Free iPhone!

... for Apple employees that is!! "Isn't Steve Jobs such an awesome boss?!"
I originally saw the story at ThinkSecret: Steve Jobs: Free iPhones for Apple employees
Steve Jobs just pulled an Oprah "My favorite things."

If I were Mr. Jobs' speechwriter I would have scripted it like this...

Good Morning Everyone. Thank you all for taking time out of your busy work days to be here.
We're webcasting this across the entire company and I'm sorry you all couldn't be here... but-

Tomorrow is a momentous day. A day I've been looking forward to for a long, long time.
Tomorrow. Is. The. Nationwide. Release. of. (dramatic pause)
Ratatouille! (Uproaring laughter)
No, No- Really I'm not kidding. (big grin on his face)
It will continue the fine Disney/Pixar tradition pairing great storytelling and state-of-the-art computer graphics.

Okay. Really, tomorrow is a big day for us here at Apple.
Tomorrow, iPhone will be let loose for the masses.
I just wanted to thank you all for the long days you've put in to make it all possible.
And I want to thank everyone at Apple for working so hard in contributing to our success.

One of the best things about working here is that we build the best computer hardware and software and MP3 players in the world.
And we get to enjoy them in our daily lives.

So to the iPhone team assembled here, there's something hidden under your seats as a token of appreciation.
(People reach under their seats)
iPhones for everyone!
(Everyone goes nuts)

And here at Apple, regardless of where you contribute, we share in each other's successes.
So if you are watching via webcast, I'd like thank you as well.
See what's taped underneath your desks.
(Everyone on-line goes nuts)

Anyways, I guess you can tell I've seen some Oprah. They'll be getting their iPhones in July actually... Ok, not everyone's getting them... but close enough.

In stark contrast, instead of giving out free iPhones, my company announced layoffs this week, which was expected post Agere acquisition. (I'm safe.)

Aerial (No, not "The Little Mermaid")

At the CYC Core meeting we got talking about dance. I ALWAYS urge college students to take social dance classes at university. Anyways, I searched "Lindy Hop" on YouTube and this was the 2nd result:



#1 - I started sweating just watching it.
#2 - I wish I could do that. No seriously. Really.
#3 - As amazing as the dancers were, the really amazing thing is towards the end and all the couples are on the floor at the same time. Floorcraft baby.

Update (10 minutes later) - Uh yeah, this is the 1st YouTube result...

More videos here: http://www.lindylibrary.com

"Say, that's a nice bike you got there."

G remarked to me that I've done a really good job influencing my sons, especially the little one, to like superheroes. Little G can say "Spider-Man" - though he confuses Spider-Man w/ Superman, and even Buzz Lightyear. He'll say "Woody and Spider-Man" when he means Buzz. Oh well, he's only 2.5 y.o. close enough!

"The Dark Knight's" got a pretty nice bike:










It looks like it's inspired by the lightcycles from TRON.



I wonder if Batman's "batpod," as they're calling it, can do 90 degree angles at full speed. Now that would be pretty cool. One problem I have w/ the bike, though, is that it appears to have machine guns mounted and, from the comics, Batman never uses a gun b/c his parents were killed by a robber with a gun. Maybe those are lasers instead of traditional machine guns.

Now who uttered that line, "Say, that's a nice bike you got there."
Answer: The T1000 from "Terminator 2" :)

Father's Day '07

Here was my Father's Day weekend.

Friday June 15:

• Went to work as usual, and scored a new monitor in salvage.
• Went to the Career Adult Fellowship at church, where the_lucky_duck was leading the Bible Study on Luke 2:21-52. Found some great insight which I hope to write about later.
• Stayed in S.F.; G and the angels came out earlier.
  

Saturday June 16:

• Woke up early to drive out to San Ramon to pick up some furniture. G's friend is moving to Tokyo and we bought some furniture from them. M has a new twin bed!
• G's brother-in-law, Wing, brought his commercial truck to help us haul the goods. He and I drove back to Newark to drop off the bed.
• From San Ramon, G took the angels to a birthday party in San Mateo.
• Wing then drove me to the birthday party. The party was for a good college friend's toddler son- real cutie.
• Had lunch w/ Wing plus a mutual friend (IJ2K, but no J this time) of the party host at San Tung Restaurant San Mateo.
• Then drove back to S.F. to drop off the last piece of furniture at my parent's house.
• My little sis and her husband came out to S.F. for early Father's Day dinner w/ dad.

Sunday June 17:

• Went to church.
• P's family invited us to a picnic in Foster City, which was pretty awesome. It's been just over a year since Philbecca got married so it was the 1st time since that I got to see his family all together.
  
• Jetted back to SF right after to begin cooking for Father's Day dinner at home. G's (big) family was coming and my mom's older brother and his wife.
  

Whew!

Connect the dots:
Newark to San Francisco to San Ramon to Newark to San Mateo to San Francisco to Foster City to San Francisco to Newark.

Yup, after cleaning up after dinner and bathing the boys, we returned to Newark Sunday night b/c they have VBS as IJ2K's church this week; hence they had an early start Monday.

