Andy's Blog

Bowled over

Every once in a while, I find something on the 'net that just bowls me over. Last night, in as I gorged myself on Internet access after finally getting my T-Mobile HotSpot account working (more on that saga later), I surfed on over to the website for the Bloggies. I just sort of skimmed through the list of nominees, but I paid special attention to the nominees for the "best designed" blogs. I have been wanting to fix up the design of my blog since I first started it, so I am always on the lookout for ideas. Of the five nominees, one in particular stands out: Karen Cheng's blog.

This site is truly amazing. The design is spartan, precise, functional, all with a dash of whimsy. I love the separator graphics in between posts -- how the day is contained in the image, and how it slides along the line, depending on how far through the week it is. Even more amazing, are the banners that Mrs. Cheng creates for some of her posts. Most of them contain a blend of images, some of which are astonishing. She is clearly a photoshop genious -- the graphics are simply amazing.

So, after spending some time browsing, and taking in the design, I started reading. In particular, I read her post from January 4th, entitled "No Place Higher". Truly gut-wrenching stuff. Amazingly written -- it conveys the exact emotional tone of her recent experience, without being too wordy or melodramatic. After reading this, it is obvious that that humanity, for all of its flaws and weaknesses, kicks tremendous ass.

-Andy.

Me and Fredrik near Paddington Station

See, Fredrik and I really did visit London!

-Andy.

An Authentic English Breakfast

So, I decided to make my London experience "complete" by ordering an authentic English breakfast:

It looks extremely unappetizing. I mean, I like all of those ingredients individually, but all together?!?! It was a bit of a challenge getting my stomach to accept this meal...

-Andy.

Visiting London

Since I had to spend a weekend in Europe, I wanted to pay a visit to the only European that I know -- my friend Fredrik. Unfortunately, flights to Oslo from Frankfurt for the weekend were rather expensive (around $500 US). Luckily, Fredrik was in London on business last week, and he offered to extend his stay over the weekend, so that we could hang out in London. Flights from Frankfurt to London being much more plentiful (and hence cheaper), I was sold.

Aside from freezing ourselves schtoopid on Saturday in the early afternoon (I misjudged how cold it really was, and dressed too lightly), we had a kick-ass time. London is an amazing city. For one, the size and scope of the city is amazing (definitely on a par with New York, and much bigger than San Francisco). For another, the sense of history that the city has is breath-taking -- there has been a city in this area of the world for well over 2000 years. America really can't hold a candle to that.

Fredrik and I took a bus tour of the city, and saw a lot of the major sites quick (since we really didn't have that much time). We also made good use of our Tube day passes, zipping all over the city. We checked out Madame Tussaud's, but it was rather expensive, and we wouldn't have had much time to see it before closing. That is one thing about London -- most places close rather early, especially in the winter. So, the next time I go, I'll have to start my day earlier, and plan the evening more carefully -- finding a restaurant that was open when we wanted to eat was a bit tricky.

In a shocking twist, Fredrik and I went to the theatre for the evening's entertainment. We saw a play called "Fix Up" at the National Theatre. It was interesting, to say the least. Not experimental theatre or anything, and not a big show-tuney production either. Fredrik and I went into it pretty-much cold, with no expectations. And I wasn't disappointed -- because I think that the play defied pretty-much any expectations that I might have been able to supply, given the opportunity. The performances were quite solid, and I definitely came away feeling that the experience was worthwhile. I think I could be guy who sees more plays, as long as they aren't in the Le Miserables/Fame/Jerry Springer vein.

-Andy.

Outside of the EDS office in Rüsselsheim

The EDS site in Rüsselsheim is quite large. They have four buildings, three of which are seven stories each. And there are a number of EDS flags flying outside of each:

Also notable in this picture is the snow. It has been cold here in Rüsselsheim, but not snowy. Then last Thursday, we got about an inch (or so) of snow. This sleepy little industrial town actually looks quite nice with a dusting of snow.

-Andy.

Working Europe

Thing have been busy lately, and I haven't been blogging as much as I'd like. One reason is because I'm in the midst of my second business trip for EDS. This second trip is a two week affair, during which I am going to be training a team of engineers on how to support the product that I work on. The rub (of course, there is always a rub), is that this team is based in Rüsslesheim, Germany. So, last Sunday, I was dispatched to Germany.

