shinyPlasticBag

Happy Canada Day, y’all. This is the second year I’ve been gone and, since its not a holiday here, spent the day working. I have to say, I miss it, not because the things we did were ever particularly epic — in fact, we rarely succeeded at having plans at all — but because we usually made the effort.

Yep, it’s just your average, hazy summer day here in the Bay Area. I’m hard at work with Nathan on a re-vamp of some of our internal systems, which is a really nifty, interesting project, but prone to melting my brain after extended periods.

I’m going to see Away We Go tonight with Andrew, Casey, Lynn, and Nathan. It looks somewhat interesting, but I’m reserving judgement until I actually see it. I’ve been trying to wean myself off of movie trailers and the like so that I’m more often surprised by movies. What’s the fun of going to see a movie if you know exactly what’s going to happen?

Today’s the ten year anniversary of my moronic car crash, wherein I totalled Mom’s car less than a month after I got my driver’s license.

Here’s to the wonderfully sturdy engineering of the 1994 Dodge Colt and the summer of memorable misadventures that it helped usher in.

Steve & Keddy, you guys are some of my best friends, and I’m sure that was cemented by our moment of sitting upside down in a ditch. <3.

So, the iPhone GS has been announced, and is due out a week from today. I really, really want one. Or rather, I really, really want to want one. I have been anxiously awaiting the release of the next iPhone for about six months. My first gen is starting to feel a little long in the tooth. Sure, it runs all the apps I want just fine, but the call quality is a bit iffy*, the screen is quite scratched, and every now and then, the screen does a very strange “OMG loose wire somewhere” dance. Plus, it crashes like a mofo.

So, when the keynote started yesterday, I was anxiously awaiting the new device, hanging my hopes on one of the rumors attached to it: tethering. Having the Internet in my pocket has really changed a lot of things in my life, but I really want the Macintosh Internet experience everywhere. Tethering was confirmed as a capability due to some intrepid people ripping apart the iPhone OS 3.0 builds, but carrier support wasn’t determined until yesterday.

Of course, AT&T was not on the list of carriers supporting it at launch. Shit! Trust my luck to move to the only country where phone service is as bad as Canada. Sigh. So, despite the fact that the iPhone GS looks amazingly wonderful, it won’t be coming to live with me until there’s tethering support available (and affordable).

I’m one seriously unhappy nerd.

* Now, somewhat ironically, I can’t entirely blame the call quality on my phone. The two scenarios where I generally make phone calls both have other limiting factors: Google Voice, for my long distance calls to family & friends back home, and my car’s Bluetooth hands-free unit. Google Voice really does mutilate calls at time, but I think I can expect better from the Bluetooth.

This has been a freakishly busy spring for me! Life at PBworks is just blurring by, as we build increasingly awesome things. I’m loving it.

Anyway, I’ve got to say, spring is quickly giving way to summer. It was 33C outside today, and there’s actually a heat weather warning out for tomorrow. Ugh! It’s a bad day when you’re getting gross and sweaty just sitting on your couch. Sigh.

Anyway, I had a fun day. Lynn and I went to a really, really boring historic spot, Dr. Tripp’s General Store, in Woodside. It was nice and scenic, though, so that’s hard to argue with. Then, we met up with Atif in Palo Alto (I say the A9.com building, woot) for coffee. For whatever reason, my car decided to act like it had a dead battery, so we had to walk back to Atif’s to pick up his car. Upon returning to Chuck, it had mysteriously re-invigorated its battery. Ugh — exercise for nothing! I hate that!

In odd news, I received a jury duty summons today, something that is particularly annoying since I’m not eligible for jury duty, so now I’ve got to figure out how to point out of the obvious to the San Mateo court system. Blaaaah.

Jury duty summons are ridiculously frequent here: two people at PBworks had to do jury duty in the past 6 months. I don’t know anyone back in Halifax that has ever had jury duty. I blame spurious lawsuits down here.

Anyway, off to watch The Office. UNTIL NEXT TIME.

For whatever reason, a copy of the Windows 1.0.1 splash screen was making the rounds on reddit today. I was inspired to make a wallpaper, but of course, I’m a Mac man, m’self.

Here’s the boot-up screen from System 7, circa 1991:

Here’s a screenshot of my desktop with a new version of it:

So, world, here’s my Welcome to Mac OS wallpaper (1280×800), and in case you want to play with it, here’s the Photoshop version. Everything should be scalable.

So, today was SHDH 32, and it was in Oakland. It was at a really interesting workshop space called the Department of Spontaneous Combustion, which was filled with interesting, Burning Man-esque creations (take a look at that link). Unfortunately, there weren’t enough places to sit, and the Internet just didn’t work. It’s hard to provide infrastructure for a hundred people with laptops and phones and all that jazz. Still, it was pretty frustrating to have driven 40 minutes to the opposite side of the bay and just sort of stand around being annoyed. Plus, it was in a vaguely sketchy sort of part of town. Generally speaking, not my favourite devhouse — although it was fun to beat JP at chess.

