[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBu3N8_U4WE] Hip-hopper Pete Miser deserves a hit for this quirky music video that is sure to inflame Apple lawyers. Watch the video before they bury YouTube with take-down notices.
It’s Not Alaska, It’s an Adventure
Jean McDermott cracks me up. She’s got a wry, dry sense of humor. Maybe the humorless can’t survive Alaskan winters.
Today, Jean posted a picture of her freezer and, separately, commented on the weather: “A couple days ago we got 10 inches of snow in one night. People up here walked around just beaming. Finally! The bumps in the ski, snowmachine, mushing and skijore trails would finally be smoothed out. No more skidding around on dirt! Not only that, but it has warmed up to a positively balmy 20° ABOVE so everyone is having a bit of a respite from having to put on so much bleeding gear every time one goes outside!
CES 2008 was Great
I had a great time at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, thanks to the October move to San Diego and a little scheduling assistance from Microsoft PR agency Edeleman. From Washington, DC, CES would have been a week commitment. From San Diego, Las Vegas is an hour flight. Edelman booked five Microsoft meetings for Tuesday. I snagged another private Microsoft meeting and one regular briefing with HP. I had a jam-packed schedule consolidated so that I could fly in and out on the same day.
Scoble Scrapes Friends’ Trust
Robert Scoble has been the talk of the Web today, for getting booted from Facebook. Robert is back on Facebook now, but he shouldn’t be. Facebook suspended the former Microsoft evangelist blogger for a terms-of-service violation. He used a testing Plaxo tool to mine, or “scrape,” information from about 5,000 of his contacts. [Editor’s note, April 4, 2017: Three Scobelizer posts gone; links removed.]
Best New Years Ever!
My family spent part of the day at Torrey Pines State Reserve. We walked the beach on a day where the temperature reached 21 degrees Celsius. Oh joy!
You Phone Home, I Hang Up
Tonight, I removed Adobe’s Lightroom 1.3 from my computer. Maybe that makes me part of the so-called “tinfoil” hat crowd. I’m deeply concerned about Adobe collecting information, in apparently disguised fashion, from users of its products.
I don’t buy Adobe’s excuses. Creative Suite 3 isn’t freeware. People buying the software can pay as much as $1,800 (street price), depending on CS3 version. Adobe feels free to mine information from these customers, without even asking their permission? Shame on Adobe. I would remove Acrobat and Flash, if so many Websites didn’t use the software. I’m mad!
Environmental Question
I hear a whole lot of ruckus about global warming and carbon emissions spewed into the air. I have a question for the environmentalists—some of them extremists—pointing fingers of accusation: How much worse off is the planet because of you and your political maneuvering that ended US adoption of fission reactors in the 1970s?
Environmentalist FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about radioactive waste disposal was a major factor halting nuclear power plant construction in the United States. Meanwhile, many electrical facilities resorted to coal and, gasp, oil—fossil fuels that produce carbon dioxide when burned.
There’s a Worm in Retail Apple
My wife suggested that I read Washington Post story, “The Elite Apple Corps: A Hundred Million Strong, Every One of Them Cool.” I live in California! I don’t read the Post anymore, which is why I didn’t see it. The story appears in today’s Style section.
Reporter Hank Stuever hits on what’s wrong with the Apple retail stores. They’re too busy, and so they’re no longer fun.
Thanks Isn’t Enough
Thirty years ago, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I knuckled down for a lonely holiday with the mainly foreign students on the University of Maine campus. I had no way home but was ready to tough out the long weekend with the other students.
With a difference: Many of my companions came from countries with no Thanksgiving. They didn’t have the memory of family and feast for this particular holiday. I was a freshman, too. Some of the guys planned to hang out in the computer center and play keyboard games and read the print-out action on teletypes. I would join them.
Tommy’s Chili Burgers
Yesterday, we drove up to Los Angeles for an exciting peace event, where my daughter sang with the local church choir. Earlier today, my buddy Andy took us to Tommy’s, which he described as “an […]
Our First Halloween in San Diego
Little more than two weeks on the West Coast, we celebrated All Hallow’s Day. It was no Scary Perry, but my daughter had fun trick-or-treating with her church friends. She poses in her candy corn […]
I’m in San Diego!
There is no way to succinctly describe the last couple weeks. So I won’t. We arrived in San Diego on the evening of Oct. 15. My father-in-law had stocked some food, plastic dishes, and two […]