interesting (ab)use of property rights in Colorado

Saw an interesting article about property rights today courtesy Boing Boing. The Daily Camera reports an Adverse Possession case that includes elements of (potential) cronyism and connections and serves as a stark illustration of how those with intimate knowledge of the legal code can one-up those who don't.

The gist of the article is that a man, who is both a former district court judge and a former mayor of Boulder, and his wife have successfully seized land that another couple has owned for decades by exploiting a hundred-year-old concept in property law known as Adverse Possession. The case is still on appeal, but that hasn't stopped more than 200 people from protesting vividly outside the former judge's home.

Here's the google satellite image of where I think the disputed lots are (gleaned from details in the story and a search on "Hardscrabble Drive, Boulder, CO":


View Larger Map



I'm rather appalled that the judge would do this, but I think it's another great example of why we need free up the legal code so that all can understand what's on the books rather than keeping it locked away for the privileged few (those in the legal system with the resources to pay for access).

Glad to see that Carl Malamud and the folks at Public.Resource.Org are doing something about this.

arranging application icons on BlackBerry 8830

I'm happy to report I've finally figured out how to move application icons on the 8830!

Since I first got my BB 8830, I've been frustrated with the default themes and the arrangement of the icons on the Applications view. When I'd add an application to the phone, the icon seemed to plop down wherever *it* wanted to, not where I wanted to place it.

After asking a couple other 8830 owners how to change the icon placement, no one else seemed to know, either. So, I poked around and played with buttons and finally figured it out.

In the applications view of your theme (the view where you see ALL your icons in a grid on the screen), use your trackball to highlight an icon you want to move, then press the applications button  (the one immediately to the left of the trackball) and select "move" from the popup menu. You can now use the trackball to push the icon around anywhere you want it to go in the grid. Once you've moved it where you want it, press the trackball button and it drops the icon in place.

You'll notice as you're moving the icon around that all the other icons move to the right of where you're trying to drop the one you're moving. And when the icons can't move right, they drop down a row (far left), so obviously you're moving icons into a stack that flows from the upper left to the lower right corner.

To make your apps window even cleaner, you can create folders to move your lightly used icons into.

You make a folder by starting from the same applications view and clicking the applications button. From the popup menu, select "Add folder" and then name it, assign an icon and click OK. The folder now appears in the top-left corner of your screen, and you can move icons *into* the folder the same way you moved icons to different parts of the screen. When your icon's hovering over the folder, you see the "+" symbol and press the trackball button to drop it in.

I created a folder called "lightly used" and moved my email setup and voice dial and password locker and other apps in there. Ahhh, much better.

The only drag? If you change themes (I use BB dimension today), you have to do the re-arranging all over again.

Have fun!

video of how to turn a sphere outside in

Along the lines of my previous post on 10th Dimension, here's a great brain-bender illustrating how you can turn a sphere inside out (and outside in).

Lots of great instruction on how to think about turn numbers and circles and the effects of corrugation.

(while the video is 21 minutes long, you can see the payoff within the first two minutes and then the "proof" takes the rest of the time).

What's your turn number?

ahead of my time: tracking the birth of our PT Cruiser

Listening to a panel of marketing poo-bahs talking all about how great the "my Mini" campaign is (build a car online then track the progress online as the same car is built in the factory), I'm reminded back to 2000 when LeftCoastMom and I purchased a PT Cruiser, sight unseen, at the height of the frenzy.

I used an AOL Hometown home page to update the status (this was in the pre-blog days), and with a little detective work, I found our 2001 PT Cruiser tracking page again.

I regularly updated the status of our car over the five months between putting our $500 deposit down and taking the keys from the dealer's paw. To get the data I had to use several techniques:

• calling the dealer (many, many times)
  
• calling Chrysler proper at 800-Chrysler (remember, this is y2k)
  
• tracking the manufacturing plant status
  
• tracking the Union Pacific RR train from Mexico to the USA
• waiting three hours at the dealer to take delivery

Sure, through the process, I learned a lot about the car manufacturing process, the rail shipping process and how difficult it was to get info along the way. But was that a good use of my time? I'm smarter for it, I guess.

Glad to see that the folks at Mini have made it a very transparent process now, and are celebrating the birth of each Mini as it makes its way to its new owner.

(We sold the under-powered PT within two years of buying it... ah, for those option-rich DINC days again)

how to manage your brand when customers control the message

One of the highlights of the Marketing to Online Communities 2007 conference is the session by Thor Muller on "How to Manage Your Brand When Customers Control the Message."

Thor is the CEO of Satisfaction, a startup delivering "people-powered customer service for absolutely everything."

He cited some great examples of episodes on the web that illustrate where a company was forced to deal with customers controlling the message (when the companies' fortress mentality was strained to respond):

"the Streisand effect": the JL Kirk & Associates blog post that kicked up a storm when JLK&A sent a cease-and-desist in response to the negative review of the poster's interaction with JLK&A. Is old news by now, but worth the repeat visit as a reminder of what not to do in this blog-enabled world.

YouTube videos illustrating good and bad ways to react to customer control of the message

• Disney (good): Dr Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker
• JetBlue CEO Neeleman's (good) Our Promise to You
• Dell (not-so-good): customer service call

Brilliant observation by Thor: "every company has a community, they're just trapped, bound and gagged, in the trouble ticket system."

How many companies are you trapped in?

AOL's approach to marketing to communities

Presented by Marcien Jenckes, VP community brands at AOL

Things critical to deliver to a community:

1. Communities belong to their participants (not to publishers or advertisers). As hosts, you own the right to facilitate interaction, but the community belongs to the people inside
2. Help with concept of identity: knowing who the participants are and giving them the ability to manage their identities online
3. Ability to build/manage social graph: building a list of all the people important to you, who are relevant to the topics and interests to you
4. creating facilitation platforms: communities are exchanges, facilitating liquidity between people to assist with the exchange of ideas (at AOL: via chat, blogs, discussion forums, etc)

AOL's Advice to Marketers
A. Know what you want to achieve in business terms first
B. Three buckets where can take advantage of commty

1. Get over yourselves, tap into the rest of the world -- use community to get leverage, organize around your brand/ideas important to you
2. Organize people around causes that they and (most importantly) you care about, and commit to it
3. Leverage the talkers and the multiplier effect: get into the viral effects of community by tapping into the power of the natural leaders/communicators within the community

Blogged with Flock

measuring marketing success

Watching David Dunne of Edelman PR present at the Marketing to Online Communities 2007 audience and he noted that the pent up desire for people to communicate is finally getting matched by the capabilities of technology and we're seeing the resultant explosive growth.

However, technology is now giving consumers the opportunity to avoid marketers' messages as never before.

So, what should marketers do to reach their audience?

• watch, listen and engage
• become great storytellers
• become great story gatherers
• activate the evangelists (your biggest fans)
  

And, an innovative digital strategy requires an innovative approach to measurement:

Traditional measurements:

• impressions
• awareness
• video views
• media impressions

Today's measurements:

• site traffic
• time spent,
• pages viewed,
• repeat visits,
• open rates (email),
• click through rates,
• registrations,
• search engine visibility,
• downloads

Future measurements:

• share of conversations, 
• frequency of mentions, 
• participation of brand in forums,
• ratings and reviews of products,
• sentiment,
• return on involvement

whole blood donation in less than an hour

I've been donating at the Stanford Blood Center for several years now, and one of my biggest challenges has been squeezing the donation into my schedule. Whether I'm giving whole blood or platelets, the time just doesn't seem to materialize.

