Cindy and Greg

While I was in DC this week a new toy showed up. The Drobo is a little data robot that provides you with storage for your movies, music, pictures, or whatever you want to store. Cali Lewis over at GeekBrief goes on and on about these things. A friend from IU, Scott, bought one a couple weeks ago and liked it, so I thought I would replace our older ReadyNAS NV with a brand new Drobo rev2.

I was shocked this morning at how quickly it setup. I was literally up and running in like 4 minutes. The unit is small and sleek looking. I was disappointed with the quality of the build as it related to drive insertion and such, but overall, I can live. I copied over all of our data and then shared it out using OS X Leopard Server.

So far so good. It come with a cute little dashboard app, see the picture below. I will let you know how it performs. I also got word that my MSI Wind shipped on Friday from Amazon. Looks like I will have a little toy to play with while Cindy is traveling this week.

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Well it seems like yesterday was the day for reconnecting with friends from the past. It started by hearing from a friend from IU on LinkedIn and was followed up that evening by hearing from a few friends from high school on FaceBook. It is always nice to hear from people. I find myself, especially when I am in Brewster, wondering what ever became of people I went to high school with. It sound like everyone is doing great. Hard to believe it has been 16 years since I graduated high school…how old am I?

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I got a little kick out of this video that I saw over at GeekBrief. Geoff is no relation

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I saw a news story this morning that says that McCain is not a natural US citizen, which means, he can not be President. I can’t say that I would be all that torn up about it.

McCain not natural-born citizen, prof says
Published: July 11, 2008 at 9:36 AM
TUCSON, July 11 (UPI) — Research shows the circumstances of John McCain’s
birth don’t pass constitutional muster for him to be U.S. president, a
University of Arizona professor says.

A 1937 law granting citizenship to children of U.S. parents in the Panama Canal
Zone came too late to apply to McCain, the U.S. senator from Arizona and likely
Republican presidential nominee, The New York Times reported. The Constitution
requires the president be a “natural-born citizen,” but the law made McCain a
citizen just before his first birthday.

“It’s preposterous that a technicality like this can make a difference in an
advanced democracy,” professor Gabriel Chin said. “But this is the
constitutional text that we have.”

The law at the time of McCain’s birth conferred citizenship to children born to
American parents “out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States,”
Chin said. The term “limits and jurisdiction” created a problem because the
Canal Zone was beyond the limits of the United States but not its jurisdiction,
the Times said.

McCain has dismissed suggestions that he does not meet the citizenship test. In
April, the Senate approved a non-binding resolution declaring McCain eligible
to be president.

“No court will get close to it, and everyone else is on board, so there’s a
constitutional consensus, the merits of arguments such as this one aside,” said
Peter Spiro, a citizenship law authority at Temple University.

A lawsuit challenging McCain’s qualifications is pending in a federal court in
Concord, N.H.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/07/11/McCain_not_natural-born_citizen_prof_say
s/UPI-86721215783410/

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A few posts ago I mentioned The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, a professor at CMU who was diagnosed with cancer and given only a few months to live. He passed away yesterday in his home. He is survived by his wife, Jai, and three children: Chloe, Dylan and Logan. The family requests that donations on his behalf be directed to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, 2141 Rosecrans Ave., Suite 7000, El Segundo, CA 90245, or to Carnegie Mellon’s Randy Pausch Memorial Fund, which the university will use primarily to support continued work on the Alice project.

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So this past week or so has been absolutely crazy busy. This Friday evening is our big summer maintenance period. I have been planning it now for about 6 weeks and getting everything in line to be ready, I think we are finally there. You wouldn’t believe the call sheet I have in front of me…so if you called and I haven’t called back yet, I am sorry

Some interesting product releases this week from Apple.

• Tomorrow at 8am Apple will launch the iPhone 3G - man I wish AT&T wasn’t so crappy here in Williamsburg. I would so be all over that
• Today, supposedly, MobileMe was suppose to be available, but as of 2:30p EDT, the site is still “under maintenance”
• Apple iPhone/iPod Touch Management UI, kinda cool allows management of iPhones and iPod Touch devices in the enterprise
• The App Store - all sorts of fun little applications for your iPod Touch/iPhone. They even have a Salesforce app, which may be very useful in the near future.

Who knows, maybe on the way home from Sterling on Saturday, I may have to stop at the Apple Store and buy a new little toy. Mark has been rubbing in his “new addition” over the past few days.

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I give Cindy a lot of crap for all the feel good books that she buys from Amazon or the piles we find at Barnes and Noble. But today while we were having lunch she told me about Randy Pausch and his Last Lecture.

With Father’s day a few hours away, it is hard not to get choked by listening to this and his head fake. Many lessons learned and great memories of growing up came from watching this. Take an hour from your schedule and watch this or order the book from Amazon.

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