Tuesday morning my dog walker called me in a panic to let me know my condo was flooding and water was pouring in through the cling. I came racing home to find 20+ gallons of water a minute draining in from my ceiling in the entryway, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom and my dog Skype laying in a puddle whimpering.

A quick call to the fire department later and they beat the door in for my upstairs neighbor to discover a faulty toilet valve and full water mains pressure flowing into the unit. They were able to shut off the water, but at that point it was too late – my unit was completely soaked, and my downstairs neighbor’s unit had sustained quite a bit of damage as well.

After filing an insurance claim the work begun. Service Master appeared to start cleaning up the water and ripping out drywall, insulation, and the carpet. The condo is a total disaster now – I’m missing a ceiling, several of my walls, my carpet and sub floor. Additionally my bed was soaked through, one of my couches was destroyed, and most of my clothing was ruined. All of this has effectively made me homeless in the short term.

Thankfully I have an both excellent friends and an excellent insurance agent so I have a place to stay and everything will be back to normal in a month or so, but Christ – what a nightmare. All this is of course happening on the eve of when I had planned to list my condo to upgrade to a house so life is just complicated coming and going.

Ahh the joys of owning property.

Shortly after taking that photo the Apple store closed to transform it into an iPhone 3G store. The first step was the erection of a large black velour curtain of mystery to shroud the store and prevent prying eyes from glimpsing the goodness being assembled inside. Other than the occasionally Apple employee emerging from the curtain to go home and sleep (lucky them) the velour curtain of mystery was the only thing to be seen until 8am graced the Pacific time zone.

Waiting in line
The 12 hours in line actually wasn’t so bad. Much to the horror of the Apple Store the Alderwood Mall Security and Administration announced that folding chairs, sleeping bags, tents, and in general having fun were forbidden on property. They seemed to think that even allowing us to be on the property after the malls 10pm closing time was a special treat and yes, could we ask for another cup of porridge sir?

Aside from having to choose between sitting on the cold outdoor concrete and standing all evening we had a blast. The Gear Live crew came out in force to film the event and do some product giveaways for some iPhone cases and accessories. The night passed relatively quickly bringing us to 8am with a line of 250+ excited people iWaiting for the iPhone 3G.

The curtain drops
The velour curtain of mystery dropped and the doors flung open to an Apple store filled with excited Apple employees clapping and cheering us on. Being first in line provided a larger thrill than I expected – leaving my heart racing as I walked through their gauntlet of proffered high-5’s, cheering iAcolytes, and my own sleep-starved imaginations addition of a glowing visage of his holiness Jobs floating in the middle of the store looking down upon his dedicated flock.

The thrill was unfortunately short lived – the internet had indicated prior to opening that system problems had been making the launch difficult for those in time zones ahead of PST. Those problems had far from been worked out by the time us on the west coast were blessed with the coming of 8am. Due to the glitches it was roughly 45 minutes from the time I entered the store until I had been able to successfully purchased my 16GB white iPhone 3G. Even after the purchase the in store activation failed completely leaving me with a sleek and sexy hunk of plastic, plaintively begging to be plugged into iTunes for activation.

Time passes, the 30 minute drive home ensues…

The first several hours home were bittersweet. On the up side I was home and able to shower and sit on comfortable furniture. On the down side I was iPhone-less. Due to a glitch (which has been dubbed the iPocalypse by our beloved main stream media) everyone transitioning from a 1st generation iPhone to an iPhone 3G had their 1st generation iPhone deactivated during the process, so due to the unavailability of the Apple activation server neither the old nor new iPhone would work as a phone leaving me (and 100’s of thousands of others) phone-less and unable to make or receive calls.

While catching back up on work mail remotely I was forced to repeatedly plug my pearly white new toy into my iMac to wait several minutes for the dreaded timeout dialog to inform me that no, I couldn’t use my new toy, and no I couldn’t have a pony either.

After begging use of a neighbors condo and phone line for a few conference calls my precious toy suddenly popped to life upon one of my connection attempts to iTunes. The server-gerbils must have finally gotten their second wind as my iPhone 3G activated, and the sync process begun to restore all of my settings, applications, and media.