Instead of planning ahead for this latest donation, I simply made an appointment for a same-day whole blood donation this week. The blood center was more than happy to take my appointment. In all, it took 90 minutes out of my day to make it to the center, donate and make it back.

Here's how the time to donate a pint of whole blood breaks down:

0:00 - 0:20 commute from Redwood City to Stanford Blood Center on campus
0:21 - 0:25 sign in, fill out the usual forms
0:26 - 0:35 form information reviewed, vitals taken (bp, pulse, temperature, Hgb)
0:36 - 0:40 vein check, iodine scrub, packaging prep
0:41 - 0:47 pint o blood goes from my vein to the bag
0:48 - 0:52 clean up, bandage up
0:53 - 1:08 wait in the canteen (2 cups of guava juice and a cookie) to make sure I don't pass out
1:09 - 1:30 commute back to Redwood City. Done!

So, why do I find it so difficult to fit that into my schedule every eight weeks?

Next challenge: finding a way to fit a regular platelet donation into my schedule. That'll mean tagging on an extra hour, but I can spend the hour reading a book, watching a show, or (hey!) even blogging since they've got wi-fi in the platelet donation room.

getting comfortable with the label "former motorcyclist"

I've had this nagging feeling over the last few months that it's time to hang up the motorcycle helmet for good and get rid of my 2004 BMW R1150RT.

Maybe that's why I'm suddenly noticing more and more content popping up that's making real what's always been at the back of my mind: the risks associated with riding. Heck, even the Doonesbury Sunday Comic weighed in this weekend.

While I do everything I can to manage those risks: always wearing a High Visibility Yellow - HVY- aerostich suit (the namesake of this blog) and helmet and gloves and boots, riding well within my comfort zone at all times, riding defensively, etc. I know the risks are still there.

Since I live within walking distance of work now, I no longer ride the motorcycle to beat the traffic (heck, I haven't ridden since my summer adventure up into Oregon). So, why, exactly do I have it in my garage?

I'll be blogging as I work through the decision process. If you know anyone looking for an RT in mint condition, let me know.

Schneier's point: A War on the Unexpected

Great to see Bruce Schneier hitting it out of the park again with his assessment of this war on terror the unexpected.

[A]fter someone reports a "terrorist threat," the whole system is biased towards escalation and CYA instead of a more realistic threat assessment.

Watch how it happens. Someone sees something, so he says something. The person he says it to -- a policeman, a security guard, a flight attendant -- now faces a choice: ignore or escalate. Even though he may believe that it's a false alarm, it's not in his best interests to dismiss the threat. If he's wrong, it'll cost him his career. But if he escalates, he'll be praised for "doing his job" and the cost will be borne by others. So he escalates. And the person he escalates to also escalates, in a series of CYA decisions. And before we're done, innocent people have been arrested, airports have been evacuated, and hundreds of police hours have been wasted.

This story has been repeated endlessly, both in the U.S. and in other countries...

The comments are great, and I really like the way Jon puts it in the context of a feedback loop:

You're describing a positive feedback loop without any dampening, so that noise will dominate and mask any genuine signal. In economic terms, the cost of all error has been externalized, so there is no incentive to be accurate or minimize false positives; in fact error directly leads to additional positive reinforcement, resulting in news coverage, promotions, additional budget and fancy new gear.

how to think REALLY big

I know I'm going to have to watch this animation about Imagining the Tenth Dimension again to fully comprehend it, but I'm posting the link here to share with my scientifically minded readers.

When I need to zoom up out of the weeds, this animation will be a most useful tool to think big.

shirky nails it: arrogance and humility

Belatedly found a nugget by Clay Shirky about Arrogance and Humility in design. It's a quick read, but here's the punch line anyway:  

Arrogance without humility is a recipe for high-concept irrelevance; humility without arrogance guarantees unending mediocrity. Figuring out how to be arrogant and humble at once, figuring out when to watch users and when to ignore them for this particular problem, for these users, today, is the problem of the designer.

Here's to the designers who can solve the problem!

my haloween costume idea courtesy CIA

Just in time, the CIA (yes, that one) publishes their new "Terrorist Buster" logo for all to see:



I knew if I waited long enough, inspiration would hit! Now if I can just find an International NO symbol big enough...

How much time actually went into creating this thing? I mean, sure, the fade/shadow is retro mid-1997, but did they have to try to emboss the thing? What's with those lines? If it weren't actually hosted on the CIA site, I'd really doubt its authenticity.

how many near-misses do we each get?

Today's Home Fires post on the NYTimes blog is inspiring both in style and substance. 

Lee Kelley employs a great storytelling technique to convey his message that Mortality Strikes all of us, likely when we're least expecting it. After a great setup, he drives home the lessons to be learned in his concluding paragraphs:

But believe it or not, I'm glad the accident happened. I must have needed the lesson because already, after a short 16 months of being home from Iraq, I had begun to take life for granted again even though that is the one thing I swore to myself I'd never do. I feel that I have truly moved on from the war, from divorce, and definitely from my life before the war in a healthy and positive way. I have embraced circumstance and now try to mold it into a respectable fate. I have been forced to reinvent myself as a single parent and I did it happily.

It's amazing how much we all try to get done in a given week, month or life. We're some busy creatures. And yet sometimes, even when we least expect it, mortality strikes our consciences like lightning electrocuting the endless Middle Eastern sky.

In this instance it was a boulder that brought the lesson to me. Two years ago mortars, rockets, and any number of other possible deaths were keeping me honest on a daily basis. I'm hoping that if I keep watching, and keep learning, someday I won't need these blatant wake-up calls. 

I appreciate Kelley's post as a reminder to keep me honest. No more blatant wake-up calls for me, thanks, I think I've already gone through my share.

mossberg says "free my phone"

Great to see Walt Mossberg weigh in on the wireless carrier ecosystem in his Free My Phone opinion piece today on WSJ.com (subscription still required, but is free today 10/22/07). And by "weigh in" I mean "skewer the carrier-run market." Required reading for anyone frustrated by their wireless carrier or equipment as a possible road map out of this hell we're in.

This hits a nerve for me, as I spent the weekend suffering through a nasty situation on my own Blackberry 8830 from Verizon Wireless thanks to a confluence of two "bugs": 1) VZW has crippled the 8830's built-in GPS (known issue) making the OEM mapping tool less than helpful and 2) Google Maps doesn't launch on my phone no matter how many ways I try to install it (anyone else with the same problem?). So, while I could get maps of choice and traffic data on demand on my Treo650 with no problems, I can't bring up useful maps on my 8830 (it thinks every address south of Redwood City is in San Jose) and there's no traffic data available, period.

If I knew I could enable the GPS on my 8830, I wouldn't be as displeased. I'd rather go all the way to be able to use Gmaps with my 8830's GPS, but I'll settle for baby steps at this point.

Perhaps there's hope for a resolution to this consumer-unfriendly situation, as Mossberg closes with the following observation:

Up until the 1970s, when the federal government intervened, you weren't allowed to buy your own landline phone, and companies weren't able to innovate, on price or features, in making and selling phones to the public. All Americans were forced to rent clumsy phones made by a subsidiary of the monopoly phone company, AT&T, which claimed that, unless it controlled what was connected to its network, the network might suffer.