From a work perspective, I would say that my first week in Germany went okay. My position on conducting training is somewhat lukewarm -- I generally like teaching, but I don't like being in the position of talking about things of which I'm not an expert. If I had plenty of time to prepare, I could have learned a whole bunch more about our product, and things would have been great. Unfortunately, like everybody else on my team, I don't have any extra time, so I really only know the parts that I coded well. And of course, as is my luck, the team in Germany won't be using 2 out of the 3 components that I coded. sigh.

But, the team in Germany has been great to me. They are quite helpful and friendly, and they seem to be interested in what I am saying. I'm getting quite a few questions, which is provoking some interesting discussion.

Now, from a me-travelling-abroad perspective, once again, things are only going okay. I was super sleep-deprived when I arrived in Frankfurt. I arrived on Monday morning, after leaving San Francisco very early the previous morning. I had a lot of material to cover, so I worked almost a full day on that Monday. But when sleep-deprived, things can happen. Within an hour of being in Germany, I had forgotten to get a receipt from the Taxi that I took from the airport to the office (which means I probably can't get reimbursed for that), and even more distressingly, I lost my cell phone.

My phone wasn't working in Germany, even though it is a "world phone". It was able to connect to several different European GSM providers, but I wasn't able to actually roam on their network. So, I was fooling around with the settings on my phone in the Taxi, and that is the last time I remember having it. So, I either left it in the Taxi, or dropped it on the sidewalk while walking to the EDS office.

Damn.

I'm not really too upset about it, however. The most important data on the phone (all of the phone numbers) is backed up -- thanks to Bluetooth and iSync on MacOS X. It is just been really annoying -- not only do I never know what time it is (on top of all of the jet lag), but I am also forced to screw around with pay phones again (ug). But on the upside, whereas before I was just toying around with getting a new phone, now I have to get one.

Other than that, I have been eating some good German food, recovering from all of the jet lag, keeping up with my American TV interests (via my Linux PVR), and experiencing a different culture. But still, I'm not much of a traveller, and I do miss being at "home", and going to sleep in my own bed. :|

-Andy.

MWSF 2005: Pages

While waiting to get my Keynote 2 question answered, I got a demo of Pages, Apple's new word processor. I had a rather dim view of it after seeing the keynote. Well, let me say this - I came away from the in-person demo much more impressed. During Steve's demo, he emphasized how you could use Apple's templates to make slick looking documents. That's great and all, but templates are usually constraining with their boilerplateness. So, I asked the Apple employee who demo'd Pages to me a series of questions about modifying styles, creating templates, and modifying templates.

And I'm happy to report that it appears to be super-easy to do all of the above. And from what I saw, you shouldn't be fooled by what some in the press are saying -- namely that Microsoft word has nothing to fear from Pages. I would say that MS has a lot to fear. There are some really high-end things that I'm sure that Word does better than Pages. But based upon the kick-ass demo that I saw, Pages may be the first word processor to give Word some competition. Well, other than Word itself, of course. :)

-Andy.

MWSF 2005: Keynote 2

Over the course of the last 6 months, I have been doing a fair amount of PowerPoint at work. I've got the latest and greatest version, PowerPoint 2004 for my mac. So, it is from this perspective that I have taken a renewed interest in Keynote. Well, that, and Apple lowered the price of the new version. So, I asked one of the Apple guys who was demo'ing iWork my all important question: how does the new presenters mode of Keynote 2 facilitate giving demos? By that, I mean what happens when you are giving a presentation, and you want to command-tab over to some other application, in order to show your audience some other bit of information?

In PowerPoint 2004, this is really, really slick. I mean, Microsoft really nailed this feature. When you start a presentation in PowerPoint, it determines if you have two displays. And if you do, it automatically puts you into presenter mode -- where the primary display shows information to the presenter (current slide, next slide, current time, etc.), and the secondary display shows a full-size version of the current slide. But what's even better, is that when you hit command-tab to go to a different application, PowerPoint automatically switches the displays to mirrored display mode. This allows you to see the same thing on the screen that the presenter looks at as the screen that the audience looks at. It makes interacting with other applications a snap for the presenter. Then, when you are done, you command-tab back to PowerPoint, and it automatically un-mirrors the displays, and you can continue with your presentation.

