This past week at WWDC, most men that left the restroom washed their hands which is good news. However, many never took hand washing 101. The first part of hand washing is water, the second part is soap and the third part is actually rubbing hands together for at least 15 seconds. It is particularly disgusting to see educated people not washing their hands. Several years ago, a family friend mentioned how he always uses a paper towel to open the bathroom door when leaving. I’ve gone one step further and use my elbow to make the paper dispenser eject the towels. There are so many germs around that I just can’t understand people not washing their hands. Yuck!
The end of a long week
I’m not sure what it is about conferences, but I can really only handle about 3 days of them. About Wednesday evening, I was ready to go home from WWDC. There is so much content, that my head can’t handle it all. If I’m going to get more information out of it, I think that shorter sessions (so I can learn about more topics), starting earlier, and a shorter lunch would let me get more info. The days will feel a bit longer, but we could get done sooner. There seems to be a ton of downtime with one session I was in lasted 21 minutes (scheduled for over an hour). I doubt anything will change, but next year I’ll have to consider if I really want to stay the whole time; it will depend on the sessions at the end of the week.
Tomorrow I return home and it is none too soon. I miss our dog and our house (someone is probably wondering why I didn’t say my wife…due to planning coincidences, she had training in Oakland the first part of the week and then came to San Francisco at the end of the week).
It’s going to be hard getting back into the swing of things next week. I’m not sure where I left off with any of the projects on my plate.
Traveling, is there an easy way?
Every time I have to travel and pack, it seems to consume me for a few days no matter how short the trip. Today I left for San Francisco to attend Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference and I spent the last day or so packing (just for a one week trip), figuring out what I’m going to take, and getting anxious about the flight and trip. Granted, the trip to Oakland is about 1.25 hours which isn’t a huge deal, but it always makes be antsy.
I’m sure people that travel often have it down pat, but I don’t and frankly, I don’t want to travel even that it becomes second nature.
Learning new computer technologies
There are so many computer technologies that I need to/want to learn, that I have no idea where to start. I learn all the time, but never really have the time to spend to sit down and learn something new unless I’m going to use it immediately. My current list of technologies/programs/whatever I want to learn include:
- MySQL (how to make queries, create new databases, etc.)
- Core Data
- Sync Services (actually how to program it)
- php
- perl
I’m sure there are other things I want to learn, but I can’t think of them now. If I had tons of time and didn’t have to move forward developing with what I already know, I’d have plenty of time.
I won!
Today I ran the Chron’s and Colitis Foundation‘s Guts & Glory 5K Run/Walk to raise money for the foundation. 5K was pretty easy for me, but I started out using way too much energy as I tried to keep up with the young kids who must have been on their high school track team. Turns out, I didn’t do so poorly. I finished first in my age group (30-39) with a time of about 21:30. As usual, I wore my Garmin Forerunner 305. I felt pretty good and was pleased with my performance; yes, there were a few people there, so I wasn’t 1 out of 1! Unfortunately the foundation isn’t one of the largest charities, so the turnout wasn’t huge.
Updated car kit photos
In a recent post, I wrote about the Bluetooth car kit I installed. Well, I finally finished installing it with a little bit of a twist. I ended up getting a 4″ external speaker for a CB radio and installing it under my center console and I cleaned up the routing of the wires a bit. It works quite well and am extremely pleased with the setup.
I’m famous!
OK, maybe not, but as I was doing a routine search for my name, I came across an RFC (Request for Comments) based on my “NotifyMail protocol”. I’m not sure why someone bothered to write it up, but it is RFC 4146, title “Simple New Mail Notification”. For a geek, that’s pretty cool.
Living with ulcerative colitis
Five years ago, I had never heard of ulcerative colitis. About a week and a half before I got married, I became quite sick and didn’t know what was wrong. Some tests were run on me and the results didn’t turn up anything. I did everything I could to look happy at my wedding, but at times it was difficult knowing how much my insides hurt. After our wedding, we were planning on taking a drive down the California coast and stop in at Disneyland. I wasn’t feeling well, so that plan was still being evaluated. However, on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, the decision was made for us and we came straight home.