Well, the government pried that market open, and the wired phone network not only didn't collapse, it became more useful and versatile, allowing, among other things, cheap connections to online data services.

I suspect that if the government, or some disruptive innovation, breaks the crippling power that the wireless carriers exert today, the free market will deliver a similar happy ending.

See his vlog about the topic here:

information r/evolution video from KSU

Those folks at the Media Cultures project at Kansas State University are at it again.

This video from Michael Wesch helps illustrate and explain how information is/could be/should be managed on the internet. Wish this video had been around to show folks when we were having our big "how to create a tagging system" debate in our online community.

You'll see the work of both Clay Shirky and David Weinberger highlighted in the video. Their work is required reading, but first, take a look at the video:

clean solar panels means more clean power

As I've previously posted on Earth Day, we have a bank of twenty solar panels on the top of our home that has done wonders in reducing our electricity bill from $200 a month to less than $200 a year.

This past summer was a nice and sunny one (though mercifully not as hot as the summer of 2006), and we'd thought for sure we'd reap the benefits of our solar panels in banking a bunch of credits from producing more electricity than we used.

We were wrong.

While we did see a reduction in our electricity bills (July came in at a whopping $4), we didn't see the kinds of credits we'd expected. This flummoxed us to no end. We hadn't brought any big power suckers online since last summer (Plasma HDTV notwithstanding) yet our monthly bill showed we were drawing down more power than we were generating. Why?

Well, thanks to the innocent comment made by a fellow parent watching my daughter's soccer team, I think we know why. Our panels are filthy with dust and dirt!

We've never actually cleaned them (which means: rinsing with a hose) so all the dust and dirt and muck that's been kicked up and coated our cars in the last 15 months is just sitting there diminishing the generating power of our solar panels. How could I have not realized that as a cause for our rising energy bills?

You can bet I'll be cleaning the panels tomorrow, and I fully anticipate we'll see the impact on our bill this next billing cycle.

Keep 'em clean!

my next physical challenge

While I have yet to post the tale that accompanies my Mt Whitney climbing video, I have been able to pick out my next physical challenge: a sprint-distance triathlon.

I found having a BIG GOAL (climbing Mt Whitney) was just the motivation I needed to modify my workout and eating habits. In the 75 days between saying, "yes I'll climb" and actually making it to the summit, I shed a total of 18 pounds from my 6'2" frame (from 218 down to 200). Even now, three weeks later, I've kept the weight off, and I'm in the best shape I've been since my first daughter was born five years ago.

Yet, since coming back from climbing Mt Whitney, I've found my motivation lagging to keep exercising regularly even while I've still kept to a healthy diet and eating schedule.

So, I've set my sights on finishing (with a smile!) the ICE Breaker Triathlon in Granite Bay, CA on April 13, 2008. It's a .5 mile swim – 13 mile bike – 4 mile run race. And while the bike and the run segments don't bother me too much, the swim is of greatest concern because my swimming skills consist of barely managing not to sink in the water. Lots of room to improve there.

I've also set my sights on launching a triathlon-specific blog to share my journey toward completing my first tri, including all advice analysis, training travails and gear getting along my way.

I'll post here on HVYTK the link once the new blog is launched. Wish me luck!

UPDATE: the link to my new triathlon-focused blog is http://tri4tk.blogspot.com so I'll keep the tri-related posts to a minimum here on HVYTK.

pint, please (better be Guinness)

On lunch break, I discovered a great blog post over on Head Rambles with advice on how to survive your first Guinness (real Guinness, as in, ordering while in Ireland).

In retrospect, a lot of the same how-to advice applies to ordering a Guinness in the dart bars here around the Bay Area. While the taste doesn't compare, or so I've been told, you've been warned how to act.

teddy roosevelt says, "just do it"

In TechCrunch's post about Yossi Vardi, I found a surprising source of words of encouragement to just do it.

The encouragement came in a 1910 speech Theodore Roosevelt made in Paris:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Even at a century old, the observations ring loudly. I wonder if I'd hold them in such high regard if they'd been uttered just a decade ago?

more good music from iceland

Listening to my iPod on shuffle yesterday, I happened to hit on Emiliana Torrini's song "Sunny Road" (from her album, Fisherman's Woman) and was reminded, again, just how much Icelandic music I enjoy.

I've been a longtime fan of the The Sugar Cubes and all-things Bjork. Then I stumbled on the so-eerie-it's-cool sounds of Sigur Ros. And now, a little poppier with Emiliana Torrini's music.

I wonder what it is about that small island nation that cranks out so many good musicians?

Wonder what she sounds like? take a listen to Emiliana via this YouTube video for "Sunny Road":

my new music drought is over

I downloaded my first free album just now, Radiohead's In Rainbows, and I'm listening to it as I type this post.

I've been a Radiohead fan since Pablo Honey dropped in 1993 and I've dutifully purchased every other album since, even defending my purchase of OK Computer to friends who thought the band had gone off the deep end.

So, getting In Rainbows, an entire album from one of my all-time favorite artists, for the price I chose to pay ($0.00) marks a seminal moment in my life. Yes, I could have paid the typical $9.99 for the album, as I've been conditioned to do so by my iTunes (and, now, Amazon) experience. Somehow, I didn't feel compelled to do so, as Radiohead's given me the chance to name my price, and my price at this time, in this format, is "free." When the physical CD is released later this year, I fully intend to purchase it then. But I won't pay for the music twice. Nor will I wait. Maybe I'm just hoping other bands follow suit and give folks a chance to sample the entire album, guilt-free, before spending money to buy the damn thing.

This is a big deal for me, as I've always eschewed the music stealing sites like Napster and Kazaa, and have only ever downloaded music I'd actually paid for or was authorized to download for free by the artist/distributer (at iTunes or direct from an artists' site). I appreciate the 30-second samples available at the music sites, but there's nothing compares to listening to an album straight through to know if you're dealing with a single solid tune, or an album of hidden gems that'll never make it to the charts, but you'll know by heart within the week.

Listening to music has always been a big part of my life, and I think a lot of this comes from having grown up in a small town (Los Alamos, NM. population: 15,000) where listening to the same album over and over and over provided some sense of escape from the day-to-day monotony that is the small-town way.

The radio was a gateway to another world, and I remember my first personal turntable: not the "good stereo" that was in the living room, but a turntable of my own to keep in my room to play whatever I wanted to play on it. I bought my 45s and LPs at the local record shop which meant my collection was limited to whatever was on the charts in the early 1980s.

My tastes, thankfully, swung from Heavy Metal (the official state genre in the 1980s) to New Wave/Punk around ninth grade thanks to a crush I had. When I discovered my crush's taste in music, my collection grew from Pink Floyd and the Scorpions and Def Leppard to include Depeche Mode and The Smiths and Black Flag as I got to know her better.

These were the years of the first Sony Walkman personal cassette players, and I'd go through cases of double-A batteries powering my trips through my own worlds of tones and lyrics and beats and moods created by artists who seemed to somehow know exactly what I was going through as a teen growing up in a small town. I was a member of Columbia House for years, spending my allowance on cassette tapes that each had the tell-tale double-pink stripe on the spine to indicate it was a Columbia House product. I still have most of the cassettes in a box downstairs in the garage, even though I don't even own a cassette player anymore (that's a topic to be explored in a future post, though).

And so I collected cassettes. Lots of them. And I created mix tapes with favorites songs, first by hooking two cassette decks together, then using the same dual-cassette deck once that technology became affordable. Yes, I was that kid in high school who constantly made and distributed mix tapes in quest of the perfect mix.

