BillSaysThis

Today was a wonderful trip, worth every Australian dollar it cost. We had a bit of a scare since it was raining lightly when we woke up but the skies cleared by the time we showered and headed over for brekky.

A small comfortable Down Under Tours bus picked us up at 7:15 out front of the hotel, driving us down to the Cairns Wharf to board our boat. The Ocean Spirit is a 105′ catamaran with both sail and engine power, a large salon with bar, upper and lower stern decks and a large open bow deck, plus a full kitchen and row of bathroom stalls below decks; crew complement seemed to be about a dozen or so.

We pulled away about 8:30 for a two hour trip, about 40km, out to a seven mile long stretch of reef called Michaelmas Reef that ends in a tiny island called, not surprisingly, Michaelmas Cay. During the trip Dave, one of the two marine biologists on the crew, gave us a video presentation on the Great Barrier Reef, the coral and other fish in the region and Michaelmas specifically. Flippers, masks and bodysuits were distributed just before arrival.

TS1 and I signed up for the snorkel lesson since it’s been awhile since I’ve done it and she’s never really been in the ocean, much less snorkeled. Our instructor was Heather, the other marine biologist, and I provided the class’s comic relief. Honestly I wasn’t expecting the class to begin literally the moment we got off the beach shuttle and so was caught trying to get my gear stowed and the flippers on. Let’s say I flopped around a bit and leave it at that.

After the class the months of swim lessons I’ve been giving TS1 paid off, as she was able to get in the water a bit and paddle around with me. The salt water got the better of her, unfortunately, so she retreated to the beach while I had a bit of a swim. We bought a disposable waterproof camera and I took a lot of snaps of the coral and fish.

The Cay is a highly protected environment, most of it off limits to people and actually a home for thousands of quite a few different types of birds. I’d expected the included lunch grill to be served on the beach but that was completely wrong 😉 Instead the beach buggy, a simple 30 seater boat, shuttled us back to the Ocean Spirit to eat. Lunch was great, though considering the cost of the trip I was quite disappointed that even (bottled) water and soda were extra cost items.

The tour company keeps a semi-submersible boat out at the cay for 30 minute tours. A bit too claustrophobic for me but TS1 took the after lunch ride and got to see the coral and fish she missed from the snorkeling, plus several large sea turtles that didn’t come that close to the water’s edge.

A little after her tour ended everyone was back aboard from the beach or scuba diving and we made the 2.5 hour ride back to Cairns Wharf. Not long after weighing anchor the chef served fresh baked cake and coffee; we were pretty beat and spent most of the time nearly napping in one of the chairs along the port rail. A half hour before docking crew came around with a glass of sparkling wine for each of the guests, which went down well with the sun getting low on the horizon.

All too soon we were bundled off to the coaches and back to our respective hotels. TS1 made us a simple dinner en suite so we didn’t have to go out and I had a good soak. Tomorrow we fly to Sydney for the last leg of this awesome vacation–I’m writing this Tuesday night but probably won’t post it until Wednesday–four full days in Australia’s biggest city.

Saturday was another travel day. After a relaxing morning and lunch in Queenstown, we had an easy flight to Sydney, a short layover and then another flight up to Cairns; that is, TS1 and I went from the very south of New Zealand to the far north of Australia, crossing three timezones along the way. We had a friendly, loquacious driver for the ride out to Palms Cove Resort, about 25 km west of central Cairns, where our fantastic accommodations are courtesy of my parent’s time share. This is a huge apartment, three bedrooms and two baths, full kitchen, living room and laundry, Too bad we only have three days to enjoy it, and two of them we’re out for full day trips.

Yesterday we went to Kuranda, a hippy village turned tourist attraction way up at the top of a nearby mountain in a rain forest. The trip up was on the Kuranda Scenic Railway, a refurbished real train that climbs through absolutely beautiful scenery, and our travel agent put us on the gold coach, equivalent to first class with free-flowing alcohol or soft drinks, tasty pastry snacks and comfortable individual chairs rather than the bolted-down benches in the other cars.

