Shorting out my keyboard with drool

Like a good geek, I kept refreshing the live blogging of today's Apple event. Based on the rumors I read, nothing was really shocking. Right after the store became available, I went ahead and used my developer discount (basically the select developer program cost is offset by the discount of the machine), selected a 2.8 GHz MacBook Pro (15"), with a 320 GB 7200 RPM drive (this has me quite excited) and got the DVI and VGA display adapters (sucks that they aren't included, but Apple is making more and more things add-ons). I hope to have my new machine next week; I've been waiting a long time (in computer years) for this. My current MacBook Pro is 2.5 years old and is a Core Duo based machine (first generation Intel based MacBook Pro). I wouldn't say it is on its last legs, but it will be nice to have a zippy machine with all the bells and whistles. It should be state of the art for at least a week!

Oh and the new Cinema display looks nice; I like that it has speakers and the 3 cables that goto the MacBook Pro make it almost like a dock (right now I plug in 7 cables into my MacBook Pro when it is on my desk).

Longer commute

This summer was one of the slowest times I've had in the 5.5 years that I've been self employed. While there have been ups and downs, I actually considered taking a job in an office. I went through the whole interview process and was offered a position, but ultimately realized that I couldn't give up the flexibility I have being self-employed and working from home. While it is possible to be employed by someone else and have flexibility, this job didn't afford it.

Seeing how hard things were on me and that working from home was getting tough for me with my son around a lot, my wife offered up our guest room for my office. This room is about 315 square feet and in the very back of the house. For the most part, we have been using it for storage over the last 4 years. I gladly took her up on the offer, had a little work done to remove some cabinets and a sink, had some tile put in where the cabinets were (to match the rest of the floor), painted it, ran some Cat6 to 2 walls for Ethernet, moved in my furniture and presto, a new office!

I've been in here about 1.5 weeks and really enjoy it. It's pretty quiet and easier for me to work. The main downside to it is that there is no insulation in the ceiling, so it is a bit toasty now and will be cold in the winter. However, I positioned my desk right under the fan and there is a room A/C unit that I can use. Another downside (and hence the title for this article) is that my commute is now a bit longer; I think it takes me about 45 seconds to get to work.

Pictures for your viewing pleasure:

Health insurance solution

Both John McCain and Barack Obama have ideas on how to handle universal health care. Both plans are pretty weak in my opinion. McCain's plan talks about giving each person a $2,500 tax credit to pay for insurance. That doesn't pay for squat and requires that individuals actually qualify for insurance. As someone with a pre-existing condition (ulcerative colitis), I'm not sure that I could quality for an individual plan which would put me up a creek or leave me stuck with the plan for those that can't afford insurance even after the tax credit. While I pay a significant amount for health insurance now, I get decent care.

Obama's plan may sound a little better, but where on this earth is the money going to come from to pay for it? The government has already taken on a significant amount of debt with this financial bailout.

So my solution is quite simple; now that the federal government is going to own a very large insurance company (AIG) that sells insurance, use that to provide universal health insurance for everyone. Since we've already bitten the bullet to waste taxpayer money bailing out private companies, why not use that to their advantage?

That wasn't so hard, was it? Maybe I should run for political office. Nah, no party would support me as my views are all over the board and I manage to offend everyone. I guess that's what happens when I'm a free thinker and actually think about issues on an issue by issue basis instead of doing what my "party" tells me to do.

Final word on phone GPS

After one success with the Sanyo Pro-200, I began to feel confident that a phone based GPS would work. However, the following day, we used it again and I didn't quite follow its directions, so it had to recalculate the route. Unfortunately it was far too slow at recalculating the route to be useful. It had to upload the GPS information to the server, recalculate the route and then send it back to the phone. By the time the phone got the information, I was in a different place and it had to recalculate again. Stopping the car and letting it figure out where we were got things going again.

I'm used to the GPS unit in my wife's Honda CR-V and it's extremely fast at recalculating its route. I've also used Garmin and TomTom units and been pleased. Before my next trip that I have to rent a car, I'm definitely buying a Garmin nüvi (the new ones look pretty cool) to save me a lot of frustration.