The Chris Gonyea Project

I was so excited last week when Gmail added IMAP to its features list. I rushed to check if my account had it. Given that I had my Gmail account practically from the start, I hoped that meant I would be among the first to get IMAP.

Still waiting almost a week later.

Anyone else still waiting for IMAP access?

After last night, I can’t keep the thought out of my head.

How long is this going to last?

Just 7 years ago, the Boston sports scene was completely different. The Red Sox had a disastrous 2001 season, which resulted in season ending injuries to Pedro and Nomar, Jimy Williams being fired and somehow replaced by a manager who did an even more horrible job, a GM who simply couldn’t handle people or build a complete team, and an ownership who just didn’t care. The Patriots were entering just year 2 of the Belichick era, had just lost Drew Bledsoe to injury, and were starting a 6th round pick Tom Brady that no one had even heard of. Rick Pitino resigned as head coach after completely destroying the Celtics with his ego. The Bruins won their first regular season title, but lost in the 1st round to the Canadians in 6 games.

7 years later?

The Patriots pulled off one of the best ever underdog performances in the 2002 Super Bowl, then went on to win championships in 2004 and 2005. They made the playoffs in 2006, nearly pulled off another Super Bowl appearance in 2007, and are now absolutely destroying their competition as they head to the 2008 Super Bowl. They have the best coaching staff, best offense, best defense, and best ownership. Oh yeah, the fans are among the best and most loyal in football as well.

The Red Sox were bought by new owners who knew exactly what needed to be done to make the team capable of catching the Yankees. They completely revamped the team’s finances, improve Fenway Park every season to squeeze every last cent out of a 95-year-old ballpark, hired the best GM in baseball, hire one of the best coaches in baseball, and make some of the best moves in the history of the game (Ortiz is exhibit A on this). Meanwhile the team was one pitching change away from the world series in 2003, won the World Series in 2004, was retooled in 2005 and 2006, and won the World Series in 2007 with a young core of players and a group of excellent veterans that look like the perfect compliment to each other.

The Celtics had some limited success in the first few seasons of the 21st century, but quickly fell apart amid countless rebuilding plans. Yet in the end, all of the pain and suffering could be worth it. The Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen trades brings us a new Big 3 and the closest chance this team will have at winning a championship in the next decade. Even if they don’t win, it should be entertaining to watch, which is something you couldn’t say about the team since the early 90s.

Finally there is the Bruins…well, no town is perfect. Moving along…

Last night was truly special though for Red Sox fans. For the first 22-years of my life, I never had hope of a championship for the Red Sox. Now within 4 years, I have witnessed 2 championships. You can’t get any better then that.

I am never more proud to be a sports fan then I am today.

Here are a few first impressions on my experience of upgrading to OS X 10.5 Leopard:

• Make sure you do proper backups before upgrading. I cannot stress this enough.
• I did an erase and install. I hadn’t reinstalled OS X since I got my Macbook and just decided it was as good as time as any to do it.
• Did I mention that Apple doesn’t assume you are a thief? No serial code and no product activation. Breath of fresh air for sure.
• Installation on my 1st Generation Macbook took ~40 minutes.
• My Macbook definitely is a little faster, especially when I have several applications open and doing stuff in the background.
• The iTunes Artwork screensaver now works with album art downloaded from the iTunes Store.
• Any VBR AAC file encoded in Leopard now shows its real bitrate in iTunes.
• According to Hydrogenaudio, the AAC encoder also has sound quality improvements.
• Web Clip in Safari is going to get a workout.
• I am really digging Coverflow in the Finder. Makes me wish someone made a Windows version of it, I can picture my work using it.
• Speaking of the Finder, it is faster, beautiful, and much more functional.
• Time Machine is great. After the initial backup, the only time I have even noticed it was when I happened to look at my external hard drive and saw the disk activity light on. I think the “gimmick” UI actually makes more people want to use it, as it is quiet beautiful. It is simply as easy as backup can get. Try restoring a photo from your iPhoto library, it will take your breath away. Volume Shadow Copy in Vista cannot compare.
• Leopard seems very stable. No crashes or any noticeable first version bugs. Apple definitely did a lot of polishing work on it.
• I’m liking Spotlight much better this time around. Faster and you can do boolean searches.
• Grammar checking is a joke so far. If I can even get a sentence to show the green underline, I haven’t got it to offer suggestions on how to fix it yet.

I highly recommend this upgrade for Mac users.

For another perspective, Leo Laporte (of TWIT and TechTV fame) has a good first impressions review.

Nothing surprises me anymore. How can anyone fake a FEMA press conference? During probably the worst wildfires in United States history? Who the heck came up with that idea? Do they not think?

That is not leadership. That is a sad twisted joke. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought this was a page out of 1984.

I have given up hope for this administration.

This rocks. My account doesn’t have it yet, but can’t wait to switch to it when it becomes available.