At the top we had passes for Birdworld, a lovely assortment of tropical birds, and some time to browse the markets. Karoline, our hostess from the local tour company, was wonderful in arranging on the fly a substitute for the second half of the day after I found out that to get to Tjapukai Cultural Park required 45 minutes travel on a gondola. With my deathly fear of open heights that was just not happening, so she switched us to a visit to RainForeStation Nature Park, including getting us a bus ride over, and then back down on the train instead of what would have been another gondola ride.

Which turned out great. We had three activities, a ride through the rain forest on an old Army Duck, a show by Pamagirri Aboriginal Dancers and demonstration by one of the dancers of djidgeroo playing, spear throwing and boomerang throwing, plus TS1 got her picture taken holding a baby koala.

The rain forest ride was my favorite. We had a funny Aussie guide named Matt, who pointed out the amazing variety of flora, showed us some huge termite nests and lovely butterflies and gave us an extended, rare view of a gorgeous wild Cassowary. The latter is a leftover species of flightless bird dating back about 150 million years, picture a cross between a large turkey and a peacock (without the colorful tail); they’re loners, coming together only to mate, quite dangerous if disturbed and endangered due to human encroachment on their native territory. The ducks are six wheeled amphibious open-topped jeep-like vehicles built during World War II and still quite functional; we drove right into a small lake without a drop getting inside.

The four men and two musicians performed about half a dozen aboriginal dances, finishing by calling six people on stage from the audience to learn one of them. Enjoyable but not too exciting. The we were split into smallish groups, with each performer taking one group around the demo spaces and we were fortunate to have what I thought was the best one, Aaron. He explained how a djidgeroo is made (most commonly by inserting a bunch of termite in the center of a small log for three months, then turning the wood over and putting another batch at the opposite end, after which the instrument is used in one ceremony and then is broken and trashed.

Aaron demo’ed how his people throw bamboo spears for hunting and fighting. The trick is not only the throwing motion and choosing the proper bamboo but in a second wooden piece that hooks at the back end of the spear and triples the potential distance as well as substantially increasing accuracy. Plus the hard piece of wood is helpful in delivering the killing blow to a downed animal or opponent, eh? Last he showed us proper boomerang motion and I even got to try a couple of tosses.

All told, ten hours door to door after a very early start. We were pleasantly exhausted, barely able to drag ourselves the better part of a kilometer back to the main building for dinner. Today is a lazy day, maybe a little swimming and a bus ride to central Cairnes in the afternoon. Tomorrow is the centerpiece of our whole vacation, a boat trip out to Michaelmas Cay in the Great Barrier Reef and I’m very excited about going!

In her award-winning novella The Retrieval Artist Kristine Kathryn Rusch gave us an intriguing small scale, star-spanning future. Small in the sense that though colonies had been created on an unspecified number of planets around other stars, humanity was but one of a number of sentient species to do so and we were far from the most significant.

All these races have agreed that crimes committed on their respective worlds are subject to the host race’s legal system, including punishment, and Rusch’s aliens are, indeed, alien so that understanding the various laws are difficult despite years of association. The punishments, on the other hand, are far easier to understand, if not accept.

The most serious offenses visit consequences not on the criminal but on the miscreant’s children. Because of the seriousness, pan-galactic tribunals hear appeals and, like so many systems of justice, the wheels of justice move slowly. That means the convicted have many years and, if they have the money, the ability to attempt to escape. Only among humans, though, have businesses sprung up to assist convicts in disappearing; of course, corresponding operations to track down the disappeared and, more rarely, find ways to retrieve them without endangering their future.

The Disappeared presents the origin story of Miles Flint, the master of all retrieval artists. In this novel he’s a detective with the Armstrong Dome police force on the Moon, only recently promoted from (spaceship) Traffic Control, and partnered with the more experienced, somewhat disgraced Noelle DeRicci. And strange ships start arriving at the dome.

First up, a yacht with three eviscerated bodies is towed in from orbit and DeRicci and Flint are assigned the case. Though there’s absolutely no identification of the people or yacht, it bears the hallmarks of a Disty capital punishment; the Disty being a race of short but powerful aliens who’ve taken Mars as a colony world.

Second, a Wygnin ship has been stopped before leaving with two (human) children. Wygnin law punishes a child of the criminal and the inter-species treaties require Earth Alliance governments to permit this, but the Wygnin lack the documentation required by the letter of the law and so the detectives stall them to try and find a loophole.

