Today as I composed the youth newsletter, I broke every machine I touched. What should have taken 30 minutes took almost 3 hours. The copier jammed thrice, the folding machine destroyed 10% of the papers, the access based pc database wouldn't share any names with me for the mailing list, even the postage meter machine was out of lickum, so I had to manually seal all the envelopes myself. All in all, I missed the mail man by mere minutes so I had to deliver 103 envelopes to the mailbox myself, instead of just to the front office.

No doubt, Kurt would say Mercury was in retrograde today.

While sitting through Mamma Mia! The Sing Along Movie tonight with Tim, his parents and Miko, I had occasion to think about all things ABBA. My mind drifted a bit, especially in the bits where Pierce Brosnan was trying to sing. I enjoyed the movie, but not as much as you'd think I would've. It's the first karaoke movie I've ever seen, and all the music was ABBA music.

While I was trying not to cringe too much, I homed in on an idea. I chose a song. I tried to remember events from my life during the particular song that was being sung on screen. For this post I'll run with The Winner Takes It All.

I have memories of The Winner Takes It All from an 8 track tape I gave my brother for Xmas in 1980. I have memories of driving across Texas in my dad's lime green four wheel drive Power Wagon, listening to the Super Trouper album in his 8 track tape player. Apparently 8 track tapes were all the rage back then.

I remember when I tracked down the video in college and how disappointed I was that ABBA didn't make better videos. I remember listening to the Super Trouper album about fourteen million times my junior year in high school. The Winner Takes It All was my favorite song. It still holds a special place in my heart, even tho Meryl Streep strangled it in the movie.

I know I've listened to it this week, and I know I've listened to it on my iPhone/iPod/iTunes collection a lot. In fact, iTunes says it's the third most popular ABBA song in my collection (of all the ABBA songs). It's been listened to more (67 times) than any other ABBA song except for The Visitors (83 times) and Should I Laugh or Cry (91 times).

The Winner Takes It All comes in at number (I'm not making this up) 69 in my over-all collection of 9703 songs. That puts it in the top 1% of the music I listen to. I think that's pretty impressive for an almost 30 year old song.

So I remember the beginning of the life of that song. I remember it lately. But I don't really have much memory of it in the middle. Odd, because I know I listened to it when I lived in Arlington. The movie theatre kids gave me hell for listening to so much ABBA, but I don't actually remember listening to any there. For that I remember Men Without Hats, Erasure, and Midnight Oil.

In Odessa, I mostly remember listening to Gary Numan, but the folks I know from there still remember my ABBA fetish, so I must've listened to it then too. It's the same with Alabama (where i distinctly don't remember listening to anything), SFO and now Portland. Funny how the brain works.

It's given me an idea… so stay tuned. I plan to do some exploring soon. it's a good thing listening to ABBA doesn't make you see spiders (see yesterday's post)…

eek!

So I went to google to see who'd ever want to hallucinate to see spiders. Apparently all sorts of wackos are out there who would do this to themselves intentionally.

One guy says he intentionally took 7 Benadryl and then describes this:

There is a large spider on the wall, a type I've never seen before. It looks like a cylinder with really long legs. I blow on it, but it doesn't react, it just sways on its web.

Another says this:

He move his hand at an incredibly slow rate, as if his arm was made out of lead, and as he touched the offending item, it raced away off his hand onto his jeans and down towards his knee. He realised that was he was looking at was a spider, the spider stopped, and became hair again, and proceeded to race away as a spider, and become a ball of hair as soon as it stopped.

And still another says:

When I got back I looked up at my ceiling fan and I noticed a large spider crawling across the blades that were spinning quite fast. Im am not affraid of spider's unless they touch me so I decided to watch it and make sure its real. I rubbed my eyes, blinked and looked elsewhere, but each time I did it remained on the light of the ceiling fan. Then I decided to go back to bed before I could I noticed another very small black spider run under my covers

eeek! Seeing spiders everywhere seems like a bad way to spend your evening, even if they are fake. I wonder if the spider thing is just our culture or if it's universal to all humans when they take too much Diphenhydrinate…

Go look at the google search yourself. The upside is since everyone was hallucinating, there are no scary spider picts.

