While I may not have written anything for my own blog in nearly a year (mea culpa), I was recently invited to write a guest post for Zendesk’s blog. My company uses Zendesk for our support tickets, and the two companies have a tight product relationship.

We kicked around some ideas on topics to write about, and landed on “Why having new employees answer support tickets could be the best thing your company ever did“.  Go check it out!

Most days, I commute to work via Caltrain, which is its own daily set of adventures.  For instance, this would’ve been a bit of a problem for me today:

Nb319 has been cancelled due to an apparent electrical problem. T07:15—
  (@caltrain) June 01, 2012

However, today, I drove in, since I was going to be staying a bit late at the office.  The drive from Los Gatos to San Francisco is usually pretty uneventful, since I leave the house early enough to miss most of the traffic.

I’m heading north on 280, cruise control set just shy of 80 mph, hanging out in the left-most lane, minding my own business.  A Nissan Pathfinder came racing up behind me, tailgating me, which is never fun when you’re going that speed.  I flipped on my turn signal, indicating that I’d get out of his way just as soon as I could comfortably pass the Toyota Prius to my right.  The Pathfinder jackhole, however, was far too impatient for my safe driving.  He darted into the gap between me and the Prius, as I was just starting to change lanes, forcing me to swerve back into the left lane.

The jackhole pulled parallel with me, and held up a NY Yankees hat to his window as if to shove it in my face, then stepped on his gas pedal and swerved in front of me, forcing me to hit the brakes so I didn’t clip his bumper.  Then he sprayed his windshield cleaner, which of course has the effect of spraying MY windshield, before speeding away at a much higher rate of speed than I was going.

All because I have a Boston Red Sox license plate holder on my car.

Stay classy, Yankee fans…

Here’s what I did in 2011 that really matters:

1. My girlfriend moved in with me.
2. Her dog also moved in with me.
3. She switched from being my girlfriend to my fiancee.
4. I got a new job.

Everything else was just icing on the cake

Happy New Year to you and yours, may your 2012 be as good as my 2011.  And may my 2012 be even better!

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 18,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

I finished packing up all my things from work today, with tomorrow being my last day at SugarCRM.  I also spent a good portion of the afternoon cleaning up the files on my laptop, removing personal files and accounts.  When it’s all said and done, the only things left are one more message in my inbox, one more meeting with my boss, an exit interview, and a going-away lunch with the crew.  I’m ready to put it all to bed.

This isn’t the first time I’ve left a company, but it’s the first time where I feel like I haven’t wrapped everything up cleanly, with a clear transition in place.  When I finally left Netscape/AOL, it was because my business unit was closing down, and there wasn’t anyone left to hand things to.  When I left Sun Microsystems, there were other people doing the exact same job as me — albeit in different product lines — but they certainly knew what to do in my absence.

However, with SugarCRM, there isn’t an immediate replacement coming in to do my job.  In fact, my job has been a mixed bag of responsibilities, sort of a jack-of-all-trades position.  I pretty much molded it to me after taking on the current role, and my varied experience with the company was my calling card.  I’d seen it all, so I could cover anything that came my way.  While there are other people in the company who could certainly fill my shoes, they’re in other critical roles that would leave just as big of a hole if they were to leave.  Institutional knowledge goes a long way when you’ve been there for nearly the entire life of the company.

On the other hand, that won’t be my problem once tomorrow afternoon rolls around.  I’ve tried to tie things up, leave things in an okay state. Inevitably, there will be things that fall through the cracks. Hopefully, it’ll all be a memory in a couple of months.

And now I’m happy to announce that I’ll be starting a new job soon.  This coming Tuesday will be my last day with SugarCRM. A week from Monday, I’ll join Team Twilio as their new Director of Support.

The theme is called Chunk, which now makes me think of The Goonies.

Ndamukong Soup Nazis

Here’s the second half of my 2-part series on my fantasy football drafts this year.  After this post, I doubt I’ll mention fantasy football again the rest of the season… unless something really interesting happens!

Thursday was the draft with the co-workers.  Fifth year we’ve been doing this league, but for the first time, we had enough players to split into TWO leagues.

Brief details on structure:  12 round snake draft with 12 players; starting lineup is 1 QB, 2 RBs, 2 WRs, 1 TE, 1 RB/WR/TE flex, 1 K, 1 Defense/Special Teams, and 2 bench spots. Scoring is pretty standard for a Yahoo league.

Here’s the results of my draft, with commentary mixed in where appropriate:

1. QB Michael Vick, PHI (#10 overall pick, 3rd QB off the board… go big or go home!)
2. RB Michael Turner, ATL (Had him last year, too, with almost the same pick; 8th WR off the board)
3. WR DeSean Jackson, PHI (11th WR off the board; I’m betting big on the Philly aerial attack, apparently)
4. RB Felix Jones, DAL (Picked him in my other draft this year as well, for the same reasons)
5. WR Mike Williams, TB (Pretty damn good in his rookie season, with a young QB; should put up even better numbers this year)
6. WR Percy Harvin, MIN (Three of the four picks between my 5th and 6th rounds were guys I’d queued up to pick — Jermichel Finley, Dwayne Bowe, Dallas Clark; now I’ll be rooting for Donovan McNabb to get him the ball, and praying for no migraines!)
7. TE Aaron Hernandez, NE (Plays more like a WR, should continue to get plenty of targets in his second year; 5th TE picked in the 7th round alone, 10th TE overall)
8. WR Malcolm Floyd, SD (Nothing interesting to say about him…)
9. QB Kyle Orton, DEN (Insurance for Vick getting beaten up and missing time, otherwise I wouldn’t have carried a second QB on that short bench; only three more QBs picked the rest of the way after Orton)
10. RB Pierre Thomas, NO (Sixty-five picks after rookie Mark Ingram, just sayin’…)
11. DEF Detroit Lions (Carrying the Lions defense in both of my leagues, allowing me to name this team “Ndamukong Soup Nazis” as well!)
12. K Rob Bironas, TEN (Gotta have a kicker…)

Ndamukong Soup Nazis

Last year, around this time, I wrote two posts about my two fantasy football teams. I’m going there again, in spite of the title of this post.  If you have zero interest in fantasy football, feel free to skip the rest of this post, as well as the next post.