Lunch with a friend ensues during the <1 hour sync…

Finally home, and with a working iPhone 3G in hand the process of playing with my precious new toy could begin. Although a little rough around the edges (more on that in a minute) the experience is overall very positive. The 3G antenna provides fast data – combining the stunning software functionality of the iPhone with WiFi like internet access anywhere in a major city makes for a highly functional and productive experience. The two big new software features – Microsoft Exchange support and the iTunes App Store – add significant functionality and usability for both business and consumer users of the iPhone alike.

Although highly subjective I would venture to say that the iPhone 3G feels faster than the first generation iPhone. I’m unaware of if the processor it utilizes is any faster, or if this is merely a psychosomatic effect, but many tasks seem to execute faster. On the flip side a few of the new features seem to have regressed performance – the contacts application now takes several seconds to load as opposed to the nearly instant launch on my old iPhone. Also in the subjective category the iPhone’s virtual keyboard seems improved, although I would be hard pressed to put my finger on exactly how. The keyboard just seems more accurate and easier to use with the new phone.

Another highly subjective trait of the iPhone 3G is it’s sleekness. While the iPhone 3G is actually a millimeter thicker than it’s 1st generation predecessor it feels significantly slimmer and more comfortable in the hand. Much like it’s big brother the Macbook Air the use of organically curving sides hides it’s true heft and girth from the users perception.

Microsoft Exchange support
Exchange support is baked in to the iPhone 2.0 firmware. This feature is available to first generation iPhones and the iPhone 3G alike. After entering your email address, domain account, and password directly into your iPhone and accepting any domain policies (such as a PIN lock) from the Exchange Server you are set to go. Email, contacts, and calendar updates push to the iPhone from your Exchange Server as advertised keeping any business user in touch with their work. Full Microsoft Office support has also been added allowing the reading and review of all Microsoft Office formats including Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents.

The iTunes App store
The App Store provides the other killer feature – or is that features. While many have decried the iPhone previously for missing various functions those naysayers have been silenced through the ad-hoc addition of functionality. The App Store allows for the browsing, downloading, and updating of applications over WiFi or the cellular network and brings a host of more than 500 new applications to the iPhone. While many of these applications lack the polish of the Apple built applications a few do have that level of sophistication and as time goes on and the iPhone platform gains momentum the signal to noise ratio will surely get better and a plentitude of stunning and functional applications filling any hole left by the Cupertino designers.

Several of the highly polished apps that have impressed me are Twitterrific, Loopt, and Remote. I also downloaded a few games and was impressed by the general level of polish, however as a general rule I don’t engage in mobile gaming so I’m mostly ignoring them for now. I have a few loaded onto my iPhone should I ever find myself with a few spare moments to burn and no productive tasks I can accomplish (unlikely with an iPhone in hand).

Location based services
While the built in A-GPS service was far from my most anticipated feature of the iPhone 3G it’s instantly grown on me. I had thought of the GPS capabilities primarily in turns of mapping and turn by turn directions, however the iPhone 2.0 firmware and the iTunes App Store have proved me wrong: location based services can be so much more.

A rash of location based applications have sprung up, and to my surprise they are all amazingly useful. Loopt provides a service similar to Dodgeball or BrightKite allowing users to check in with their friends and see what’s up but it improves upon it’s predecessors by being entirely automatic. Users can set up contacts and determine what level of location awareness they want to grant to each of these contacts and then view the location of their friends on a Microsoft Virtual Earth powered map. By updating your location without having to search for a location or manually enter one in the use of Loopt can be quick and simple – open the app, check what’s up, and get on with your day.

Other less flashy uses of the location services on the iPhone 3G don’t fail to impress. Even something as simple as a weather location can be improved by automatically knowing where you are. After getting used to weather applications, restaurant review sites, and other miscellaneous applications starting up defaulted to showing me information contextually relevant to my current location I’m struck by how “dumb” the non-location aware web is. Somehow it now seems downright primitive to have to enter my zip code into a web form to view movie times.