And when I started driving a car, I think enjoyed the ability to crank the stereo as much as I did to get from point A to point B while listening to the cranked stereo.

Then my parents got me a CD player as a high school graduation gift (my first CD was Suzane Vega's Solitude Standing) and a whole new realm opened up for me. Gone were the days of playing a song then waiting while rewinding to replay the song, always guessing where the beginning of the song actually was, and wearing out the tape in the process. Now, at the click of a button, you could fast forward, start over or shuffle!

And so the next decade of my life was spent acquiring CDs, both through the mail (BMG this time) as well as at the funky record stores around college in San Diego County and then at places like Amoeba Music and Rasputin Records up in the Bay Area.

I had CD players everywhere I could get them (portable CD walkmen, CD/cassette player in the car, CD players around the apartment) and was listening to music just about non-stop. Mix tapes were much easier to make, and the quality of sound was much better. And I could dub multiple copies to give to friends so they'd be inspired to go buy the same CDs I had. I never once thought my mix tapes were taking money away from the artists, because all I ever saw was my friends going out to buy the albums of the artists I'd exposed them to via my mixes.

Then the digital music scene hit, and, while I was an early adopter of computers an online life, I never got into the song-swapping scene. I was too busy ripping my own CDs onto my PC in a format that could be read by my first-generation iPod (remember Rhapsody in those days before Windows-based iTunes?). I'd collected over 800 CDs, so it took a lot of time to rip, and I wasn't about to just give away all this music I'd spent so much time and money accumulating as my own to someone who was just acquiring for the sake of acquiring.

So, I never got caught up in the Napster scene, and after a while, it became a point of pride that I'd never swapped music that way. Sure, I'd still trade (and rip) CDs with friends, but that was on a one-to-one, in-the-flesh basis. But I haven't ever participated in large-scale anonymous music-swapping. Call me old fashioned, by I think this large-scale swapping is theft. And while I think the RIAA is going about the problem (suing folks) the wrong way, I do think these swappers are getting what's due.

So yes, I think the RIAA and the labels have completely blown the opportunity to embrace mass digital distribution as a way to revolutionize the industry and change up their business model. And they'll continue to fail, which will leave room for innovation and experimentation by the artists themselves. Innovations like Radiohead's pay-what-you-like to download the album before the physical CD drops (hell, even before they line up a label to distribute the physical CDs). Wilco and others have shown the free-to-download-digital, pay-for-physical-item model works. Why wouldn't it work this time with extra revenues coming from those who choose to pay twice (for whatever reason motivates them)?

So, legally downloading In Rainbows for free feels good to me. It feels right.

And it's a kickass album to boot. I can't wait to by the CD.

last week's rubik's cube solving competition

Yes, I'm a geek about the Rubik's cube. My fastest solve ever was back in my prime (my teens) at 45 seconds.

In this year's competition, just held in Budapest, the fastest single solution was recorded at 10.18 seconds.

The overall winner was a 16-year-old japanese kid, Yu Nakajima, who averaged 12.46 seconds after solving it five times.

Not content with just the straight-forward solution (two hands, eyes open), competition categories included solving with one hand, blind-folded, with feet. See the Reuters Video for the visuals (while it's available).

I gotta work on my technique!

mt whitney climbing video

Still trouble-shooting the dramatic pause at the 58 second mark, but here's video I shot at 13,300 feet on the way up to the summit of Mt Whitney.

Bugatti Veyron 16.4 - a dream car

Bugatti Veyron 16.4 driver's side
Originally uploaded by thomas pix

Apologies to the Bare Naked Ladies:

If I had a million Euros... ("if I had a million Euros")
I could not even afford this car! ("no he certainly could NOT!")

Why? the sticker price for the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 is 1.1M Euros. And even if I could afford to buy it, I'd only drive it once, to get it up to it's top speed of 407 km/h.

And then I'd put it away in a showroom like the one it's in now with all the great hardwood and lighting and barriers and pay someone to keep the lint off it for the rest of my life.

It's just that beautiful a machine. (Click the photo to see the eight other pictures I took of this car)

Oh, and there was a new Audi R8 in a showroom around the corner that didn't even merit a photo after I'd spent time in the Bugatti showroom. Tough act to follow.

just back from climbing Mt Whitney

Made it to the top at 14, 497 feet. Much colder and snowier than expected, so it took a lot longer than planned. Finally returned to the cars, triumphant, 20 hours after we left. Only half our party made it to the top, and only a handful of folks made it the entire day we were permitted to be there.

More detail to come, but I've just posted my photos over in my Flickr Mt Whitney set.

minor improvements to DirecTV HR20 experience

In this latest round of software updates on the DirecTV HR20 HD DVR, they've finally introduced "smart" technology into the experience of fast forwarding or rewinding through a show. By "smart" I mean "forgiving."

The situation they've addressed is to help compensate for people's slow reaction times when speeding through a recorded show. If you're fast-forwarding through a block of commercials and you see the show's started again, by the time your brain sends the signal to your finger to press the PLAY button, you're already several seconds into the show already and have to rewind. No matter how hair-trigger your own response times, you still miss a couple seconds of shows.

The brilliant folks at TiVo took this into account from the start and always backed up the show a few seconds from when you hit the PLAY button when rewinding or fast-forwarding. A nice touch that demonstrates they really pay attention to how folks use technology, and a great demonstration of technology closing an interface gap seamlessly.

So, having been trained on a TiVo for three years, you can imagine our frustration when we discovered the HR20 did not compensate for this gap and we had to relearn how to fast forward and rewind through a lot of trial and error to get our timing and prediction skills honed.

Flash forward to this past week, and the good folks on the HR20 dev team have at last introduced this compensation feature so that the DVR automatically backs up five seconds from the moment you press the PLAY button. At last!

On another front (following up on my DirecTV Ka-Lo upconversion process) we're at last seeing the lineup of HD channels expand. This morning I see in the menu a total of 21 high-def channels (up from eight), and the DirecTV folks are promising 100 High-Def channels by the end of the year. Now we get to see the Weather Channel folks in all their HD goodness 24 hours a day!

using Blackberry 8830 outside USA? think again

Something's been nagging me for the last couple days about my new Blackberry 8830 and whether or not I'll really be able to use it in Berlin (Germany) when I fly there this weekend. One of those too-good-to-be-true nags that's probably borne of all my past experiences with Verizon's products not quite working as billed.

So I gave the folks at Verizon tech support a call today just to make sure I'd be able to use my 8830 next week in Europe.

Boy am I glad I made the call today.

Turns out you need to acquire (read: purchase) the "Verizon Wireless Global Support Pack" which is a fancy way of saying: you need to get the Vodafone(TM) SIM card which does not come standard on the Verizon Wireless Blackberry 8830 World Edition.

Beg pardon, but what, exactly, makes it a World Edition phone if it doesn't come out of the box equipped to work around the World?

Maybe the same folks who decided to cripple the GPS also made the brilliant decision to ship the phone sans SIM card.

In any case, the tech support rep was happy to inform me all I needed do was stop by any local Verizon Wireless store and pick up the Global Support Pack for $39.99 and install the SIM card and call back to make sure the phone's ready to go before I leave the States.