Finally, a frantic woman has landed yet another ID-less yacht at Armstrong claiming the crew and passengers were taken by a posse from a third alien group, the Rev. Her story doesn’t quite hang together but lunar politics being what they are, the cops have to treat her carefully and so she’s able to escape while being driven from the port to the precinct.

The cases all turn on Flint’s inability to accept that humans should be punished in ways or for laws that shatter his absolutely reasonable sense of justice and fair play. To give an 18 month old baby boy over to be raised as a Wygnin because her mother built a house–on land the Wygnin willingly sold her, not understanding the human concept of property–that unknown to her killed eggs of a second sentient species living on their world or that a lawyer should face decades of hard time for the subsequent crimes of her client.

Rusch does a good job of weaving these threads together through The Disappeared, finishing by showing us the motivation for Flint’s decision to become the best, or at least the most ethical, retrieval artist. Setting up an entire series of novels which I certainly hope match up to this one.

recommended

Late afternoon, relaxing with a tasty hot chocolate in a little ice cream and chocolate cafe that makes its own chocolate on premises, mmmmmm.

We did take the steamer trip across Lake Wakatipu this afternoon. The boat is the TSS Earnslaw, recycled from its early 20th century worklife as a lake tramper to a tourist transport, and the very pleasant ride was about 40-45 minutes each way.

At the far end we visited Walter Peak High Country Farm which besides hosting visitors is still a working sheep ranch. The staff laid on a decent buffet lunch on a patio over the lake and then we had a tour on the sheep operations. The host was quite loquacious and, as seems common down this way, has a sense of humor that would not, er, go over as well in the US.

He had his dog, a rocket of a Border Collie, round up about eight sheep and bring them down into the pen with us. We had the chance to take some pellets and feed the big hairy animals by hand. Next the dog brought another recently sheered batch down from the hillside to show off the way the dog and handler use whistles and coughs to control the animals. Finally we went inside a shed and he sheered one right in front of us, which didn’t seem as much fun to me or TS1 as you might think.

Tomorrow is a big travel day. We’re catching an afternoon flight to Sydney, hang out for a couple of hours and then get a different plane up to Cairns. Sunday is our day trip to Kuranda, Monday is free and Tuesday the big highlight, a day trip out to the Great Barrier Reef.

Hope y’all are having a happy Thanksgiving. I know what we’re thankful for this year!

It’s just before dinner Thursday here in this beautiful town on the shores of Lake Wakatipu, so for you Americans it’s still Wednesday (or maybe just tickled into Thanksgiving in the East). Queenstown is only about 13,000 people but from appearances nearly all work in the tourism business.

If the word bungy has a New Zealand-ish feel to you, that’s because the folks down here invented it. And Queenstown is all about the extreme outdoor activities, from the wacky Fly By Wire to jetboating to long, multi-day hikes up in the mountains that were featured in the Lord of the Rings films.

We had a bit of trouble getting here yesterday, though. The country’s entire air traffic system was messed up when a small Cessna flipped tail over head at Wellington Airport and so our flight was about two hours late. Making the wait worse was that Air New Zealand switched the gate for us three times, only to end up back where we started.

Then we checked in to our hotel only to find that the ‘renovation’ is more like a major construction project. The room is nice but $23 for the no hot food buffet breakfast was a bit much (the hot food adds $10, all prices in NZ dollars) as well.

But it’s hard to stay upset when you walk out of the terminal and hotel into pure physical beauty. The lake, the mountains, the open countryside are stunning. I took photos but they probably won’t do it justice.

We walked around town yesterday for the afternoon and early evening. Sad to say KFC, McDonalds and Subway have penetrated even this far from home but otherwise the downtown has many nice shops and restaurants. TS1 even dropped $15 at the local casino though I resisted the urge.

Today we drove out about 45 km to a tiny village called Glenorchy (pop. 400) and went for a short walkabout in the area which were used in the LOTR films for Lothlorien and Isengard. Very windy and a bit overcast but fun and a huge change from home. Driving on the left does take a bit of getting used to, and the road was a single lane curving up and around the base of the mountains each way the entire distance.