The downside to the iPhone 3G
While the App Store, Exchange Support, and location based services are impressive the new iPhone 3G and iPhone 2.0 firmware still have their less rosy facets. The 2.0 firmware lacks the rock solid stability of the 1.1.4 firmware I had been using previously. My iPhone has randomly rebooted 4 times in the last two days – usually in association with one of the App store downloaded applications. Luckily this is likely just some growing pains with the new 2.0 firmware and hopefully a patch will be delivered soon which resolves the stability issues I’m seeing.

In addition to the crashes the iPhone 3G has a fraction of the battery life that the 1st generation iPhone had. This is undoubtedly the fault of the addition of 3G and GPS. I’ll have a more complete idea of how big the impact is after a few more days of usage, but I certainly have seen a reduction. Yesterday while out and about I was torturing my iPhone with 3G data and GPS usage tacking our groups progress through downtown and Greenlake using the Google Maps application. In less than 2 hours I had lost 60% of my battery life.

I’ll be the first to admit that using both the 3G and GPS radios simultaneously is likely the worst case scenario but it’s frustrating to see the battery drop so quickly given the stellar battery of the 1st generation iPhone. Luckily if it gets to be more of a problem than 3G is worth I can turn off the 3G radio and push mail to theoretically get the same or better battery life that I’m used to in exchange for losing out on the increased speed.

Final thoughts
While Apple and AT&T faltered with a very rough launch with activation server failures the iPhone 3G hardware combined with the iPhone 2.0 software make for a very big change to the mobile market as a whole. Apples vision of the iPhone being the personal computer of tomorrow is starting to show through the smoke and mirrors. The iTunes App Store will allow developers freedom to create amazing new experiences, and the well implemented support for Microsoft Exchange will help the iPhone venture into the enterprise and tap the booming market for business-oriented smartphones.

A special thanks to Brian and Brien for indulging my geeky little psychosis and watching Skype for the night.

Answer: the bacon chocolate martini at the Capitol Club, Capitol Hill, Seattle.

Bless the Capitol Club, and bless Ali and TB for doing dinner with me last night at the Capitol Club. Good luck gals – twins on the way!

Update: A few days after posting this I’ve gotten a couple of emails asking for more details so here they are. The bacon chocolate martini is far from a martini – it’s not crisp nor light. It’s thick, heavy, and delicious. In fact, think of it more as a dessert than as a cocktail. The Godiva chocolate liquor used gives an almost milkshake like texture to this rich sensual delight.

The drink itself is more focused on the chocolate than the bacon. The bacon infused vodka adds more of a bacon note to the drink than an overwhelming bacon flavor. The candied bacon garnish is a sweet finish and tastes delicious dipped in the chocolate between nibbles. The Capitol Club was smart to start with maple cured bacon and then candy it – the ultra sweetness added by this process works perfectly with the natural salty flavor of the bacon when combined with chocolate.

Getting on the flight was also an interesting experience. I’m not sure if this is normal for international flights but they had a long line of customs agents lining the hallway to the plane as I entered and were pulling every other passenger or so off to ask them conversational questions about their trip and duration. I suspect given the way the conversation happened that they were looking for nervousness or other signs of illicit activity.

While Northwest Airlines is no British Airways or Virgin it does manage to impress with a few amenities. Most notably is the inclusion of standard united states AC power outlets for each seat enabling laptop usage during the entire 12 hour flight without the use of additional batteries or proprietary charging adapters.

Aside from the availability of power (sweet, sweet power) the Airbus plane I’m on features a small screen embedded into the back of every seat. Coupled with a wired remote control in the armrest this screen is theoretically supposed to offer on-demand movies, in-flight information, games, and a variety of ways to part from one’s money. However the particular linux-powered system in my (rather the row of seats I am currently occupying) seems to have some problems as after three hard resets they still can’t get movies working. The attendant offered me 5,000 air miles for my trouble, but as I fly about once a year it wasn’t really worth the trouble of filling out the paperwork to claim them. Poor me.

*** time passes ****

I’m currently hurtling above the Atlantic ocean near Greenland at approximately 580MPH. As such the flight has been blessedly uneventful. The food service is average at best, but not so bad when I factor the fact that it’s being served to me 36,995 feet in the air while hurtling along at nearly the speed of sound.