*waiting for some people to walk out*

Okay, for those of you still here, thanks for sticking around!

First up was my “Balls of Shame” draft, although the league is being renamed this year to “Pigskin & Poker”, due to the fact that it’s a group of poker buddies.  Last year’s draft is detailed here, as well as my victorious outcome in winning the league here.  It’s a PPR league, 16 round snake draft with 8 players; starting lineup is 2 QBs, 2 RBs, 3 WR, 1 WR/TE flex, 1 K, 1 Defense/Special Teams, and 6 bench spots.

Also worth noting that this is a keeper league. If you drafted a player last year in the 8th round or later, and he stayed on your roster all season, you could keep that player and sacrifice the pick from the same round this year. My example was Santonio Holmes, picked in the 15th round last year; I kept him for this year, which means I didn’t get a 15th round pick.  Seven of the eight teams elected to keep a player:

• Malcolm Floyd (8th round)
• Jamaal Charles (9th round)
• Arian Foster (10th round)
• Mike Wallace (11th round)
• Dez Bryant (12th round)
• Darren McFadden (15th round)
• Santonio Holmes (15th round)

Here’s the results of my draft, with commentary mixed in where appropriate:

1. QB Tom Brady, NE (4th overall; in a 2 QB league, 6 were taken in the 1st round, with only 2 RBs coming off the board)
2. WR Andre Johnson, HOU (the 2nd round had the run on WRs, with 5 coming off the board; still only 3 RBs taken in the 1st two rounds!)
3. QB Matt Schaub, HOU (9th QB taken, making me the second team owner to go with two QBs in the first three rounds; doubles up my points with Andre Johnson)
4. WR Miles Austin, DAL (Opposing defenses have to worry about Dez Bryant, Jason Witten, Felix Jones, etc.)
5. WR Vincent Jackson, SD (Hmm, maybe I should start thinking about taking a RB…)
6. RB Matt Forte, CHI (Seems like great value here to get someone who catches passes out of the backfield; 45th pick overall)
7. RB Felix Jones, DAL (I’m a big buyer on Felix Jones this year, and I suspect this will be a winner of a pick!  Healthy, improved offensive line, a healthy Tony Romo and an emerging Dez Bryant to open the field, no more Marion Barber to split carries, etc.)
8. WR Anquan Boldin, BAL (Not the big play receiver he was in Arizona, but he’ll get tons of catches; Lee Evans should help stretch the defense)
9. RB Fred Jackson, BUF (Should be solid enough to be my bye-week RB; I completely missed spotting DeAngelo Williams sitting out there, and so did everyone else… he wound up going in the 11th round!)
10. QB Jay Cutler, CHI (I’d just read the Sports Illustrated article, “You’re Wrong About Jay Cutler“… I hope I’m right during the Brady/Schaub bye weeks!)
11. TE Dallas Clark, IND (Since we don’t have to start a TE, he fell pretty far, but I see him as being a solid WR/TE option; every week, I get to start 4 out of Johnson/Austin/Jackson/Boldin/Holmes/Clark)
12. RB Marshawn Lynch, SEA (Ugh… DeAngelo Williams had just been taken off the board, starting a run of four RBs ahead of my pick)
13. WR Steve Smith, PHI (Gavin and I both looked up in the 13th round, both with the name ‘Steve Smith’ on the tip of our tongue; he got the Carolina version one pick before me; I’ve already dropped him, figuring a 3rd or 4th option on the Eagles that was coming off major knee surgery wasn’t a need; Danny Amendola replaces him on my bench)
14. DEF Detroit Lions (I was the second-to-last owner to pick a defense… I’m betting on that scary defensive line; named my team “Ndamukong Soup Nazis”)
15. WR Santonio Holmes, NYJ (Keeper pick, awesome value!)
16. K Garrett Heatley, NO (Gotta have a kicker…)

I’ve written a few times about my use of external hard drives to store my iTunes media, and the purchased TV shows are the big space hogs.  Then, when I had a major data loss, I resigned myself to never being able to get back to the media files that were lost.

We have two Apple TVs in the house, one in the living room, one in the bedroom.  Any time that I wanted to watch something I’d purchased from Apple, I needed to have my external hard drive connected to a computer in the house, and leave iTunes up and running on that computer, in order to stream the media using the Apple TV.  Not a big deal, but a White Whine / First World Problem on those nights when I go upstairs to bed, want to watch TV, but forgot to set up the computer downstairs for this scenario.

Now, with the Apple TV software update, the problem goes away.  No more do I have to leave the hard drive plugged into the laptop and leave iTunes running.  No more do I have to lament losing the previously purchased TV shows.  I can now offload the files from my external hard drive, freeing up space for other things.  This could easily be my favorite new Apple feature of 2011… which is kind of sad, now that I think about it.

Update: As I go back through the news about this software update, looks like John Gruber agrees that the pre-purchased aspect was more interesting than the Vimeo inclusion.  Nice to know I’m not the only one.

I may be biased, though… I’m engaged to the session organizer, the speaker is a friend, and the subject is my company.