Then we drove back past Queenstown to Arrowtown. Supposedly a recreation of a 150 year old gold mining town, it was really more like, oh, Main St. in Half Moon Bay with upscale eateries, jewelery and clothing stores and a couple of small attractions. Did I mention driving on the left is strange?

Anyway, tomorrow we plan to go on a ferry ride across the lake, check out a huge working farm and ride back. Saturday we fly to Cairns via Sydney!

TS1 and I started our long-awaited vacation Saturday night, flying from SFO to Auckland. A nice flight, if a bit bumpy and crowded, thumbs up to the Air New Zealand cabin crew for keeping everyone happy and comfortable and for having decent seat room on our 777-200. The on demand seat back video and music system was cool too, as I finally saw Knocked Up (funny and sweeter than expected) plus second viewings of Live Free or Die Hard and Simpsons Movie.

We arrived about 5 a.m. local time Monday morning, meaning no lines at customs or for rides and the hotel (right on the main drag in downtown) was aware of our early arrival hour so the room was ready. After a bit of rest we went out wandering, found an East Asian food court with some tasty choices, wandered more and saw the Sky Tower, a huge Santa over a big bookstore and found a cafe that gave free wireless with purchase (since the hotel charges NZ$30 a day for in-room broadband).

We had dinner at Gina’s Pizza and Pasta Bar. This highly-rated restaurant has a friendly, attentive Italian staff and the food was delicious; we shared a salad and pizza. The hotel concierge showed us a map and said it was maybe 15 minutes or so to walk. Er, maybe if you’re an Olympic class power walker but at more than two miles with some serious uphill climb we needed more like an hour, but I suppose burning the calories made the food go down better.

Today we hit the Auckland War Museum, had lunch at veg-friendly Revive and hit the Auckland Zoo for the afternoon. I completely underestimated the best way to get back to the bus after the museum, so add about 45 more minutes of shoe burning. By the time we got on the bus back from the zoo my feet were literally burning. But it was a good burning, and worth it. Took lots of pictures, will post soonish. Now off for some dinner!

(After dinner)

The museum was nicely done with a mix of Maori and English settler historical material. I have much respect for the Maori and other Melanesian people who crossed huge stretches of the Pacific in uncovered, human-powered oversized canoes! New Zealand was actually one of the last of their migrations as they only arrived here about 800 years ago.

On the bus ride there we had some discussion with a few other tourists about the best stop to get off and so when we left I was very confident that we should go down the hill in the opposite direction to catch the bus closer to our destination. After finding an area map–the museum is on one side of a big park and wooded area called the Auckland Domains–I was sure we should set off on what looked like a short path to the street and, obviously, a bus stop.

Very obvious, except totally wrong. The path veered off on a steep downhill through some pretty woods and didn’t get near a street for about a mile. There also, of course, was no bus stop for another long chunk of walking but we got to it before TS1 went back for one of those nasty looking Maori knives.

Revive was not that big a place and simply packed. Far more women than men in the restaurant, which is down near the harbor. Viv has this organic veg mushroom lasagne, yummy, and I had a three salad combo featuring bulghur.

The zoo was a lot more walking but filled with some beautiful animals. TS1 was captivated by the baby penguin and the family of orangutans. The lions were sleeping but it was feeding time for the giraffes and zebras, which were in the same large enclosure, and I thought the baby giraffe was cute.

We went to Star City for the buffet dinner at Fortuna. More yummy and now we’re both beat.

Auckland is a very cosmopolitan city, as you’d expect for the commercial center of a large island nation. In the downtown area, where we’ve spent most of our time, there are multiple restaurants on nearly every block (or superettes, convenience stores slightly larger than 7-11’s) and never are two of the same cuisine next to each other. The people, too, are a huge assortment and so far all friendly.

Up early tomorrow to catch a short flight to Queenstown almost all the way at the other end of New Zealand. We’ll have a rental car there, should be amusing driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road again since I’ve only had to do it once before, seven years ago in Australia.

The Lab here at BST has been humming the last couple of weeks, though much of the work is not yet ready for public view. Our head man has also been interviewing for an exciting opportunity at a very cool small startup and we hope to post good news about his new ‘day job’ soon; for now let’s just say it involves building a new kind of community engagement model for a disruptive SAAS company.