You know, I’m pretty good at chess, but I really don’t strategize at all while I play. I prefer to be reactionary, hedging my own position and moving in when I can. I don’t have a particularly great success rate, though, because I get bored and distracted. I really wish I didn’t — I LOVED chess back in junior high. One of my crowning achievements was beating Ms. Meadows, the librarian, in a game. No one else I knew had ever done that.

Anyway, driving home today, vaguely grumpy after an unsatisfying nerd experience, Casey and I dragged Andrew to an In-n-Out burger. I’ve been extolling the wonders of their amazing food ever since he moved here in October, and since he doesn’t have a car (and we live in an 25 km long In-n-Out deadzone), he hadn’t made it there. It was, of course, delicious.

Casey and I also stopped in to OSH and picked up some herbs and peppers. I’ve been wanting to have a little garden ever since I moved into Queen Street two years ago, so I’m glad she’s kept reminding me, and I’m very excited. I got a jalapeno plant, some corn, some tomatoes, some sage, and then various little spicy peppers. The next issue is finding a good spot to put them where they’ll get enough sun, but yeah. Excited.

Anyway, that’s enough boring nerdery for now. Ciao, world.

You know, one of the things I hate most about human existence — and I say that because I’m pretty sure this is universal — is the unpleasantness of consciousness context switching. That is, I hate going to bed — I always want to stay up and keep watching TV, or surfing the Interwebs. However, once I’m asleep, I never want to get up. It’s annoying.

I like sleeping in so much that I used to fantasize about taking a Sleep Day and just not getting out of bed. Working nightshifts for a few years pretty much beat that out of me, though. Waking up at 3 or 4 in the afternoon was really sucky.

Anyway. Random.

Wonderful sunshine.

I’m in Willits, CA en route back home to Redwood City with Mom & Joey. We spent the weekend up in Fortuna, although we didn’t spend any time in Fortuna itself. We wanted through the Avenue of the Giants and scrambled along the shores of Eel River, and we bought interesting things from a gem & mineral shop. I got Dad a weird agate rock and a cute little ammonite fossil for Casey.

It is fantastically sunny outside today. Sometime, I really want to spend a few weeks and drive right across the continent, stopping at some optimal number of roadside attractions and tourist traps, and maybe fly back or something. I’ve wanted to do that since I was in high school (I recall planning a roadtrip to Chicago in grade 12 that never came to be). It’s really a funny thing to want to do, since I generally dislike driving. Weird personality facet, I suppose.

Anyway, laptopping in the backseat of my car is somewhat uncomfortable, so I’m done typing now.

Dear lord, this blog has just completely slipped out of my mental radar. What’s wrong with me? Ugh!

Anyway, I’ve been having a delightful week: Mom & Joey are in town, so I’ve been doing my best to entertain them and show them interesting things. For example, we went to Muir National Monument on the weekend, which was spectacular. They have some massive redwood trees there — it’s a pretty amazing park. Definitely on my ‘return to’ list.

Wednesday night, we went up to San Francisco (with Lynn as our navigator) and went through Chinatown and North Beach. We had dinner at Michelangelo’s Caffe, which I love. I went there with Lynn when I first got here and was completely won over by the plate of gummy bears they bring you after your dinner. Fantastic. Anyway, Lynn successfully managed to pay for our dinner, so now the rest of us are scheming of ways of making it back up to her.

Work is crazy busy. It’s great to have so much to do, but it’s always a bit alarming to look at todo lists that are constantly growing. It’s going to be one hell of a summer. Oddly enough, I’m looking forward to the challenge. This is what startup life is supposed to be like.
Anyway, Mom and Joey are here for another week or so, so we’re heading up north this weekend so they can see the humongous redwood forests of northern California (and maybe southern Oregon). It should be a lot of fun. I really like roadtrips, and this is a fun route to take. Lots of windy roads through mountains and forests with the occasional breathtaking view. It’s wonderful.

Anyhoo, I’ve got to get a-workin’. Until next time, blog.

I just got out of interaction09 redux, which was at Adaptive Path’s office in San Francisco. interaction09 was a design conference that happened in Vancouver last month. Someone noticed that so many people there were from the Bay Area that they could stand to do a micro “redux” edition in San Francisco. I went with Mike.

It was interesting, although I’m finding the more I’m exposed to “designer-y events”, the less interest I actually have in design. It’s clearly not my speciality, even though I like to think of myself as more enlightened than your average code monkey. Live and learn, I guess.

Anyway, as I was walking down the sidewalk (past a man pushing an empty shopping cart whilst wearing a bathrobe and smoking a cigar), I was hit with yet another “Holy crap. California.” moment. I really haven’t been taking full advantage of my enviable position here. It’s Silicon freaking Valley.

So, new personal commitment: attend, on average, one tech event per week. It shouldn’t be too hard: I’m on Caltrain en route to SuperHappyDevHouse, which will be my second tech event of the day, and I went to BayCHI’s “Dancing with Ambiguity” event at Xerox PARC on Tuesday. This week has been busy.