| 1 year... no smoking |
[Oct. 2nd, 2008|11:21 am] |
So it's been a year (well, a year on Sept. 21st) that I've been on the other side. I'm a non-smoker. I guess it's all official now that it's been a year. I had forgotten all about it until Michelle reminded me today with a cute Hallmark e-card.
At about 1/2 pack a day and 52 weeks, that's about 182 packs of cigarettes that went unpurchased thanks to me, or about $1,000.
I feel accomplished. |
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| Drumset on a shirt |
[Sep. 24th, 2008|11:13 am] |
New at ThinkGeek.com
I'm sure a guitar one is coming around the corner. |
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| I hate Phoenix drivers sometimes |
[Sep. 18th, 2008|02:47 pm] |
While I was pulling forward in the drive-through line, this jerk-off pulled in from a side street and decided to cut me off from out of nowhere. I guess that guy thought his lunch was so much more important than mine.
I yelled at him when he rolled down his window, but he ignored me.
I just called and reported him.
(yes, I realize the drive-through is diet failure, but I was in a hurry and running errands) |
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| People are retarded |
[Sep. 15th, 2008|01:49 pm] |
I may or may not alienate a friend or two, but I'm going to say it anyway.
America is experiencing economic crisis. Maybe it's nothing like the Great Depression and we're not all fighting tooth and nail for daily work, but we do have a serious problem, and it's largely the fault of stupid people and greedy people.
When our housing market took a big up-swing, a lot of people bought homes they couldn't afford or could only afford with an ARM. Some of those people made this decision on their own, because they wanted the giant house. Others were talked into the bigger house by shady lenders. Either way, these were uneducated choices made by a select number of people, but that affect us all.
When these people bought their homes they either did not know or did not care that their loan interest rate could go up quite a bit any time after the deal is done. An ARM offered a lower payment, which meant more house, and that was all some people needed to hear. When that rate adjusted uncomfortably upwards as should have been anticipated, these same buyers are forced to either find a way to pay a much higher mortgage, sell, or foreclose. In this market, selling seems next to impossible and most of these people can't afford the higher mortgage, so foreclosure becomes the only option.
This affects the rest of us because the bank is stuck with a huge overage of foreclosed properties that they can't afford. Mortgage companies folded, and now some banks are following them, prompting their customers to fear the worst. The U.S. government has decided to step in with bail-out help and those of us who bought homes we can afford are penalized with a sinking economy, a falling dollar value, and we're surely going to be paying for these bail-outs in our taxes for god knows how long.
I don't so much mind the government bailing out some key institutions to keep our economy up on crutches, but hearing plans of giving bail-outs directly to home owners to help them keep the home that they bought and couldn't afford pissed me off. Watching the Dow dop lower today than it has in 7 years doesn't make me happy about all this, either.
If you bought a huge home you could only afford on an ARM or are a lender who greedily let people into ARMs you knew they'd get foreclosed on in a year and helped bring us to this point, you owe America an apology.
Additionally, all those people who got themselves into a foreclosure because they were greedy or stupid and then proceeded to demolish the home when served a foreclosure notice should be kicked in the teeth and then sterilized. |
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| Metallica! |
[Sep. 12th, 2008|02:17 pm] |
Stolen from ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) batty_
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| iPhone SDK on a PC |
[Sep. 8th, 2008|12:20 pm] |
When I first saw the iPhone app store, I knew I wanted to develop applications for it. Now I have an iPhone, there's (guessed to be) about 10 million iPhones out there, and I have my iPhone developer membership. The only thing stopping me now is that I don't have a Macintosh, and I don't have any plans to go buy one. What's a guy to do?
Install Mac OS X on my Vista laptop.
I'd hate to have to dual boot it, so I'm shooting for the next best thing... running OS X as a guest OS in VMWare inside Vista. It's slower, but I can switch back and forth quickly, which is important for me. After a lot of reading, downloading, and tinkering, I now have a working VM of Tiger running inside Vista. My test worked, but what about Leopard? The iPhone SDK only works in Leopard, so while my little success over the weekend is inspiring, it'll get scrapped now, and I'll need to get Leopard installed.
Once Leopard is running on my PC, I can move on to the actual SDK and get developing. Hopefully that goes smoothly.