I’ve been struck by how many male flight attendants there are on this flight. In my past experiences most flight crews have been predominately female – a stark departure from this 2:1 male to female ratio I’m seeing for this one. I wonder if that’s because this is an international flight, because this is a Northwest flight, or if I’m just lucky to get some decent eye candy on the 10 hour leg of my journey.

*** more time passes ***

While whisking along through the air I decided to flip through my download of Little Brother, Cory Doctorow’s latest book. It’s actually a fairly creepy book to read given how close it smacks to the truth. The subject of the book is a kid, barely 17, who is in the wrong place at the wrong time and is detailed and questioned for potential involvement in a terrorist act. Having just been questioned needlessly by customs while leaving the country I’m suddenly even more aware at how the United States government has become just a little too Orwellian of late, all in the name of protection.

*** even more time passes ***

Well, Little Brother is done, and an excellent book. Bravo to Cory for writing in a language that the up and coming generation can understand bringing light to an issue that often adults find confusing. I highly recommended reading it – wether from a free download from Cory’s website or by purchasing it from your local retailer (and thus supporting Cory).

On a less related note I’m very glad that this plane has AC outlets. I’m already more than 8 hours into this flight and think that without the digital comfort provided by my laptop in the form of books, movies, and music I would have gone stir crazy by now. As is I think I’m on the verge of stir crazy just based on the fact that I’ve essentially been sitting in the same cramped and uncomfortable seat for 8 hours straight without standing up now. I can’t wait for the flight to land (less than 2 hours now) so I can stretch my legs and get some circulation going again.

*** time passes, but not much ***

Although walking about is discouraged I finally couldn’t take it any more. I managed to do a few laps around the plane (and hit the frighteningly small bathroom). It wasn’t much, but after 8 hours I’m not too picky when it comes to stretching my legs.

I’m now struck by the prevailing fact that I’m further from my home (or my birthplace) than I’ve ever been before. In the grand scheme of things it’s pretty trivial to be 4,037 miles away from Seattle (if the in-seat entertainment unit is to be trusted) given how man is on the verge of exploring the universe and expanding our horizons on a cosmic scale, but it’s still a big deal for me.

I’m very interested to see what my personal take on Europe is going to be. Somehow it now seems strange to only have a single viewpoint on life, to have only seen the American way. From what I’ve heard the rest of the world is a very different place – I’m eager to see how different (and how the same) it really is from the reality I’ve known my whole life.

*** 700 miles remaining to Amsterdam ***

As I’m sure my mother could attest I’m not so good at sitting still. I’m not so good at traveling either. I guess combining the two is one of those little personal tests one must go through to experience the world. Weird thing is that if my 101 goals are to be believed then I’ll be doing this all over to visit Japan, and then a miniature version of this to see the east coast of the United States.

Side note: I wonder what kind of coffee will greet me at the Amsterdam International Airport. Regardless of type, quality, or concentration I can assure you that immediately upon landing coffee will be consumed.

*** 48 minutes remaining to touchdown ***

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? How about now? Now? Soon? Are we there yet?

Further side note: The iProduct is ubiquitous. Of the approximately 30 people I can see from my vantage here in the bowels of a giant plane I can count no less than 18 of them using the signature white earbuds. Sadly I myself am in this lot while I wait for my Vibe Duo’s to come back (yet again) from Vibe after their last failure.

*** the second leg ***

I’m currently on the second (and much shorter) leg of my journey. Nate and I made it to Amsterdam and got a chance to stretch our legs and wander about the Amsterdam airport for a few hours. Now that we have boarded our final leg we have less than one hour remaining until we land in Germany.

I’m busy cramming Learn German 101 podcasts trying to brush up my vocabulary to a meager minimum to allow me to get by. Yes – I realize that on the plane to Germany is likely not the best time to be learning German, but really when it comes right down to it I think this falls into the ‘better late than never’ category.

I’m quite looking forward to landing and getting checked in to our hotel. We will be landing at roughly 2pm local time and have the rest of the day free. After a quick shower I’m hoping to get out into Berlin with my camera and get in a little tourist time before the HP PSG event starts and I get sucked into work related stuff.