Blues Traveler is one of those bands that reached national prominence during my college years, whose music still holds up over 15 years later — man, I’m getting old!  I’m listening to the Four album as I type up this post, and I’m sure I’ll still enjoy listening to this album in another 15 years.

Image via Wikipedia

If you live in the San Jose area, find a reason to go to a concert at Villa Montalvo at least once… beautiful setting, intimate concert amphitheater, and of course, terrific weather in the summer for an outdoor show.  We were third row center, which makes you feel like the band is really playing for just you and a few other people, especially at a venue like Villa Montalvo.  To give you an idea of these seats, if you look at the back of the head two rows in front of me, that’s Steve Wozniak there. As April noticed, The Woz spends a LOT of time looking at Foursquare on his white iPhone 4.

It’s really a good time when you’re at a concert, hearing John Popper singing.

But you know what’s even better?  John Popper on the harmonica!

The bargain with myself.

I know, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

One day skipping the routine, and it becomes harder to go back to it the next day. Then another day passes. Next thing I know, it’s been nearly two weeks since I’ve written anything.

It’s not like I’ve been super-busy, out late every night. Sure, there have been days in the last couple of weeks where I’d work late, or April and I had somewhere to be in the evening, or family was visiting. Let’s face it, though, there’s time in the day. There are moments to steal to jot down a few thoughts, something reasonably coherent. It’s not like I’m on a deadline with an editor, and I have to fill a certain word count or column length. This ain’t the New York Times.

July has 31 days, and I posted 30 times. That’s pretty good. I can certainly live with that. But here we are, August 13th, and this is only the 2nd post of the month for me. That needs to change. There’s still time left in August to approach 31 posts for the month, which keeps me on track (for the month) with the Post A Day challenge.

I’m back on it now.

• Blues Traveler
  
• Daniel Tosh
  
• Fly By Night
  
• Foo Fighters

Unfortunately, we lost one of our concerts for September, when
Kings of Leon canceled the reset of their summer tour. Too bad, I really wanted to see that show…

The gripe is, as always, that the 3-D experience wasn’t worth the extra money.  It never is, especially with non-animated film.  There was one action sequence where Cap throws his shield, and the ricochet comes right at the audience; I’ll admit that I flinched at that moment, it was so fast.

Since it’s a Marvel movie, you have to stay through the end of the credits.  Afterwards, you’ll wish it was already May 2012.

I thought it might be a good idea to answer some of the frequently asked questions we’ve been getting over the past 24+ hours.  All of these are from my perspective… if April wants to chime in with her perspective, she has her own blog for that

Q: Was she surprised?

A: She knew it was coming sooner or later, because we’ve talked about it at length, many times over.  She wouldn’t have moved her life to California if she didn’t know it was coming!  And she suspected that the moment of truth was getting very, very close.  But I caught her totally off guard when I actually popped the question.

Q: So how did you pop the question?

A: Long answer to a short question… I’ve had the ring since mid-June, and I had always targeted July 30th (today) as the specific day that’d I’d ask her.  July 30th has a special significance — it was one year ago today that we first said “I love you” to each other.  Romantic that I am, I thought there’d be no better day to propose.  Originally, I’d wanted to surprise her with a weekend getaway, and as I was making arrangements in secret for it, April RSVP’d to another event for this evening.  Plans foiled!  I couldn’t tell her “No, we can’t go to that” without revealing why I had other plans for us.

So, I still had it in my head that I’d propose on July 30th, but had to think of some other opportunity to do the deed.  And I was struggling with that.  Every time I would try to come up with a plan, I got anxious.  Not because I was nervous about proposing, but because I was scared to death of screwing it up!  I was definitely over-thinking things.  The more I would over-think things, the more anxious I would get.

Thursday night, we both had different plans.  I had dinner with my parents, who were in on the secret, and they asked me, “So when are you going to… you know?”  I said, “I’m still planning on Saturday.”  At that point, Saturday was still the date I wanted to do it, but there was no plan at the ready.

When both of us got home after our respective dinners Thursday night, as the night got later, we were in our bedroom, chatting away about this and that, being a little mushy and cutesy… the usual.  It was about 11:00pm, and we were both pretty tired — it was definitely time to go to sleep. But when April stepped into the bathroom to get ready for bed, I was struck with the thought, “Why not just ask her now?”

And that’s what I did.  I snuck the ring under her pillow, and when she got into bed, I started telling her how much I loved her, and she mumbled back, “I love you too, and I’m sleepy.”  She started to move to turn off the bedside lamp, but I held her back and asked, “Do you want to know how much I love you?”  I pulled the ring out from under her pillow and showed it to her. Then I asked if she would marry me.  And by now you know her answer

Q: Didn’t get down on one knee?

A: Nope, that would’ve been awkward to do when I was already lying down!

Q: For the ring, did you go to Jared?

A:  No, I did not go to Jared!  The ring was a custom design at a local jeweler, with a diamond that was my great-grandmother’s.

Q: Have you set a date?

A:  No, not yet.  We’re talking about it, and we expect to make a decision fairly quickly.  We want to get the ‘when’ and the ‘where’ locked in early.

Q: Have you registered anywhere?

A: No, not yet. Does that mean you want to get us presents???

I said yes! @jnassi http://flic.kr/p/a8bRAB—
April Kyle (@thisisnotapril) July 29, 2011

For Haynesworth, he’s been a dominating force on the defensive line for most of his career, this last year in Washington notwithstanding.  His tenure with the Redskins was a disaster, no doubt about it.  However, he’s still young enough that he should have plenty of gas left in the tank.  I think he can be disruptive in getting into the backfield to pressure opposing quarterbacks, by playing next to a classic middle-of-the-line DT like Vince Wilfork.  Haynesworth will play more of the hybrid DT/DE role that the Patriots haven’t had since trading away Richard Seymour.  Play Haynesworth in that role, and I suspect he’ll be motivated to return to a Pro Bowl level and put the Washington disaster behind him.

