Chris’s Blog

Please stop sending $0.00 receipts to me via email for free updates to iPhone apps that I have previously installed.  Thank you.

I know I haven’t written much.  It’s been crazy.  We have the house on the market.  Supposedly, there has been one showing, but they didn’t leave a card and we haven’t heard from our agent on whether they actually opened the lockbox or not.  He says there is a ton of interest on our house, though.  I guess that’s good.

I’ve also been devoting a lot of time to shooting and, when I can’t be at the range, collecting supplies and accessories for shooting and surfing shooting forums.  I got an awesome range bag, 3 more magazines for my XD (total of 6 now–whoo hoo), and I detail stripped my Makarov and replaced the trigger, trigger bar, firing pin, and recoil spring.  I’m hoping some new, tighter fitting parts will help it be more accurate.  It’s “Ok” but all the Makarov fans on the interwebs claim these are some of the most accurate little pistols around.  I don’t expect bullseyes at 25yds, but I’d like it to group like my XD at 7-12yds (3 inches with no bench resting).

Lastly, work has been tough lately.  Yesterday, I finally released Safe Eyes 5.2.  A few months ago, AIM updated their software to use an encrypted connection.  At that point, all of our code for logging AIM chats quit working because the data is encrypted by the time we see it.  Working with some of the great people at AIM and some very different (to me) technologies and architectures, we were able to get AIM chat logging working again, but it was a long road.  I was working in an area I was not at all familiar with.  I can honestly say that this was the toughest project that I’ve worked on in my time at InternetSafety.  It is rewarding to finally release it, though.

That’s it for now.  I know I say this a lot, but I’ll try to be more regular about posting.  Of course, baby is coming in a little over a month, so it’s going to get crazy again. 

It’s official, our house is up for sale. Well, it’ll really go into MLS (2 different listing services) this week, but everything is signed and there is a lockbox on the front door and a sign in the yard.  We’ve put a lot of work into it the past couple months and our realtor was pretty confident that our house will show nicely and sell, so we’ll just have to see!

So, if you know anyone looking to move to a 3 bedroom, 2 bath with a nice, finished room in the basement and 1.3 acres (woods) in Paulding County, GA, let me know.

I like corn.  A lot.  I like the taste of corn on the cob (especially cooked on the grill), but being the neat-freak, obsessive-compulsive that I am, I hate the bits between my teeth that eating it inevitably causes.  Hence, I love this gadget that my wife brought home from her weekend trip to see her family in SC.  Her sister works for Williams-Sonoma which carries all sorts of kitchen doodads from the cheap to the crazy expensive.  ($8000 for a coffee maker?!)

She brought me home the Corn Stripper by Good Grips.  It does exactly what it’s advertised to do.  Quickly and easily strips corn off the cob.  I love this thing.  Now, I can eat grilled corn on the cob without immediately running to the bathrom to floss!  I’d gladly pay twice what Amazon wants for it.

This will be my last WWDC post as we’re leaving tomorrow morning to fly back across the country.  It’s been a great week.  The place we stayed was totally awesome, the events and sessions were (for the most part) great, and we ate too much good food.

Today, we had sessions as usual.  I learned a few really great things that I want to go back and implement right away.  Then, at the very end of the day, we sat around the Interface Design Lab and managed to catch a few minutes with one of Apple’s design experts.  Can I just say the next version of Safe Eyes is really gonna ROCK!  That may have been the best and most worthwhile 30 minutes of the entire week.  The best part was that while he was giving us some general ideas and guidance, I really put into exact words what turned out to be a really well-received concept.  Time to throw a few ideas on paper and maybe mock up a prototype using my new-found skillz with Interface Builder.  Sorry I can’t be more specific, but we have to have some surprises! 

Tonight was the WWDC Bash at Yerba Buena Gardens.  Apple brought in Barenaked Ladies to play and I actually kinda like them.  We stood around for a little while and had some of the finger foods and cookies they had, but it was like 20 degrees out and windy, so eventually we had to leave to go defrost.  Apparently, this is the weather in San Francisco–85 during the day, 45 at night.

I’m looking forward to getting home.  Hopefully, we’ll be able to come back out here for WWDC ‘09.  We’ll see…

I’m ready to go home.  Not to say I’m not learning a lot and enjoying all the Apple goodness, but I miss the girls (and jellybean) and am tired of the shower in my room.  Don’t get me wrong, the residence suite we’re in at the Ritz-Carlton Club is awesome (thanks, Forrest).  It’s more square footage than my house!  But…I got the handicap bathroom.  The shower-head hangs about kidney-height.  And the pressure stinks.  It’s one of those hand-held jobs, so I don’t have to kneel on the marble to wash my hair, but it’s just a little annoying.

The sessions have been very good overall.  There have been a few duds (mostly due to people who should probably not be presenting), but I’ve learned a lot so far.  I just hope my poor brain can absorb it all.  I’ve learned a lot about Internationalization/Localization, the voodoo magic of Interface Builder, and a bunch of Xcode tips, tricks and shortcuts to make using that IDE a little more natural and me more productive.  We’ve fixed a few small things we were struggling with before while we’ve been here and we’ve talked to the Apple engineers about some other stuff.  It was very cool to just sit and talk with some of these guys that do “Apple” all day, every day.