Wish me luck in Berlin!

My new EeePC
I picked up one of Asus’s delightfully tiny new netbooks, the EeePC. A netbook is a new category of sub-notebook device with low end specs designed primarily for browsing the web. The EeePC clocks in at a measly 900Mz, but at 9″ and under 3 lbs it’s easy to forgive it’s specs in lieu of it’s ultimate portability. So far I’m finding it an ideal email machine for use at meetings at work, and as a great bedroom/couch machine for keeping an eye on the tubes while relaxing or watching movies.

Being entirely solid state (the EeePC 900 series comes with 12GB of flash memory rather than a hard drive with spinning platters) it’s shock resistant, and gets surprisingly good performance for it’s diminutive specs. Due to the random access nature of flash memory the EeePC boots quickly and gets great battery life (3 hours of real use). While solid state drive (SSD) technology is still not competitive in price or storage capacity to typical hard drive (HDD) technology I can see the potential and am starting to get excited about the predictions that in 2011 or so SSD will all but completely replace HDD technology in notebooks and desktops.

While the EeePC 900 I picked up came pre-loaded with Windows XP I’ve done some experimentation with putting Ubuntu on it. As with my typical annual cycle I attempt to put some variant of Linux on my computers to see how the OS X/Windows competition is doing. This time however I was surprised – the latest Hardy Heron (8.04) release of Ubuntu is slick, polished, and works ‘out of the box’ on all the hardware I had laying around. While Ubuntu might be getting attention as a decent desktop alternative where I think it really shines is on a low end PC like the EeePC – it’s limited feature set and lean architecture work perfectly on a device with CPU and memory constraints.

Movies
Being a 3 day weekend I took the opportunity to see a couple of movies with Brien and Brian. We saw both Indiana Jones 4: The Crystal Skull, and Iron Man. Both movies were excellent (if not over the top) and fun movies to see while on holiday. I was never the hardcore fan of the Indy series that Brien was, and much to his horror I actually liked the newest one best from the series. It captured the fun essence of the earlier flicks while maintaining a fresh and modern feel even while being set in not so modern times.

Iron man also kept a modern feel, although it did so with a very modern setting. Having never read the comic book I assume I missed out on a lot of the back story, but still found the story presented in the movie touching and engaging. Having grown up idolizing gadget superhero (Hello, Inspector Gadget) it’s nice to see a modern take on a technological super-hero. Final note on the movie: I need a flying metal suit, that looks fun!

Lensbabied sneaker opus
Last but not least, a quick shot I took with my Lensbaby 2G while out on a photo walk on Saturday. I’ve been using my 18mm and 50mm primes a lot and decided to take the Lensbaby out and go for a stroll. I’m certainly glad I did as one of the resulting shots is a clear winner in my odd little abstract world.

Update: Oh yeah – as Andru pointed out, I’m going to cover the HP event for Gear Live. Fun tech coverage for all!

I guess not everyone has to be into zoos. Personally I don’t much find animals interesting. Sure I love Skype and having him around is a blast, but I enjoy his companionship rather than a fascination with his non-humanness. From a photographic perspective zoos don’t really do it for me because of the cages and glass – I far prefer getting up close and personal with my subjects, really interacting with them to get the perfect shot.

Oh well, I had fun, learned something about myself as an adult, and avoided heatstroke for another day. All in all a positive way to spend a Saturday afternoon even if I won’t repeat the experience.

Admittedly due to the rain the parades attendance was down from what the organizers would have hoped for, but worse was the cross section of society that showed up. A good half of the attendees had the stereotypical stoner look – not what you want showing up on the evening news though. When people see the B roll footage that is likely to make the media what will they see? Certainly not sickly looking patients desperately needing marijuana to survive. Certainly not professional and trustworthy looking people – just stoners through and through. It presents the public with a rough image composed of stoned hippies drenched in patchouli eating chips rather than doctors and businessmen giving credibility and weight in the public eye.