I dreamed I was in a cubicle environment, working on classes, when something popped up for an HP contract. So I had to run down the hall and figure out how to log on to HP's network in order to apply for the job.

Odd.

I usually equate the dreams about the theatre with a sense of relief, thinking about how I don't do that any more. I woke up with a similar feeling about the HP gig.

Interesting. What do you think it means?

In his blog post, Kevin Kelly describes how he and his son created the beast. There are more pictures there too.

And I can tell I'm a nerd, because I recognize the Apple styrofoam piece front and center. I guess this could be the whole reason that my favorite tech company uses such creative packaging…

But President Bill Clinton had an amazing speech last night that showed poise and grace, making me long for the day when we had a president who could speak in front of a crowd without making up words and sounding stupid all over the place.

One phrase that I think should be lifted from Bill's speech was this gem:

People all over the world are increasingly impressed more by the power of our example than by the example of our power.

I love that. I almost gave him a standing ovation at my desk when I saw it on the podcast.

MLS Site

It's looking like Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas in Plano on Saturday night, October 4. Please plan to join us, it'll be great to hang out and see whoever can make it this time!

eek!

Turns out, I'm not the only one. Last night I had major indigestion, so I took some chewy pepto-bismols and presto, it turned my tongue black. Scary for only a moment, and then funny as all get out.

Read more about the phenom here, and then don't worry if you happen to do the same thing.

At Leif's birthday party, I ate a heaping plate of food and two pieces of cake (one made entirely of ice cream). I really did eat too much. ooooooh.

Here's what Bigfoot looks like:


And here's what a possum looks like:


Let me point out a couple of differences.

1. Bigfoot is like 9 feet tall. Possums are not.
2. Bigfoot is brown, Possums are gray
3. Bigfoot might be imaginary, Possums definitely are not

so there you go. Next time you want to submit fake DNA to prove Bigfoot exists, you should at least bring something better than a possum to the table.

Possums, btw, were only previously brought to the table by this woman:

Nope, the sad day I'm referring to is that I am quoting Fox News on Cliffdweller.

Last week's excitement over a supposed Bigfoot body, which culminated Friday in a circus-like press conference in Palo Alto, Calif., collapsed like a wet soufflé Sunday as an independent investigator determined it was all fake.

Too much fun. Read more at Fox News.

Wow! I think this is the most blanket coverage of the whole web that I've ever had. I've had visits from New Zealand, Austrailia and Russia before, but never from Iraq, South Africa or Pakistan. Tres cool. Here's the complete list of countries seeking Bigfoot via Cliffdweller: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, and Uruguay.

And as if that wasn't enough, it's also the first time I made it to almost all 50 states checking my blog. Here's the list of US States that came here looking for a large furry beast, and only found a possum: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Now I just have to figure out why Montana has no interest in Bigfoot when the rest of the world does.

Back to Google Baiting: if I could find some reasonable way to mix Bigfoot and iTunes in one post, I would have paydirt. Maybe I should take Timmy on an expedition to take photos of Bigfoot with my iPhone…

Thanks to Leif for pointing it out!

Three samples of DNA were presented to "Scientists" (later revealed as scientists at a university in the midwest). The first appeared to be Human, the second was a possum, and the third was from the OJ Trial, um I mean was inconclusive.

So, is Bigfoot just a giant possum? or did the yokels try to sell us down the river again?

Your call. Let me know.

No matter how you crack it, it's Bigfoot in a freezer. According to the New York Times, these guys found a Bigfoot carcass and this is a picture of it in their freezer.

For years people have said that "if there was a bigfoot, we'd have a body from somewhere." well, here's their body. Let's see if the evidence holds up…

…But on Friday [um, that's today] at a hotel in Palo Alto, Calif., a pair of Bigfoot hunters say they will present what they contend is the most definitive proof yet of an animal that science says does not exist: DNA evidence and photographs of a dead specimen they say they found in a remote swath of woods in northern Georgia.

