Well, last night I was certain that I was going to talk about cutting my neighbor’s laurel or photinia or whatever the hell it is and how I ended up also cutting off a huge branch of his apple tree (the one my dad planted) but I was beat. The hedge and tree were overhanging our garage and my mom kept telling me to cut it back. I could have gone to sleep right after dinner but what fun would that have been? So I just lay on the floor listening to podcasts. Exciting Saturday night. I think I was sunburned and tired from all my fun. The apple tree branch was the worst part. There’s so much awful ivy on it that I couldn’t tell where the apple began and the ivy ended. Most of it went into the wood chipper.

I didn’t do a very good job of scheduling the day. I got back from the gym, ate lunch, and then started cutting. Then I took a shower, went to the coffee shop with my mom, and came back to start cleanup. Then I had to take another shower. That wood chipper seems to be used on the hottest days of the year. It was only in the 80’s yesterday, but that sure seems hot when the previous week was in the 60’s. Plus I hit my head on the garage gutters

I should have known when I signed up to be a “special customer” of Borders for $20 that I’d never make that money back. In fact, while I love books, I’m getting to be a big Kindle fan. I read a lot of books on one of my two Kindles (I really should sell the old one on eBay) or on my iPhone. The thing is, I always have my iPhone and so I always have my books. I’m reading a real book right now and it’s kind of cramping my hands up. I feel like a cranky whiner, but I’m actually getting used to non-books.

The worst part is that I don’t buy as many books as I used to, and I find it easier to get books on Amazon than going down to the bookstore. First they closed the downtown Borders, and now they’re closing them all. We have one of the best bookstores on the planet in Powell’s books, but I hardly go there either. And my biggest problem with books is what to do with them after I read them. I have stacks and stacks of books that I’ve read and re-read and they take up a lot of space. I guess I could try to sell them, or just give them to Goodwill like everything else. Now if I could only convince my buddy MattyG to drive his brother’s truck over here, I could make a HUGE trip to Goodwill.

Not only was Mac OS X Lion released today, but yesterday my old boss told me about some software that was updated that I needed to get packaged. Not work software, mind you, but just-for-fun open source stuff. And I don’t even use the software, I just make sure it compiles. There’s all sorts of ways to waste time with computers, and I’m just finding more and more of them.

Oh, and the reason it’s bad to have pictures from the gym like this

is because of people at work with Photoshop.

Funny how much I depend on my second monitor on a day-to-day basis. Heck, I have two monitors for my laptop at work and I have two monitors for my work laptop at home. Guess how many of those four that I had to pay for on my own? Then I have a 24″ Apple monitor for my home computer. My sister went to another extreme and bought herself a 30″ monitor to replace a pair of 19″ monitors. It’s nice to be able to read my screen again instead of having everything crammed into one set of desktops.

It was supposed to be a nice weekend but yesterday it was gloomy and today it rained pretty hard during the day. Luckily, I got the pressure washer out yesterday, and I tried to spend most of the day either cleaning my office or fiddling with my computer. I threw away a lot of recycling, but my room looks pretty much the same. And there was a big setback when the free muffin we got cracked my mom’s tooth. It would have been an expensive muffin, but the dentist was in today and he said it was pretty serendipitous that we uncovered a large cavity that didn’t get to the nerve. Good news and bad news. That’s life.

To save $1.50 in parking, I bought a Time Capsule to back up my MacBook Pro. It only cost me $299, so that saved me -$297.50. The worst part is that I’m without my $900 24″ monitor, so I have to look at everything on my laptop monitor. It’s higher resolution, which means all the pictures and letters are tinier. If I had younger eyes, it wouldn’t be so bad.

I was able to go to the Apple Store because I felt too tired to go to the gym. I have stabbing pains between my shoulder blades in the middle of the night (which just mean my backal muscles are cramping) so I haven’t been sleeping very well. I kind of think that just means there are side-effects to the medication I take, but it also probably means that thinking about doing pushups tonight was making me feel like just sitting on my ass. Not sure why I wasn’t too tired to go to the Temple of Apple, but we all have our odd energy boosts, right? I remember when a friend of mine was doing chemo and too tired to even sleep but was still driving around going to Target sales. That’s the spirit.

I’m staying up late (which I shouldn’t do because of weight gain and aging reasons amongst other things) and here I am reading an article that says the mean peak age for swimmers is 21. And most athletes start to see physical declines at 26. Hell, I can’t remember being 26 any more. What a cheery thought. Chess grandmasters peak at 31.4, so that’s a little older. This is all from an article on Wired. Nice, huh?

Well, I’ve been feeling more tired lately and not quite as peppy at the gym. I think it’s just a bad attitude that developed after my birthday which was months ago but the feeling hasn’t abated. Or it’s just because I am old. Eh, screw em. All I have to do is be able to yell at the kids to get off my small and patchy lawn, right?

I hate learning about my limitations at the gym. Today I found out that trying to broad jump as far as I could is not something to be done in those flat minimalist shoes that are so popular with the trendy runners. Three jumps in and I thought I’d jarred my ankle out of joint. My ankle feels fine now, but I feel like I have a stone bruise on my left heel. There was more running in the workout and it’s a good thing we go around the building because limping around causes you to run in circles.

OK, so now when I run or broad jump, I think I’m wearing my Nike Free shoes. They weren’t free by any means but they’re a hell of a lot more padded than my torturous Merrells.