Upon getting back, my doctor had me consult with a gastroenterologist to schedule a colonoscopy. A colooscopy is one of the most uncomfortable tests that could ever be performed, not the test itself, but the day before the test when you have to get cleaned out with stomach lube (glycol, glycerol, or some other yuckful stuff). It wasn’t until after the procedure that I was told I could have added flavor like lemonade packets to it. The results of the test immediately indicated that I had ulcerative colitis, like the gastroenterologist suspected. I was put on steroids and medication that I’d have to take the rest of my life (not the steroids, luckily). For the most part, I live a normal life, but a few times, I’ve had flare ups causing me to go back on steroids to clear it up. The last one was about 1.5 years ago when I got a cold, couldn’t work for a few weeks which caused me a lot of stress (I’m self-employed, so when I don’t work, I don’t get paid) which turned into a flare up. Since then, I’ve been OK. However, on a number of days, my stomach is in knots and there is not much I can do about it. Up until this past January, I basically did nothing or very little on the days when I couldn’t stand it.
This past January, I decided to run the Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon which put me on a training schedule running 4 days a week; I knew that if I didn’t run, I wasn’t going to be ready for the marathon. Part of the reason I wanted to run the marathon was to prove to myself that ulcerative colitis wasn’t going to rule my life. During the marathon, at about mile 20, my stomach acting up, so it was mind over stomach to finish the marathon, which I did without incident. This morning, when I went to run, my stomach was a little queasy, but I had to run. I was OK until about mile 10 when I had to walk a bit as my stomach was acting up. I made it through the run, like always, without a problem.
Some days it is harder than others, but I take it one day at a time and do my best to cope. Reducing stress is one of my main goals as I can see a direct correlation between flare ups (not sure about normal queasiness) and stress. Next Sunday, my family is joining me at the Chron’s & Colitis Foundation’s Guts & Glory Run to raise money and support research towards a cure of this disease. While my disease is mild compared to others, it sometimes makes it difficult to get through the day; I do the best that I can.
Fog and mist are my friends
When I started training in January, I couldn’t get myself to run when it wasn’t sunny. In the last 7 months, I’ve learned a lot about running (yes, there is stuff to learn) and have sort of gotten used to running when it is warm. However, note to self, don’t run next year in the heat. Today’s morning run was a relief; when I got down to the bay at 7 am, it was foggy and misting. While it was a bit humid, it remained overcast and bearable for the entire run.
I miss the Newton
My history with the Apple Newton goes back to the summer before my senior year in college. Apple’s PIE (Personal Interactive Electronics) group (before it got renamed as simply Newton) wanted to license my NotifyMail program and I negotiated a deal that I thought was excellent. I received a Newton MessagePad 110 and the Newton Toolkit (developer tools) which was valued at over $1600 at the time in exchange for a site license. People at school poked fun at me, especially after the Simpson’s episode where one of the characters wrote “Beat up Martin” and it came out as “Eat Up Martha”. I played around writing some programs for it and when I joined Qualcomm full time the following year, I started work on Eudora for Newton (my boss lobbied to let us do it) and over the course of the next year, I got to work with some great people at Apple who were working on their TCP/IP stack. I got early access to Newton 2.0 and was amazed; when Apple killed the Newton, it was a small part of my life (a few years) sort of disappeared. The Newton had so many things that was ahead of its time; handwriting recognition (in the last OS, it was good), flexible data stores (it was easy to expand the address book), flexible applications (I could patch an application in no time flat), and a convenient form factor. I used to travel with the Newton and a keyboard instead of a laptop.
I haven’t thought much about the Newton until I was given an old eMate last year (which I haven’t turned on because I need to find a power supply). Today, a friend sent me a link to a comparison of the Newton (a ten year old product) and the latest UMPC (ultra mobile PC). Despite the age of the Newton, it did quite well which is kind of sad in that 10 years of computing, the handheld hasn’t really been improved. Comparing the Newton to the Palm is also interesting; the Newton OS had flash internal storage meaning that when the batteries died, your data wasn’t lost whereas the Palm OS didn’t get this (NVRAM) until the Tungsten T|X and Treo 650 which was not that long ago. This was one of the main reasons I didn’t think Qualcomm should go with the Palm OS for a smartphone…your battery dies (which most people seem to do with their cell phones) and you’d lose your data. Unfortunately I didn’t succeed in pushing the Newton. (Prior to this, I was offered a job in the Newton group, but for better or worse, I turned it down and stayed at Qualcomm).
After reading that comparison, I started missing the Newton. If the Newton had developer tools that ran under OS X, USB, Bluetooth, and WiFi, I think it would be a killer platform today. Yes, there are WiFi cards for it, so it isn’t a huge stretch. If anyone has a Newton MessagePad 2100 that he or she is willing to sell for a decent price, please let me know.