I especially like this quote from the article:

"There’s a lot of comment being made that it looks fake, or it looks like a suit," Mr. Dyer said. "But these people wasn’t there when I was sweating, pulling this thing through the woods."

Please, if you're going to hunt Bigfoot, don't make the rest of us look like we're related to George W. Bush. Learn to speak English. Yokels don't sell papers. Or maybe they do when they're talking about Bigfoot.

Go read that there whole article, see what you think.

NY Times: Two Georgians Say They Have Bigfoot's Body

i've managed to have scheduled classes to teach every day - two on most days. With my slight break in the middle today, i managed to over-commit with several different clients for the already scarce time. Now I'm sailing into tomorrow, I have classes to teach from 9:30 to noon, 1pm to 3:30, and 4 to 6:30. I have a birthday party from 6:30 to 9ish, and a movie at a film festival to check out that I had some small hand in producing at 9:30pm. I'm gonna need a time machine just to get through my Thursday.

Friday I have a class first thing in the morning and then a meeting with a client, for whom I will not have any time before our meeting Friday to look at her stuff. And then there's the other client, same thing, except I have a couple of extra days to work it all out - they're closed on Friday.

Also in the middle of all of that, I have to sprinkle in some sign makers to fix the awning out front, and the windows for the company. Oh, and I have to get the balls rolling to sell my house.

It's amazing I'm getting any sleep at all.

I'm thinking i'm not stressed because of the secret recipe cookies Tim made for me. He only gave me three so far, but I know there's more and I'll get them in a day or two. Mmmmmm. secret recipe cookies.

The Bible tells us there's more to life than just doing your job and eating meals. Popular movies like The Matrix tell us that what we are experiencing is not real, that it's all an illusion. Other religions have been telling us that for centuries but we never listen.

I'm rumored to have good parking karma because I always get a good parking space. What does one do to get good parking karma? I certainly never sacrificed anything to the deities of parking. Yet, still I tend to get Doris Day¹ parking everywhere I go.

A friend of mine thinks he deserves what he is going through. Some people believe that every action we make has a definite reaction that will come back to haunt us. How many times when there's a couple of catastrophes have you heard someone say "these things always happen in threes."

Why are we so ready to blame the universe for things that happen? Why are we ready to blame ourselves for the same exact things? Why does anyone or anything need blame for things that happen. The only thing we control is how we feel about those things, and often we don't seem to have much control over that.

Yesterday I donated a bunch of plates and glasses (that were left behind when the ex moved out) to a family in need because I didn't want them. Do I get karma for giving the dishes a good home? Or do I get minus karma for getting rid of the dang things so conveniently? Should I have schlepped them somewhere on my own as a kind of karmic payment for getting them away from my house? Or would Karma have been better served if Tyler and I had gone out and used them all for target practice?

So if all the talk of Karma is true, I wonder what I did that introduced Tim into my life.

I blanked the drive and have been restoring from the Time Capsule via Time Machine for the past several hours.

It ain't done yet, but if this works it'll be the simplist restore, ever.

Update: here's a link to all the pictures Tim posted.

I made a quick dash for some needed supplies to Safeway in full Pirate garb. It was a hoot having virtually everyone I saw at the store say "Arrrrrr" to me. Even the little old lady who let me cut in front of her shopping cart full of stuff at the register with my one role of scotch tape. She said "arrrrr" and then "go ahead of me, you have only one thing."

I was tickled at how a simple pirates uniform makes everyone laugh a lot. When I changed into the clothes right after church, I breezed thru a room where i knew some folks were still hanging out, and everyone giggled.

It's good to see people laugh a bit.

And everyone everywhere kept saying "Arrrrrrr."

I'm filled with some great feelings about babysitting Henry last night, going to dinner with Tim's brother and his wife on Friday, hanging with the whole family at the party today. Most of all, just being with Tim. It feels very much like a re-awakening of my roots. It feels absolutely real. And, since I know you're reading this, thank you for that.