So, to the store I went, and surprisingly I wasn't charged for the SIM card (thanks to my being a BlackBerry Global Email subscriber) aside from the 20 minutes it took to wait in queue and then wait some more for the sales guy to do all that hocus-pocus behind the scenes to lock my phone to the SIM card from VZW. (If the stakes weren't so high for my making and receiving calls next week, I might've waited to see if I could buy a SIM card over there so as to have a local phone instead.)

In any case, be forewarned: if you've purchased an 8830 thinking you can use it straight away overseas, be sure to call *611 from your phone stateside to see what all you're still missing before you leave.

Can't wait to blog from Potsdamer Platz, but I've got a mountain to climb in the meantime.

UPDATE: I called the Global Support Services team this morning to double-check all is well and ready for my trip, and I was instructed to update the roaming capabilities on my phone by calling *228 from my phone and choosing option 2 from the menu. Did so, and one minute later, I'm all set to go!

three days to the Mt Whitney Summit

Three nights from now, I'll be a couple miles into my ascent of Mt Whitney at this hour of the night (midnight) as part of a same-day assault on the summit. We'll be covering the full 21 miles of hiking (going from 8,360 feet up to 14,497 feet and back down again) in a single day as we have a day permit to be on the mountain Friday, September 28.

I've been training for this climb the last two months with a variety of exercises running, cycling, hiking and lifting weights (in the process I've shed 15 pounds from my frame, to boot). So, I feel I've done everything I can to get ready, now it's just doing it.

I'm leaving the Bay Area Wednesday with my climbing partner, Victor, to make it to Mammoth Lakes (elev 8,000 feet) to sleep at altitude before making our way down to Lone Pine to meet the rest of our party (six of us total) for dinner Thursday. We'll start hiking around 10pm Thursday night so we can summit by dawn and be back at the Whitney Portal by Friday mid-afternoon.

From there, we'll drop back down into Lone Pine to re-feul our bodies and then up to Bishop to sleep (at last!) before returning to the Bay Area Saturday.

In all, it's going to be a great trip. Per the weather forecast, we'll have mostly clear skies for the hike with temperatures ranging from the low 20s to the low 40s at the summit (about 10-15 degrees warmer down the mountain), and we'll have an almost-full moon to help save our headlamp batteries, as well. Couldn't ask for better conditions.

Now it's just up to my own conditioning. Wish me luck, and help me figure out what the next goal should be so I don't gain all 15 pounds back again!

tracking another season of survivor

Finally got around to watching the season opener of Survivor: China last night (it'd been festering on our HR20 since Thursday), and a few passing thoughts on the situation as I see it:

• why oh why does anyone show up to meet Jeff wearing anything but sensible clothing for the 39 days ahead? This means no skirts, no spiky heels, no rompin' stompin' footwear either.
• If you know you've been chosen to be on Survivor, and you're going to be outdoors for 39 days, make it a point to actually go camping for a night or two before leaving the States.
• And there's absolutely no reason anyone going on Survivor shouldn't be able to make a shelter or (gasp!) make fire. We're fifteen shows into this thing, and folks have no excuse to be surprised at the challenge that awaits the first couple days in, no matter where the show's taking place: Australia to Africa, Cook Islands to Vanuatu.

And a few thoughts on the participants this year:

• I can't wait for Courtney (the bitchy waitress) and Leslie (the righteous talk show host) to get voted off... bonus if it's in a surprise two-fer trip to tribal council.
• From the looks of things, Ashley (the pro wrestler) is going to keep the blur-it-out censors busy since she can't seem to keep the twins in her top for more than a few moments at a time.
• Given both his accent and his attitude, I coulda told you Chicken (yes, the Chicken Farmer) was going to be first to go the moment he drawled in his only-in-Virginia-way that he wasn't going to share his opinions anymore cuz nobody was smart enough to listen to him. A shame, as I'd hope I'd pick up some chicken farming tips from him
  
• I hope James (the quiet grave digger) goes all the way.

Looking forward to the next 14 weeks of the show to see who does what to whom and when (and why).

Sharks hockey season is here again!

San Jose Sharks Season Tickets
Originally uploaded by thomas pix

It's that most wonderful time of year!

Just as I did a year ago, tonight I had the distinct pleasure of cracking open the San Jose Sharks season ticket books and dividing up the tickets to be shared with my fellow season ticket holders, D and N. There's nothing quite like the smell of a fresh print job to conjure up images of a stellar season ahead.

Looking forward to another great season of Sharks hockey, and the long-awaited trip to with the Stanley Cup here at the Shark Tank in San Jose.

While the Sharks are playing their first preseason game tonight down in LA (untelevised, of course), I'll have to wait until this Saturday to see Grier and the boys take the ice in person. In the meantime, I'm amusing myself watching footage of last year's playoffs wherein my man Grier put the smackdown on Nashville's Hartnell over on HockeyFights.com.

Let's go Sharks!

favorite items from Bourdain's Overrated Menu

Kottke points out this precious article in Radar Magazine: Anthony Bourdain's Overrated Menu wherein the celeb chef plates and then eviscerates trendy food items from a menu near you.

While I haven't seen this particular menu printed out just like this, I know I've seen some dishes remarkably close to these popping up on menus I've recently perused.

My three favorites overrated dishes (Bourdain's commentary for each):

• Pea soup topped with truffle oil: Truffle oil is the lazy chef's way to add value, by which I mean charge more.

• Mesquite-grilled Amish organic free-range chicken, served with Fijian mango chutney and accompanied by foraged mushrooms: It should never take longer to describe your dish than to eat it. Mango chutney was innovative when Bobby Flay did it in 1978. Foraged mushrooms? Amish chicken? Who gives a shit about who picked the mushrooms or if the people who raised the chicken wear bonnets?

• Cruelty-free Berkshire pork with shallot reduction and Yukon potato gnocchi: Nobody wants to be cruel, but you did kill the thing—what's cruelty-free about that?
  

Hear hear!

who would ever use fuzzmail?

Normally I'd think to find the funnies in the Style section of the Mercury News. Over a bowl of Grape Nuts this morning, however, I found my humor in this Monday's Tech section in the form of a product review written by Craig Crossman titled "Fuzzmail gives importance to what you delete"

You know you're in for a good time when the product under review isn't even mentioned until the end of the eighth paragraph(!) of the review and even then the product's only mentioned three times total.

The premise is this: Fuzzmail allows a recipient to see how little much time a dupe sender spends composing and rewriting an email before it's sent. So, instead of seeing the finished product that says simply and politely "thanks for your inquiry, we're not interested," Fuzzmail would allow the recipient to see all the different ways the sender really wanted to tell the recipient to buzz off before doing the proper and polite thing. As a bonus, the recipient could actually see how much time it took the recipient to calm down and do the right thing.

To me, this begs too many two questions:

1. Who, in their right mind, still indulges their fantasy response in the actual email window at the risk of prematurely hitting "send"? Isn't this the stuff of urban legends by now?
2. Who else, being of right mind, would ever willingly subject themselves to the watchful recordings of Fuzzmail? Seems to me, it's the stuff of a sneaky spyware install, not something a person would consciously force themselves to use. While the recipient might benefit from a voyeuristic tour of how someone composes an email to them, there's no payoff for the sender (the one who's giving up the goods).

Crossman claims Fuzzmail provides insights into the composition process that are completely lost once the author hits the "send" button. Sure, there's plenty to online communications that's suffering for lack of context, but if Fuzzmail is the best response we've got to adding dimensions to our electronic communications, we're all in for a wild ride big trouble.

to donate platelets or whole blood?