What the marijuana legalization campaign really needs is a true spokesperson. Someone professional and educated with a sharp tongue and an even sharper suit. A spokesperson to show up on TV and talk to the American public – not show up at a hemp rally and talk to stoners. The kind of people who attend rallies marches, and events are already swayed – the movement needs to broaden its focus and broaden it’s message to the other 99% of the public.

As Abraham Lincoln once said “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.” To enact the same kind of broad social change that Lincoln once did the movement needs to sway public sentiment, not stoner sentiment.

Update: My friend Shae just pointed me at this article. It would seem Rick Steves has stepped up to the plate to hopefully be just the spokesperson I’m looking for here. Go Rick!

Next off I met David, one of the sweetest men on the planet. I’ve spent practically the entire last week and a half with him and I couldn’t be happier about it. It’s one of those intense whirlwind relationships that seems to go at a million miles an hour – fun stuff while it lasts and heres hoping that it will last a very long time!

Finally Skype got to meet David’s roommates 12 week old pit bull puppy Porter. The two of them have been beating up on each other every other day or so and having a blast at it. David is a really active guy and thanks to his influence Skype’s activity level has roughly doubled. He seems happier for it and I hope to keep him active like this as long as he can keep up.

Overall I’m coming away from the experience disenchanted. I love the concept of trial by jury and think that in a perfect world it’s the most ideal way to try people – until of course artificial intelligence becomes advanced enough to be able to lend its services as a truly impartial and objective judge. However in the real world the United States implementation is more than slightly flawed.

The key problem comes from the legal promise of “a jury of peers”. Back when the United States was founded this was possible to provide given that society in general in the colonies was more or less equal. Unfortunately in the intervening centuries our society has been ripped asunder with the creation of four classes: lower, middle, upper, and the ultra-rich ‘ruling class’. As much as some would like to deny that this would effect the judicial system it does – the ultra-rich almost never go to trial thanks to the fleet of lawyers they employ, and the other three classes are unlikely to get a true jury of their peers.

As the social divide increases the concept of a jury of peers becomes more and more diluted. For instance if I was ever erroneously accused of a crime and sent to trial my experiences here have taught me that I would likely not get a true jury of my peers for the trial. I would be far more likely to get a jury of people either too disenchanted to want to serve their civic duty yet unable to get out of it, or too listless and unmotivated to have a good case for undue hardship to get out of the jury pool. Most of the people I see getting selected for juries are unemployed, retired, or from jobs where they are one of many people on a constantly changing team of replaceable people.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m all for civic duty and want to fully support the legal system, but my experiences here have shown me that change is needed to make for a system that is fair for all that end up trudging through it – guilty or innocent, rich or poor alike.

As far as I can see there are two potential fixes to this flawed implementation of the trial by jury system:

1. Change the term “a jury of your peers” to “a jury of citizens”. To do this properly the rules for jury selection would have to change significantly. Currently a computer selects potential jurors who are then vetted by the judge and lawyers which by definition results in a slanted jury. To fix this the computer should instead pick 12 random people who would be required to serve on the jury – no exceptions, no exclusions. This would result in a reasonable cross section of society with (in a purely theoretical statistical sense) no bias
2. Actually implement “a jury of peers” for the accused. To do this a computer could still be involved in the selection process, but it could by definition not be random. To truly select a group of someones peers their profession, neighborhood, intelligence, financial information race, and general social position. Again once suitable jurors are selected the lawyers likely should not be allowed to reject potential jurors except in extreme cases when a juror could be proven to be overly-biased. Unfortunately this second approach would likely increase bias in the jury panel to acquit or find a verdict of not guilty, but at least that verdict would truly come from a selection of the accused peers.

In either of these cases one key element must also be changed: the compensation. Currently jury duty in Washington State pays a $10 per day stipend. This is unfortunately a valid reason for people to resent their civic duty – anyone making from minimum wage all the way up to the ultra rich has a reason to be insulted by this token gesture.

A more fair approach would be to either pay a percentage of the jurors normal salary (100% is not necessary, but perhaps 50% or 70% would be a fair approach), or require employers to pay for jury duty at a normal rate while removing the state compensation entirely. Both of these would cause financial burden (either to the state, or to employers) but would significantly reduce the bias introduced to juries by financial hardship.