Now I'm going to turn in before I start getting all gushy in this *very* public forum.

Tomorrow is the big 30th Birthday Party for Miko Phillipi. It's going to be grand. Tim has been prepping for it since 1985, I think.

The theme is Pirates. We're all going to be dressed up as pirates. I can't remember the last time I actually dressed up as anything. Actually, I can. But that's not important right now.

So I have the costume down, I'm still working on the pirate name for me tho. Some offered by the internet include "Mad Long Ben", "Captain Small Beard" and "Poop Deck Carlos." I'm open to any suggestions.

They did a NYC variation on the classic carnival game where you have ducks in a little pool and you pick them up to see what prize you get. In the NYC Special Olympic fundraiser version, the little pool was the Hudson River and the little ducks were worth as much as $1million.

Of course, they only picked up one duck, and it wasn't a million dollar winner.

Read more about it at the Duck Race website.

Still it looked pretty cool on the CNN podcast. Then I saw a picture from the real Olympics kick off in china. See if you can tell which of these photos is from where…

I'm just sayin…

Here's to the signpost in this road. It's a good thing.

Today I actually talked to a real estate agent about maybe selling my house. He was supposed to call me back. Let's see if I hear from him tomorrow…

And finally, in the past three days I've eaten at Del Taco, Taco Bell and Taco Time. Each one has strengths and weaknesses.

Del Taco's strength is that it has Taco in it's name so it is identified with the other two in silly taste tests.

Taco Time definitely has the best actual Tacos, if you go for crunchy examples of the said item, but Taco Bell has the best Dr Pepper.

And finally, has anyone besides me and Tim noticed that the chips at Taco Bell are starting to taste a lot like they have sugar in them? It's almost like The Bell is using cinnamon crispas for their nachos. What's up with that?

I'd have to say that no Dr. Pepper is Taco Time's only weakness. And anyone who knows me knows that good Dr. Pepper is enough to make me go to a restaurant, even if they do sugarcoat their chips.

So why is it when I've seen three whole episodes on live tv in the past year, that two of the one's I've already seen are the two that Fox shows tonight during prime time.

Funny how that works. I'm absolutely sure that the next time I get to watch The Simpsons on live Sunday night broadcast, it'll be that other episode that I've already seen.

sheesh.

See the pictures in the sidebar, I'll post some direct links here when I have more time.

check this one out:

Fresh chives from the garden, sour cream, local eggs, butter and mashed potatoes combine to make a deliciously light loaf of bread. The dough also makes excellent dinner rolls. The loaves or rolls can be shaped and refrigerated overnight and baked just before serving.

The full recipe is here, it looks yummy. Next time I come to your house for dinner, please have these ready for me so I can see what they taste like.

Tell him he looks really good for a 50 year old.

Do you remember when we told everyone that Amy was 40 when she was only 35? The memory is the first thing that goes, you know, so it's ok to admit it if you don't remember.

Or how about the time we were going to go skydiving and I chickened out and you ruined a pair of shorts (with grass stains).

Who was the redneck in the next cube who was so cute but so dumb. I thought he was going to kill us, literally, when we started suggesting that everyone had a little blood from other races in their veins?

And who could forget My Little Pony. I had such a crush. OK, maybe that was just me and not you, but you're the one who named him.

So Happy Birthday, and many happy returns! You're a celebrity now.

1. Mom just got one! she stood in line for 3 hours, and is none too happy about the line, but she got an iPhone. How does Apple create such demand that 2 weeks after launch they still have 3 hour lines every day?

2. Mobile Me just hiccuped on me. In an odd way, no less. All 5000 of my contacts were still in my phone, but all the phone numbers were gone. So I had the entry for Mom, her email address and her iChat handle, but no phone number. And it wasn't just mom, it was all the phone numbers. When I put a new number in on the phone, it dutifully ended up back on the mac, and when I put one on the mac, it also ended up back on the phone. But the thousands of numbers that were there before were just simply, well, gone.