Sony GDM-FW900 Flat Widescreen 24" FD Trinitron CRT Monitor

I was juuuuuuuust on my way outta work for the weekend and was cleaning out my cubical a bit. Today's the last "Clean & Beautiful" day where they put out drop points around the building so we can dump the junk that accumulates. I rolled out an old 17" CRT monitor and finally got rid of a bunch of Amazon shipping boxes that was a fire hazard under my desk.

Just as I was about to go, my manager says I should scavenge to see if I could find a monitor to upgrade my current setup. At my cube, the ThinkPad (2373 9ZU) is usually docked; using it as my main screen since it runs 1400x1050 resolution. It also drives a 19" Dell LCD, maxes out at 1280x1024, which is an extended desktop so I can drag windows between the two screens.

Along the main corridor there must have been 15 CRT monitors that people removed from their cubes- NEC, Sun, Sony etc. I didn't think I'd find anything, but then I spied this bad boy-

Sony GDM-FW900 Flat Widescreen 24" FD Trinitron CRT Monitor

• 22.5-inch viewable screen
• 2,304 x 1,440 maximum resolution
• 0.27-millimeter dot pitch
• PC and Macintosh compatible
• Virtually flat viewing surface

More technical details at the bottom.

So my manager and I heaved the behemoth onto a chair w/out armrests and rolled it to my office. I was amazed that it was there for the taking and secondly that it appears to be in perfect working condition.

Anyways, this will probably be the main screen now w/ the laptop screen as the extension. At that resolution, the text is tiny. Plus I'm horrible at adjusting these things... any volunteers? For some reason, when I change my desktop settings (i.e. single screen to extended desktop) the image the laptop is sending doesn't fill the screen and it doesn't keep the settings where I stretched and centered the image.

BTW, I'm looking for the user manual online. No luck so far.

On a side note, the ThinkPad's 80Gb HD is really flaky. When the machine turns on/wakes-up the HD doesn't spin up. Uh-oh. I had to play w/ the power button quite a while tonight to get a vital file from it. Anyways, at least it's still under the 3yr extended warranty. This is actually a good thing- IBM will send someone out to replace it with a refurb HD (better than nothing). And since the warranty is up this September, I'll be getting a new Lenovo ThinkPad T61 (Santa Rosa)! Fortunately, we're still getting XP Pro, not Vista.

Sony GDM-FW900 Flat Widescreen 24" FD Trinitron CRT Monitor Additional Technical Details

• Compatibility: PC and Macintosh
• Display type: Color CRT
• Display size: 24 inches
• Diagonal viewable screen size: 22.5 inches
• Dot/pixel pitch: 0.23 to 0.27 millimeter
• Glass surface: High-contrast AR coating
• Power Requirements: 90-264V AC, 50/60 Hz
• Input signals: Analog RGB 0.7 V-pp, positive, 75 ohm, separate sync HS/DV TTL, composite sync, sync-on-green 0.3 Vp-p, negative
• Input connector and cable: 15-pin mini D-sub, 5BNC
• Maximum noninterlaced resolution: 2,304 x 1,440
• Maximum refresh rate: 160 Hz
• Horizontal frequency: 30 to 121 kHz
• Vertical frequency: 48 to 160 Hz
• Maximum display area: 482 by 308 millimeters (18.9 by 12.1 inches)
• Power on-off: Yes
• Contrast: Yes
• Brightness: Yes
• Horizontal and vertical position: Yes
• Horizontal and vertical size: Yes
• Color temperature: Yes
• Language select: Yes
• Display frequency: Yes
• Horizontal and vertical moire: Yes
• Pincushion: Yes
• Pin-balance: Yes
• Degauss: Yes
• Trapezoid: Yes
• Parallelogram: Yes
• Rotation: Yes
• Width: 22.5 inches
• Height: 19.7 inches
• Depth: 20.6 inches
• Weight: 92.6 pounds
• Parts: 3 years
• Labor: 3 years

"Waffle" Sandwiches

Last night we saw an episode of "Boy Meets Grill" (FoodTV) where the "boy" made different sandwiches. (The Croissant Filet Mignon sandwich looked pretty good.)

Hence, this morning I was inspired to make grilled sandwiches for breakfast with what was on hand in the fridge.

We don't have a panini grill, so, what the heck, let's use the WAFFLE IRON! Crank that baby to 5, the highest setting. It worked pretty good.

A few drops of "E-Ve-Oh-Oh" (thanks Rachel Ray) on the outside of the bread slices. Slice each of Swiss and Rosemary Ham inside. (Thanks Trader Joes!) Into the iron it goes. Press down hard for a few minutes and it's eatin' time!

G and the boys wanted more, but no more ham. Used raw button mushrooms instead with a few drops of evoo on 'em. Yummy. Nice cold beer would have been nice, but it was morning and I had to go to work. Bummer.

We always kinda wanted a panini grill. On tv they say you can use two frying pans stacked together to press the sandwich, but then you gotta heat two pans which means washing two pans and I'm a "path of least resistance" kinda guy. (aka lazy) Anyways, I don't mind the waffle pattern; kinda like it actually.

The "boy" on tv also made pizza on the grill on the next ep. Maybe I'll try that in the waffle iron next. Or quesadillas.