The whole thing works so naturally, that it took me a little bit to realize what PowerPoint was actually doing. I mean, PowerPoint was doing the right thing, automatically, without me having to go in and configure a bunch of options, or fight with some bizarre keystrokes. In short, it was being mac-like.

Anyways, I described all of this to the first Apple employee that I talked to, and he didn't know what Keynote 2 would do in this situation. And he couldn't find out, because his G5 only had one display. The gentleman next to him, however, had a PowerBook with a secondary display. So, I waited in line (quite a while) for him to be free. I'll paraphrase our conversation:

Me: So, when using the new presentation mode of Keynote 2, what happens when you command-tab to some other application?

Apple Guy 2: Why would you want to do that?

Me: You know, for giving demos and stuff. Say I'm giving a presentation about how some application works, and I want to flip back and forth between my slides and the application.

Apple Guy 2: I'm not sure, let's try it.

[At this point, he starts a presentation in Keynote 2, and hits command-tab. Nothing happens]

Apple Guy 2: You can't.

Me (incredulous): What do you mean you can't?

Apple Guy 2: Once you are in presentation mode, the only way out of it is to stop the presentation.

[He notices the dumbfounded expression on my face]

.... Well, maybe this isn't the best way for Keynote to behave....

No kidding! I know it's dumb of me to reject a product simply because it doesn't have one feature or another, but this is a total deal breaker for me. At least, for the presentations that I have been giving, and am likely to be giving in the near future.

Dang.

-Andy.

MWSF 2005: Tiger (Spotlight and Dashboard)

I didn't spend too much time bugging the guy who was doing Tiger demos. I did learn that for photos, Spotlight indexes the metatdata that you see when you do "get info" on an image (like the comments box for example). It looks like Tiger has expanded this, because I noticed a "keywords" box in the get info dialog. I'm not sure if this data is passed around in EXIF, but I suspect that it is. So, because of this, I think that some of the Dashboard demo that Steve did was "smoke and mirrors". Most normal people aren't going to have awesome metadata associated with their pictures and movies, so those things won't show up in Spotlight searches. I grilled the guy, but it doesn't appear as if Apple is providing any awesome way for entering in metadata. At least, the guy that I talked to could only offer up some lame Applescript excuse...

Dashboard appears to be everything that was demoed, however. I think the only problem I'm going to have with it is going to be the with the function key that I bind it too. My powerbook only has two function keys that I don't need to hit Fn for first (F11 and F12). I'm currently using both of those for expose, so I'm going to have to come up with something hip for Dashboard. I quizzed the Apple guy about adding new widgets. He said that since widgets are powerful, that Apple is only going to make it easy to install ones that they have certified. But, it is possible to install non-certified widgets - you just have to drop them into the correct directory, and they'll work. Oh, and the eye candy around this feature is mind blowing. I saw some of it in the keynote, but there is even more that I saw when I was getting the in-depth look today.

They still haven't fixed my biggest beef with Mail. I like to use nicknames for people (like 'dad' for example), and there isn't a clean way to do this in Mail. Also, when you do type the first few letters of someone's name, there is an intolerable lag before it fills in the e-mail address. This still remains in Tiger (although it is much harder to out-type it on a 2.5Ghz G5).

The last thing that I found out is that the upgraded iChat AV in Tiger is backwards-compatible with that in Panther. So, my dad and I won't have to upgrade in lockstep in order to still chat. :)

-Andy.

MWSF 2005: iPhoto 5

I spent my afternoon at Macworld today on the show floor, covering the bits that I didn't see yesterday, and spending a lot of time in the Apple booth. This allowed me to get a more in-depth look at some of the new stuff that Apple announced, including iPhoto 5. In a nutshell, iPhoto 5 seems to offer a couple of nice improvements over iPhoto 4, but all of the major things that suck about iPhoto 4 still suck in iPhoto 5. I was giving the poor Apple employee who was talking to me the business about it, and I got him to admit that some of the things that bugged me about iPhoto 4 bugged him too, and they still weren't fixed.

