have the genetics to pull it off. Well, the left side of my face can pull it off, but the right side can not. While I’m quite unbalanced at times, I don’t like to look the part. Even though I know this, I keep hoping this will change as I get older but it doesn’t change. It just gets grayer. I was recently told that my beard looks like a creamcicle. I took that as a compliment.
People watching fascinates me and I have selected the best seat in the house here at Panera for people watching. I am situated right next to the food pick-up area. A woman in a long flowing prom gown just walked up to pick up her tomato soup. Now that’s a snappy date.
There was once a teacher who had next to her picture in the yearbook, “People fascinate me. I’ve never met a person that didn’t impress me.” Though I didn’t have that teacher (she taught special education), I LOVED that attitude and have sort of adopted it along the way. Sometimes I lose sight of that philosophy. That teacher had such a zest for life. She’s the one that helped me on one particularly rough day in high school. That attitude and that one day changed my life.
My gosh I’m getting heavy in this blog entry. Perhaps Panera needs to start serving cocktails.
The child has stopped screaming like Mariah Carey. Cocker Spaniels and garage doors all over the area can now relax and calm down. I know that I have.
Secure.
So I’ve been on a geek streak this week. This was all kicked off by the announcements at Apple’s WWDC and the beta releases of iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks. Because I’ve done some swapping around of devices and testing of this new software, I’ve had occasion to reload my iPhone 5 from scratch.
Somewhere in one of my geek articles I talked about the importance of using really good passwords for your computer endeavors. Long gone are the days where you could use the clever password of Secret (complete with capital “S”!), today you have to have a whole bunch of random characters mashed together to make something that you can remember but also can not be easily guessed.
Enter 1Password from AgileBits
1Password creates really secure passwords for you and better yet, it remembers them for you so you don’t have to worry about typing a password like h8!UU1m2^CeT into your favorite web browser, just so you can take a peek at Facebook. It stores your secure password under a master password (that you can remember) so all of your online information is doubly secure. Better yet, 1Password can sync between your laptop/desktop and mobile devices so that you have access to these hardened passwords on whatever device you might be using.
Earl and I set up his 1Password information earlier this evening and just before writing this blog entry I got all my information set up for my personal devices. It’s wicked easy and it’s money well spent, especially if you spend a lot of time online and/or you’ve put a lot of information out there.
This solution is MUCH better than writing a password down and sticking it to the side of your monitor on a sticky note or using the same password for all over your accounts.
I don’t get any kickback from talking about the folks at AgileBits, I’m just one satisfied customer. And if I can spread a little love and knowledge in the geek world, I’m going to do it.
I suggest you give 1Password a try.
Lunch.
Must husband made me a salad for lunch today. There is much rejoicing.
Yes, I’m one of those geeks that uses the Internet to share what he had for lunch.
Sized.
So when I made a conscious effort to start losing weight last Labor Day I had a size 36-inch waist. My pants would fit kind of tight but shorts were comfortable.
Today I am wearing size 33-inch slacks to work for the first time in a long, long while. They’re a little tight but comfortable.
I’m a little excited about the fact that I’m wearing pants this size, but they’re still a little tight, especially when you lean back in the Jeep and try to take a respectable photo of your crotch. I’m used to having a fluffer for these types of photo shoots.
Because I’m wearing smaller pants my stomach is a little confused at the moment. My stomach is saying “eat! eat!” and then saying “but your pants are tight! Your pants are tight!”. This creates a conflict within that can only be resolved by staring at a Dunkin’ Donuts cookie whilst chewing sugarless gum.
At least I still feel motivated, I guess.
Revert.
Somebody switched his iPhone 5 back to iOS 6. While I’m probably not allowed to say much of this because of developer agreements, I will tell you that when iOS 7 is released this autumn it is going to be awesome and people will love it. It will definitely breathe new life into your iDevice.
That being said, as expected, beta 1 is not ready for primetime yet. It’s the start of something great, but I can’t use it on my main iPhone right now. It’s too unstable for my needs. All of that is OK and expected. What I kind of didn’t expect was not being able to restore my iCloud backup to iOS 6. So I just finished reverting my phone back to the latest “real” version of iOS and then manually setting it up to my liking. I had to download all of my apps one by one again.
My phone is flying in regards to speed. I’m a very happy camper.
Freedom.
I have been striving to include a photo or graphic of some sort with every blog entry lately, in case you haven’t noticed. I often come up with the title of my blog entry before I actually write it, and since I typed the word “Freedom”, I had to figure out what I wanted to include as a photo to represent this blog entry.
When I looked up from my seat in the Jeep, I saw that there was a United States Flag blowing beautifully in the wind right in front of me. So today, we enjoy a photo of the U.S. flag.
I have been thinking about freedom more than usual lately. It’s a word that gets bandied about in the media, during debates, in every day conversation; it’s the descriptor of what makes the United States “great”. We have the most freedom of anyone that calls themselves a citizen on the planet, so the story goes, and we take this freedom very seriously. Thousands upon thousands died as sought our freedom and millions have died defending our freedom. Millions of citizens of the United States have enjoyed the freedoms that we probably take for granted within our borders.
Why is it that more and more Americans don’t mind giving away some of that freedom lately?