Since I was old enough and heavy enough to do so, I've been donating blood somewhat regularly for a couple decades now. In all, I think I've donated close to five gallons of blood, one pint at a time, although there's no one place where I can get my history, as I've donated all over the country and it seems none of the collection groups are on the same tracking system.

In addition to donating whole blood (something you can only do once every eight weeks), I've also donated platelets by apheresis which is this nifty process by which they drain blood from your arm, send it through a machine that uses a centrifuge to extract the platelets from your blood before pumping the blood back into your body. Since we humans generate so many platelets so quickly, one can do apheresis a lot more often than giving Whole Blood (once a week if not more often).

The apheresis process is stunningly cool from a geeky technology standpoint... you're basically hooked up to a machine that's acting like part of your circulatory system for a short time. You can watch as the blood is drawn out of you and as it's returned back to you (with some anti-coagulants mixed in). The side effect of the anti-coagulants is that you get really cold during the process (at the Stanford Blood Center, you recline on a heating pad and are covered up with toasty blankets throughout to counter this sensation), but it only makes sense you'd get cold given your blood's coursing through a machine, right?

Nowadays, the draw and return are done through the same needle, in one arm. Back when I first did apheresis in the early 1990s, you had to sit for an hour plus with a needle in each arm: one side is where the blood was drawn and the other side was where blood was returned. It was a rather bizarre experience back then because the return side of your body got amazingly cold while the rest of you got only a slight chill.

So, this past Friday morning, I showed up at the Stanford Blood Center at 7:30a to undergo apheresis, in response to an emergency call for platelets they'd sent out earlier in the week.
I was pleased to learn that they paperwork one has to fill out before each and every donation has finally been updated, so the long list of questions you're asked once behind closed curtain is a lot shorter than it used to be. Still, it takes a good half hour to check in and get your vitals taken and all that jazz.

By 8am, I was reclining in the apheresis lounger feeling my back get nice and toasty thanks to the heating pad. I was one of six donors that morning, all male, and with the exception of one other guy my age, I was youngest by a couple decades. Given how long it takes to do apheresis (an hour versus the 10 minutes to drop a pint of whole blood), it's most popular with retirees who've got plenty of time on their hands. Taling with the nurse, I found that they're starting to get more young people to do platelet donations, but mostly early in the mornings (like when I was donating).

Now, given how long it takes to donate platelets, it's no wonder the Blood Center has numerous ways to help you pass the time: a huge DVD library, lots of cable channels and free wi-fi. I didn't bring my laptop with me (this time), and instead brought a book that I need to read for work. Next time, though, I'll be bringing in the laptop so I can spend the hour catching up on RSS feeds.

This time around, I only donated 4 x 10^11 platelets, and it still took me an hour. Compared to the older gentleman to my left, I was a real lightweight. He donated 12 x 10^11 platelets in 75 minutes, putting me to shame.

But, as the nurse reminded me, it's not a race. I learned this the hard way when the apheresis machine got a little too quick on the draw, and I could feel the needle shimmy in my vein and my lips momentarily got numb. The process is automated, though, so an alarm signal went off when the machine sensed the draw was too fast, and the nurse immediately came over to slow the machine down a bit.

I especially enjoyed being able to watch on the monitor my own progress and see the machine calculate how many platelets it'd extracted and therefore how much longer I'd be in the chair watching it share my blood with me. Once the allotted number of platelets were extracted, the machine beeped approvingly, and at 9:04am, the most painful part of the donation process occurred: they ripped off the tape holding the piping in place on my arm. If you've seen me, you know that this means they ripped off quite a bit of hair from my forearms, too boot. Thus, the pain.

But by 9:20am I was hopping in my car to go to work, knowing I'd given platelets for someone who really needs them more than I do.

So, while I like the fact I can donate platelets more often than I can whole blood, I find it ironic that the apheresis process takes so much time. The incentives are all backwards on this. Shouldn't the thing that takes the least amount of time (donating whole blood) be the thing you can do most often?

Alas, no.

So I'll have to figure out where the value proposition is for me. I get the same payoff in feeling I've done a good thing whether it's whole blood or apheresis. do I give whole blood six times a year at a cost of six hours to me? Or do I give apheresis the same six times a year at a cost of 12 hours to me on the assumption I'll actually find even more time to donate via apheresis more often?

Not quite sure what I'll donate next (mid-October, once I'm done with climbing Mt Whitney and my business travel overseas). Maybe I should decide on apheresis now while I'm still sufficiently geeked out at the thought of sharing my circulatory system with a machine. Better check my calendar.

using my blackberry with my bmw

One of the biggest joys of owning my new Blackberry 8830 World Edition is how it seamlessly interfaces with the telecommunications package on my 2005 BMW 325i.

My e46 3-series came with the BMW Assist package (among other things) which includes the Bluetooth capability to pair the car with a phone. Longtime readers know how displeased I was to find out my Verizon Treo 650 wouldn't work with the car because Verizon crippled the connection (kinda like they've crippled GPS on the 8830). So, prior to buying the 8830, I borrowed a friend's phone (exact model and carrier) to make sure it would work on my e46 bimmer. It paired and called easily, so I made the jump and got the phone.

After setting up email and contacts, the first big thing I did was pair my phone to my car (the pairing process was a piece of cake). After they paired, it took about a minute or so for the phone book contents to sync between Blackberry and bimmer, and now, whenever I hop in the car and need to take or make a call, I use the bimmer's built-in handsfree to do so.

Here's how it works:

INBOUND When there's an inbound call, the music (be it from radio or CD) stops and instead I hear the ringing of a phone through the car's sound system. The phone number of the inbound call displays on my stereo head unit and I press the "talking head" button on my car's steering wheel to accept the call. According to those I've spoken with via my car's telecom system, I come through loud and clear on their end with little outside noise bleeding through (the microphone for the system is in the reading lamp cluster, just above the rear view mirror). When I'm done talking, I simply push the "talking head" button again and the call is disconnected and the music comes back on.

OUTBOUND When I want to place a call, I use the Blackberry to scroll through contacts like I would if I were placing a normal call from the phone. When I tap the SEND button, however, the car intercepts the call, cuts the music (if needed) and handles the mic/speaker duties just like on an inbound call.

The super-double-bonus piece of this is that if I've left my cell phone in my bag (as I sometimes do) and want to initiate a call, I simply press the R/T button on my steering wheel and my contacts list shows up in my stereo's head unit and I can use the fwd/rev buttons on the steering wheel to scroll through the names until I find the one I want and initiate the call by tapping the "Talking Head" button on the steering wheel to start/stop the call. Sweet.

QUIRKS Since I've paired the phone to the car and enabled them to automatically connect whenever the car is in range, I have to be careful when Left Coast Mom borrows the car while I'm in the house. When she starts the car, my phone turns on and connects to it even when the phone is inside on the kitchen counter (about 30 feet away). Once she drives off, the phone and car disconnect, but I know one of these days the timing of an inbound call is going to be perfect so she hears the inbound ring as she drives off.

I've got over 800 contacts in my phone book, so it takes a long time to scroll one-at-a-time through the list via the steering wheel controls. I'd like to find a way to do this faster.

I have yet to deal with managing a call and a passenger at the same time since most of my driving is solo driving. Not quite sure how I'm going to handle it when it comes to taking a sensitive call with someone in the car, but I have a feeling I'll figure it out on the spot.

