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I’d previously mentioned that YouTube was carrying MacGuyver. I just found they also carried The Mole. I was a fan of the show when it first aired, but I believe the network stopped airing it before the season ended. This show put Anderson Cooper on the map. LOL.

Every once in a while, layoffs or firings come around. And IT has to go through and lock people out of their accounts and change passwords. It always seemed like a bad job to have. It’s a pain in the ass, and I’m sure in ways it’s just sad.

Well, the time has come for me to be the one to lock people out of their accounts. It is sad, sort of the end of an era. As I go through each account, each colleague, each friend, it’s like turning another page in the chapter, until there are no more pages in the chapter.

I guess as I close one chapter, I open a new one. The future is a little hazy.

One day it will be my turn to go, who will be the one to lock my account? “Last one out, turn off the lights.”

I’ve been running the dev build of Chrome as my primary browser now for a couple of weeks. I probably wouldn’t recommend it for everyone since the bugginess of the dev build varies, though this week is quite good. I figure I could at least contribute something back, so I test the dev build.

The new version of Safari 4 is interesting. It is very similar to Chrome, but ultimately there are two reasons that I prefer Chrome over other browsers.

1. The “awesomebar”. I’m don’t recall what Google call their URL/search input box, but I find that it works incredibly. Makes it difficult to use other browsers. Google’s version is extra awesome because it suggests searches as well as searching your history and what not.
2. Multiprocessing. Sure it’s great when plugins crash or something. But that happens less frequently now. The benefit that I derive more frequently is that my browser can now take advantage of multiple processors and multiple cores! Hurray! I’m probably a “heavy” web browsers. I don’t really use bookmarks. I have a handful of “favorite” sites that I remember, and for things that I am in the middle of I just leave the browser open. So right now I have 15 Chrome windows and 16 Firefox windows open, each with varying number of tabs. Sometimes I’ll be browsing to windows at once with various number of Flash ads and maybe a Flash video playing which I read in another window. If there is too much going on with Firefox, the video will skip and start to annoy me. However, with Chrome, it can use both cores. Joy! I guess it is inevitable that the other processors will need to support multiple processors/cores.

The one thing that bugs me about Chrome is when I ctrl-click on a headline in Google Reader, it doesn’t open the tab in the background. Oh well. I’ve submitted bugs, maybe it’ll get fixed.

On Facebook, I got tagged with the “25 Random Things” meme. One of the things I wrote about was that I went to a Catholic high school and that I enjoyed religion class. I wrote how I thought theology classes should be made available at younger grades more readily. They shouldn’t be required, but I think they should be available.

I can’t say my instructors were very good. Some were, some were not. One odd thing that always stuck with me (despite being taught by one of the not so good instructors) was the three different types of love.

Love in terms of Christianity can refer to three different types which are referred to by their Greek terms.

• Eros - this is the passionate love. When you’re “in love” this is eros.
• Philia - this friendship.
• Agape - in a Christian context, this is in reference to unconditional and voluntary love.

Agape always stuck out the most for me. I think part of it was based on the way the word sounded and the inherent rhythm in the word. I think another part of it was that it was essentially a new concept to my young self. For the others I learned a new word, but for agape I learned an idea.

We all grew up knowing about the “Golden Rule”, etc but agape is more proactive. My interpretation is that agape requires work. It requires the decision to love and the effort to love, and to do so unconditionally.

I’ve always felt that it didn’t matter if Christ existed or not. It wasn’t important who he was, but rather the lesson being taught. Like Aesop’s fables, it doesn’t really matter that there are talking animals, the important part was the lesson. A secular world has use for agape too.

http://www.sjchurchofchrist.org/agape.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love

I loved MacGyver as a kid. I even found some episodes once (*cough*on some torrent*cough*) but the quality wasn’t that great, which was understandable given computers at the time the show aired had color monitors that only displayed green and black.

It turns out you can watch all(?) the episodes on YouTube, legally! Quality seems a little better than the copies I found previously, probably because they aren’t digitalizations of VHS tapes from VHF broadcasts.

How come I never saw anything about this?

YouTube Playlist: MacGyver - Series

My first iPhone app finally made it through the Apple review gauntlet. You can find out more info by going to the ControlPad page. In one sentence, ControlPad turns your iPhone (or iPod Touch) into a wireless keyboard/trackpad for your computer. It isn’t unique by any means, but I don’t think there is a competitor that has the same exact features.

I wrote a little IM client targeting the Treo 600 and 650 many years ago. Development took a while (stretched over many months/years), and in its lifetime it moved under 200 units. I wasn’t really in it for the money, and it really didn’t provide me with any. ControlPad, on the other hand, has done about 240 units in 3 full days. Cash-wise, I suspect it will beat out my IM client in a few days/weeks but it hasn’t yet. I have not promoted my app in anyway, and I believe all the sales are pretty much coming from being a recent app when sorting apps by release date. The app is not really a mass market app and I am treating it as more of an experiment. I have a bug fixing release in review, and I am waiting to see how that affects sales. I didn’t log the hours, but without a doubt ControlPad required much less development time than my PalmOS IM app. Most of that development time came from the holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas).

Compared to PalmOS 5, the iPhone is much more enjoyable to develop for. Cocoa and UIKit are so much more enjoyable than the PalmOS 5 API. Apple’s tools are much better as well (not that they are without fault). The tools I used for my PalmOS IM app were primarily gcc and pilrc, I believe this was (right?) before Palm came out with their Eclipse packaged SDK.

Most of the development was completed prior to 2009, however the review process took a little longer than I expected. It took a couple business days to receive a response, and I had to resubmit twice (so 3 total submissions, and 3 total reviews). This basically took a couple of weeks. I’ve read that the different categories are treated as separate queues, and review time varies depending on category. I couldn’t really say.

