Category Archives: Personal History

iMac Update

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I’ve done my share of gushing about the MacBook Pro and, more recently, the beautiful new iMac. So it’s only fair I share some of the rough spots I’ve encountered the last few days.

Firefox is crashing like crazy on OSX. Almost unusable. Same for Photoshop. Not sure what’s happening but look forward to getting it sorted out.

Phil has me set up with XP running on VMware and I’m suffering from mild schizophrenia, trying to move back and forth from Windows (for Outlook, mostly) and OSX. I finally just closed the win version of Outlook and started getting email via the Exchange server (when I could keep Firefox running).

I’m sure I’ll get the hang of this but trying to live in both worlds is challenging. Once we get the crashes under control (I know, I know)… I plan to spend as much time in Mac Land as possible and I’m hoping that makes things easier.

But I’m in for the duration. My experience on the MacBook Pro has been delightful and I’d like to have that warm glow at work, too. That’s gonna take some fiddling and some mental adjustment on my part.

Now Buddy can go steady again

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I received the following email last week:

Senior_ring

“My name is Mike McGuire. While camping at Lake Wapapello a few years ago, I came across a class ring from Kennett HS lying in the rocks. The year is dated 1966 and the initials on the inside of the ring are BDS. I looked up the students on classmates.com and found a Buddy Shivley. I sent an email through classmates.com and received no response. I then did a google search on “Buddy Shivley”, “Kennett” and “MO” and came up with your site.Do you have any way to contact Buddy or his family? I would like to get in contact with him to determine if the ring is his and return it. I know this is “out there”, but it is a true story. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.”

I grew up with Buddy and went to highschool with him. If you know how to get in touch with him, let him know he can stop searching for his senior ring.

Update: 9/25/07 — One ring to rule them all. Thanks to Mike McGuire, Google, and a lot of luck, Buddy Shively will soon be reunited with his Kennett High School senior ring. Email from Buddy:

“Did you go on a trip to Lake Wappappello around the time we graduated HS? (not to be confused with the (in)famous float trip) I remember about 15 or 20 of us went. I remember riding in a boat with Ronnie Carnett pulling in toward shore in water over my head. All of a sudden Pat Brooks was in the water in front of the boat and Ronnie was setting there with his foot pumping an imaginary brake pedal with the boat going on toward Pat. (I think it was Pat and Ronnie – it may have been someone else – but I was still a hero!) I dove into the water (rather heroically, I might add) and pushed the boat away from Pat.  When I came up my ring was gone and I really hadn’t thought about it much in what  41 years.”

And today, out of the blue, a Mike McGuire called and said he had found the ring and traced me down.  He is sending it to me.  What a deal.”

Yes, what a deal. And no, I wasn’t on that trip. But I love the Lord of the Rings flavor of this story. The story of my high school ring was one of the early posts here at smays.com.

Bud_ring
Update: 10/11/07 — Bud Shively has his high school ring back.

“Who said it wouldn’t fit?  It is as good as new. It sure hasn’t been worn much.  I cannot believe it. Mike McGuire, of near St Louis, found my Kennett High School Class ring that I lost about 41 1/2 years ago and graciously had it cleaned at Randy’s Jewelry (you did a great job, Randy’s) in O’Fallon MO and kindly returned it to me.”

Surviving Las Vegas

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Fake waterfalls, fake grass, fake tits. Las Vegas is city of illusions. If Branson is Las Vegas for people who don’t haved teeth… Las Vegas is Branson for people who do. In fairness, Las Vegas is for people who like to gamble and shop. I don’t care for either.

Nice wedding on Friday and a great show on Saturday. Cirque DuSoleil’s "O" is amazing. Beyond description. The O Theater (The Mirage) seats 1,809 and the show has been sold out every night (2 shows) for years. Tickets range from $85-150. Let’s call ’em $100, or $180,000 per show…$360,000 a night. And the show is probably a loss leader to get folks into the casino.

Took some pix and video and will share those when time allows.

Now I’m about to check email for first time since Thursday. This won’t be pretty.


But these days it seems
Nowhere is far enough away
So I’m leaving Las Vegas today

Monkey Fez

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The Order of the Fez now has enough members to play ping pong doubles. Please rise and join me in recognizing David Brazeal, Order of the Fez #4:

“Hereby is submitted my application to the Order of the Fez. Thanks to ebay, I have obtained a fez from a monkey trainer in Tel Aviv.  It belonged to his dear, beloved macaque, Ahmed, who was recently crushed to death in a fruit stand accident.”