We’re also building a small, er, highly opinionated website content system in PHP for a consulting client. The system is essentially the fifth or sixth iteration of the page template class code used here on billsaysthis.com but forked to handle pure HTML page fragments as well as PHP-driven content where appropriate (e.g., the real data is in MySQL) since a web designer is partnering on the engagement.

This code can also be available to you at a very reasonable cost.

We’re also taking another pass at a small Ruby on Rails project to get a sense of the improvements in the forthcoming 2.0 release. So far so good and with some possibility of posting this as a free to use public web application before New Year’s Day. Open source? Maybe, though the executive committee here has questions about how interesting the code might be to other developers and very much about the time commitment this would create.

And then there’s the big vacation starting tomorrow too.

Wynona Rider, that cute little thing from Beetlejuice and Reality Bites, will play Spock’s mother in the upcoming Star Trek XI.

In a stark contrast to their recent form, Liverpool ran the rule over Turkish Cup holders Besiktas tonight at Anfield with the eight goal margin setting a new Champions League record. Everyone thought this game would be three points for the Reds but nobody, except maybe the Spanish Inquisition, thought it would be more than a goal or two apart.

Peter Crouch, showing how unfairly Rafa Benitez has treated him this season, opened and closed the scoring. Israeli nation team player Yossi Benayoun got the second after a half hour–that was all the first half scoring–and then the third and fourth either side of ten minutes after the restart. Captain Fantastic got #5 in the 69th.

Ryan Babel, who’d only just come on, made the sixth with a slick backheel and then ‘scored’ the next in one of the funniest goals I’ve seen. Near the top of the 18 yard box as a Besiktas defender blasted the ball to clear it, Babel jumped and turned his back to the goalmouth, the ball went right into his booty and bounced up and over the hapless keeper.

In the other match in our group, Marseille did us no favors by surrendering a late loser to FC Porto. That left the standings as Porto top with 8 points, Marseille next on 7, Liverpool on 4 and Besiktas last with three. The Reds host the Portuguese side in three weeks and finish the round in France Dec. 11 so unless the Turks deliver some unexpected assistance, advancing to the knockout stage will require defeating both teams.

Still, what a wonderful show today! A result to savor for a long time.

I’m a big Nick Hornby fan (A Long Way Down, About a Boy, High Fidelity). So when I found myself needing something to read away from home the other week and saw his latest sitting out front 20% off, into the bag it went and I’m out the other side happy.

Slam is Hornby once again inhabiting the skin of someone he’s not, this time a 16 year old English boy sitting on top of his limited patch of the world but, as intimated in the opening paragraphs, is quickly knocked down. Now, sure, Nick was once a 16 year old English boy but as best I know he is not the child of divorce nor was he a skateboarding (excuse me, skating) enthusiast as a teen.

He also did not have conversations with a poster of Tony Hawk. Two-way conversations, though Hawk’s parts came straight out of his autobiography which Sam, our protagonist, has read about 50 times. Enough to have memorized it, so Hawk’s conversational responses are actually quotes pulled from the book.

Sam is on top of the world because his skating’s going well, a teacher at school has asked about his university plans (no one in his family has attended college) and, best of all, he’s dating and shagging a beautiful girl. And the shagging was her suggestion.

Where would the dramatic tension come from if all these remained as they are? No, Sam has to take a major fall, for our entertainment. But Hornby does such a marvelous job with this setup that even Sam can’t be mad.

I think that I enjoy this writer so much because his books go beyond just good, interesting plots that move at ever-quickening pace, with engaging characters. Not only do his lead characters, Sam here, Will and Marcus in About a Boy, Martin, JJ, Jess, and Maureen in A Long Way Down and Rob in High Fidelity engage, they jump off the pages at you. Many novels are written in the first person (in Down, the four leads take turns as the POV) but rarely do authors achieve the level and immersion Hornby consistently reaches; I chose the word “inhabits” previously as an indication of this.

recommended

For any who say that blogging is no more interesting or useful than photocopied shopping lists, go and read Garret’s superb post on the dangerous, profit-all-cost effort by the oil and gas industry to ignore residents’ drinking water safety as well as the local economy in order to tap some deposits that may or may not be worth the effort.