I’m a week late with the post, but better late than never. My adult lighting project has finally made a major splash on my living room. The new track lighting offers beautiful even lighting for the seating area without casting reflections on the TV screen thus bringing my home theater one step further to completion (thanks Brien!).

Sadly it’s still not 100% complete – I’m still waiting on Seattle Lighting to deliver on the Lutron Maestro programmable dimmer switch that I ordered. Without the dimmer switch the lighting is somewhat unusable as the full on setting is almost blindingly bright. Once the dimmer switch arrives I can hook it in to the rest of my home theater automation and allow the lights in the house to dim when I go into movie mode with my Logitech Harmony programmable remote.

While on the topic I have a mixed review of Seattle lighting – they have an amazing selection and access to some equipment nobody else in Seattle can get, but on the flip side they have horrible customer service. I placed my order in late December and was told that my whole order would take 2 weeks (3 tops) to arrive. Nearly 3 months late the bulk had arrived, and now over three months later the last dimmer switch is still pending. I wouldn’t have minded so much, but they did a terrible job of managing my expectations – constantly telling me it would be ‘just a few more days’ every time I called in for status updates.

Oh yeah – and the transformer they sold me was bad. Good for them that they replaced it quickly, and not really their fault; but with bad taste in my mouth from the weeks of getting jerked around by their customer service it was really the arsenic and ass icing on the cake.

This somewhat bittersweet news. Obviously being laid off is never a great thing, but in this case it may actually end up being the a good thing for me long term. Of late I’ve been rather frustrated with the speed and direction of my group so I guess this is the kick in the ass I needed to do something about it and find a position where I can exercise my passion for technology in a more direct fashion, and perhaps have a more direct impact on bringing about the coming technological singularity.

That being said – if you, my reader need a technologically passionate problem solver let me know!

I’m off through Monday which is nice – having 3 days to relax after CES is key to not collapsing into a sick little mess. I’m mildly terrified of the email nightmare I’ll be walking into when I get to work on Monday, but that’s the price I pay for taking a week off.

Yes I’m OK. Yes I was a little numb for a while. And surprisingly I’m actually more pro-Taser than I was before this whole thing started. It’s effective at dropping you for sure, but really doesn’t leave lasting harm, and assuming you don’t have any weird medical problems it’s surprisingly safe from what I’ve read.

Oh yeah – and you can get the file here if you really want it. A longer version with far more details including what lead up to this will be posted to Gear Live in the next couple of days.

Update: The Gear Live video (which is over 7 minutes long and has a lot more lead up, comedy, and wonderfulness) has gone live. check it out, or better yet give it a digg.

Had a great dinner with Chris from Bloghaus and partied a bit with some of the Monster Cable guys – but now the time to sleep has come. I’ll post more of my adventures shortly in the hear future – I promise! If you simply can’t wait you can always check out my Twitter feed for the minute by minute, blow by blow of my CES experience.

So far I’ve actually made good progress. I made it up to Broadway to pick up some Gear Live branded business cards for CES, have done 5 loads of laundry, packed most of my stuff, and cleaned up. I still have a little work to do, but over all I’m feeling much better about leaving – thanks to Traskpro

Amazingly with all the CES stuff I did today I even found time to do a few usability tweaks to Traskpro. Now tags can be entered separated by spaces, commas, or semicolons, and tags can be marked as high or low priority by tagging them ‘high’ or ‘low’. I got some great user feedback from two of my users and hopefully this will make entry more intuitive for new users by sticking to the arching design goal of flexibility.

Not too sure if I’ll be doing much personal blogging from CES – I will be pretty busy this year between doing video production and writing up the sights and sounds of CES. Check out the Gear Live coverage of CES, or you can click to see Gear Live filtered to only my content.

What do I have planned for the rest of my day off? More of the same. Bliss!

Taking it easy I said? Not likely with being the only PM in over the holidays and some massive amounts of work to do! Hopefully I can make today short and get home to rest and recuperate.

The launch event itself was an interesting experience. Apple really does know how to work a crowd, and the energy and passion it’s employees (retail and engineering alike) bring to work with them makes for a really positive experience for Apple’s customers.