As far as Ochocinco goes, I’ve always thought his antics to be fun and harmless.  He’s not a malcontent, he doesn’t get in trouble off-the-field.  His production won’t be what it used to be, and he’ll still get shut down by CBs like Darelle Revis.  Otherwise, he should give Tom Brady yet another weapon to use against defenses.  Don’t forget that the Patriots were putting up huge scores last year — without a top-flight wide receiver on the outside.  Ochocinco will keep defenses honest and spread the field, opening up more room for Wes Welker.  As if Tom Brady needed more help.

When it comes to the Patriots, either you love them or you hate them.  Success (and that whole Spygate business) over the past decade has turned everyone outside of the fan base against the Pats.  When they won their first Super Bowl, they were the underdog and the darlings of the NFL — a team-first group of players, unheralded overachievers.  Since then, sentiment has turned.  Now when you add two polarizing players like Haynesworth and Ochocinco, you could practically hear the outcry of anti-Patriots sentiment coming from the Internet, even if you were offline.

I’m okay with that.  I’m okay that my team is going to be the villain.  Bring it on.  Go Pats!

Update:  Sure enough, after I post this, I see that Mark Schlereth agrees with me about Haynesworth being the new Richard Seymour for New England.

Specifically, the parts of the brain that store your technical skills must be exercised regularly.  I remember this every time I go months between doing anything related to setting up web pages, writing simple PHP code, configuring databases, etc.  My technical skills are suffering from atrophy at the moment.  Really a sad state of affairs.

BookBook for iPhone is a wallet and iPhone case rolled into one pocket-sized, vintage book. Open this beautifully designed leather book and you will see a wallet on the left and a slot for your iPhone 4 on the right. Trade your wallet for this handsome little book and you’ll have one less thing in your pocket or purse when you walk out the door. And, as long as you remember your phone, you’ll never forget your wallet again.

April uses a similar iPhone/wallet case from Michael Kors, but that’s, uhm, a little flashy for my tastes.  I can’t really see myself carrying around a gold designer clutch.

However, I can see myself using the BookBook for iPhone.  It would require cleaning out my wallet and carrying around less cards and cash, which is not a bad thing.

If only it were my birthday coming up… I don’t think I can wait 6 months to have someone buy it for me as a gift!

See the BookBook for iPhone in action:

Originally seen on Mashable.

I’ve been on the lookout for something like this, with the following features:

1. Super-simple to add tasks
2. Sync between a web interface or a Mac thick client, and iPhone and iPad
3. Re-order task list
4. Postpone tasks manually
5. Automatically roll over incomplete tasks to the next day
6. Give me a way to search for completed tasks by date range

I’ve tried a number of solutions, never really found one that felt right for me — either too many bells and whistles, or a clunky interface, or missing a web interface or a mobile app. In just a few minutes with Do It (Tomorrow), it looks like they cover the first four features on my wish list.  I’ll know tomorrow if they handle #5 on the list.  Doesn’t look like #6 is possible at this point.  But for a measly $1.99, to get the first four features?  Gimme!

The design of the web application is really beautiful, too, see below with my tasks for tomorrow blurred out so you don’t have to read what I’m doing for work tomorrow.  It looks like a Moleskine notebook, and the font is a simple handwriting font.  They even add the obligatory coffee stain image!

The Cast of Avenue Q, San Jose Stage Company

No, not really… life is pretty good for yours truly these days

That’s the title to one of the songs from the musical Avenue Q, which me and April went to see last night in their penultimate performance at The Stage in San Jose.

I really didn’t know anything about Avenue Q before last night — I knew it was a musical, that it had puppets but was NOT for children.  Other than that, eyes wide open.

I wish I’d have known how much fun it was going to be.  I would have gone to see it earlier in their run in San Jose, and that would have allowed me to recommend it for everyone to see.  As it is, I can tell you this:  Go see this show when it comes to your city.

If a stage show has musical numbers with titles like:

• What Do You Do With A B.A. In English?
• It Sucks To Be Me
• If You Were Gay
• Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist
• The Internet Is For Porn
• I’m Not Wearing Underwear Today
• My Girlfriend, Who Lives In Canada
• And, my favorite… You Can Be As Loud As The Hell You Want (When You’re Makin’ Love)

You have to see it.

Great job by the San Jose cast, with special kudos to Rinabeth Apostol for getting the sounds right in the song “The More You Ruv Someone”, to Robert Brewer for going falsetto as Bad Idea Bear 2 and then going down several octaves to voice Trekkie Monster, and Monique Hafen for really belting it out when she finally gets to sing solo as Lucy The Slut.

My fellow Americans, our long laundry nightmare is over.

Checking the system.log through Console, I’m seeing these errors:

Jul 22 13:39:06 Jason-Nassis-MacBook-Air mds[44]: (/Volumes/iTunes/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/98C64515-4F23-400B-8608-B8D79F12A34D)(Error) IndexCI in store_stream_init:store_stream_init err:2
Jul 22 13:39:06 Jason-Nassis-MacBook-Air mds[44]: (/Volumes/iTunes/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/98C64515-4F23-400B-8608-B8D79F12A34D)(Error) IndexCI in indexPrepareForSyncBulk:indexPrepareForSync error: 2, 0.
Jul 22 13:39:06 Jason-Nassis-MacBook-Air mds[44]: (/Volumes/iTunes/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/98C64515-4F23-400B-8608-B8D79F12A34D)(Error) IndexCI in _CISyncContextSync:indexPrepareForSyncBulk error:2
Jul 22 13:49:02 Jason-Nassis-MacBook-Air mds[44]: (/Volumes/iTunes/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/98C64515-4F23-400B-8608-B8D79F12A34D)(Warning) IndexGeneral in _SIOpenIndex:datastore clean, reverse store dirty
Jul 22 13:53:59 Jason-Nassis-MacBook-Air mds[44]: (/Volumes/iTunes/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/98C64515-4F23-400B-8608-B8D79F12A34D)(Error) IndexCI in indexPrepareForSyncBulk:indexPrepareForSync error: -1, 0.
Jul 22 13:53:59 Jason-Nassis-MacBook-Air mds[44]: (/Volumes/iTunes/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/98C64515-4F23-400B-8608-B8D79F12A34D)(Error) IndexCI in _CISyncContextSync:indexPrepareForSyncBulk error:-1
Jul 22 14:08:59 Jason-Nassis-MacBook-Air mds[44]: (/Volumes/iTunes/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/98C64515-4F23-400B-8608-B8D79F12A34D)(Warning) IndexGeneral in _SIOpenIndex:datastore clean, reverse store dirty

Not sure what else I should do to debug this, other than just leave Spotlight ignoring the external drives.  Any suggestions, Mac experts?

I Iz Upgrading Yor Makbuk

I upgraded my MacBook Air today to OS X Lion, and I thought I’d share my first impressions of Apple’s new operating system.

Download and Install

Lion is the first Mac OS to only be available as a download through the App Store, which is perfect for the MacBook Air.  The Air doesn’t have an on-board DVD drive — although you can use an external drive via USB connection — and with Apple pushing out a new model of the MacBook Air, you know they want everyone to go electronic copy only, no discs to ship or sell at the retail stores.

The download took about 20 minutes on my home network, and then the install process took another 30 minutes or so.  My immediate thought after the install started was, “Man, I probably should’ve done this on another computer first and not the work computer… oh well, too late now!”

Launch Pad

The first thing that shows up in the Dock after the install is the new Launch Pad feature.  It’s basically the iOS finder, where you can re-arrange your applications, group them, create new pages for the application lists, etc.  In other words, an entirely useless feature for the Mac.  I have the Dock already for my most-used apps; I have the Applications folder shortcut in the Dock for the less-common apps.  But, really, if you’re a power user on a Mac nowadays, you’re already using something like Spotlight, Quicksilver, or Alfred (my personal favorite).

Mission Control

Pretty much ruins my habits for using Expose and Spaces.  I had six Spaces pre-defined in Snow Leopard, with all of my common apps pinned to one of those Spaces (or all of them, in the case of iTunes).  After the upgrade to Lion, I had to reset my hot corners, and the Spaces become Desktops, but it’s an odd transition.  I wound up killing off all six Desktops for now, until I get the hang of Mission Control enough to start using multiple Desktops effectively.

Up/Down Scrolling

Which is natural to you?

This was the most jarring change for me.  Trackpad gestures reversed the movement of up versus down.  It’s like gravity has no meaning anymore!

Prior to Lion, when you used two fingers to gesture down on the trackpad (towards you, away from the keyboard), your app would scroll down.  In Lion, it’s the other way around — you gesture UP on the trackpad (away from you, towards the keyboard), and your app would then scroll down.

It seems completely unnatural to me, in spite of Apple calling that the “natural” scroll direction.  Luckily, you can disable that gesture and revert back to pre-Lion behavior.

I know that the “natural” direction is what’s used by iOS, and I’m completely fine with it on the iPhone and iPad, but it seems daunting to change that habit on the computer after years and years of mouse movements, scroll wheels and trackpad gestures.

iCal

iCal gets a HUGE facelift, looking just like the iPad version of iCal now.  It’s a huge step forward, and I found it very easy to use.  The quick create for events is going to take some time to get used to, but the couple of events I created today for work picked up my syntax perfectly.

Mail

Another daily use application that gets a major UI update.  I love that the 3-pane view is in the core product now.  Previously, I’d used a 3rd-party app to achieve that view, which of course would break on every OS update that touched Mail.  Conversations view is interesting, a little too much with the animation for my taste.  The new search functionality will be a HUGE benefit for me.  One thing to know when you’re first upgrading is that it takes a while to update your mail database, so carve out some time to let your Mac chug through the process before you need to immediately jump into your email.

Miscellaneous Stuff

• Overall system performance seems a bit sluggish, especially when you’re switching apps.  I’ll have to see if eliminating multiple Desktops has an effect on that.
• Full-screen mode is going to take a while to catch on, we’ll have to wait for all the 3rd-party apps to adopt it.  So far, the only apps that I use daily that have it are Mail, iCal and iTunes — none of which I’m ever able to stay in from a full-screen perspective.  I’m sure it’d be great for focusing on writing.  Maybe I’ll use Pages to write my next blog post, and go full-screen mode, just as an experiment.  Microsoft Word for Mac 2011 already has that feature, so no big whoop.
• Time Machine… ugh… every time you do a major OS upgrade, it takes FOREVER to run a Time Machine backup.  30-something GBs were trying to back up over my home wifi today.  I had to cancel it for now since it was clobbering my network performance as well as the computer’s performance.  I’ll let it run overnight, and with the Ethernet USB adapter plugged in.

Problem!

I use an external Western Digital hard drive to store my iTunes media and my iPhoto library, and it has to be connected anytime I want to A) use iTunes or iPhoto, and B) sync my iPhone or iPad.  Since the update to Lion, though, I’m finding that the external hard drive is unexpectedly being ejected.  I haven’t found any reports on the Internet about that being a problem with Lion yet, and I did a Disk Utility verify and repair, no problems found.  This could be a serious issue for me, I’ll have to keep an eye out for it.