I also pulled apart my Flip video camera and re-wired a very small part of it to add in an audio on/off switch, which it desperately needed. More on that (with photos) later. |
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| Tranz and such |
[Sep. 6th, 2008|12:15 pm] |
Last night rocked. We got to Tranz around 11:00 and hung around with Jason for a bit, and then Noel showed up with Tony and had a blast. It was good to see lots of familiar faces and getting to finally spend more than a few minutes chatting with Noel was a nice change. After getting tired dancing to one song, making me feel old, I felt much younger, staying through last call and then ending up not leaving the parking lot until close to 4 AM.
Awesome time at Tranz. So tonight is Velocity. Who's in? |
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| Edit CNN from your web browser |
[Sep. 5th, 2008|03:25 pm] |
Remember those fake magazine covers where you could get one that was just an overlay over your own mug shot, looking just like "Time" magazine and stating "Man of the Year"?
Imagine modifying CNN or Yahoo to say whatever you want.
http://www.joetech.com/2008/09/05/cool-trick-edit-any-web-site-in-any-browser/
Kinda neat and super easy to do. |
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| Sarah Palin <3's me |
[Sep. 5th, 2008|02:50 pm] |
Well... Not ME, per se.
You see, we provide the technology that allowed people to track a big old snow machine (snowmobile) race in Alaska every year via our satellite tracking solution. Palin's husband participates in the race and she went on the news (last year, I think), talking about how great the new web technology is.
We were talking politics at lunch and it dawned on us. I have the video clip here somewhere. |
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| Tranz |
[Sep. 5th, 2008|12:00 pm] |
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Tranz tonight. Anyone else going? |
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| ICEE Day at the office |
[Sep. 4th, 2008|12:03 pm] |
Last month, we procured an ICEE machine on the cheap for our office. After lots of testing and reading and testing and tinkering (none of this on my part), we are now serving up ICEEs in our office. For a developer, I think a large part of the draw to an office is the work environment and things like ICEE machines. This thought was supported today by one of my developers saying "We should mention this in our job listing next time we're hiring".
Mmmmm. Blue Raspberry. |
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| Google Chrome |
[Sep. 2nd, 2008|11:49 pm] |
For a long time, IE has had cause to worry about its browser market share. Microsoft pushed Netscape aside years ago without breaking a sweat and the karma police provided us with FireFox to make Microsoft have to actually make a usable browser. At one point, it was so bad that they had to just give up on the Mac versions completely. IE 5.5 on a Mac did more harm than good when you ran it. So now we have two relatively good browsers, IE 7 and FF 3.0.
Enter the scariest company to take you on besides Microsoft... Google. When Google gets in the ring, all that dancing around had better be good for more than just show, because you've got a fight ahead.
Yesterday, Google released the Beta version of its Chrome web browser, and it's pretty cool.
http://www.joetech.com/2008/09/02/google-chrome-a-new-browser-and-a-new-development-market/
I can't wait for the stable release. |
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| My $2,500 Basketball card |
[Aug. 29th, 2008|09:05 am] |
I mentioned in a previous post how John and Adam and I bought a high-end sports card product, opened it, and hit one hell of a lucky pull, getting a box, signed by LeBron James, numbered 23/23 and filled with a few LeBron James cards, also numbered 23/23. The money-maker of that lot was this card, which I sold a little over a week ago on eBay for $2,573.
The same guy bought the empty (but signed) box everything came in for $2,048 and another LeBron autograph card (no patch) for $1,748. It's been enough time since he said he sent a money order out that it should show up today or tomorrow at the latest. If it doesn't show up, there's other people making offers already. One offered over $10,000 in trade (more sports cards). |
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| "hurricane-like" Monsoon |
[Aug. 29th, 2008|08:36 am] |
Last night, we had a monsoon. It was "hurricane-like", according to the news. 1/2 our tree came down, the power went out, and damage ensued all around. When it passed over us, I checked weather.com on my phone and we were dead center in it. Here's what I saw on my way to the office this morning:
That's a roof in the middle of Thomas! Nuts. Anyway, I took more pictures : http://www.flickr.com/photos/nodomain1/sets/72157607011374049/detail/
Adam's apartment complex made the news with several huge uprooted trees. One hit his apartment doing a little damage and he had to head elsewhere for the night.
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