Leopard itself is a neat little upgrade. The upgrade itself actually works really well – I didn’t lose any of my documents, settings, or preferences. Aside from Quicksilver being stuck in my dock (not the menubar where it really belongs) everything works flawlessly on Lanshark – Photoshop even stayed fully activated. Leopard is nothing revolutionary, but it really does add a lot of polish to OS X and makes for a worthwhile upgrade.

For the first time ever I actually kind of like the Finder. Quicklook (the ability to preview just about any document without the overhead of opening it’s parent application) is handy and makes confirmation that you have the document you are looking for brain dead simple. Spotlight is vastly improved featuring much faster searches, operators, and network search abilities.

Aside from the Leopard launch I was also thrilled to find out my Gmail account finally got IMAP enabled. The IMAP implementation is well done, and it makes Gmail’s iPhone experience as slick as their browser experience. Being able to have Mail.app cache my gmail account is handy as well for having my webmail searchable via the OS just like the rest of my personal knowledge store.

The final great thing to enter my life yesterday was Puzzle Quest for the DS. Puzzle Quest is a fun little RPG/Puzzler game that a couple of friends had suggested and it’s quite fun. It offers quick-in, quick-out gameplay – a fun addition to my go bag.

After getting the call nearly a month ago informing me that ‘Tami has died’ I’ve gone through a strange progression from barely knowing of her existence to slowly lifting the shroud of mystery that has long covered my mothers side of the family. I’ve reached to my mothers half-brother (trailer-park loser), searched the internet for her abusive and estranged father (rotting in a California Veterans Center, broke, drunken, and worthless), and sifted through death records looking for other half-siblings and blood relatives.

The more I learn the more I realize how my mother is a shining star – an amazing person who has made a name for herself, becoming a loving wife, mother, and friend. She has propelled her career to lofty heights, is a well-respected pillar of society here in Walla Walla, and has a network of friends that care for her. When I look at the rest of my mothers estranged family and compare it to the family I know and love it’s obvious that the two are night and day.

After attending the funeral today I feel strange about the experience. It’s weird sifting through all the photos of Tami and looking at her lives leftovers I feel like I should feel something, but I still not a spark of emotion or connection stirs.

I know my sister has some desire to reach out to the side of the family we never knew, but my brief brush with them has left me with a sour taste in my mouth. I have no desire to dig deeper into the depths of that particular branch of my family tree, preferring to leave it to slowly age from this earth, myself and my sister it’s only real legacy.

Now that the power is out to much of Seattle I’m hearing the police and fire sirens start. More and more of them keep springing up – what with my computers battery backup beeping in the corner, the rushing wind, and the steadily increasing sirens it really is beginning to sound like the end of the world.

The good news in this stormy weather: I went to see my doctor this afternoon and he thinks I just have a bad cold. He told me the usual: get lots of sleep, drink lots of fluids, and I’ll be fine in a couple of days.

4:00 PM
The sirens have faded into a distant memory. The wind is still there, but it’s died down quite a bit from where it was at earlier. Power and DSL are still out, although I’m getting reports that cable is back on in some parts of the city. I’m avoiding boredom and helping my body heal by napping lightly.

Why can’t I turn off the death beep of my UPS? WHY? I know that the power is out – it’s incessant beeping only serves to anger and frustrate me.

6:00 PM
I feel downright primitive. I think this is the first time in years that I’ve felt this out of touch or bored. Normally I have a cornucopia of things to amuse me around the house, but I’m now realizing that they pretty much all need power to work. Even the few good books and magazines I keep around the house can’t really be read in the dark. If the power is still out in the morning (and it’s out at work) I’ll likely just drive to Walla Walla early – no sense hanging around here staring at blank walls…

6:40 PM
Wow, I’m really bored. The sun is now too low to read even the largest print books, all of my UPS units have run out of juice, and my Macbook Pro only has about an hour of battery left. Time seems to travel much slower when one does not have clocks, amusements, light, or the ability to communicate with the outside world.

7:00 PM
I just realized I have 4 (four) laptops here. I’m an idiot. Watching DVD’s now on laptop 2 of 4.

7:57 PM
Power has returned! The end.