Why we can't have nice things
Reunions and Social Networking
I didn't really go to any 10 year reunions because I honestly would not have not have even known anything about it. And frankly, would have had a hard time remembering most of the people there. When you have to adapt to as many environments as I have, you have to make room for new faces and names to index over the old ones. This isn't to say the old ones weren't important, but you prioritize to the now when you have to get to know a whole new school of people four times over, not including two universities and two branches of service as well as countless jobs.
As I said, I didn't go to the ten year reunion in Chickasha, but I was invited by a friend to attend the homecoming football game that many of the reunion alumni were going to. I saw a few people there I vaguely remembered and talked to a few of them for a bit, but there wasn't a big impact really. I had a pretty good job then, but was in a rut as far as life giving me everything I was wanting out of it.
So twenty years, holy crap! It had been twenty years since graduation and that's a long time. But as people were connecting on FaceBook and showing pictures of them and now and all the fun group pictures in High School, It occurred to me it had been much longer for me. My friends and acquaintances were still 9th graders in my eyes because that was when I last saw most of them. People I once knew had gone on living and growing when I left that school and there was the evidence. Despite your brains best effort to make you think those people are still the same from when you last saw them, they were busy having their lives and growing as people too.
In the end, my moving around so much had a few effects on me, it made able to adapt to new surroundings, but in return, it made me lose a bit of my past. It also made me lose a piece of me that roots itself in it's past. These people, no matter how distant now, had a big impact in forming my opinions on the world and how I see things. In all the places I went to. And yet in my ability to adapt I had nearly dumped all those memories years ago.
I'm thankful for the social media networks for giving that to me, for letting me have my past back. To reconnect to people I knew for years, or for a brief time of my life that was important to me. I'm happy to reconnect to these people and see they aren't the same kids I last saw either. It's been enlightening on many levels and it's given me back a piece of myself.
My Top Apple iPhone Apps
Tweetdeck I really wanted to like Twitterific but they dropped the ball. Timed with the release of the 3.0 iPhone operating system was the release of Tweetdeck which gives a better user interface design and features than any of it's predecessors.
City Transit NYC Subway Guide This is a great application if you live in NYC or just visiting as a tourist. Not only does it show all the rail lines on a map, it gives you the detailed info for each line. Nearest Station finder can be handy too when in a part of town you aren't as familiar with.
Kindle for iPhone Okay, so it's not as easy to read as the real thing, but I currently have about 20 books in my pocket to read when I am crazy bored on a plane or on the subway. Plus reference books that fits in my pocket. I'm a bit disappointed that Amazon didn't build in an ability to purchase the books directly in the application, hopefully that will be fixed in a future release.
Myst A guilty pleasure from my early days on the Mac. When Myst came out it was revolutionary and now the whole adventure is on my phone anytime I want to relive it. A bit of a hefty download but worth it for people who want to revisit the island.
OmniFocus Although this organization app has a bit of a learning curve, it's usefulness becomes obvious once you get into it. Organize using several methods such as due date, context, location, project, and more. It's made much more useful by the somewhat over priced desktop app for $80. OmniFocus sells for $20 on the App Store.
Pocket God Another useless application that would have lost me after a few launches, but they keep updating it about every other week or so and you can do something all new to the little lemmings who live on the island. My fav: death by vampire bat bite then bring on the sun. (poof)
TV Forecast It's like having your DVR list wherever you go so you can remember when your show is coming on or be painfully reminded of your favorite show getting canceled. Also, it come in very handy when reprograming the DVR or TiVo for reference.
Flight Update The last time I was making a connecting flight, my plane was late and I only had ten minutes to get across Detroit airport. While American Airlines was giving me no information before getting off the plane, Flight Update let me know my connecting flight was delayed as well so no need to run with a suitcase.
PocketFlicks If you have a Netflix account this can be helpful. Especially when you remember on your way home that you mailed in your last three movies back yesterday and "Footloose" is at the top of your list for some strange reason and you need to change it, stat!
Facebook Facebook was early to get out this sleek ap for the iPhone. It is still one of the best designed user interface apps out there. A lot of information to update but organized so it's easy to find. Never again do you have to not know exactly what that person you kinda know is or is not doing right now with a survey.
Air Mouse Pro This is surprisingly a more useful app than I would have imagined. Control your Mac or PC desktop remotely from your iPhone and quite easily with one hand or two. Many different uses like controlling my Mac Mini from bed to launch Hulu desktop or a slide show presentation.
Shopper It could use a little refinement still but they do keep updating it and so far it feels like the best simple list organizer for the iPhone. For complicated task and organizers, you should look for something else.
Mobile Fotos An excellent app for viewing your photos and videos on Flickr. Multiple accounts and GPS enabled tagging as well as viewing map locations of other photos. Now with background uploading.
Adventure Another game app that is completely useless to productivity and even a bit simplistic compared to today's standards in gaming while you run your dot around simple mazes and fighting dragons with an arrow, but it's old school and that's how I roll.