Excuses, excuses, excuses.  I’m going to make up for it, though!  Today you’ll get THREE blog posts from me, instead of my usual single post.

Stay tuned, more to come shortly.

Planes, trains or automobiles? What is your favorite way to travel 500 miles?

First, a tangent… did you see that Bears game last week?

Ironically, it’s about 520 miles from my house to the hotels on Las Vegas Boulevard, and I’ve done the drive to Vegas on more than one occasion.  It takes about 8 and a half hours, a full day’s worth of driving.  Usually when I’ve done the trip by car, it’s when I’m taking a longer vacation in Vegas, 5 days or so, affording me the time to decompress in the car and leave my cares behind on my way to Nevada.  The biggest problem with doing that?  You still have to drive home after you’re done!

Of course, flying those 500 miles takes about 90 minutes, plus all the time spent in the airports.  You save a ton of time that way, and it’s not like I’m going to be driving around once I get to the casinos.  That’s what taxis are for!

A 500 mile trip is just far enough away that driving is not a good use of time… unless you’re definitely going to need a car once you get there.  The price of a rental car plus airfare might be prohibitive.

I haven’t taken a train for more than 40 miles (Mountain View to San Francisco on CalTrain) in a very long time, so I cannot comment on that experience.

But, really, the best way to travel 500 miles?  Walk!

Passed over to me from Jessica C.:The comic artist is Keith Knight, who I’d frankly forgotten existed… but I actually have a few signed books of his comic strips hidden away somewhere in the house.  I had come across him at WonderCon several years ago, and really enjoyed his stuff.  Now I can add him to my Google Reader list, so I won’t forget about him again!

Here’s me and April at Shoreline Ampitheater, waiting for the Eddie Izzard show to start:

I’m still feeling my way around Spotify, but I already like what I see enough to cough up the $9.99 per month for a Premium account.  My iTunes library is pretty extensive already, and now I can play those files through Spotify, as well as discover new music and listen to that one earworm song all the way through without having to purchase it.  I can’t wait to sift through all the links that Lifehacker posted as The Essential Spotify Tools.  And I’m really, really looking forward to more of my friends popping up on the service as more invites are available — it’ll be what iTunes Ping could’ve been for me, but fell completely flat.  Hearing what my friends are listening to is how my own music discoveries are influenced.

If you’re on Spotify already, but not linked with my on Facebook, you can add me on Spotify at “jnassi”.

And if you don’t have Spotify already… I have some invites available

Do you feel obligated to finish all books you start reading?

I have a rule of thumb when it comes to the books I start reading.  If I get through the first 100 pages, then I have to finish.  I’m pot-committed after 100 pages.

Only problem with this is the Kindle (device or app), since not all books that I have through Amazon are sporting page numbers.

I definitely enjoyed it.  Egan’s storytelling technique, the very structure of the novel, was what I found most entertaining.  Each chapter features a different character, and there isn’t a chronological progression from chapter to chapter.  Each character is somehow related to another character, leading to an overlap from chapter to chapter… but only a small overlap, most of the time.  With the shifting timeline as well, you never know where the flow of the writing is going to take you.  There’s no past, present, or future if each chapter comes from a completely different perspective, despite the chapters bouncing around a timeline that spans over forty years.  There are threads that tie everything together; in my head, I envision one of those criminal investigation bulletin boards showing all the ties for organized crime, like in The Wire.

Music is another thread throughout the book, but don’t worry, you don’t have to be a music geek to enjoy it.  This isn’t High Fidelity.

Something you need to know if you’re going to read this book — don’t try to read it on a Kindle.  One of the most unique chapters is presented as a PowerPoint slide deck, and the reviews of the book on Amazon say that it’s very hard to view the slides on the Kindle.  I’m glad I picked up the paperback instead, since this wound up being one of my favorite chapters of the book.  If only my presentations conveyed as much in slides as this chapter, I’d have a whole new line of work in front of me!

April

This invariably leads to comments muttered my way like, “I don’t like you”, or “You suck”, or “I’m going to start using made up words, like how you’re a monkeybutt.”

It’s not that I’m good at these kinds of games, mind you. I suck at Scrabble… but I’m better than her

Later that evening, we had another failure, and yet another one this morning. Sad faces abounded in our house. Hell, even the dog seemed bummed out by it. We’ve thrown up our hands and told Sears to give us a whole new brand.

I’ll do a longer update to the story when we reach a REAL conclusion to the saga.

June 1st, the new appliances are delivered to the house and installed. “Rejoice!” we thought, “We can do laundry again!”  Alas, it was not meant to be.

We fiddled with the new washing machine, trying to find the magic combination of settings that would make it finish a full cycle as expected.  The Normal cycle seemed to be okay most of the time.  Whites and Delicates were failures.  We’d start the cycle, the drum would fill with water, it’d agitate for a bit, and then it would drain without ever running the rest of the cycle.  Then we’d try running the cycle again, same results.

Were we doing something incorrect?  Loading too much into the machine?  Pushing the wrong buttons in the wrong order?  I couldn’t fathom how we were being outsmarted by a washing machine.

We called for a service repair.  Of course, they couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary.  To humor us, they ordered a new motherboard for the washing machine — never thought I’d write that combination of words — to be delivered to the house within a couple of weeks.

The days go by, we manage to get our clothes clean using the Normal cycle or the occasional success with other cycles.  The new motherboard arrives, and we have another service appointment scheduled for last Thursday.  Service person comes out, replaces the motherboard, declares victory.  After they leave, we try again… and the cycle dies once more.

By this point, I’m ready to blow a gasket. I call Sears once again, and schedule a replacement to be delivered.

