SwimFinsSF

So excited and Proud

This just went up to Apple’s Website today… I couldn’t be more thrilled and proud right now

No on Prop 8

October 24, 2008

Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.

Tags: apple, equality, gltb, prop8

Twitter updates

So i’ve got twitter tools up and connected to my blog.. Right now its configured to post in both directions – each time I post on my blog it updates on twitter and once a day it posts to my blog a summary of all of my tweets.. I don’t think I like the daily summary though – the tweets seem kind of random on the blog… THere is a tweet summary on the right hand side of the blog that I think is going to have to do…

anyway – thats what those random posts were… if ya wanna follow my tweets just go directly to twitter… (www.twitter.com/swimfinssf)

Do your homework

*sigh*… After quite a few hours of poking around and trying to figure out why I can’t get my Mac or Windoze in Bootcamp to talk to my new spiffy Series 3 TiVo I FINALLY figured it out… Seems the new Series 3 TiVos don’t support TiVoToGo so I can’t pull programs off of it… Grrr… Wish I’d read the forums before spending all of this time debugging (or, frankly before I’d bought it)… Its a pretty big drag that the latest greatest TiVo doesn’t support some of the coolest features and it didn’t really occur to me that it wouldn’t.. According to the TiVo forums its in process and should be coming soon but that was some time ago.. Ah well – this one is still much cooler than my old tivo which didn’t do any of this stuff so I guess I shouldn’t bitch.. But still a drag..

*sigh*…

A new toy

I got my new toy today – all Apple Employees are getting ’em… and DAMN They’re cute. Can’t wait to get it home and loaded up with my tunes!. Was just needing this at the gym this morning!

DAMN

I was futzing with templates on a private blog that I have up here and the changes I made to that blasted my template for my main blog… GRRRRRR… And I put that template together so long ago that I don’t really remember how I built it… I’ll do a little poking around to see if I can re-create it… But i’m betting this may be an excuse to move to WP and try something new..

So in the mean time forgive the stock template – don’t have much time to fix it right now…

DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN

Nuvi 360 Observations

Like I said earlier, I broke down and got myself a really cool toy last week.. After seeing Brian’s and talking to Randy about it I broke down and got myself a Garman Nuvi 360. My justification for getting it was the traffic integration feature as well as our upcoming trip to europe… But in reality its really just cuz its a cool toy and I’m a geek. Up until now I never wanted a Nav system because the fact is I don’t get lost driving around SF or going to work – I live here. But the other features seemed to make it make sense for home and its small enough that I can take it on trips.. So I figured what the hell..

So.. Now that i’ve been using it for a little while here are some observations for those considering it.. Since I couldn’t find good discussions on the thing online I figured I’d share! 🙂

• Interface is very good.. It took me a little while to figure out how to get it to show me maps for a place that I wasn’t currently at because it is always trying to give you directions from your current location. But if you choose ‘Find Location’ and navigate to an address you can then select ‘show map’ at the bottom of the screen.. Thats very cool when you’re trying to look at maps in other states or countries cuz otherwise it’ll try and drive you there which is rough for points across an ocean.. (strangely it couldn’t find a route from SF to berlin..
• Dashboard Mount: This has been giving me grief. First, when I put the power cord into the mount I couldn’t get it out.. still can’t.. which is frustrating since I HATE cords all around my car.. I only want it plugged in when it needs juice. It has also started loosing suction on the window lately – probably just needs cleaning but still.. This is particularly a problem living in a big city where you can’t really leave a cool gadget in sight when parked – taking it on and off is a little troublesome..
• Traffic integration: This is REALLY cool.. shows you both incidents on the freeway as well as red, green, and red on roads to indicate traffic flow.. WAY cool.. Confusing part here is they have a bunch of different models (10,11,and 12) and I had a hard time figuring out which one to buy.. I finally just picked the 12 cuz it looked the least conspicuous and it seems to work.. Only issue I have with it is that it needs the nuvi to be connected to power which means it needs to be in the cradle (kind of a bummer when I got the thing at work and the cradle was at home..)
• European Maps: So this one was wierd.. They have two versions – one that comes on a DVD and one that comes pre loaded onto an SD card.. The one on the SD card, in retrospect is what I should have gotten but I couldn’t tell and got the DVD version. This version requires that you run the maps on a PC and then send them to the Nuvi.. great if you don’t want all the maps but a hassle otherwise (and thank GOD for Bootcamp – otherwise i’d be screwed).. Its also kind of counter-intuitive how to get the right things sent across.. It turns out you have to go into the application and select the segments of the maps in the map browser and hilite them and then click transfer to get the maps over.. There really shoudl be a ‘send all the damn maps’ option or more clear directions..
• Phone integration: This is also cool and everyone I talked to says they can hear me fine.. I do wish the volume went up louder on the thing though – road noise makes it a little hard to hear some times.. I also wish there was a ‘answer with phone’ option for the situations where I don’t want to talk on speaker.. Its probably there but I couldn’t find it..

Overall this thing is REALLY damn cool and I HIGHLY recommend it.. just a little nits that I wish worked differently.. but thats OK.. I’ll live.. still love my gadget.. can’t wait to try it in europe! 🙂

(Oh yea.. and I need to post a link to Technorati Profile so I can claim my blog.. so here it is..)