[ music | Michael Buble - Let It Snow ]

Merry Christmas, folks. Another year is nearly gone, and 2010 is right around the corner.  This year started like crap, got worse, and the past 4 months has shown me instead that life is still awesome, and I’m happier now than I may ever have been. I hope if nothing else, the new year is something to make all your lives brighter. Merry Christmas to everyone.

[ music | Rilo Kiley - So Long ]

I’ve been neglecting my blog all year. For this,my dear readers, I apologize. I shall endeavour to be a better blogger in the new year. Between a really busy real life, and Twitter, I’ve just neglected to sit down and write up much. Even my previous post is a half-assed attempt, and I dislike doing that. For my day to day crap, check out my twitter feed.

However, to help make up for it, I’ll soon be making a kick ass end of year wrap-up post covering the best and worst everything from my viewpoint. Unlike some year-end wrap-ups, this one will be at the end of the year, between Christmas and New Years. I like to wait till the year is over to recap the year.

[ music | Soundgarden - Rusty Cage ]

I see Joe Hewitt has quit iPhone development thanks to Apple’s “chickenshit approval process“. I’m easing my way into iPhone development despite my reservations about Apple’s incredibly arbitrary and selectively enforced rules, and find it incredibly telling that as time goes on more and more people are chafing under Apple’s leash. They appear to have responded to customer demand with changes like mature app categories, but reversing course on NIN’s app and the Google Voice fiasco show how incredibly schizophrenic and unfair the system really is. I don’t blame Joe at all.

Someone mentioned to me Mozilla’s Addons site, but there’s a fundamental difference between that and Apple’s App Store. You can choose to develop for Firefox without ever looking at AMO, and you can distribute your addon independently as well. With Apple, you either go through the App Store, or you restrict yourself to EULA-violating methods like Cydia and other jailbreak-only solutions. I have nothing against those solutions, but it severely restricts discoverability and freedom of both developers and users.

What I find so unbelievable is that is that, at least from my perspective, Apple’s policies seemed doomed to failure eventually, and yet they’re still trying to stand by them. I see a redux of IBM of the 1980s. The PC took off thanks to IBM’s wide open policies on clones. IBM felt if they could maintain more control over the platform, there was a lot of profit to be made, and used the genuinely advanced MCA bus to help further those business goals. The consequence in the end was the complete eclipsing of IBM in the PC market. Android may not be on the same level as the iPhone OS yet, but the market seems to have demonstrated time after time that lower cost and greater freedom wins. If Apple keeps strangling their very promising platform, they very well may wind up the next Betamax.

[ music | The Clash - Should I Stay or Go ]

I just got back from my first and most likely my last visit to Shoney’s. I ate some catfish, got sick, threw up in the bathroom, and was called a liar by the manager who threatened to call the “authorities”. All in all, a fun time!

Tom and I had some coupons for some discounts on Shoney’s meals, and decided to try it out. I had the buffet, which had several nice items such as breaded catfish. Very shortly after eating the catfish I started to feel nauseous, then shaky and sweaty, and finally I ran to the bathroom to expel my dinner. I wasn’t happy at this point. I asked to speak with a manager, who came over, and I started off by telling her the waiter was excellent, and that I wasn’t unhappy with him.

I explained what happened, and that I would appreciate it if my buffet charge would be removed from the bill as it made me quite ill. The manager said she didn’t know what happened, and so the best she would do is take half of my dinner off. I said, “Well, it’s simple what happened, I just came back from the bathroom after throwing up my dinner, and I don’t really think I should have to pay for it.” At this point, I was visibly pale, shaky, and sweating, as Tom can attest. It was pretty obvious I was ill, and her response was to look me dead in the eye and say, “I don’t know that, I don’t know that you’re ill, or that you threw up, or that anything even happened.” I incredulously replied, “So you’re calling me a liar?” She shrugged, and repeated the offer for half off the one meal. I was incensed, and said, “I refuse to pay for this.” She stood up, started to walk away and said quite loudly “I’ll call the authorities!”

Given that she obviously tried to humiliate me by telling the whole restaurant she’s calling the “authorities”, I said quite loudly, “Great, I’ll tell them you called the police because your food made me sick!” I managed to get to my feet, and Tom and I walked to the counter to pay and leave. She yelled from the kitchen to the counter, “make them pay the whole thing, no discount!” Weak, shaky, sick, and sweaty, I was now also furious. I said out loud to the restaurant as a whole, “That’s right ladies and gentlemen, the manager is calling me a liar and won’t discount the meal that made me throw up. So enjoy your meal, or she’ll call you a liar too,” and stormed out to the car, threw up again in the parking lot (I should have asked her to come see it for proof!), and we drove away. Actually, we started to drive, but before we got out of the parking lot, I had to chuck again, and had Tom stop the car.

I’ve already left a message for the corporate office on their voice mail, as it’s well past business hours. I’ll be calling tomorrow if they don’t call me first. I really hope we can solve this because while I do not want to go to small claims court over an $19 dinner, I will do so only because I was treated so incredibly poorly.