All in all, though, I couldn't be happier with my paired Blackberry and bimmer. Not sure why Verizon nor BMW touts the fact the phone and car work together... seems to be a HUGE selling point on both sides, imo.

comcastic indeed, redux

Thanks to my friend Lisa, I've had a schadenfreude morning reading about Bob Garfield's experience as yet another displeased Comcast (soon-to-be-ex?) customer.

While my lousy experience trying to LEAVE Comcast ultimately was resolved by my throwing up a white flag, Bob's been burned by Comcast's lack of customer support trying to BECOME a customer.

I like the way he's ended his post with a call to action:

In any event, the damage has been done. They have ruined two weekends and screwed up half of my telecom services. I will shake them down for as much free service as I can get, then drop them at the first opportunity. And they deserve it. They deserve much worse.

Is this company so frantic to seize market share on voice and broadband that it is willing to disrupt customers' lives, fail to appear, repeatedly lie to them, walk out on them and then treat the customer as if he or she is a nuisance?

Well, we shall see. This is the Listenomics age. We will not take it quietly.

And by the 49 comments (and counting) left so far, it looks like folks are not staying quiet.

setting my goal as the Feynman point

Courtesy a kottke.org post today, I have a new goal: to memorize pi to the Feynman point.

The Feynman point is the sequence of six 9s which begins 762 digits into pi. "[Feynman] once stated during a lecture he would like to memorize the digits of pi until that point, so he could recite them and quip 'nine nine nine nine nine nine and so on.'"

Maybe I can work on this as I climb Mt Whitney at the end of the month?

Why the rote memory exercise? Well, it helps me pass the time on those solo ventures (hiking, motorcycling, kayaking) when the mind otherwise goes to jelly. I've already memorized pi to the 76th digit (cluttering up my memory from a contest in math class back in high school over 20 years ago). Oh, and I can sing the alphabet backwards, too.

So many brain cells, so little time.

recording industry exploits, redux

Yet another example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, social capital style...

In today's WSJ (online), there's a great story about the secret behind YouTube (and MySpace) Singer-Songwriter Marié Digby.

In an Aug. 16 blog posting on her MySpace page, Ms. Digby wrote: "I NEVER in a million years thought that doing my little video of Umbrella in my living room would lead to this . tv shows, itunes, etc !!!"

Ms. Digby's MySpace and YouTube pages don't mention Hollywood Records. Until last week, a box marked "Type of Label" on her MySpace Music page said, "None." After inquiries from The Wall Street Journal, the entry was changed to "Major," though the label still is not named.

The artist and her label say there's nothing untoward about the campaign. In interviews, Ms. Digby and executives at the company describe her three-month string of successes as part of a lengthy process of laying the groundwork for the upcoming release of her debut album.

Ms. Digby says she doesn't mention her record label on her Web sites because "I didn't feel like it was something that was going to make people like me."

So, while she's been playing up the aw-shucks-how-did-this-happen-to-little-old-me? schtick by posing as an amateur on both MySpace and YouTube, she's actually been signed to the major Hollywood Records label since 2005.

It turns out the passed-as-happenstance events that have found her on TV, on radio, and on iTunes were actually part of a carefully executed exploit of the audience's thirst for amateurs and disdain for labels.

Just as lonelygirl15 has heightened our suspicion of anything that seems to good to be true in terms of amateur-produced video, now Marié Digby has raised our guard around amateur singer-songwriters.

Sure, the exploit works once, but where's the long term payoff when the customer base only grows more suspicious of any future endeavors?

UPDATE: Good to see Ben over at Church of the Consumer Blog take this issue on (what with his huge readership). With a week's distance from the WSJ article, he's made the same hopscotch leaps from Digby to lonelygirl to future implications, and has a nice follow up on the repercussions on Digby's MySpace presence.

changing habits to fit a Blackberry 8830

I've been using a Treo 650 for the last couple years, and have finally migrated over to the Blackberry platform, specifically Verizon's 8830 World Edition Blackberry.

If you're looking for reviews of the 8830, check out what's being said on C|Net, PC Magazine or Mobile Tech Review.

This post is about what it's like to try to get used to using a Blackberry after having lived on a Treo for two years. Likely this'll spread over several posts, so let's get started.

• Size and Feel: while the 8830 is the biggest Blackberry, it's still shorter and thinner and lighter than my Treo 650. And the keyboard of the Blackberry's a lot easier to touch-type from thanks to the raised beveled keys.
  
• The trackball: I'm liking the trackball a lot. It certainly beats the buttons on the Treo for navigating around the screen. However, the tracking is a little slow for my taste in its default setting, and I haven't yet figured out how to speed up its sensitivity (assuming I can). (you can control the trackball sensitivity under Options>>Screen/Keyboard) When I'm trying to get to the bottom of my deep email inbox, it'd sure be great to have the iPod-like tracking mechanism to move around quickly, but that's not to be.
• The Back Button: I considered the lack of a back button to be the major flaw of the Treo. The fact that I can get back to where I was by clicking a single button is great. Kudos to RIM on this feature. Now if only I could figure out how to stop accidentally going back, I'd be in business
• Email systems: Not until I started using the Blackberry's text-based email system did I realize how spoiled I was using SnapperMail on the Treo 650 which allowed me to read html-formatted email easily. I'll get used to the RIM's email system quickly tho (although I need to change my email subscriptions to be text-based instead of html-based), especially since I love the push email system. I also really like being able to direct both my work and personal emails to my 8830 and they both alert me when a new message comes in. I would like to be able to separate them out so that during the day I only get work email alerts, but I can live without it (for now).
• Camera (lack thereof): I didn't realize just how much I used my Treo's camera (crappy as it was) until I found myself looking for the camera app on the 8830. Hmmm. In skimming the crackberry forum boards, I'm reminded I've got a business tool now, and next time I report to jury duty, I won't have to fork over my phone due to its built-in camera function. Seeing how much I love my wife's Canon Powershot 1000, I think I can live without the camera-based phone.
• Memory: Given the Treo's lackluster performance on the built-in RAM front, I'd supplemented its capacity with a 1GB smart memory card which I used (thanks to an adapter) as an always-present thumb drive. However, given the location of the memory card (top center of the phone), I was always accidentally ejecting the smart card. On the 8830, however, the micro memory card is tucked away in the battery compartment so there's no chance of accidentally ejecting it. The opposite is true: I was able to install a 2GB micro memory card only after a lot of precision installation work. Not likely to replay that installation process, so I view it as a permanent install. Considering I can't take pix or movies, I wonder what I'll fill it with?
• Themes: I've only learned about four different themes on the 8830 (the Verizon style and three BB styles), but wow, I'd love to be able to personalize it a bit more. It's not readily apparent how to add graphics, styles or sounds to the 8830, so I'm stuck with a default theme (for now). The Treo, on the other hand, was quite personalizable (what a word!).
  

The biggest difference I'm enjoying between the Treo 650 and the Blackberry 8830 is that the 8830 is compatible with my car's telecom system, so all calls to me while I'm driving are routed through the hands-free car system, and no more fumbling for the phone or holding it awkwardly while I drive. As a bonus, I can scroll through my address book using the buttons on my steering wheel and initiate a call from there. Sweet. This has made the purchase worth it all by itself.

BTW, I got my 8830 for $199 after all the discounts from Verizon (new every two and online ordering) along with a two-ear commitment back to Verizon. Hey, I've been with them this long, what's another two years?

