Back from Maui and Oahu.

Some things went went:

Some things went not-so-well:

Alas, a full write up will have to wait – I’ve got 600 unread work related
emails that survived my filtering process. Not bad – about 100 per day, I
expected more. Here’s a short recap:

Great:

1. Congrats to Wendy and Steve – fantastic wedding.
2. Snorkeling with contacts for the first time at 
   
   Hanauma Bay. Lots o’ fish.
3. Met up with a dolphin.
4. Shook hands with Sam Choy.
5. Got engaged.

Not so great:

1. My
   Panasonic Lumix FX9 camera was stolen from the beach. (Irony: I’ve never
   been the victim of crime in Manhattan, Baltimore, or SF – but instead Maui.
   This was my negligence though.)
2. My Audiovox 5600 was stolen. And worse, Cingular asked me for $14.95 to
   get a new SIM card via priority mail. Thanks for helping me out guys.
3. I left behind my
   Etymotic 6i earphones on my flight back to mainland. My calls to AA’s
   Lost and Found at LAX have gone unreturned so far.

4. Coming back home after staying at the
   Sheraton Moana Surfrider.

5. Not having enough time to see all of Oahu. I guess I’ll have
   to go back!

Are you trying to call me? My phone got stolen (my digital camera too) while I was at the beach in Maui.

Leave a voicemail – I’ll get to it.

New Yorkers are polite? Yes, says mag – Yahoo! News

New Yorkers are a polite bunch.
ADVERTISEMENT

No, really, they are. So says Reader’s Digest.

The magazine sent reporters “undercover” to 36 cities, in 35 countries, to measure courtesy. New York was the only American city on the list.

In a city with a reputation for being in-your-face, New Yorkers seem to be expressing themselves with a new one-finger salute: a raised pinkie. In fact, they seem to have even better manners than people in London, Toronto and Moscow.

In its admittedly unscientific survey, the magazine’s politeness-police gave three types of tests to more than 2,000 unwitting participants.

The reporters walked into buildings to see if the people in front of them would hold the door open; bought small items in stores and recorded whether the salespeople said “thank you”; and dropped a folder full of papers in busy locations to see if anyone would help pick them up.

Wow… how times have changed!

6 years ago today, I joined Microsoft.

Since then, some things have gone pretty well…

Some things have gone not so well…

Some things have gone extremely well…

But for now… back to work… this release of Toolbar is going to be damn hot.

I saw this article today…

Oil company execs: Fuel relatively cheap – Yahoo! News

Americans paying $3 per gallon at the pump have it relatively cheap when compared with prices globally, say oil and gas company executives who defend their record profits as essential to maintaining supplies.

In parts of Europe and elsewhere in the West, gasoline prices are more like $5 per gallon to $7 per gallon, said the chairman of ConocoPhillips Co., James J. Mulva.

Now, no one likes paying more for fuel. I remember back in 2004 I thought expensive was having to fill up a MB G500 for a friend at $2.60 a gallon in Palo Alto. But if you think about it, at $3.xx a gallon, it’s still cheaper than Starbucks – and Starbucks is just cocoa bean flavored water! Something that’s pretty renewable, whereas petroleum is from dead dinosaurs. And let’s just say that dinosaurs aren’t dying any faster these days.

Here’s another key comment:

“On a global basis, we’re competing for resources,”

It’s a new era indeed.

Good grief:

GetDshirts.com Dustin Diamond House Foreclosure – Mortgage Loan

I’m Dustin Diamond and you probably remember me from the hit TV show Saved By The Bell. After the show ended I decided to leave Sunny Cailfornia for the midwest. My shitty credit meant that getting a loan for a house would be tough. I began looking and finally purchsed one on a land contract. I was thrilled! Now I call Wisconsin my home.

During the past years the land around me has developed for the better and my property value went way up. Now that the house is worth a lot more they want it back. Knowing my credit is bad, getting a straight mortgage would take some time. I received a letter stating that I had 30 days to pay $250,000.00 or get out. I was not thrilled.

shahine.com/omar/ – Adobe and PDF

This reminds me of when we used the QuickTime SDK in Mac IE 5 for our “media bar” feature and we had to remove it at the last minute because Apple got pissed off at us for playing video in IE and bypassing the QuickTime player. Sheesh.

Wow… what a flash to the past. I bet there’s probably at most 20 people who remembers what he’s referring to.

One of the many “stories” of Mac IE.

I saw this piece today:

A train ride into America’s melting pot | csmonitor.com

And if you hop aboard New York’s No. 7 subway line, which runs 9.5 miles from Times Square, Manhattan, to Flushing, Queens, you’ll travel through one of America’s most richly diverse communities.

Our photographers recently rode this subway line and stopped along the way to explore the neighborhoods. Salsa music, Asian cuisine, Indian fabrics, and Muslim prayers blend in a sensory experience of taste, color, smell, and sound.

Nothing brings back my memories of living in NY like the 7 train which I would take all the time as a kid. Called the daily miracle, I never realized that it went a mere 9.5 miles – in part because it takes over 30 minutes to go from one end to another.

Check out the pics. You really do see an incredible diversity taking this train. You’ll also see people sleeping on it from the first station to the last station.

Although eventually I’d upgrade to the LIRR, the purple 7 will always have a special place in my memory.

A bonus, here is a link to pictures of what happened to the original 7 trains, and where you can find them today. Hint: they’re sleeping with the fishes.