Another interesting observation is that I’ve received very few support emails (a handful). The ratio of support emails versus units sold is much smaller compared to my IM app. This is a pleasant surprise.

The App Store is definitely the right thing at the right time. I’m not sure if prior mobile platforms would have been appropriate (bandwidth, end user computer literacy). I’m wonder how long before Apple or Microsoft extend the software store to the computer. I am aware of some startups doing some similar things, but once Apple or Microsoft bundles it with their OS it will give the “shareware” market a huge kick in the pants. Software companies make huge amounts of money by being preinstalled on computers. This isn’t quite the same, but being one step removed from that would still be incredible.

Nothing like having the shit hit the fan on a Friday and requiring you to work to over the weekend to, well, ruin your weekend. I was still able to make various previously planned meal engagements but I was haunted by the specter of the recovery work.

I guess my good friends at Citibank had the same kind of weekend. 

I JUST got an email from them titled, “Unlimited FDIC Insurance Coverage on your Citibank Checking Account”.

Here is a partial blockquote:

Good news! Citibank is participating in the FDIC’s Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program. Through December 31, 2009, all of your non-interest and interest bearing checking deposit account balances are fully guaranteed by the FDIC for the entire amount in your account.

Ha! On second thought, their weekend might have sucked more than mine. And I’m referring the execs scrambling plus the marketing guys that drafted the email and the guy managing the email campaigns. Luckily, I don’t work for them… they just have all my money.

Today, I finished playing an 18 hole round of golf for the first time. I’d previously played many 9 hole courses and finished a 18 hole scramble. I’ve also started this course before, but have never quite finished. I scored a 123. Par is obviously 72. I’ve had my clubs for some 8 years now (holy cow!), but I have only been seriously playing and practicing in the last year.

Some bullets:

• My wedge was feeling very comfortable today. I was swinging it well and swinging it with confidence. Shots were pretty much headed in the direction I wanted. Unfortunately my distances were off (short). I’ll just need to spend some time bonding with the club.
• I was driving pretty well. Unfortunately my longest club that has acceptable consistency is my 5 wood. So everyone else was out driving me. But I was making fairways the vast majority of the time, and golf is a lot easier from the fairways. I will need to practice more with 3 wood and my driver. I am already planning on dedicating a couple weeks to my driver come December.
• I was relatively happy with my iron play. I will likely put more emphasis on practicing with my 3, 4, 5 irons than my other irons. I don’t play my long irons because I am not consistent enough with them. I can think of a couple of places where a longer iron would have helped (but only if I can hit it straight).
• I was able to stay out of trouble for the most part. I did loose one ball off a slice. I hit it in a couple of sandtraps, but I don’t fear those anymore. Though I did hit one into a fairway bunker - that probably robbed me of a stroke.
• Shiz scored a 119. I was contending until I putted 11 times in a span of 2 holes. Ouch. I blamed the ball and switched balls after that and it was all good. One of my mental golf goals is to minimize the mistakes. Getting birdies is difficult, but have a hole explode is pretty easy. I need to manage my mistakes better and keep bad holes from becoming outrageous holes. This is largely a mental exercise.
• I’ve been keeping a couple of spare clubs in the apartment. This allows me to exercise my wrists/forearms and get used to manipulating the club at various (slower) speeds. A couple times a day as I am walking by, I’ll pick it up and play with it. I’d like to attribute my confidence with my wedge to this. The clubs I have in the apartment are far longer and thus are more difficult to manipulate than the wedge.

Every four years the US gets to enjoy the Summer Olympics and then the Presidential Elections. I’ve been following with more interest than usual because I like Obama. Though I liked him more before he was running, and more during the Democratic Primary. I understand the repositioning he needs to do for the general elections, but whatever.

One thing, I find that I cannot stand at all is reading the comments on news articles and blogs. It was horrible when it was Obama versus Clinton, and it is just as bad now with Obama versus McCain. The comments always seem to quickly degenerate into a mess of talking points and innuendo.

I didn’t really follow politics too much but I am saddened by the state of politics. I don’t think the modern Republican leadership is necessarily evil, but I think they have a different idea of what is right and good. I see myself as a citizen of the world with the US being an equal partner, whereas maybe modern Republican philosophy sees the US as being big brother. Bill Clinton’s “power of our example, not example of our power” pinpoints this difference in philosophy. Palin’s “change to advance career versus career to adance change” came off as a weak ripoff but I’m going to guess much of the audience didn’t follow Clinton’s speech.

I think I would have liked McCain better 8 years ago. But this time around, I think he has essentially “sold his soul” for this last(?) chance at being President. Questionable tactics and polictical agents used against him them are now being employed by him this time around. What was the “Straight Talk Express”, now seems to say whatever is policitically convenient or on the talking points memo for the day.

Another thing that bugs me is that the Republican leadership seems to be exploiting the Evangilicals. Using prapoganda and leveraging “moral” issues, they are getting votes they may not necessarily have otherwise. Sure, some of the Republican parties leaders may have similar values as the Evangilical base, but I think the leadership knows politically they do not see eye-to-eye. Republicans have been historically aligned with big business and are anti-union. How do these align with small town people? Of course, when this is brought up, the opposition is painted as elitest and talking down to the people. Cheney’s daughter, Rove’s religion (or lack of one), McCain as a fairly liberal senator (pre-Bush), Mitt’s liberal tenure as governor, Guiliani’s cross-dressing - I don’t really have a problem with any of it, but I don’t think they’re being honost with the voter base they’re courting. I believe they are exploiting them to advance their own agenda. I wonder how often politicians use the phrase “God Bless …” off camera.