The "smart albums" still aren't very smart. I somehow got a bunch of low-res thumbnails in my iPhoto, and there was no way to create a smart album based on the resolution of the pictures. And there is still no way to do that in iPhoto 5. In addition, there is still no good way to add metadata to photos. Even worse, it appears as if there is no integration between Spotlight and iPhoto -- so even if you could add metadata easily in iPhoto, Spotlight wouldn't see it. The issues with file names on pictures remain -- when you export photos, you can assign them a filename based on the title. But that will only be relevant if you enter that in first (which, as I have discussed, is a pain in iPhoto).

On the upside, iPhoto 5 can download movies off of the camera. I convinced the guy to try it with my camera (I had my USB cable with me), since he has a similar Sony. During the Keynote, Steve Jobs said that iPhoto 5 supported MPEG 4. But it appears that he meant to say that it supports any movie format that Quicktime does. Because my camera generates MPEG1 movies with MPEG2 layer 3 audio, and iPhoto handled those just fine. You can also eject the removable media right from iPhoto now, although it doesn't eject automatically after export. Sorting the photo library by roll has been improved, in that you can name the rolls now.

So, all-in-all, a disappointment. If I had a camera that could generate RAW images, or if I was into making photo books, I'd be all over this thing. But, that's not where I'm at right now. So, it looks like $80 is going to be a tough sell for me. I think that Apple is going about this iLife pricing thing all wrong. It is right to build the applications so that they work together -- Apple is making clear gains there. But I don't think it is necessary to bundle them together. Since it is $80 for four applications now (iTunes doesn't count because it is free), Apple should just make it $20 per application. In that way, people who only do photos but not video (like me) will be satisfied. And people who do movies but not music will be satisfied, etc. And if you want them all, it's the same price as if Apple bundled them together.

Probably not ever going to happen, but it is worth a thought anyway.

-Andy.

The Mac mini power adapter

The Mac mini has an external power brick, unlike the iMac G5:

Still, not that big of a deal, considering how small the Mac mini is. It would be great if it used the same power supply as the PowerBook/iBook, but oh well.

-Andy.

The Mac mini

The Mac mini, underneath

I flipped one of the Mac mini's that Apple had display over, and got a picture that I haven't seen anywhere else yet:

The bottom appeared to be a solid chunk of metal, with the Apple logo etched into it. Sweet.

-Andy.

The wall of iPod shuffles

Apple has a wall that runs along the side of their booth, devoted to the iPod shuffle:

Me touching an iPod shuffle

Apple has really nailed this product. Again.

-Andy.

MWSF 2005: The Highs

All-in-all, this was a pretty awesome keynote. Even though the rumor sites pretty much spoiled things in terms of the general ideas of what Apple would announce, what Apple delivered was uniformly better then what the rumor sites were predicting. Without further ado, here is my list:

• Spotlight - Desktop search done right. The integration into applications (especially the Finder with Smart Folders [which look super rad]) is what really makes spotlight great.
• Improved Mail.app in Tiger - being able to search all of my mail folders via spotlight is going to save me crazy amounts of time. I could *really* use this at work, however. Maybe I should buy a Mac mini and use it at EDS?
• iChat AV and H.264 - I really want the better codec. I don't see myself doing multiparty video conferences, unless some of my team at EDS gets macs (hint, hint).
• Mac mini - Stupendous. It is smaller (but taller) than what I envisioned. And Apple actually got to the $499 price point. I haven't looked at all of the specs yet, but it looks like it's essentially my laptop in a smaller package. If it had a PCI slot and TV-output, I could use it as my Tivo. And it would look way better than that Shuttle that I just bought.
• iPod shuffle - I was surprised that Apple actually did a flash-based iPod. Basically, because up until now, all flash players have sucked, and I didn't see a way for Apple to make them un-suck. Well, I am quite happy to be proven wrong. Apple has been able to deliver a lot of memory for a cheap price. And, even more importantly, they have licked the UI issues. I played with one on the expo floor, and it is amazing. You hit play, and it immediately starts playing a song. Don't like it? Hit next -- you immediately get a new song. It is really fast. And the audio quality is amazing. Even on the noisy show floor, I could tell that this thing sounds great. And it is so compact. The form factor is also really amazing. I want one. As I have typed this, my want for this product has increased. How does Apple keep doing it? They are taking all other CE vendors to school right now. Creative? Rio? iRiver? Sony? None of them can even touch this. It doesn't make any sense.
• Apple sells 4.5 million iPods in Q4 2004. Quite simply, this was the biggest, most stunning announcement that Steve Jobs made today. With the 1-2 iPod / iTunes music store punch, Apple has blown the roof off of digital music. The numbers that Jobs presented during the keynote are simply astounding.
• More iPod integration with cars - I checked out the Mercedes CLS 500 on the show floor. That looks like a really impressive ride. Is $70k too much to spend on a car?
• iWork only costs $79 - Quite a price savings, since Keynote alone used to cost $100. I don't think that I'm going to buy it (since I have Office 2004, which is pretty sweet). But if I have to deliver a lot more presentations for work, I may start sniffing around Keynote 2.
• Sheet music generation in Garage Band 2 - I don't know what this feature is really called, but watching John Mayer play the piano and having the notes pop on the screen in Garage Band was jaw-droppingly cool.
• Dashboard - the way the widgets flip in and out must be seen to be believed. A really killer feature in Tiger -- I can definitely see myself using this a whole bunch. Apple has addressed a real need in using the computer (getting little sides bits of info fast), and solved it in a beautiful, innovative way.
• New features in iPhoto - while I have already panned the price, it looks like a lot of the improvements in iPhoto 5 are going to be welcome. I didn't get a chance to play with it today (the Apple booth was positively mobbed), but I'll try and get some time with it tomorrow.