(of course, I've still got another 25 days to change my mind without penalty)

Stay tuned!

Crowded House concert set list

My longtime favorite band Crowded House is in town on their Time On Earth tour, and I got a chance to catch them in a phenomenal show at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga, CA, last night. The Mountain Winery is a small 2,500 seat venue that's up in the hills above Silicon Valley. Once the sun sets, the lights of San Jose and all the surrounding cities glimmer on the valley floor.

And as a bonus last night, the almost-full moon rose about a third of the way into Crowded House's set and was so impressive that Neil Finn stopped the show, told us to all stand up and turn around to see the moon rise across the valley floor.

You could really tell the band enjoyed playing together, as the banter was going full force, and the show felt more like watching good friends play songs for you in their living room than the larger affair it actually was.

I kept track, and the set list from the 2+ hour show:

• There Goes God
• World Where You Live
• Say That Again
• Don't Stop Now
• Fall At Your Feet
• Distant Sun
• Silent House
• You Are The Only One To Make Me Cry

(moon rises, we all look, and they do a partial cover of Van Morrison's Moondance)

• Nails in My Feet
• Don't Dream It's Over
• Pineapple Head
• People Are Like Suns
• When You Come
• Something So Strong

encore

• Locked Out
• She Called Up
• Weather With You

encore encore

• Fingers of Love
• She Goes On
• Four Seasons in One Day
• Better Be Home Soon sing along (this was an acoustic version, as the venue staff had pulled the plug on the sound due to curfew. Neil led us on an extended version as an "F you" to the man)

There's still quite a few dates left on their tour, so by all means buy a ticket and enjoy the show.

giving Verizon Wireless one more chance

I've been flummoxed trying to make sense of all the plans and equipment and rates at the various carriers. Recognizing this FUD leads to a rather dear switching cost, I decided to give Verizon Wireless one more try, despite my blogged claims to the contrary.

I borrowed a friend's VZW-powered Blackberry 8830 today to see if I could pair it to my car and use my car's system to talk hands-free. Sure enough, the 8830 worked like a charm.

Rather than go in to a retail store and pick up the phone (why should they get the commission?), I instead used Verizon Wireless's online store and saved myself $100 in the process for upgrading my phone online.

So, I've ordered my own Blackberry 8830 (and upgraded Left Coast Mom to a RAZR in the same shipment). They Should arrive early next week.

And I'll be sure to blog about my experience changing from the Treo 650 world to the Blackberry 8830 world. First stop: how to get all my data from one to the other?

My daughter wants to be John Moschitta

A good friend shared this video with me this morning, and I now know who my daughter's idolizing at the ripe age of four. I swear she spends her days (all day, every day) practicing to take over his throne as the fastest talker in the world.

Fast Talking Fedex Commercial

Posted Nov 22, 2006

Fast talker John Moschitta runs his mouth through this '80s spot for Fedex. John Moschitta is best known as the fast talking fellow from the Micro Machines ads.

Best Burger in the USA at Bobcat Bite? YES

I'm a huge fan of Alton Brown (his shows on the Food Network include Good Eats and Feasting on Asphalt), and when I caught a glimpse of a Food Network special on the Best Restaurants in America, I knew I had to see the whole thing to find out where in this fine country I could find the best fried chicken, the best pizza, the best ribs and the best burger.

Imagine my surprise when I saw that the food editors at Bon Apetit magazine had chosen as the best in all the land the green chile cheeseburger at Bobcat Bite outside Santa Fe. Why was I surprised? Because I was scheduled to fly out to Santa Fe the day after watching the special on TV.

What luck!

I did a sufficient amount of research (going to the web site) to get a pretty good idea:
- where the restaurant is (on the Old Las Vegas Hwy, 4.5 miles east of the Old Pecos Trail exit off I-25)
- when it's open (11am to 7:50pm Tuesday through Saturday)
- what to order: a green chile cheeseburger, home fries and iced tea

I pulled up outside the pink adobe building at 3pm on a Thursday. Late enough, I thought, to miss the lunch crowd and early enough to avoid the dinner scene.

The two outside tables (four-tops, each) were full of folks enjoying their meals, so I pulled open the screen door to go inside and took a seat at the long wooden bar that runs the length of the skinny dining area. Behind the bar is a big picture window through which you can watch humming birds flit about the feeder and thrushes and jays and juncos splash around in the bird bath. Between the door and the bar is a single row of tables giving the place a decidedly cramped-but-cozy feel to it. Lots of Old West memorabilia on the walls, and the murmur of good conversations taking place over even better food.

In short order, Bonnie, one of two waitresses working that afternoon, had placed a menu in front of me and told me she'd be back for my order in a moment as she walked down the length of the bar and through the doorway into the kitchen. From my vantage point, I could see the very cast iron griddle stove that had been featured on Alton's program.

While I already knew what I'd be ordering, I opened the menu out of curiosity to see that, on the left side of the page, their sandwich menu ran the gamut from a plain hamburger to my green chile cheeseburger to a simple ham and cheese (ranging in price from $5.60 to $6.85). On the right side, they listed out the various steaks they serve, ranging in price from $12 to $20.

I told Bonnie my order (burger medium rare, please) and she quickly brought my glass of unsweetened tea and I sipped it while looking around the room to see who else I was dining with. Of the 27 seats available inside, there were only four empty chairs to be had. The crowd on hand ranged from a couple tattoo-laden young guys at a two-top talking about cars to a cluster of white-haired friends swapping stories about who'd forgotten what more often. If I didn't know any better, I'd say well over half the customers were locals on top of being frequent guests.

Bonnie and the other waitress certainly made everyone feel at home as they brought out plate after plate of burgers and home fries and refilled glasses of lemonade and tea.

A scant 20 minutes after placing my order, Bonnie set the most beautiful looking green chile cheeseburger in front of me. It's served open faced so you can add lettuce and tomato as you wish before setting the top bun on the patty. The patty was a beautiful brown and thick 10 ounces of ground-that-day choice chuck. The monterey jack cheese was perfectly melted so as to capture the diced green chiles underneath it and not allow them to fall off. The home fries that were scattered around the burger were a perfect golden color... yum.

When I stacked the bun on top of the burger, it was thick enough that I had to consciously open my mouth as far as it would go (just shy of painfully wide), and when I bit in, the taste was heavenly. The texture of the beef was a hearty and moist crumb, the mild jack cheese helped to cool the surprising heat of the green chiles, but all of it worked to really make my mouth sparkle bite after bite. I closed my eyes in bliss. I had found the perfect burger.

Before I knew it, I'd eaten well over two-thirds of the burger, and only ten minutes had passed since the plate was set in front of me. I slowed my attack and enjoyed every chewing motion that unleashed more of the yummy burger taste into my mouth. I started alternating bites of burger with bites of home fries (perfectly cooked and salted just the right amount) trying to stretch things out even more. But, 15 minutes after I'd taken my first bite, the whole thing was gone.

While I wanted to order another burger then and there, I knew it was only a matter of minutes before my stomach would be puffed out to here. I resisted and instead walked up to the register to pay Bonnie for my meal: a grand total of $10.45 (plus tip).

Maybe they sell more steaks at night, but while I was in the place, I only heard anyone order the same thing I was getting: a green chile cheeseburger (supposedly the best in the land).

If you ever find yourself in the Land of Enchantment,