Thank You Steve

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When I think of Steve Jobs, I don’t think about how great of a salesman he was, the market cap of Apple, or the fact that he resurrected a company left for dead in the biggest turnaround in corporate history. Although he certainly did pretty well doing the above.

I think of his endless drive to make computers devices that people want to use and have fun using. To make it so my grandmother will not be intimidated by a computer. So someone can have their entire music library available with one touch of a finger on a click wheel. Seeing a 2-year-old figure out an iPad and begin learning because of how intuitive it is.

There is the attention to detail that is unrivaled in the industry. When you pick up an iPhone, you are just in awe. Same thing with a MacBook Pro. Same thing with an iPad.

It was always weird to me that most people called computers running Windows “personal computers.” The only true personal computers were products who’s idea was directly influenced by Steve Jobs. My iPhone is just as much of a personal computer as my MacBook Pro. No one else has had the vision to make devices that work so well at what they do for the vast majority of people who need such a device. There is a reason why so many people have personal connection with an Apple device.

The world lost someone special today. His vision will go on.

Godspeed Mr. Jobs.

The most important lesson a 6-year-old can get

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My great-grandfather was one of those people that no one ever forgets. Everyone knew him and he knew everyone. One of the nicest persons you would ever meet. The hardest worker you could find is what I always heard about him. For a 6-year-old at the time, he also taught me a very valuable lesson the hard way.

I don’t have many memories of him, but I have a few. I remember visiting him at work at a doctor’s office next to New London Hospital. He was a maintenance man there that helped maintain the facilities. He would often pick me up and put me on his riding lawn mower as we went around the yard there. We would also go to his apartment that he shared with the love of his life, my great-grandmother. The apartment wall was covered from floor to wall with pictures of family. Nothing meant more than family to him. I remember hearing his stories. About what, I don’t remember, but I remember sitting on his lap listening.

A long time smoker of Camels, he had quit smoking when he found out cigarette prices went from 25 cents to 35 cents. Right in the store, with my grandmother who happened to be tagging along, they both agreed to quit cold turkey. My grandmother is still here today because of their joint vow.

It was too late for him though. In 1989, he was diagnosed with lung cancer with only months to live. It devastated everyone. This man, who seemed indestructible, would only have a few months to live.

As a 6-year-old, I never experienced death before. My great-great uncle Alberton passed away three years prior, but I was just three. But my great-grandfather, I had real recent memories with him and I was about to learn a hard lesson about death. I was told he was sick because of smoking. I watched him as he kept getting more weak and sick. I wish I remembered the last time I saw him. I probably never realized at our last meeting that it was our last meeting.

He passed away on September 6, 1989. I woke up for my first day of first grade and my mom told me the news. I got the talk of how he wouldn’t wake up from sleep anymore and how he was in heaven.

As a 6-year-old, something about his loss shook me to the core. The first promise I ever made to myself I have kept and will keep the rest of my life: never to smoke. I’ve refused to do it in the face of peer and society pressure.

Thinking about it now, I am sure he would list this as one of his greatest legacies: the fact that someone he cares about never smoked because of him. He saved my life.

Buying a house

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Never imagined how busy I would be when buying a house. Especially when the closing date of my condo and of the house we are buying are both on September 30th.

There are lots of details to keep up on. All of the real estate and mortgage related paperwork. Inspections, appraisals, the waiting game for answers to questions. Making a list of utilities, accounts, etc. that will need address changes or signups for. Thinking of what stuff we want to bring over to the house or get rid of. Praying that nothing like a hurricane or earthquake suddenly throws a curve ball.

It is very odd creating wishlists on various sites for various things I haven’t used in years that suddenly become a necessity when owning a house. Like a lawn mower and a snow blower.

On top of this, the fast pace life of working for an awesome company of course always keeps me on my toes. Wouldn’t have it any other way though, this is what I am born to do. Work hard, play hard.