Last night, we went to the Apple Design Awards presentation.  They showcased several really slick-looking Mac apps and handed out the coveted trophies (and apparently 30″ Cinema displays, MacBook Pros, and WWDC tickets for next year) to the winners.  Then, it was “Stump the Experts” where Apple Engineers who have been here longer than dirt (seriously, they had the the project engineer for Hypercard 1.0 and at least one guy that worked on some part of the IIgs project there) took the stage, answered obscure questions from the audience, and asked the audience obscure questions.  I randomly ended up with a “Stump” T-shirt which is pretty cool because apparently, they’re pretty coveted.  The MC for the night just walked around, pointed to us, and said, “go get a shirt!”

Today is the last day and there are still plenty of good sessions (this afternoon looks pretty packed).  Then, tonight, there’s a WWDC “Bash” at Yerba Buena Gardens, so hopefully that’ll be cool.  There are sessions tomorrow, but we’re flying out in the morning since it takes nearly all day to get back across the country.

Well, this will cover some of Day 1, too.  I was way too tired to post at the end of the day because after all the WWDC excitement was over for the day, I got to put in a few hours building a new release of Safe Eyes to fix a couple bugs.  I worked with a couple guys in the Mac lab Monday afternoon to get our broken build process (Xcode 3.1 had broken it) back up and running and there were a few things in Safe Eyes 3.1 that needed fixed, so I worked into the wee hours getting a build ready and passing it along to our QA guy so he could do his part.  It was a bit of a challenge since I’m here with my MacBook (not my primary build machine) and had to get everything set up just right for building.

Then, yesterday, the day was jam-packed with sessions.  There were some good ones (all of which are covered under NDA) and I learned an exciting new thing about the debugger in Xcode that alone might have made the whole day worthwhile.

We finished it off with a quick dinner at California Pizza Kitchen (awesome) and a meet ‘n’ greet with a few fellow programmers.  We just sat around for a couple hours and chatted about our respective companies, positions, and history.  It was good to get to know them.  One of them was one of the guys invited down by Apple to have a first crack at the iPhone SDK.  He and a co-worker churned out a pretty good sample/proof-of-concept app in 2 weeks with no Interface Builder, no previous coding experience with Objective-C and on a very beta/alpha SDK.  Respect that!

Well, it’s off to more sessions.  I’m drinking way too much coffee this week, but I’m also doing pretty good on drinking my water, so hopefully I can balance it out.

Well, we resigned ourself to overflow last night when we heard 5-6am as a suggested time to line up to get into the actual keynote room.  We took our time this morning getting checked out of the hotel down on Fisherman’s Wharf and getting up here to Moscone West.

We just missed getting into the real keynote by about 200 people (maybe 20-30 minutes).  Too bad.  I just didn’t even think there was a possibility (I wasn’t going to stand in line for 4+ hours).  I guess next time we know.  8am would’ve been early enough.

At least we’ll get to see it.  They have huge hi-def screens in the overflow room.  Right now, we’re sitting in the “Lab” area (gigantic room) waiting for them to take us up to overflow.  Getting excited…

While that is essentially accurate, what people who are fond of using that phrase often leave out is the fact that if you haven’t ridden a bike in 9+ years, you may not actually forget how, but you will look really dumb for the first 10-15 minutes while you get used to it again.

Here I am in San Francisco for Apple’s WorldWide Developer Conference.  I’m excited because I’m such an Apple fanboy (and, as I recently realized to my chagrin, a self-aware Apple elitist, but that’s a story for a different post).  We (Aaron and I) got here early enough to rent some bikes and bike across the Golden Gate Bridge.  Very cool.  Although, the trip TO the bridge was actually the hard part!  Mostly uphill.  There were a few times I was in gear 1 for a while.  Oh, and remember that 9+ years since I’ve been on a bike?  Yeah, I had to hop right on for the first time in a LONG time and ride off through a pretty busy area of San Francisco to get to the bridge.  It was a blast, though.  I was actually cold up on the bridge.  The wind was whipping and it’s probably in the upper 60’s here.

I’ll try to post a few pictures later after I pull them off the camera.  We’re staying at the Marriott at Fisherman’s Wharf tonight and moving to the Ritz-Carlton Club tomorrow (it wasn’t available tonight).  Since we’re already down on the water, maybe Aaron will be up for some good seafood tonight.  I know my legs certainly earned it!

Oh, and unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to get in to the actual keynote (a.k.a. The Stevenote).  This is the first year WWDC is sold out and the people at the registration/badge pickup suggested getting there at 5am to stand in line for the keynote.  It doesn’t start until 10am.  I’m not too keen on sitting in line for 5+ hours–it’s just not worth that to me, so we’ll probably just catch it in one of the overflow areas on TV.

I’ve been busy.  I haven’t been playing my Xbox, I haven’t been playing my guitar (much), and I haven’t been posting to the blog.  I apologize.

First, I bought another gun.  Not just any gun, I picked up the XD-45 Compact that I’ve been eyeing for at least 2 or 3 months.  I got a great deal (at the gun show) and we went right from there to Aaron’s property to shoot off a few rounds.  Aaron bought a 9mm XD and another friend bought a Sig P226 .40S&W.  The Sig is a very nice gun.  I was set on going .45 or the deal he got might have swayed me.  I’ll post more about the XD later on, hopefully with some pictures.  Suffice it to say I LOVE IT and it shoots awesomely as evidenced by this target (standing, at about 60ft) even with the compact magazine (which still holds 10 rounds of .45 ACP)!

Secondly, this video had to be posted.  I’m not a huge Weezer fan, but this is totally and completely brilliant.