[ music | U2 - Freedom for My People ]

Communication is key to a free society, and instrumental in helping a people liberate themselves. Radio helped win World War II. Television and helped bring down the Berlin Wall, and the Iron curtain. Right now, the Internet is helping the people of Iran try to take back their country. The Iranian government is cracking down on all forms of communications media, such as TV and the Internet, but the people aren’t taking it lying down. In America, many people think of Iran as a nation that hates the US, but that’s not true. Just like in other countries, Afghanistan, Cuba, North Korea, etc., extremists seized the government and that’s all we hear. The people of Iran are people just like you and me who want to have their own peaceful lives. And right now they’re fighting an obviously slanted election.

Amazingly, Twitter is a huge part of it. I scoffed at Twitter at first, then I started to use it, and now I can see it’s merely a new method of leveraging the world wide nature of the Internet with the local nature of telephones and mobile devices. Twitter is helping the Iranian people circumvent their oppressive government’s crackdown on communications, and helping organize protests as they fight for their freedom.

If it sounds grandiose and over the top, think of it this way, “the pen is mightier than the sword.” Today’s pen is electronic. And it reaches far more people than paper ever could.

[ music | Talk Talk - Life's What you Make It ]

I was reading this article with was an interview with Big Mitch Baker and Mozilla CEO John Lilly and stumbled across this sentence, and it made me double take.

As of April 2009, Firefox claimed 22.48 percent of Web browser market, according to Net Applications. That makes it the second most popular browser world-wide, after Internet Explorer, which holds 66.1 percent. An impressive feat.

We’ve helped take IE down from over 90% of users to a hair under two thirds, and dropping. We did that, you, me, the entire Mozilla community. We took Gecko from the marginal-at-best suite to Firefox, 22.48% of Internet users, and paved the way for alternative browsers like Chrome and Safari to be able to carve out a viable existence. Ten years ago people were wondering how long Mozilla could keep plodding along before IE snuffed us out, what would happen when AOL cut the umbilical cord, and laughed at the idea of a real alternative to IE ever rising in the shadow of MS.

Impressive indeed.

APNG is a good thing. Some people think it’s not, that it’s just Mozilla carving its own course. It’s not Mozilla just being difficult, it’s that MNG missed the mark by a mile. Don’t believe me? Turns out other companies have encountered similar situations, as Raymond Chen explains why it’s ok to reimplement a subset of functions as a simple solution to a simple problem.

[ music | Garbage - You Look So Fine ]

So, I’m in the Qwest Center in Omaha, wandering around the convention hall where so many of Berkshire Hathaway companies are showing off their wares, and by a bookseller is this amazing redhead. This lady was much more receptive to being complimented. I told her she was gorgeous and asked for a photo, and she blushed, giggled, and said of course I could. Ladies, this the proper response. Be happy, and polite. Don’t assume we’re rapists. Rapists don’t ask for photos, they offer you a drink full of roofies in the back of their van [Note to self: get a van]. So I thought I’d share another pic from my trip.

And such a pretty smile...

And here’s an artsy shot of the St. Louis Gateway Arch I took as we were passing through. This small version links to a high res copy.

See? I’m not always thinking about girls.

So, Tom and I are in Iowa meeting a friend, and we were cruising around Burlington taking in the sights. We stopped at a supermarket because the lot had a great view. As I was takiing some photos, I saw THE most beautiful girl in all of Iowa, and asked her if I could take a picture. After assuring her I’m not a pervert, she said yes.

So, dear Alicia, thanks! I can’t post the pix yet as I didn’t bring my memory card reader. But I’ll be home on Wednesday or Thursday, and if you email me, I’ll be glad to email you copies. Thanks for a minute of your time.

UPDATE: So, everyone can see the comment on this post. It SEEMS that someone commented on her behalf not to post the pictures. The data in the comment seems to indicate it could be from the area around there, so I have reason to believe it might be a legit comment. As it stands the picture won’t be posted. Also, when I asked her permission to take a snapshot, I gave her my email address and website address, so if she wants to say otherwise, she can.

It could be she was a bit freaked out, which is understandable, sadly. It’s too easy to listen to TV news and think everyone you don’t know is a predator or thieving Wall Street banker. The world seems much scarier today than it really is. Things aren’t nearly as dangerous as the news and politicians would have us all think. But in the age of multiple 24 hour news networks, internet news websites, and tabloids, two things always move products, and generate ad revenue: sex and fear. Show the latest celebrities in skimpy outfits (or sometimes out of them), or tell people the latest way in which the sky is falling. There are serial killers in every parking lot, child predators under every bridge, and plenty of politicians and media moguls willing to exploit people’s fear for power and profit.

It’s a sad day when you can’t tell someone they’re pretty without scaring them. Sorry I scared you.

[ music | Depeche Mode - Wrong ]

I fell asleep in a chinese restaurant, and woke up in a tub full of ice. They stole my hair!

Like a thief in the night...