Cable TV free

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We have done it. As of yesterday, we are Cable TV free. Cable boxes were returned, bill adjusted (just $59 per month for Internet & basic cable), and now figuring out what to do next. The price drop is over $70 from our previous cable bill.

So far so good. We definitely have watched a lot less TV, although we haven’t been home much either. When we were home yesterday and this morning, my 4-year-old nephew was over, so I ended up streaming cartoons for him over Netflix. Including the original Popeye cartoon from 1936, which was really neat to watch with him.

While my bedroom TV can see the few Clear QAM channels in HD, my 2007 era living room TV cannot (it only sees the SD versions). This is something that will need to be rectified. I may experiment with a TV antenna just to see what channels are in the area.

I’ve begun to think of what is next. I’m seriously considering a Mac Mini server & home theater computer. Combined with the Elgato EyeTV we could work around the HD issue I mentioned in the previous paragraph, record anything on basic cable worth recording, and also have a centralized server for movies, music, etc. Then use an AppleTV for easy access. Another option would to build a Windows Media Center PC as that seems like fun to play with, although it seems to have its own annoyances.

I also have been wondering whether to get a receiver and start building a home theater sound system. The problem I’ve had so far is that all of the receivers I have found are bulky, have tons of connections & buttons I would never use, and aren’t my definition of simple. There are also very few that are even Energy Star qualified. Where is the Apple of home theater receivers when you need one?

Operation Cable TV free so far appears to be successful. More updates to come.

Going cable free

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Tonight my wife and I decided that by the end of the Stanley Cup playoffs (roughly a week or so from now), we are going to turn in our Cable TV boxes and go Cable TV free as an experiment this summer.

Why we are doing this:

  • It is the summer, let’s get out and enjoy it instead of sitting in a chair being zombies.
  • Online options (Netflix, iTunes, and similar services) are now very viable options for when we want to watch TV.
  • The only time we watch TV is for local news & sports. Here is the kicker though…we rarely watch the sports, we just listen to it while doing other things. Use the radio for that, much cheaper.
  • We want to do more reading, work on our condo, and hopefully be moving into a house this summer. The last thing we need to do is be distracted by whatever is on the Food Network.
  • Of course the big part, our cable bill will be significantly cheaper. An early estimate is a reduction of half our current bill.

The only thing I will miss is the sports game that I WANT to sit down and completely focus on. Like a Red Sox/Yankees game. But maybe in this rare cases I will go to a family or friend’s house, a local bar, or just listen to it the old fashioned way as well.

iTunes keeps triggering ‘allow incoming connections’ dialog from OS X firewall

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Ran into an interesting bug with Mac OS X’s Firewall. Every time I launched iTunes, I would be prompted by the firewall whether I wanted to allow incoming connections. Every single time I launched iTunes.

Luckily, there is an easy fix according to this Apple support forum post:

Doing so has worked perfectly well for me. However, there may be a specific sequence of actions that will work. Mine was:

1) Wait for the dialogue to appear, then deny access. Quit the application in question.

2) Open System Preferences>Security>Firewall, and remove the application in question from the list entirely.

3) Wait for the dialogue to appear again, then grant access. This should be the last time you see the dialogue.

Problem so far has been resolved!

Sony’s critical error

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Reading about how bad the security breach of the PlayStation Network is, I don’t know how I could ever trust Sony again. At least not anytime soon.

Waiting six days to tell us that all of our personal information is most likely compromised (including my password) and they cannot guarantee the security of my credit card data?

I can deal with name, e-mail address, etc. But password? That tells me they didn’t follow standard practices for password security. Which definitely doesn’t give me confidence about them protecting my credit card information.

Since I have linked my Facebook account to my PlayStation Network account, I think I am going to change that password too. Since I have no confidence that Sony hasn’t safely stored that password either.

I would sell my PS3, but I am sure there is a flood of them hitting the market this second.

What a mess. They have a lot of explaining. The next week and what actions they take to calm our fears and compensate the PlayStation Network users is going to be make or break for the PS3 in gaming market.