All-in-all, a dazzling keynote. I'm really glad that I went. I will try and post some pictures and blog more about some of the other things that I saw at the show later this evening (after I put in a few hours at work).

-Andy.

MWSF 2005: The Lows

Because I'm a pessimist, I'll present my disappointments with the Steve Jobs keynote first:

• Price of iLife '05 raised to $79 - The only app that I want out of there is iPhoto. Paying $50 for it last year was ok, because I wanted to play with Garage Band. But $80? That's a little tougher to swallow.
• No eMac update - Now that we have the Mac mini (which looks awesome), what is the point of the eMac?
• No PowerBook update - Just because the G5 isn't ready for the PowerBook yet, doesn't mean that there is no way for Apple to innovate with the PowerBook line. Here is a list of things that I just brainstormed: biometric security, higher-resolution displays, better audio-out quality, higher capacity batteries, improved Bluetooth, bringing the 12" up to parity with the rest of the PowerBook line, and doing a subnotebook again.
• Still no firm ship date for Tiger - What's up with that?
• iPhoto doesn't appear to have better "tagging" support - Jobs spent a lot of time showing off Spotlight, and how it scan index and search through the metadata attached to photos. Well, currently, adding metadata to photo in iPhoto sucks. And it doesn't appear to be any better in iPhoto 5.
• No .Mac updates - I'm still waiting for the "killer feature" makes me give Apple more money. Blogging is an obvious one to go after -- how can Microsoft be all over it while it isn't even on Apple's radar?
• No 5Gb iPod mini

Most of these are minor quibbles -- the good far outweighed the bad at this year's keynote. And I'll discuss the good in the next post.

-Andy.

MWSF 2005: Skunked

So, I woke up at 5:30 this morning, in order to be sure that I didn't miss a 6:58 AM Caltrain, which put me into S.F. at 7:47 AM, which got me to Moscone before 8. By the time I got my pass, went to the bathroom, and got to the end of the (considerable) keynote line, it was 8:03 AM. The keynote was supposed to start at 9, but it didn't get under way until 9:20ish. So, I was in line over an hour early.

But alas, it was not early enough. It looks like about 1/3 of the people who were waiting were able to make it into the main hall in order to see Steve Jobs deliver the keynote live. The rest of us got to go to the overfill room, to see the keynote on TV. While it was still better then watching a webcast, it isn't what I had hoped for (and I wasn't alone on that front).

If I go again next year, I'll have to up the ante with my approach to the keynote.

-Andy.

Giving Caltrain some props

So, I'm sitting on the 6:58 AM Caltrain from Mountain View to S.F. (it is a "baby bullet" train), and I feel the need to give Caltrain some props. First, they re-vamped the daily parking system at the station. No longer do yo have to park, walk to the machine, pay, and then walk back to your car in order to put the receipt in a viewable place. Now, you just park, look at the # of your space, and give that to the machine. Why does this matter? Because this morning it was raining cats & dogs right over the mountain view station (was it raining in Sunnyvale when I left my apartment? No.). So, this improvement lessened my soaking.