After poking around a bit, I did a few things that finally fixed it. I ended up going to my Mobile Me system preference and resetting the contact info so all of Mobile Me would be replaced by what was on my mac. In a little while, it was all on my iPhone again, like nothing had ever happened. weird.

So even tho Apple claims Mobile Me is fixed, I'd still proceed with caution. I back up my calander and contacts manually almost every day.

The tones seem to go up and up forever and ever. It's called a Shepard Scale. To get the full effect you'll need to play it a couple of times, over and over.

suhweet!

California Medley was a collection of bland and tasteless vegetables that looked good. It usually meant broccoli, cauliflower, peas and another unidentifiable thing or two (squash? who knows). To this day, whenever I see more than one veggie in a bowl, I think "California Medley." Eatio has destroyed me for life.

Tonight it occurred to me as I dumped my fresh steamed broccoli and my sliced up fresh steamed carrot into a bowl, that Oregon Medley was my favorite combo. The difference is that it's fresh veggies, and I steamed them myself. And they're very tasty.

Next time you come over to my house to eat, you should order Oregon Medley.

Of course on a side note, who knows where the carrots and broccoli at Fred Meyer come from. The could be Texas Medley, or worse…

…and a tip o the hat to SG's mom for turning me on to Muenster Cheese… it tastes great on my sandwich.

It was very relaxing and it made for a pleasant way to end an almost perfect weekend.

…and that's all I have to say about that…

Think about it. How much does popcorn weigh? How many ounces is a billion pounds? I know, it's easy math, but the point is that it's a lot of popcorn. No wonder we're all fat from eating non-essential food products. I'm glad I don't weigh a billion pounds.

Here's an article over at ABC that talks about movie theatre popcorn.

I'd have to ask, are we really eating a billion pounds, or are we throwing it at the screen when we see sucky movies like The X-Files, I Want To Believe? While I was sitting thru that one last night, I kept thinking of the title in this way: "The X-Files, I Just Want to Leave."

It always sucks when a movie has great potential and then they screw it up by making the monsters into plain old russian speaking scientists who transplant heads from one body to the next.

What did we do before there was a YouTube?

Here's an excerpt of a claim made in the 1950s:

Batman and Robin, Wertham charged, inhabited "a wish dream of two homosexuals living together." They lived in "sumptuous quarters," unencumbered by wives and girlfriends, with only an aged butler for company. They cared for each other's injuries, frequently shared quarters, and lounged together in dressing gowns. Worse still, both exhibited damning psychological characteristics: proclivities for costumes, dressing up, and fantasy play; secretive behavior and double-lives; little interest in women; and, most damning of all, neurotic compulsions resulting in their violent vigilantism. Indeed, Wertham argued, depictions of Batman and Robin were frequently homoerotic, visually emphasizing Batman's rippling physique and Robins splayed, bare thighs.

More than just Batman stories, it goes on to talk about The Lavender Scare, where being Gay was thought to be an in for the Russians in an assault on our very society.

It's a lengthy, but fascinating read, over at The Belirico Project. Check it out.

Too much happening for me to keep up

Too much to say but the words are costly

Too much to carry when all I want to do is dance

Too much to be when i just want

pete shelley's Heaven and the Sea album is playing in the next room. iTunes is a cruel bitch goddess. Thank goodness the weekend is almost here! Bosco* and I are both looking forward to Saturday, albeit for completely different reasons.

* Bosco is Susan's dog that I'm dog sitting until Susan's return on Saturday.

it goes on to say:

And while you know a lot, you don't act like a know it all. You're open to learning you're wrong.

You get along best with: The Comma

Take the test yourself: What Punctuation Mark Are You?

Here it is, read it for yourself. I can't remember what it said, and the photo was too close on the iPhone camera so I can't quite make it out, maybe you'd like to tell me what it says…

But I do remember thinking it was perfect.