This post is full of the insight and analysis that would do any newspaper proud but is rarely seen in “professional” journalism in this era of corporatized media. Garret went to a public meeting hosted by a smaller energy company acting as the spearhead for its bigger brethren. He listened to the questions and objections posed by his fellow townsfolk as well as the company’s responses and actually evaluated all of it, going beyond the rhetoric and comparing words to actions and past behaviors.

Thanks Garret. The phrase ‘holding feet to the fire’ comes to mind as the best description of what you wrote, something that the Woodward/Bernstein revolution was supposed to bring to journalism in the ’70s but never actually delivered.

(Um, Webbies judges? You best be looking G’s way come awards time.)

Well, here I am 24 hours after starting the Leopard update to Miami Steve and it has been without doubt a difficult and annoying 24 hours. Apparently, according to the AppleCare product specialist who helped me, my MacBook had a kernel panic and this required a second installation attempt; fortunately the option to save my user data worked and there was no need to do a full-bore erase the hard drive update on a third attempt.

About that support call: I was on the phone for just over three hours. 90 minutes of that was on hold waiting for the second level support (the product specialist), and another 10-15 was on hold waiting for the front line tech. I don’t care if it is Sunday afternoon, Apple management are the ones who decided to release this on Friday 6 p.m. and they ought to have been prepared for the call volume. Of course all customers get is a sorry for the inconvenience, no offer of any kind of restitution for my time.

I’m also a bit concerned that the drivers for my Ximeta NAS drive won’t seem to load at this point; making a fresh backup right away with Time Machine or iBackup seems like a very good idea. Sent off a support email to Ximeta but they for sure don’t work on Sundays.

Hopefully I’ll have another post soon with positive notes about 10.5. For the few minutes I’ve had so far, I can only say that a number of the UI changes do look nice.

After eight novels and more than a dozen short stories, Kage Baker finally tells the story of what happens on July 9, 2355 in the Heinleinesque The Sons of Heaven. The immortal cyborg employees of Dr. Zeus Inc. have long waited to find out why the Temporal Concordance, the vast database recording all they know about history, has no entries from that day forward.

The mortal directors and scientific staff have their own thoughts on the subject, which are precisely what the staff fear: After tens of thousands of years, all substantial economic value the company can plunder/preserve has been achieved and the cyborgs–who frighten their mortal masters–can be terminated. Due to the scientists’ own towering achievements that is an incredibly difficult task but they think it has finally been done and will distribute it in the form of a special batch of chocolates sent as a thank you for a job well done. The cyborgs, of course, are not that stupid.

Indeed several different factions of them have been working for centuries to turn the tables on that date; some want to become dictators of the few remaining mortals, some want to wipe the planet clean of them, some only care about retribution on the leadership of Dr. Zeus and others just want to be through with taking orders for distasteful jobs. Baker shows us scenes for each group’s preparations.

Then there are the Little People, the faeries of old, who hate the cyborgs for beating them into hiding millenniums ago and haven’t forgotten. They want revenge and use their superior science to infiltrate the Company; the killing serum as well as the distribution plan comes from their best researcher.

Finally, the three Company-created mortals, Alex Checkerfield, Nicholas Harpole and Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, have a key part to play. When we last saw them in The Machine’s Child, all three were occupying Alex’s body and warring for control over it while straining to prevent the cyborg each loved during their normal lifetimes, the botanist Mendoza, from learning just who was inside Alex. Baker gives an entertaining solution to their pseudo-sibling rivalry and the four who, along with sentient AI pirate Captain Henry Morgan, have been central to the entire series turn out to be the most important players in what goes down on the 9th of July.

In a very amusing twist, Kage stops the 2355 action dead in its tracks to cover that sibling rivalry/Mendoza story 500,000 years in the past. At first I was not happy but as it went on I realized this was an important passage from both plot and literary perspectives rather than trilogyitis-like page count padding.

A number of subplots are also resolved. Literary Preservation Specialist Lewis, long a captive of the faerie scientists, returns and gets his long-desired chance to be the hero. Kalugin, lost at sea, is found though this seems more a gift to certain readers as he remains offstage with all references coming from more significant characters. William Randolph Hearst, Joseph and Lewis’s host in Welcome to Olympus, Mr. Hearst (from the Gods and Pawns collection), is still around and an enthusiastic member of Executive Facilitator Joseph and Enforcer Budu’s faction.