On the train, I am riding in one of their newer train cars. Not only is it amazingly quiet (I'm listening to Death Cab For Cutie without using the noise cancelling headphones!), but there is also an AC outlet for my powerbook! Sweet!

Now, if only they had onboard WiFi....

-Andy.

Engineering is awesome

Every once in awhile, Wired comes up with an Earth-changing-amazing story about how some kick-ass people are doing some kick-ass stuff that is going to change the world. I just read this article in the dead tree version of the magazine after work today. Basically, this article is about how some engineers over at MIT are figuring out how to build basic electrical circuits, using biology. The implications of this work are simply staggering. I mean, I am continually impressed by what the principles of engineering are able to achieve. And now, applying those some principles to the biological realm just seems like it is going to bust the whole field wide open. I have been fairly skeptical of the whole biotech field (sure it's going to exist, but is it going to boom and change the world?). Now I'm starting to see the light.

-Andy.

Dang!

The first law of buying a computer is that as soon as you buy it, there will be something {faster, sexier, smaller, cheaper} for purchase (choose your own attribute). Well, I just saw this on Gizmodo. And it certainly looks slicker than the xPC that I just bought. Rats!

-Andy.

My Shuttle SN95G5

After months of dithering, I finally bought the PC-of-my-media-center dreams:

This box is going to eventually house my TV capture card, and run Linux and MythTV, serving all of my personal video recorder needs. The hardware:

• Shuttle SN95G5 Case and Motherboard
• AMD Athlon64 3000+
• AOpen NVidia GeForce FX5200 128Mb AGP Video Card
• 1Gb of Corsair value RAM
• Seagate 200Gb Serial ATA HD
• Sony Dual-Layer DVD-/+RW CD/DVD Burner

I know that it is way more power than I need for a simple PVR, but I want it to be fast when I crunch video down to Mpeg4. I also want to rip DVDs with it. And run Seti@Home or something (since it has to be on all the time anyway). So, I splurged a bit.

For right now, I've got Windows XP on it, because there are a couple of games that I want to play, and I wanted to inaugurate this computer in style by killing the heck out of Kevin in Urban Terror. Also, I don't have time to mess with Linux right now (see the bit about Urban Terror). But when I get back from Germany, it is going to be on.

Once again, the gallery is here.
-Andy.

A hike in the rain

So, for various reasons (which I won't go into here), Kevin, Mike, and I drove down to Three Rivers, CA in order to visit with Elizabeth yesterday. And also to rescue Sheila from SoCal (yes, that is one of the reasons which I wasn't going to go into. And I'm not going to go into it. This is just mentioning it). Anyways, Mike couldn't go all the way down there and not do something. Never-mind the fact that it was raining, and the weatherman didn't say that it was going to stop.

There didn't seem to be any deterring him on this idea of doing something outside, and I was a little sleep-deprived from Kevin keeping me up the night before -- so I didn't put up too much of a fight.

So, we went hiking in Sequoia National Forest. In the rain:

It actually wasn't that bad -- most of the way up the mountain, there was only a light rain. Of course, on the way back, the rain got heavier. But I wasn't 100% drenched by the time I made it back to the car. Of course, all of the water made parts of the trail pretty slippery. But, it's not like I value my body or anything.

The plan was to start the hike at the Potwisha camp site, where the elevation is low enough that it doesn't snow. The plan was to hike up to a neat waterfall that is connected to the Marble Fork. But, we got started a little bit late, which meant that we didn't go all of the way to the waterfall. We did get pretty close, however (even though my photos don't really capture that fact).

Speaking of which, I've uploaded the limited set of photos that I took (hey, it was raining!) at this gallery.

-Andy.

MacWorld San Francisco 2005

So, I just bought my pass for MWSF 2005. I'm going to be going to the Steve Jobs keynote on Tuesday morning, and maybe to some user sessions on the 12th or 13th.

I am such an Apple nerd.

-Andy.

Tsunami Relief

Following Mark's lead, I have also donated some money to the Red Cross and Care for their Tsunami relief efforts. I have been thinking about doing this few the last few days, and I saw yesterday on Omar Shahine's blog that Microsoft matched his donation. I thought it would be really cool if EDS did that -- and lo and behold, I had a message from the CEO in my inbox this morning, claiming exactly that. So, I just donated some money, and got EDS to double it.