By now you have probably heard the name Edward Snowden. He is the “whistleblower” that revealed details of the NSA’s monitoring of ALL phone call metadata in the United States. While the NSA isn’t listening to the content of your phone call, they do have a record of the fact that you called the pizza joint down the street and ordered your usual pepperoni, anchovy and pineapple pizza. And by the way, ew, what a weird combination of toppings!
The NSA is doing this in the name of counterterrorism efforts. They are looking for patterns in communication efforts so they can see who is connected to whom and where they are making that connection. This helps the NSA identify “trends”.
Many Americans scream, “I don’t really care that they’re doing this, because after all, I’m not doing anything wrong so I don’t have anything to worry about.” As I mentioned last week, that’s great until you inadvertently butt dial Iran and you find yourself with a drone up your ass because you’ve been deemed a threat.
The thing is, I don’t think the government should give two hoots about what I’m doing within the privacy of my own life unless they have a reason to believe that I’m doing something wrong. I’m sorry but as an American, I’m innocent until proven guilty, I am not automatically “under suspicion because I use the telephone or the internet.” I am not willing to give up my freedom just because there’s a chance that someone thinks that someone else somewhere that might be remotely connected to me (we go to the same car wash, for example) and therefore they feel that I should have my personal activities monitored. Too many brave men and women have fought to the death to protect the freedom that I enjoy and because of that, I’m not that willing to give it up. I find Edward Snowden to be a brave man who is fighting for our freedom just like the millions of soldiers have done so over the past 220+ years. I commend him for what he did, and though I do believe that the NSA should be able to conduct their intelligence gathering in secret ways in order to protect the freedom that we enjoy, I do not believe that we should be so eager to give up our freedom so that the government can broadly generalize, sweep and mine data.
There has to be a better way to gather intelligence. It is expensive, it is intrusive and it is unscrupulous to gather and store ALL the metadata of every single phone call made in the U.S. And until the NSA can do better at this by respecting that which was given to them by their Creator, they need to stop.
Freedom. It’s meant to be shared, not given away.
iReaction.
OK, let me start this post with two important notes, actually three important notes:
1. This is another Macboy related post.
2. I really am a developer so everything I obtain is via legitimate means.
3. I’m scared to death of Apple so I won’t post screen shots or go into specific details of what I’m experiencing whilst beta testing.
As I mentioned in my post yesterday, Apple previewed their newest versions of iOS (for the iDevices), called iOS 7, and OS X (for the Macs). The newest version of OS X breaks the tradition of being named after big cats and is called OS X Mavericks.
I’m not a huge fan of the name but it works for me. I still think “Sea Lion” would have been kind of fun.
As an OS X and iOS developer, I utilized my vast developer powers and installed the beta versions of each of these new offerings on my test devices. These are my gut reactions after just over 12 hours of experience with the new platforms.
Surprisingly, my old MacBook Pro from 2008 runs OS X Mavericks in its current incarnation just fine and it seems a little snappier than OS X Mountain Lion. There are some subtle changes in the interface that I certainly appreciate and it feels quite comfortable to me. One of the things that I really like is the deeper integration with iOS; it’s kind of cool being able to find a place in Maps on my Mac and send the information to my iPhone automagically. I know, I know, others have been able to do this for a while but the bright spot of doing it on OS X is that I don’t have to see an advertisement whilst doing it. OS X Mavericks is a comfortable evolution that I am thoroughly enjoying.
iOS 7 is more than an evolution, it’s an abrupt change.
Keeping in mind that I am running beta 1 of iOS 7, there are some things that I am finding a little confounding.
First of all, I don’t understand this obsession with Helvetica Neue as the default font. Anyone and everyone is looking to make their logo and other typography as svelte as possible with Helvetica Neue.
I believe that if you’re going to say something, say it boldly and Helvetica Neue is anything but bold. In fact, it can be a little rough on the eyes. But it’s EVERYWHERE in iOS 7 and I guess there’s not a dang thing I can do about it.
There has been a lot of chatter about the new icons in iOS 7 and I have to admit that I agree that they feel like they’re missing some of the polish that I have grown to love about Apple. I don’t know that “cartoonish” is a word that I would use; they just feel amateurish to me, almost as if they were an afterthought. There’s a certain lack of class. Maybe these are just placeholders until the real things come out because of course, this could all change at a moment’s notice and it probably will.
That all being said, I like the way that iOS 7 works. I had to make some changes to muscle memory when it came to handling email (I apparently used to swipe the wrong way?) but otherwise in that respect iOS 7 feels more familiar to me than I thought it would. The change isn’t as jarring as say, moving to an Android device. I really like the animations and the slight 3D effects. Of course, this is style over substance but I think it does contribute to the spit and polish that Apple is known for.
There is a feature missing in iOS 7 that I hope will return in later releases and that’s the “Tap to Tweet” and “Tap to Post” buttons in the notification center. I LOVED being able to be witty in 140 characters or less by just typing my hilarity in a pull down box and then going on with life. That functionality is missing right now and it’s kind of a bummer to have to open up my Twitter client (I use Tweetbot) to be witty. Half the time the moment has passed.
The Sybil sides of me have been hot and cold about iOS 7 over the last 12 hours, but the sensible side of me has been determined to just calm down and make a fair assessment of the new experience.
I’m looking forward to seeing how iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks progress.