Two conclusions came to me as I read the final 100-150 pages: As mentioned in the first ‘graph, Robert Heinlein is a major influence on the entire series, though it’s the post-Stranger in a Strange Land, Lazarus Long era Heinlein and not his early Future History work. Second, Baker has actually written a Singularity tale. A different kind, since that point of no return isn’t reached in the same sort of technological sense we usually imagine (e.g., Stross’s Accelerando, MacLeod’s Fall Revolution sequence).

definitely recommended

One thing that many people feeling stuck in their job search don’t realize is how useful getting out to events can be for them. For starters, being around people is almost always an emotional positive. If they’re in the same boat as you, then you know you aren’t alone in this sad situation. If they’re working, well, then perhaps you’ve found a connection that will turn out to be the key piece in getting to that next great gig.

So going to things like ProMatch and CSix, both of which I highly recommend, are good. But getting to Lunch 2.0, JHTC and SDforum events is even better. For instance, I ran into Scoble at today’s Lunch 2.0 at Oracle (his blog post about it) as well as making some good connections within Oracle and with other folks, plus a free nice lunch (better than the typical pizza usually served) and a red t-shirt that Oracle had made up for the meeting (that is, the text and graphics include today’s date and the Lunch 2.0 logo). Frankly I usually don’t bother with the t-shirts any more but how often do you get a good-looking red one instead of black or white?

And anyone who reads this and would like to meet anyone at a JHTC event, just introduce yourself to me and I’m your man. Next month (Nov. 13) we have an excellent program, our annual venture invessting panel featuring Ann Winblad, Tom Foremski and Barry Kramer. January our featured guest is Marina Gorbis, executive director of Institute for the Future. Plus these are both free.

Enough proselytizing. Get out of your house and find events where you can meet people working in the jobs and companies that are a good fit for you!

Despite my enthusiastic post about 10.5’s imminent arrival the other day, about which my feelings are unchanged, and my continuing enthusiasm for my iPhone (named BigMan, all our hardware get Springsteen-related names), I am just a bit short of complete surrender to Apple Fanboyhood.

For example, this morning I woke up to find that the hard drive on MiamiSteve (my MacBook) had died. Again, since this happened last November as well. Once again my lessons regarding frequent backups should pay off since I can see pretty much all the files and such sitting on the NAS drive. Guess what Bill will be doing with his Saturday night…

An improvement from the last such event is that the AppleCare rep I spoke with said that when I go for my 6:00 Genius Bar appointment I’ll be able to get a replacement hard drive on the spot instead of turning in the laptop for the usual 5-7 business days repair turnaround. Keep your fingers crossed that this turns out to be true, please.

BigMan is not in a perfect state either. I spoke with a (different) AppleCare rep a couple of days ago about it and he said I need to do a full restore of the system software. This will, of course, wipe the phone’s drive clean and the sync/backup software only handles some (well, most) of the data. Gone will be SMSs, notes, map bookmarks and settings for things like Weather and Stocks; no big deal but surprising omissions given the Jobs attention to detail which pervades Apple’s product line.

The rep said that my two big issues ought to be resolved with a restore, but I haven’t been up for it yet so no confirmation. Maybe after the new hard drive is installed and all software and date reinstalled and restored.

Update: Sure enough, when my name was called at the store the ‘genius’ had a hard drive in stock. He went in the back, got the drive, swapped it for my deader, installed the OS (Tiger, not Leopard, oh well) and gave it over to me for creating the admin account and confirmation that all was well. Once again iBackup did it’s job with almost nothing lost except for a few directories I forgot to add to the backup profile. Cool!

It was the first day of my (first) honeymoon, in Aruba. I was working for a long-defunct commercial real estate finance company and just a few months out of B School. At lunchtime I noticed a local four page newspaper at the front desk, hot off the presses, with a big headline about how the Dow Jones was already down more than 400 points after only a couple of trading hours.

Wow, huh? Talk about the right day to be out of the office and out of the country! Even now I can’t quite picture the misery that must have been going on back in the office. Pretty serious though; even a week later on my return everyone was still in a black mood.