I've also been watching the episodes of Supernatural on my AppleTV. I'm hooked. In one episode that I watched today, they summed it up with this phrase: "Gay love saved the day." You gotta love TV that does that. I know I do. You see, the intern got killed and his ghost had to save the day when the other guy told him… oh wait. I don't want to spoil it too much.

Sprinkle in the finale of Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, because it was an entertainment force this weekend, too.

So do try to keep up. Wish my father a happy birthday yesterday too, while you're at it. He just turned 75. My grandfather would have been 100 yesterday if he were still alive.

I think maybe it's time to seriously consider a trip to Europe, maybe Germany, maybe Scotland, maybe Rumania, maybe it's even time to lift that long standing moratorium on italy. I don't think it really matters, I just think it's time to really consider one. Mamma Mia really did make me want to go to Greece…

BTW, the batman movie link above is all performed in legos.

I was going to take a pass on it this weekend, but Niko and Martin grabbed a ticket for me anyway and made me go. I'm glad they did.

I don't remember ever sitting through such a long movie and not paying attention to the time. It clocks in somewhere around two and a half hours, but my only time-related concern while watching it was that it would eventually be over and i'd have to leave.

They didn't miss a punch. They were right on target everywhere. The Joker was most excellent as was Batman and Harvey Dent. All very good.

Go see it. You won't be disappointed.

Here's an article about the first day grosses (and the place where I stole the dollar bill that made me laugh out loud).

It kind of tastes like water with dirt in it. No seriously. It got me thinking. But then lots of things get me thinking…

Everyone I know who is watching their weight tells me Coke Zero tastes just like real Coke. I have to disagree. Are my tastebuds that discerning? probably not. It's just that I'm not so certain that I want to drink Coke that I'll drink dirt-water and pretend that it tastes like the classic.

But what do I really think? I think that from now on if my choices are Coke Zero or water, I'll drink water. Or tea. Or anything other than Coke Zero that's offered. Seriously. How do they get away with selling this stuff?

I think that I'm going to tell myself that before I can drink any other Coke*, I have to finish this one bottle of Coke Zero. I think that's one easy step. I don't ever plan to have another swig of Coke Zero, ever, thereby killing all my cravings for regular Coke instantly. I think it'll work.

*Coke means Coca-Cola, and does not imply my willingness to give up cherry coke, or Dr. Pepper. Being from the south, "Coke" usually means the same thing as "Soda" but in this instance I just mean regular old Coke. The one exception to the new no-Coke rule is if they ever have Coke instead of Pepsi at City Thai, then I'm obligated due to a long running joke at my favorite Thai place.

You see, I read an exciting post by one of the iPhone App developers. Fraser Speirs is no stranger to Mac development. Now he's developing Flickr Apps for the iPhone. He is the developer behind one of the first things I downloaded and started using: Exposure.

So here's what he said in his blog post.

If you haven’t got it already, it’s time to move your head to this place: iPhone OS is Apple’s mainstream platform for 2012 and beyond. It’s a bold prediction, but the numbers seem fairly clear.

He pontificates that since Apple sold 1,000,000 phones last weekend, and since they keep selling faster and faster, that by 2012 Apple will have a larger installed base of iPhones than Macintoshes. That's scary. Does that mean that Apple starts paying more attention to the iPhone than the desktop? Like the way they quietly (ha!) discontinued the Apple ][ line in favor of the Mac?

Of course, he's predicting the future with figures from right now. He neglected to notice that Apple's Mac sales increased 38% this quarter. Maybe the iPhone and iPod halo effect really is beginning to kick in.

For now, the iPhone is a tiny computer riding a giant wave of cool. Mr. Speirs says his app Exposure is averaging 3,200 downloads a day from the App Store at iTunes. I wonder if it counts the re-downloads and upgrades as downloads…

Today I was talking to a person who mentioned they were going to buy the sprint version of the iPhone. I said, "huh? There's no such thing." They proceeded to tell me about the things that their phone could do, and that it was as good as an iPhone. Well, if you know me, then you also know that them's fightin' words.

So now I have to reflect.