I am starting to feel rather impressed at how different companies are contributing to the welfare of the world. After spending the last several election cycles mired in cynicism, this Tsunami thing has been refreshing (excluding the massive loss of life, of course).

-Andy.

Apple Store Chicago

While waiting for our table at Due's, Sara and I walked over to the Apple store on Michigan avenue (we had a 50/50 chance of finding it -- I guess you can say that I got lucky). Sara tried to get me to buy an iPod mini, but I didn't crack (I am pretty close, though -- if new ones come out this month, that could seal my fate). I also almost bought some portable speakers that seemed pretty cool: The JBL "On Tour" Speaker System. These things looked pretty cool, and don't rely on an iPod dock connector, so they'll work with anything that has an audio output jack (like my PowerBook and MiniDisc player, for instance). Pretty tempting, especially since I'm going to Germany soon.

-Andy.

Wrigley Field

I took this picture while Sara and I were walking around in Wrigleyville, waiting for Kevin to materialize and the Fall Out Boy show to start. They don't make 'em like this anymore...

-Andy.

Pizzera Uno

I took this picture on our way into the restaurant. We got there a little after 4 PM on a Tuesday, and we still had to wait over an hour for our table. Amazing.

-Andy.

Holiday Wrap-Up

So, I'm on my way back to San Francisco, after having spent about 10 days in Chicago and the surrounding areas. As always, spending time with my family & extended family was great. We went over to Aunt Cathy's for Christmas Eve, and had the extended family over to our house for Christmas. Everybody seemed pretty happy to see me, especially Scout. Good old Scout is getting on in years, and is starting to show his age. He can still bust out with his playful puppy antics of old, but now for much shorter bursts. But that is okay, he still makes for an able companion to our family.

I completed trips to Peoria and Champaign. I went to Chicago twice -- once to consume Due's pizza with my family ("true" Chicago pizza), and the other time to see Fall Out Boy. My dad and I installed grandma's Christmas gift -- a new ceilling fan for the kitchen. I went to Oak Park for Mark and Laura's New Year's Eve party. And my folks took me on a drive all the way out to Woodstock, IL (hint: it's pretty far from Wheaton), in order to swap-out the 1Gb SO-DIMM that I bought for my PowerBook (more on that later). I saw a couple of movies: "Flight of the Phoenix", "Sideways", "The Ladykillers", and "Love, Actually". And of course, I went to Fry's (since my dad is such a nut about that store).

It seems like my trips to Chicago are always jam-packed with stuff to do. This one was more successful than most -- in that I accomplished pretty much everything that I wanted to do. I was glad to be away from work, and am not looking forward to going back. Although, I am looking forward to finishing moving into the new apartment -- there is something about not having my house in order that I find unsettling.

-Andy.

Fall Out Boy @ the Metro

Accompanied by Kevin and Sara, I went down to Chicago last Wednesday night in order to see Fall Out Boy headline a sold-out show at the Metro. FOB played a tight set, to an enthusiastic crowd (Chicago is their home town, after all). They played at least one new song, off of the new record that they are currently recording in L.A. Pete also mentioned that the new record is scheduled to come out on May 3rd. So, Target in Sunnyvale should be expecting my patronage on that day.

On the whole, however, I think that my enthusiasm for FOB is waning a bit. By far, I have seen this band live far more than I have any other, and when you see pretty-much the same thing over and over, it naturally becomes tiring. What I'm really referring to is Pete's banter and antics. The show at the Metro was being recorded, for some possible release that is to come later. This means that Pete was even chattier than usual. At one point, during the encore, he divided the crowd in half, and tried to get them to move from one side to the other. Needless to say, as the song began, everyone on the floor of the Metro rushed to the center, causing the people trapped in the middle to get crushed schtoopid. Ug.

On the upside, FOB did play their Christmas song "Yule Shoot Your Eye Out", which I managed to hear on Sara's favorite radio station, WONC, out of North Central College. And Pete was wearing a home-made t-shirt that said "Stump Club" on the front, and "President" on the back. I didn't bring my camera inside the Metro (even though security was lax enough that I totally could have, darn it!), so I didn't get any pictures. I did find some on the web though.

-Andy.