Cutting right to the chase, my answer is Mercury Blues by David Lindley off his 1981 first solo record, El Rayo-X. This version of an older blues tune, credited to K.C. Douglas and Robert Geddins, has nearly every element I have to have: fast tempo with crisp aggressive percussion, lyrics about love gone bad and, perhapsdefinitely, most important of all, slammin’ muddy blues guitar driving the train all over the tracks and into a fiery climax that barrels right into concrete wall. Damn if it isn’t infectious and danceable too!

That said, no one will confuse Lindley’s nasal, high-pitched vocals for Placido Domingo or Paul McCartney yet they mesh well with the plaintive, up, down, and then hopeful lyrics: I stole my bestfriend’s girl ’cause I got a Mercury ’49, he got lucky stole her back again but no matter, I’ll win her in the end.

Lindley’s guitar playing, riff-driven rhythm guitar part underlying a sizzling slide guitar lead, rides off the four bar drum opening into the stratosphere before calming down just a tad when the vocals come in but right after the first chorus he lets loose on melodic, fuzzy slide.

Drums are by Ian Wallace, formerly of English art rockers King Crimson. Bass is contributed by either Bob Glaub or Reggie McBride, can’t say for sure as the credits aren’t song-specific. There’s also some nice organ playing on other tracks by Little Feat’s Bill Payne but left off on this tune for a sparser, more airy sound. Wallace’s drum kit is also supplemented with rollicking percussion that falls somewhere between ska and Latin beats.

The rest of the album is fun and good rock, particularly a couple of old Bob Fuller blues songs, She Took Off My Romeos and Quarter of a Man, and the covers of Smokey Robinson’s Don’t Look Back (better by far than Jagger’s duet with Peter Tosh) and the Everly Brothers’ Bye-Bye Love.

“What,” I hear you asking, “isn’t there a Bruce Springsteen track you think is a better answer to the question? After all, you’ve said time and again that he far and away makes your favorite music.” Not quite. I have him with two of the top five (Thunder Road and Cover Me) but in rock and roll you get extra points for being somewhere in the one hit wonder/not-quite obscure swimming pool. Rounding out the five are Thin Lizzy’s Cowboy Song (from Live and Dangerous) and the Stones’ prescient Sympathy for the Devil.

[Karl, a cool Philly rocker in his own right, has a list up in response. What’s yours?]

You may not realize it but you probably hear David’s playing several times a week on one of the hundreds of tracks by other artists which he pitched in lead guitar as a session musician, also extra credit points for Lindley. Going back to the ’70s he played with Jackson Browne (for which he is probably best known, including his falsetto vocals on Brown’s live version of Stay), Warren Zevon, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, David Crosby, Terry Reid, Graham Nash, Bob Dylan, America, Eddie Money, Iggy Pop and Rod Stewart.

Oddly, my copy of the CD gives the title as Mercury Man, which jives with my memory from back in the day. Whatever. Lindley’s track got plenty of airplay in the ’80s but he never really followed it up to build a solo career; I think his tastes are bit too eclectic for that.

Definitely a song to grab from iTunes, Amazon or wherever you get your music these days.

Apple announced today that Leopard AKA OS X 10.5 will be released next Friday (what is it with this ‘release at 6 p.m. Friday’ shtick anyway?) and published the list of 300+ new features. The ones that most interest me:

• Time Machine: This is a complete backup and restore application (wonder if it will be better for me than iBackup) with an allegedly simple as pie user interface.
• TextEdit: Read and write Word 2007 and OpenDocument formats, makes me wonder if it will replace the majority of my use for NeoOffice. Since I don’t have iWork, I’ll still be using Neo for spreadsheets and presentations. Unless I can get by with Google’s online tools…
• Terminal: Tabbed windows, and movable at that. Save the configuration of all open windows as a workspace. Sorry iTerm.
• Mail: Improved search (w00t!). Detects text fragments like appointments and addresses, and lets you choose smart actions with a click: create a new contact, map an address, or create an iCal event.
• Spotlight: Web history searches, hopefully works with Firefox. Now where was that hot naked chick I was ogling yesterday?
• Preview: Edit images in Preview. Crop, rotate, resize, and save images in a range of image formats. Selection tools make it a snap to cut and paste images from Preview directly into other applications.
• Automator: I keep thinking I should use this scripting app and maybe now that it will be “easier than ever” I actually will.