Nokia Tracfone

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Nokia100
I like paper plates (the good ones, not the cheap ones) and have the decency to feel guilty about using them. I’ve worn a plastic Casio wrist watch for years (less than $20). And tonight bought a year’s worth of minutes for my little Nokia Tracfone.

I paid $19.95 for the unit at Wal-Mart and have been buying additional minutes for the last 18 months. The Tracfone was made for people like me (and Avon Barksdale). No synching with Outlook. No texting. No camera. No nothing.

Yes, I do keep the Casio Exilim and the MacBook by my side, but the Tracfone and the camera fit nicely in the MacBook case. Weight is not an issue, given my limited travel.

I’ll bet I saw 50 iPhones at Gnomedex and everyone else had state-of-the-art hardware. When I pulled out the Tracfone at lunch, the guy across the table asked, "What’s that?"

"North Korean. I’m not supposed to have this out in public. Sorry." …as I jammed it back in my pocket.

So I’ve got all the minutes I need for the next year, for about $11 a month. What is that, 35 cents a day?

Long Distance (Skype)

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Had a nice, leisurely chat with my brother tonight. We talked about 45 minutes. Regular readers know my brother lives on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia so we’ve always tried to keep our phone calls brief. Thanks to the miracle of Skype, we were able to really get caught up this evening (morning for him).

He recently got some kind of point-to-point, microwave Internet access. Not sure if it qualifies as “high speed,” but it’s a big improvement on the dial-up they’ve lived with since moving to Indonesia.

Skype_logo
Audio quality was pretty good. Waaay better than regular long distance connection. If he can boost his speed a little bit, we’re gonna try video. Stay tuned. And thank you, Skype.

Gnomedex 2007

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This year’s Gnomedex is billed as "The Blogosphere’s Conference." Speakers include: Guy Kawasaki, Cali Lewis, one of the JibJab guys, Justin Kan (Justin.tv), Jason Calcanis, and others. If you don’t recognize these names, it’s unlikely you’d enjoy the conference. But I look forward to it all year. This is my Indy 500/Super Bowl/World Series, minus the crowds (It’s a small conference, limited to about 300 attendees.)

For the first four or five years of the conference, I took vacation and paid my own expenses. But the Enlightened Management of Learfield now sees the value of this conference, so it’s work related and reimbursed.

Oooh, look! Goosebumps!

iPhone Confessions: George Kopp (Week One)

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George is a serious Techno Boy. He has a geek job with the state for his day job (all Windows) and moonlights on Macs (and some PC’s) for love (and a little money).

George knew he’d eventually own an iPhone but thought he could wait awhile. He made the mistake of stopping by the AT&T store (Day Two) for a look-see and wound up springing for the 8 gig model.

George’s love-of-all-things-Mac is tempered by his no-bullshit-geek-o-rocity. By that I mean, he expects much from his techno-toys. But once he got the iPhone in his sweaty little hands, it was prom night. I got caught up in that as we talked and had to edit our chat more than I intended. Sorry, George.

Listen/Download: 5:30 MP3

iPhone goes on sale: Curly Howard alive and well!

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Curly Lives!The local media were on hand for the Big iPhone Event yesterday. I was stunned to learn that one of my childhood idols, Curly Howard, is not only alive… but working as a videographer for one of our local TV stations. AgWired’s Chuck Zimmerman did a touch-and-go and took this photo (which I consider very flattering).

I’m embarrassed that I didn’t introduce myself, but I did watch the voice-over package that aired on the 10 o’clock news. About 40 seconds.

There was a photographer from the local newspaper on hand. A rather stern looking woman who didn’t seem to be having any fun. Her paper ran the iPhone story on page one (above the fold) this morning. With a couple of her photos. I did not, however, find the story/pics on the newspaper website.

All of which reminds me of the wonderful freedom of blogging. I can post what I want (video, stills), when I want, with no pesky editors looking over my shoulder. I wouldn’t suggest for a second that my amateur efforts are on par with these pros. I would argue that I had more fun than they did and maybe some of that comes through in my posts.

And one more thing. The video that aired on the local TV station and the front page newspaper story –unless posted to their websites– is gone forever. With any luck, in a month or two, a Google search for “iPhone+jefferson city” will get you to smays.com.