To a person who doesn't use an iPhone, they just don't get it. Its the same exact thing I've said about windows users for years and years. They look at the mac and say, oh, I've got a pc and it's good enough. This person was looking at the iPhone and thinking it's just a phone that can run a calendar too.

It does that, but it does more.

The game changing that's going on around us because of Apple is amazing. With my iPhone, now I can control my television programs. Not only can I control them, but i get feedback on my iPhone as it's doing things. With my iPhone I can keep up with things that other people are doing. Zune thinks they have "the social?" It doesn't even compare with the social things on my iPhone. Oh, look, my friend WWP is nearby. I think I'll give him a shout out.

It's hard to describe to someone who doesn't use one. But people who have argued that whatever they have is good enough for years and years, are starting to come around.

Every day, the fanatical developers are making cooler software for it. It's almost like a crusade: what else can we use the accelerometers for? Let's find some way to make this application useful based on where you are when you use it.

Every day, it gets a little further ahead of those things that pretend to be in its league. Sure it's missing a thing or two, but there's always the next rev to fix it. It's like it's scoring a 98 and people are whining about the 2. My old RAZR would have been good to score a 30 on the same scale. We didn't miss cut and paste on it because it really was just a phone.

I was amazed last weekend when I was in Yakima and could not get a consistent reliable wifi connection for my mac. But my iPhone worked. I blogged from it. I reviewed restaurants from it. I found places on it. I took pictures with it and emailed them to the folks back home within seconds. I played games on it. I updated Flickr on it. I read articles from the NYTimes on it. I listened to music on it. I watched The Simpsons on it. I did all of the things that I would have normally done on my computer plus I even used it as a phone occasionally too.

Make no mistake, this little jewel is a pocket computer that just happens to have a phone built in. I've only had the new software for 5 days and it is already an integral part of my day to day routine. crazy. I'm excited to see where the software train is going to lead.

The folks working on the new rockets are using their own time away from the office to make things that work better, cheaper. In some cases, they're the same scientists who are working on the much more expensive, official projects by day at NASA.

But apparently the same buffoons are still in charge:

A spokesman for the competing effort, Ross Tierney, said concerned engineers at NASA and some contractors want a review of the Ares plans but can't speak out for fear of being demoted, transferred or fired.

Why can't someone step up and say, "hey, you know that $20billion? let's see if we really can save it for the taxpayers…" instead of "Hey, if you take away that $20billion, my company is not going to be able to pay its CEO."

…why would anyone want to work anywhere else? At least that's what the head buffoon asked me when I quit and moved back into the private sector.

Read the whole article over at Yahoo: NASA engineers work on alternative moon rocket

So I have a .mac account, it's been upgraded to MobileMe. I even have the extra space that comes with MobielMe. I have an iPhone with the firmware 2.0 installed. I have a very active address book and calendar. I'm excited about push.

I'd be more excited to see it actually work. All of the broken bits seem to have died down, according the the dozen or so Mac blogs and newsletters. MobileMe is working, they claim. All you have to do for push is set your system preferences for MobileMe to "automatic." done.

Still nothing. I read more. The Mac itself isn't actually push. It syncs on a schedule, so to get something to go to the iPhone right away, you have to choose sync now from the menu. check.

Still nothing. dang. Check the iPhone settings to make sure they are set to push. done.

Still nothing.

So is MobileMe still broke, or does push require something besides entering data on the iPhone to make it work? I'm still plugging in cables here to update my addresses and calendars and I really don't want to do that any more. Shouldn't it be working by now? Anybody got any ideas?

Update: It appears that someone out there who reads my blog knew the answer and told me I had to go into my settings on my iPhone and add a MobileMe account (even tho there's already an email account for the service there). So I did it and it appears to be working now. thanks!

Since the photos I took today at the Fruitstand, Giftshop and Museum will eventually rotate out of the sidebar, I figured this is as good of time as any to go ahead and post them in an actual post to save them on cliffdweller for posterity.

You know I love this stuff…

All I can say is it's a good thing I didn't have any disposable income…