Guitar Toolkit Not that I am awesome at the guitar or anything. But I recently got back into it and it's an awesome resource for correct tuning, tempo, chord directory and sound samples. The interface is excellent and easy to navigate. I'll never be a rock star outside my own head, but this will help me live the dream
Wobble I know, I know, but In the effort of full disclosure, this app is just well... awesome. I'm a little surprised Apple allowed it through their very strict guidelines for Apps but it's just. uhm, fun. At least pervyness is supposedly helping donate money to breast cancer awareness, which was completely and strictly my only goal for buying this app. What?....
Splash ID I used to own this for my Treo phone and had forgotten how useful it is for keeping all my passwords and access info to everything from email accounts to web site accounts. Strong encryption and is password protected itself (otherwise what's the point?) Nice to have this info when and where I need it.
Eight Years!
Ten years ago, I started playing with a program called Adobe Pagemill and made a simple little website on my3mb of web space provided by my dialup internet provider; earthlink. The title Absolut Wade came from a design project I was working on while in design school at the time where was learning about branding and did a series over Absolut Vodka. Eight years ago today, I was thinking it would be kind of cool to move my web site off of earthlink and get my own dedicated website. The website was mostly some web design experiments and some testing in the new thing called Macromedia Flash. It was really complicated to register a domain back then, the form was damn near rocket science and it cost $80 to register. Then my friend Vincent suggested I run my own webserver from my home computer since I had broadband (before most other people in the country did) and left the computer on all the time. He helped me set it up and from that day absolutwade.com came into existence.
About a year later I moved it from host to host to get it off my machine and it evolved to what you see today. More web design experiments and now a blog that is occasionally but not often enough updated. The web log was created using code from many friends helping me learn at the time in ASP and PHP. Ray, Jon, Paul and others helped a lot to this endeavour. Later, Movabletype was incorporated to manage the weblog part of the website.
The weblog came later but for some time was the main focus of the website. Sometime around 1999 but the early entries had been destroyed in teh great interwebs fire of 1999.
The website became more photo based when I started my travels in 2003 to Australia and I wanted to document my travels. Later this was moved to flickr as it was a better photo management system.
Many thanks to the people who kept interest over the years. It's been fun. Not sure what the future of this website is as I sometimes lose interest in continuing a blog and I seem to be more focused on photography than writing these days. Still, It is a good reference to look back sometimes and see where you are from there to here. and once in a while I still have something to say.
Eight Years of my life on the internet. Happy Birthday.
Some past views of the website from oldest to most current:
AW1.0, AW2.0, AW4.0, AW5.0, AW7.0, AW8.0, AW9.0, AW12.0, AW21.0, AW32.5, AW33.0, AW38.0, AW39.0, AW40.0, AW41.0
leopard
Apple unveiled their next line in kitty cats today: Leopard. It has some nice features but hard to tell which is just eye candy and which is really useful. I think the iChat app advances are probably the biggest leaps forward to user interface.
I alone, have paid for Steve Job's firstborn to attend Yale for at least a year.
Apple announces it's earlier than expected release of the 17" MacBoook Pro. And Beau suddenly feels another vaccuming sound out of his checkbook...
In other news, the camera I have hauled with me all over the world untill my recent upgrade, just found a new home, thanks Jo :)
Which Book to Buy?
So my Laptop died if you haven't heard me bitching about it. It has visited the Genius bar at two different Apple stores three times in two weeks with everything from power issues to hard drive dying issues. It's now on it's way to Houston, TX to get repaired. In the meantime something else has to happen since I need a computer I can travel with and I need it now. I was leaning on getting the Mac Book Pro but I just hate to lose the 2 inches of screen space from my current expectations of 17" screen. I decided in the end to just get a new 17" Powerbook (more Ram and HD, Better Resolution) for several different reasons. Most of them being
- Don't want a smaller screen.
- Intel Chip isn't going to be that advantageous until software upgrades.
- Built in iSight is neat but I already have one.
I am still ancy about calling Apple and changing the order but I think the 17" Powerbook is the right choice. for now. If anyone has compelling arguments to swing me the other way, I am listening.
In a few weeks a refurbished Powerbook 17" will be back here and for sale if anyone is interested before it hits eBay and Craigslist.
Update: According to Apple Insider, and several other sources while investigating, Apple is planning a release of a 17" MacBook Pro by June for the Developer Conference. The only glitch is, since then the (WWDC 2006) has been moved from June to mid August. However, the Insider says Apple should be ready for the 17" release by mid May. Holding up the production has been fitting an 8x superdrive into the very thin MacBook Pro casing. The 15" model currently has a 4x Superdrive 'till mass production of the 8x can be accomplished.
Yesterday I called Apple and canceled my order of the 17" Powerbook and will try and hold out for the 17" MacBook Pro.
The Reference Links
Here's something I meant to put up again awhile back, the reference links is a repository for various links of news, interest, and often used websites. At some point I mean to work this into the front page with the blog so that both are easily seen in place. Till then, you can find them over here.
NBC and SciFi, latest to offer programing for iPod
NBC will start allowing their content to be distributed by Apple for their iPods. It's official, I want a new iPod now..
Yahoo plans TiVo link
Yahoo and TiVo, sittin' in a tree... Now that's two great things I am holding my breath on the hopes that Yahoo doesn't screw up badly, so far Flickr is doing okay but a little scorned from Yahoo finding a new girlfriend..