Today, 40 days after the original was delivered, the new washing machine was delivered and installed.  SUCCESS!!!  We’re able to do laundry again!

When I heard the electronic chimes tone to indicate success, I felt like we’d really accomplished something.  We’d been through a long battle and came out on the other side, smelling like a meadow.

I played about seven hands in the SJG poker tournament today. On the fourth hand of the day, I was dealt KQ, and raised into someone who’d already raised 4x the big blind. Stupid bet on my part already, and it only got worse from there. Flop comes with a queen, and I bet big. He bets back into me, and I say, “All in.” He calls and turns over AQ, and then I say, “Oh shit.”

I had him covered by ten chips, which I milked for two more hands before giving up the ghost. I finished in 106th place….out of 107 players. Pathetic.

Tomorrow will likely be another short post, assuming I don’t get knocked out too quickly.

Sauron and Isildur

I sat down on the couch tonight and turned on the television.  Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring was just starting on one of the cable movie channels, and I figured that would make for great background sound for my daily blog posting.  I had a whole blog post planned out for today,

Maybe 6 minutes into the start of the movie, the dark lord Sauron is kicking some serious ass, and just when it looks like he’s completely conquered the armies against him, Isildur takes a swing at him with a broken sword.  It’s a lucky swing, since it chops off Sauron’s ring finger, the one wearing the One Ring, and that puts a serious damper on Sauron’s corporeal form.

This struck me as highly improbable, even for a fantasy story where suspension of disbelief is a prerequisite.  You’re telling me that this total badass dark lord, full of evil magic with his ring of power, after decimating the armies of men… and all it took was taking a sword to his finger to defeat him?  And it takes him thousands of years to even start to come back into power?

Achilles had his heel; Glass Jaw Joe had his jaw.  Sauron had his finger.  Go figure.

Glass Jaw Joe

Are you too lazy, or too busy?

There’s a frequent theme on The Herd with Colin Cowherd (ESPN Radio) about how people’s lives are busier than ever, which I don’t know that I buy entirely.  Are we busier here in 2011 than people were 100 years ago, when they didn’t have the modern conveniences we have today, especially computers and the Internet?

My supposition is that we’re no busier today than people were in the past, but we can get more accomplished in shorter periods of time than ever before.  Because the level of accomplishment has gone up exponentially, we have a perception that we’re busier.  However, getting more done does not equate to being busier.

Here’s an example:  10 years ago, when it came to paying my bills, I had to write out checks, update the checkbook ledger, stuff envelopes, lick stamps, write out my return address, and drop the envelopes in the mailbox.  Today, I can pay my bills online and even set up automatic bill pay so that I don’t even need to log in to my bank’s website.  I can finish paying my bills much faster than I could in the past due to advances in web application technology, leaving me more time to tackle additional tasks.

But there’s the rub… I actually have MORE time available to me, and it’s up to me how I want to fill up that extra time.  If I were a classic Type A personality, I’d always be searching for ways to maximize that extra time, and that would give me the perception that I’m busy busy busy.  Instead, I’m more of a Type B personality, and I’d rather use that extra time as downtime, relaxing on the couch as I’m doing now, surfing the Internet, watching TV, reading a book, etc.  Does that make me lazy?

That's a head scratcher...

Ladies and gentlemen who read my blog,

I picked up blogging again on a daily basis four days ago, but I don’t feel like I’ve gotten back into the swing of things again yet.  I have yet to get back into the flow of writing regularly. I’m still waiting for major inspiration to strike me, giving me fodder for posts that are thoughtful and/or insightful. It’s not something I can force, and the blog post prompters that I’m glancing through aren’t giving me something that I can sink my teeth in to yet.

So, I ask you, fair readers:  What would you like to hear from me about?

Put it into the comments of this post, and if something strikes my fancy, you’ll see it in an upcoming post.

Of course, if nothing gives me a spark, then I’ll force something mundane on you, and nobody wants to see that happen!

Yours truly,

Jason

I got my fireworks fix on Saturday at the Red Sox-Astros game, but I still have plans to grill some burgers and eat corn and watermelon.  But more importantly, today, we’re just a couple of weeks away from the release of the new Captain America movie!

One of my favorite comic books from back in the day was Captain America.  Captain America was sheer awesomeness.  Who else was awesome enough to lead Earth’s mightiest heroes, when Norse gods and billionaire inventors wearing jet-propelled armor were around?  The guy had a shield that could stand up to the Hulk, and he was even worthy to lift Mjolnir, the hammer of Thor!

What really grabbed me first about Captain America was when I was reading one of the old Official Marvel Index to the Avengers, seeing the cover of Avengers #4 from 1964, and then seeing the same scene on the cover of Captain America #337 soon afterwards.  I guess this was in 1988, based on the publish date of the issue, making me an impressionable 12 years old. This was during Mark Gruenwald’s epic run, and I got hooked on so many things in that one issue — the storyline of Cap’s friends trying to get him back into costume, the snake-inspired villains that would go on to be part of the Serpent Society, that awesome cover art, and especially the black costume.  Man, did I ever love that black Captain costume…

So, here on the Fourth of July, 2011, I give you some of the most patriotic covers of Captain America books out there, from the 2002 relaunch, all by John Cassaday.

April and I will be at the 2nd game of the series tonight, my first chance to see Andrew Miller pitch.  It looks like the Sox offense will be in much better shape tonight, with Jacoby Ellsbury back in the lineup, and David Ortiz getting the start at first base with Adrian Gonzalez heading out to right field.  Alas, Darnell McDonald will also be getting a start, and he’s just terrible at this point.

