Bacon in a can! WANT! You can already get ready-to-eat bacon in vacuum-packs which are much easier to store than cans. But… cans can last for ten years! Nevertheless… Tactical Bacon. Tac Bac. That’s basically impossible for me to pass up.

You can get it over at ThinkGeek. Buy me some too.

Speaking of food, the folks over at Mint.com have a clever little chart showing the second quarter reversal of a five month downward trend in dining out. The chart is based on aggregate information from over 1 million Mint.com users. Neat!

In other quickies, Cheney is still a lying liar. Every time the man opens his mouth he admits to war crimes… yet he’s a free man. President Clinton’s marital indiscretions brought DC to a screeching halt, but we can’t just take a tiny little peek into the crimes admitted to by the closest we have to a super-villain? I don’t think I’ll ever understand it.

And finally, some neat information about how Google gathers traffic data from users of their Mobile Maps application.

Sleeping pattern is still out of whack from a month of unemployment. Off to try and sleep.

Most of you have probably seen this, but it’s funny nonetheless.

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

We did it. We seriously did it. The reality of that is still setting in. For a few weeks I’ve been cautiously optimistic. I believed it would happen but there was still a tension when it came to it actually happening. I am not sure I even fully understand the importance of what America just accomplished. Barriers shattered. Lives changed. Not just here but all over the world. Children woke up this morning believing they could honestly be whatever they want to be, even President; Children that had no real belief in that yesterday. A man raised by a single mother and his grandparents, who lived on food stamps at one point, who rejected the high-paying jobs at Wall Street to become a community organizer on the south side of Chicago has risen to the highest office in the land. A long struggle for the African-American community has produced what may be written to be it’s largest victory to date. As I’ve seen on signs recently; “Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked so Barack could run. Barack ran so our children can fly.”

I know that a lot has been and will be said about the power of this election for the African-American community. I don’t think I’m even capable of truly understanding what it means for a man like Jesse Jackson who was there when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. But I do know that for the people of all races gathered in impromptu street parties all across the country, and revelers around the world, this is bigger than race. Much bigger. This is about a nation making a clear choice between the status quo and a more progressive path. It’s about fear and doubt being defeated soundly by hope. It’s about validating President-Elect Obama’s statement that “nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.”

I also see it as at least a small defeat for negative campaigning. America looked at all of the mud and slime and lies that were thrown at Barack Obama and rejected every bit of it. Not just by a slim margin. Resoundingly. We have spoken with a clear voice saying, “Enough is enough!”

Now the real challenges begin. Already, an aggressive Russia is testing President-Elect Obama by placing missiles on Poland’s border. Already President-Elect Obama faces the resolution of two foreign wars and the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Osama bin Laden is still at large. Health Care. Energy. Climate Change… the list goes on and on. I am certain that while President-Elect Obama feels joy in victory, he is keenly aware of the overwhelming weight that has just been applied squarely to his shoulders.

I believe he is up to the task.

It is now our job to keep him on target and hold him to the vision he has outlined for America. Do I think that it should be expected that he get through everything he has campaigned on? Absolutely not. But our involvement in our government should not be limited to getting our candidate elected. Please, stay informed. Stay involved. Stay engaged. Our government cannot represent and rule on our collective behalf if we cash out on November 5th. “Yes We Can” must not turn too quickly or exclusively into “Yes We Did.”

I believe we are up to the task as well.

Last night, after rushing home from Virginia to watch the acceptance speech, I was watching CNN when they went to video of some the streets of DC near the White House. I went out to grab a bus and a cab and head for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The scene there was a wonderful mix of joy, relief and excitement. Strangers were hugging and high-fiving each other, singing and chanting in what can really only be described as a collective civic orgasm. As folks wandered off, more arrived to take their place. It was an entirely spontaneous and entirely peaceful expression of American pride, joy and resolve. At one point, there was a spontaneous march up New York Avenue, led by people banging on pots and pans. I took some fuzzy iPhone shots outside the White House, that I will post soon.

The highlight of my evening came at around 2:30 AM. I had been outside the White House for about half an hour when a collection of the revelers, small at first, began quietly singing before a louder chorus erupted.

The song? It was the Star Spangled Banner.

In the wee hours (EST) this morning, CERN‘s Large Hadron Collider was turned on, and fired its first proton beams!

I can’t wait for this thing to start the actual collisions. I hear that should start happening in late October. All the end-of-the-world nutjobs will just have to wait to see if we’re all vaporized. It was interesting however, that my Twitter updates this morning telling me the beams were successful were followed almost immediately by Twitter updates about earthquakes in Iran, wildfires in Mozambique and Swaziland, and a predicted recession in the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain.

From the American News Project, via Huffington Post

It’s important that people understand that opening up these areas to production will do little to nothing to reduce our gas prices, and we’re talking several years down the line regardless. The oil companies already have access to acres and acres of drillable land and sea that they aren’t using. Why not force them to produce on those areas if we’re so concerned about drilling “now” and “here.”

We need more effort towards renewable energy. Let’s see the GOP stage a congressional sit-in for that one. I’m sure their buddies at ExxonMobil should have no problem with that. I mean they want to stop the “war on the poor,” right?

More than that, we need leaders who will lead. America has spent too much time being told what it needs to hear and misled down these dangerous paths… How about a little truth in government for a change?

It’s been just over a month since I last posted. It isn’t that I don’t have time, it’s that I just don’t really think about it. A lot of the time I’ll find something really interesting during my work day but by the time I get home it has made the rounds so much I’m tired of hearing about it and don’t feel like writing about it. The big problem is that blogging is sort of frowned upon from my work computer and blogging from my iPhone is a little rough over EDGE and the iPhone-friendly WordPress admin plugin I installed. There is some pain involved with typing out links and such with two or three fingers. Then there is the fact that there is no copy and paste. I’m hoping there winds up being a free WordPress blogging application in the App Store soon. That won’t resolve the typing long entries issue or the copy and paste issue, but it will resolve the web interface issue and might make other things easier.