My neighbor put up his 150′ slip-n-slide again on the hill in front of our house. Lots of people out on the slide. I, on the other hand, was busy with the pressure washer, trying to make the driveway safe for those who are afraid of moss. I’m not sure how they do it, but the guys who built the pressure washer seem to have been able to engineer it so it spits pieces of moss all over the person running it and also have it just short enough so you have to bend over and hurt your back. Absolute genius.

I had to complete the task, because it was on my list. My list tends to be pretty short, but it’s still a list. Yesterday I took my monitor in to have it looked at. For $900, I figure they can honor the warranty. It has some weird burn-in-like artifacts, but I’m not sure what had burned it in. Whatever it is, they said they’d fix it but they wouldn’t validate parking any more unless I spent over $50. I figure it’s a $660 repair so I can afford the $1.50 parking.

So there’s breaking my computer and there’s breaking my computer. Somehow I got all my email redirected to the wrong place, but I did figure out how to get it all sorted out. All the spam and ads (and two or three legitimate emails) came in at 6PM. Somehow it’s all kind of working out. Funny how I really have nothing else interesting going on. Going to work, going to the gym, sitting at my computer, wishing I had more free time to fill with nonsense.

Huh, maybe this is why I was silent for a month. Nothing left to say so late in the evening. If I could only remember what I was thinking earlier in the day. It was most likely unprintable or cheeseburgers.

Every year the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference starts out with a keynote speech and people line up for hours for the 10AM event. It’s the only event that’s not under NDA and has press in attendance as well. Every year I take a picture of the media wall for some dumb reason and this year wasn’t any different.

This year WWDC sold out in less than a day and so I figured lining up at 7AM (a sketchy prospect at best) would be too late. I woke up at 4AM because of jet lag from being in Cambridge for the reunion and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I ended up in line at 5AM. The people ahead of me in line were from the art and IT departments of the Watchtower so I was on my best behavior and they were quite friendly as well. So my week had lots of weird sleep deprivation keeping me going, but I was able to hang out with Megan and Nadeem a couple of times. They took me out to get the best hamburger ever, even better than my old favorite at Laurelhurst Market, at Citizen’s Band on 8th and Folsom. Or 9th and Folsom. I always get it wrong. (It’s 8th and Folsom.)

I even made it to Nelsoen’s birthday gathering and hung out in the hotel bar a few nights, talking to all sorts of random people. It was great fun. The only disappointment was that I didn’t know the band playing at the bash. I’d never heard of Michael Franti and Spearhead, but they were fun. They just didn’t have the name recognition, for me, of the previous bands: Ozomatli, Bare Naked Ladies, Cake, or OK Go.

They did have Buzz Aldrin as the final speaker on Friday. I ended up going to a barbecue on Friday night with a bunch of small developers and flew out of San Jose on Saturday. Once again, I almost missed my flight because I was eating. I was in downtown San Jose buying namagashi for my mom and sister and I checked my flight. It was 1 1/2 hours before the flight and I should have been at the airport. But I had to make one last stop before going to the airport.

That’s right. A double-double animal style.

My computer is still being difficult and it is my own fault, but it’s working fairly well. I have the GM of Mac OS X Lion installed and most of the things I use on a day-to-day basis are working fairly well, so I can get back to my usual routine of breaking things on my own.

Here’s a bunch of pictures from my reunion. When I was training for the marathon, I remember there were three goals to have. A realistic goal, a stretch goal, and one that you’re sure to meet so you aren’t disappointed. I remember those were beat Oprah (4:30), 3:30, and have a good time. For my reunion, I only had a couple of goals of having fun and eating a lobster roll. I hit both those within my first 24 hours. My first night, I had dinner with guys I hadn’t seen for twenty-five years. I figured they still wouldn’t be talking to me, but the stress of senior year at MIT was far in the past and we all got along as well as we did in earlier years.

From the left, that’s Ron Duncan, Dr. Mike Malaska, me, and Dr. Juan Alvarez. Ron works at Synopsys, and Mike and Juan are pharmaceutical researchers. Mike was the guy who I was afraid wouldn’t talk to me but, like I said, we’re not in our senior year at MIT any more.

My other goal was easily met because Legal Seafood is next to the Marriott where I was staying.

Reunion weekend is the same as graduation, and I stopped to watch the parade of graduates come from Kresge Oval on the way to Killian Court.

Kresge Oval was also where we had a barbecue on Friday night, which reminded us all about MIT food. It was expensive ($38?) and awful. But it did give a chance to hang out with even more friends.

There’s Mike, me, Banleng James Toh, Ron, and Henry Woo. Henry’s the only one from the MIT Class of 1986 I’ve seen in the intervening 25 years.

Saturday night was our class banquet which coincided with MIT’s 150th. I didn’t take all that many pictures, but I do have prof that I saw Bobby Satcher, who is now Dr. Robert Satcher, M.D., Ph.D., Astronaut. You can see the MIT 150 on the Hancock Building, or whatever it’s called now.

That’s Mike, Henry Dr. Satcher, me, Randall Nelson, and Ron.

Sunday I left pretty early to make it to Apple’s WWDC in San Francisco. I did have a chance to meet the guys at a café, including Dr. Paul Dimilla before I got in a taxi for the airport.

That’s Henry, James, Paul, and Mike.

That’s all the MIT pictures I have so far, and I think 25 years was too long to wait to see those guys.

In keeping with the new “screw with my computer until too late” theme (same as the old theme) I decided to upgrade my Quicken to something that actually runs on a Mac made in this decade. That is, from Quicken 2007 to Quicken Essentials. What a pain in the tuckus that was. And now it’s tomorrow and I need to get some sleep.

Yes there are pictures. I’m going to do something about them soon.