We also went ahead and bought tickets for Sunday’s game, because we’re awesome

Today, I kick off another attempt at “Post A Day”. Wish me luck! I’ve been wanting to come back and start writing again, and there’s a nice symmetry about starting again six months to the day of the last attempt. Coincidentally, I was in Houston on January 1st and now here I am in Houston again for July 1st.

April and I are visiting her parents for the holiday weekend, and not coincidentally, my Boston Red Sox are in town to play her Houston Astros in an interleague series. We’ll be catching the first two games of the series (tonight and tomorrow) at Minute Maid Park, my first chance to see the 2011 edition of the Sox in person.

The roof had better be closed tonight!

Even though the Red Sox don’t open their season until tomorrow, I wore my Red Sox jersey to work today.  I’m all in!

I’m a month away from moving my lady love to California to live with me, and I really, really, really need to make some room for her and her things. Including her dog.

I’ve been going through the accumulated junk in my house, getting it ready to be picked up by my favorite throw-money-at-the-problem-to-make-it-go-away service, 1-800-GOT-JUNK.  There are old computers and monitors being e-recycled.  My 5-disc CD player that I bought in my senior year of high school.  My 2-tape cassette player that I bought even before high school!

Zip drives.  A CD-R burner — not a DVD-R, but a CD-R!  Dead hard drives.  Dead routers.  VCRs that mangle VHS tapes.

The empty boxes to computer components that went into the one and only computer I ever built myself — with an assist from Mike Garcia.

Notebooks from old jobs.

A recliner chair that didn’t recline anymore.

Television sets that were purchased before anyone had ever heard of “high definition”.

Furniture that’s old and busted, turned on its side and being used as a stand for one of the television sets that’s going away.

It’ll be good to get all of this stuff hauled away tomorrow, but even then, I won’t be done.  I’ll just have made a significant enough dent to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Everything was a mess of F2398B1.doc, or similar.  Tens of thousands of files, all told, none of them with identifiable file names.  I opened up a few of the .xls files at random, and they were readable, but not ones that I actually cared about by that point.  Most of the .doc files weren’t able to be opened by Microsoft Word 2011 — or, at least, not without knowing what kind of encoding they were in the first place, which I can’t tell without knowing what the filename should have been!

Not only that, but I wouldn’t be able to recover the files to the same 1TB drive where they resided.  And I didn’t have another storage device available with anywhere close to the free space where I could save these files.

No way to know which files were which, and nowhere to save them to.  I gave up.  This evening, when I got home from work, I wiped the drive.

I’m even going one step further and reinstalling the OS on my Mac Mini.  This little guy is going to be the media server to feed my Apple TV, so I don’t have to keep the portable hard drive connected to my laptop when I want to use the Apple TV.

It’s a lot of 1′s and 0′s that I’m deleting.  Many years of accumulated crap that I’m throwing away.  And that’s all right, I can let it go.  I can put the past behind, and look toward the future.

Every now and then, say ‘What the fuck.’  ’What the fuck’ gives you freedom.  Freedom brings opportunity.  Opportunity makes your future.

I was actually working on a way to properly and regularly back up one large set of data from my 500GB portable external hard drive to a stationary 1TB external hard drive on the home network.  The portable HD is where I keep all of my music, as well as my unwatched TV shows and other similar large files that I don’t want clogging up my laptop’s internal drive.

The 1TB drive was all of my old data.  Pretty much every file from every computer I’ve owned dating back to college.  Backups of old websites I would run, prior to this blog.  Every DVD rip I ever did, movies that I didn’t buy the DVD, only rented it.  iTunes TV shows that I’d already watched, including several season passes.  Photos from before I started using iPhoto.  TurboTax data files from years past.  ISO images of old operating systems.  And so on and so forth.

Even with all that crap, there was still just over 500GB available on the 1TB drive, so I started backing up the portable drive to the 1TB drive.  I was using Carbon Copy Cloner to do the trick, and it worked beautifully, took about 6 hours to complete overnight a couple of days ago.

But then I decided to get fancy, and that was to be my downfall.  I tried to change a few settings in Carbon Copy Cloner, file paths, etc.  And then I kicked off the backup again.. and got that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I watched as my old files started disappearing from the 1TB drive!

I somehow managed to do the clone operation to the root level instead one level down, and Carbon Copy Cloner erased almost all of the data on the 1TB drive before I could stop it.  And since it was doing a lower level operation than the Finder would do on the Mac, I couldn’t simply look in the Trash to recover the files.

I’m trying to run a data recovery application to see if it can save my bacon.

On the one hand, I really don’t want to lose all of this stuff.  It’s the accumulation of years and years worth of information — some of it real work!

On the other hand, there’s nothing there I really need.  Most of it is stuff that was effectively in deep storage.  As much as I like the idea of enjoying the little things, I also believe in the philosophy of “Don’t sweat the small stuff”.  So, if the deep data recovery doesn’t prove to be fruitful… c’est la vie.

To quote April, “If you drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let ‘em go, because man; they’re gone.”

Going to The Men’s Wearhouse is always a risky proposition. Guys will back me up on this… they do a fantastic job of milking you for a ton of money every time you walk in there.  Sure, you don’t wear suits and ties to work, but OF COURSE you need three new suits, eleven dress shirts and tie combinations, and three pairs of shoes!

This trip, I managed to walk out with the collar stays and only the collar stays.  Willpower!

However, they have a store-wide “buy one, get one free” sale going on, which means I’m sure I’ll go back this weekend to do a little shopping.

Everything is on sale as “buy one, get one free”, with one exception — shoes.  The salesperson told me that shoes were on sale as “buy one pair, get the second pair for half off”, which is still a pretty good deal.

Of course, now I got it into my head that it means you could buy a total of three shoes for the price of two.  Wonder what they would do if I asked for one left, one right, and another left?