In Politics, Sen. Obama really disappointed me with his position change on FISA. He swears up and down that it was not a position change, but rather a situation where he settled for a weaker bill rather than not have the guts of the thing at all. That may well be true but I hold my freedom from illegal search and seizure and my privacy in a very high regard. I know that he knows where the Constitution stands on the issue and the whole thing reeks of playing to center to avoid right-wing slams in the talk radio circuit (which he shouldn’t care about if he is for change) and playing to big donations from telco mucky mucks, which he swears he isn’t about. So… He’s still getting my vote but he’s lost a whole lot of “shine” for me. It seems like he’s just throwing this election away. All signs point to him coming out the victor in November but if it doesn’t wind up that way you’ll be able to point back to things like FISA for reasons why. I wanted to see him a different light, as a different kind of politician but this sort of thing is just business as usual in Washington and puts him in the ranks with the rest of the spineless Democrats we have in Congress. Clinton, of course, opposed the bill so her supporters are basically a chorus of “told you so” right now, which is to be expected and is totally deserved though they have no way of knowing how she would have voted as the nominee. The politics change a little bit then, though they shouldn’t.

In Nerdery, the iPhone 3G dropped today, to some pretty significant problems. It seems someone over at Apple didn’t account for the fact that while last year’s US-only and subsequent smaller national launches went smoothly, the entire freaking world was grabbing iPhones today. All the traffic brought the iTunes activation servers to a standstill, basically freezing new activations and upgrades to the 2.0 firmware for existing customers. This resulted in a HUGE amount of expensive paperweights, even for those that weren’t buying new iPhones today. All was eventually resolved and I have been really enjoying poking around in the App Store.

I popped over the the Apple Store in Pentagon City this evening to grab an iPhone 3G and found a line wrapped around about half that floor of the mall. Apple employees were quoting about a 4-hour wait, and at just after 8pm, there was no way I was standing in line for a freaking phone, especially since I already have the almost-as-good version in my pocket. I will try again another day.

Ok, that’s enough for now. The lady will be headed down from Baltimore soonish and I want to get a few hands in over at Full Tilt.

I was all set to upgrade to Leopard tonight, but M-Audio hasn’t updated their drivers yet. Whisky Tango Foxtrot. Is M-Audio so broke they can’t afford to join the ADC and get the developer seeds? Hell, grab a bittorrent client and your favorite tracker and ANYONE could have them. It isn’t like the announcement of Leopard’s release came as some big shock to the developer community. I don’t understand why at least SOME progress could not have been made on the drivers.

So, basically, I could update my MacBook Pro, but then my UC-33, Axiom 25 and FireWire 1814 could quite possibly be rendered useless. As I have some music I need to work on, I can’t exactly take that risk so I’ll just have the shrink wrapped Leopard box taunting me until M-Audio pulls their head out of their ass. My next gear purchase will certainly be Korg.

Also, I can’t find the totally awesome mask I was going to make my cats wear.

I’m going to go watch a movie or late-night television or something and feed the cats some treats. Then back here to record an angry evil psytrance mix.

Exploits of a Mom

Loves it! xkcd is one of my favorite web comics.

Now back to catching up on my TV downloads. Finished Season 2 of Rome, nearly caught up with The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Kitchen Nightmares.

Also tapered my earlobes back out to where they were a while back. I’ll have to take them out or wear smaller jewelry in client-facing professional situations, but I’ve missed the larger jewelry.

I’m trying to think of a good domain name for a great site idea I’m working on with some friends. This is challenging nowadays. I remember when I bought ryptide.com ages ago, I paid a great deal more than one does nowadays, but I could basically have my pick of anything. Had I been a wiser man, I would have pounced on several more and sold them at a premium later.

I think I’ll sleep soon.

Apple said in a press release today that programs like iPhoneSIMFree used to unlock iPhones to run on carriers other than AT&T will “will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed.” and goes on to add that “he permanent inability to use an iPhone due to installing unlocking software is not covered under the iPhone’s warranty.”

I haven’t unlocked mine, as I’m fairly happy with my service on AT&T. I have installed third-party applications, however. Thankfully there is no indication that this refers to those programs, but only to the programs that modify the firmware to allow the device to operate on a different carrier’s network. I should be ok. I will say however that I’m really seriously hoping that an SDK is released to help improve the quality of third-party applications. The web applications are useless without data, and I have definitely seen a drop in stability with my device since I installed a few applications. A full restore takes me back to factory settings so I am not to concerned about it, but I’d like to see improvements.

I received an email from the Apple Developer’s Network today about some new Tech Talks regarding developments for the iPhone. It only mentioned web applications, so I’m not sure the SDK is any closer at all. It could be that Apple just wants to let someone else deal with it via crowdsourcing that they aren’t necessarily supportive of, but not overtly against either. They’ve kind of taken a “do it if you want but we make no guarantees” stance with the third-party non-unlocking applications.

An open letter to iPhone Customers

… even though we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.

Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple’s website next week. Stay tuned.

We want to do the right thing for our valued iPhone customers. We apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of Apple.

Steve Jobs
Apple CEO

Some folks are saying this was planned all along… Get folks riled up, then come out like a saint, etc etc… Regardless, this is freaking awesome. I wonder if we’ll be able to use the $100 in the iTunes store.

As a rule, Apple “gets it” — and that is why I consistently support them.

Heh, maybe I could figure a way to use the credit to buy a share of Apple, then wait until after Christmas and dump it ;]