So, I finally got an iPhone. I know it’s a few years behind the time, but the 3GS and 3.0 OS finally made it seem like a complete product. Also, the 32GB model seemed like it was the first to really be big enough as a convergence device. Additionally, the App Store “ecosystem” looked like it had reached the size needed to sustain itself. So, I dumped my no-longer-on-a-contract T-mobile account over to AT&T. So far so good. It’s nice to have a reasonable Internet browser all the time. I’m an NPR addict, so having instant access to their podcasts is awesome. Weather radar in your hand is amazing. I’ve got enough space to hold an enormous number of apps, music, podcasts, pictures, movies, and TV shows to remain computerless for a good chunk of time. I’ve even managed to connect to my office VPN, but I haven’t bought an SSH app to do my normal thing with yet (I live on a terminal). I even found this blog app, so maybe I will get back to posting again.

It’s been pretty busy since my last post.  There is a lot going on.

First thing is the weather.  It has been a Dr. Jekel and Mr. Hyde thing.  We had a pretty cold streak that lasted about a week (cold enough I actually turned the heater on) followed by a heat wave.  It hit 70F-something today.  It’s December; it’s not supposed to be that hot.  I’ve turned the A/C back on.
Kitty is losing some weight.  I’ve put her on a restricted diet with Shinta gone and when she came back she said Kitty looked skinnier.  I’m not starving her by any means, but we’ve cut back from giving her food at every meow to something much more structured and regulated.  When she gets down to “healthy” we’ll increase the flow a bit.  I bought a bag of the “light” food too, so hopefully we can up the volume enough that she doesn’t feel as hungry.  We’ll see how it turns out.

I’ve been out to the airport 3 weekends in a row now.  It’s kinda nice just sitting there watching the planes and listening to the traffic on the scanner.  I’m gonna be real used to radio traffic again when I start back flying.  Heck I might even get to know “the guys” fairly well by then too.  It’s cool to have such an active little airport so close to home.

With Shinta gone, I had to occupy my time more than normal.  I decided to go ahead and try listening to a podcast I’d seen postings about, but just never gotten around to listening to.  It’s BSD Talk (http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/). Somehow, I managed to listen to ALL of them.  Yes, an entire year’s worth of podcasts in a little over a week.  I’m caught up and loving it.  Will does a really great job covering the BSD’s and related things.  I find myself checking for more postings daily now.

The TV show season is winding up.  We just watched the Survivor ending tonight.  It’s cool that Yul won, but really any of the final 4 was fine with me.  I’m a little disappointed in the Amazing Race ending.  I really didn’t want any of the top 3 teams to win.  I’d have liked the Alabama team to win from the 3 that got to the top, but I really wished Kentucky or the Cho brothers had made it.  I think the Cho brothers had more of a chance, but they shouldn’t have played so stupidly.  It’s one thing to help the other teams in the “six pack”, but to constantly draw themselves down in order to help the others was just dumb (in my opinion).  Oh well, it could have just been how the producers edited things.  I’m looking forward to the Amazing Race All Stars coming next year.  I’m starting to wonder when Stargate is going to pick up again.

I took a couple of work buddies shooting.  Introduced them to “the dark side”.  It’ll be interesting to see if they want to go again.  I think they enjoyed it.  It’s hard not to enjoy blasting 5.56 down range.  No recoil, lots of noise, and an evil looking toy.

I finally added a slide show to my photo gallery.  It’s certainly not the most full featured slide show.  It’s not pretty, very intuitive, or even that elegant, but it functions without javascript.  That’s a big deal to me right now.  Maybe when I code some sort of AJAX solution, but not right now.  Right now I want it all done in a way that supports a wide set of browsers without the need for javascript.  I’m about ready to write the captions parser, but I may wait and redo the entire back end first to make it a bit more of a media asset manager with web browser accessibility, than just a dedicated photo gallery.  We’ll see.

Work seems to be kind of winding up for the year.  Looks like there are a lot of people disappearing for vacations and our last release of the year out the door.  Time to start working on some infrastructure changes for next year.

Well, in moving to our new offices at work I’ve got a very nice cube that I wanted to decorate.  It’s prompted me to do something I’ve been meaning to do for about four years (and that’s no exaggeration).  I wanted to do a really good panoramic composition and get it made as a large print.  Well, I’ve finally done it.  I looked at some large resolution work I’d done before and it turns out that they alignment was pretty bad.  I needed some software to do a better job.  I’ve previously posted about some software I found and while it’s cool, it was more of a proof of concept.  I’ve dug around more and found AutoPano Pro (based on Autostitch).  After spending a few hours with the trial I thought it was worth it and bought it.  I then proceeded to really work on getting some print worthy panoramas assembled.  After several done I decided on this composition to be my first try for printing over at Kinkos:

The print turned out to be much more expensive that I had thought it would be, but at 71 inches by 11 inches it isn’t exactly small.  It has me wondering if I actually want to put pin holes in it to get it put up.  We’ll see.

I haven’t posted in quite a while and a lot has happened. I don’t know where to start and I’m sure I’ll forget something, so here goes:

We’ve continued our restaurant tasting. Since the last update we’ve been to Erling Jensen’s, Ruby Tuesday’s, Lulu Grille, and Bhan Thai (twice). We went to Eriling Jensen’s in celebration of my birthday and getting a job. The full-fledged review is where to find the detail (not written yet), but it’s quite probably one of the best restaurants in Memphis. Bhan Thai has the best Thai food we’ve had in Memphis (Chao Praya being a close second). Ruby Tuesday’s has buffalo burgers. I’ve been missing my buffalo fix and I’m finally finding some here. Incidentally, I found out about Erling Jensen’s while looking for buffalo meat here. We went to Lulu Grille today for lunch (more buffalo burgers). And since we’re on the topic of food, I should mention that the little cafeteria at work has an excellent tasting Italian sub sandwich for CHEAP.

Speaking of work, I’ve completed my first three weeks. My luck seems to be holding up not only in finding a job so quickly, but also finding a good one. I really enjoy it there. The people are friendly, and there doesn’t seem to be the pervasive flow of people jumping ship you find in some companies. To me, that’s a good sign, and I’m excited to see how this goes. That reminds me to complain about taxes. My god I hate taxes. I was looking at my paystub and realizing that I’ve now paid more in taxes from this new job than I use to even get paid over the same period of time. And we don’t have state income taxes, that’s all federal.
Also, I don’t think this has happened since my last post, but I seem to have neglected it. I finally got to go shooting again. We went to RangeUSA for their Carbine night with the Krinkov. Those frangible rounds they require weren’t 100% in feeding, but they were also so light that accuracy is probably pretty bad out my 1/7″ barrel. At the cost ($0.35/rd) I’m sure I’ll probably go again out of necessity, but it won’t be too often. I’ve got some more Makarov ammo coming in, though. The drought on 9x18mm seems to have been helped a bit. I’m gonna need it for the HCP (aka CCW in most places) class coming up.

No new movies yet. Kind of surprising, considering how many I usually see. I rented Clerks and Pirates of the Carribean so that we’ll see them before their sequels. Miami Vice is out this weekend, so maybe that one. Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis have started up again (and I completely forgot). We spent last night catching up. Gonna be good new seasons.

Memphis has had it’s 100th murder of the year. Actually, by now it’s probably beyond that, but last week I saw it on the news. Washington DC is complaining about their 18 or so murders, but they don’t have a clue. Did I mention the HCP class? Also, pretty freaky, some dude went on a stabbing spree at a grocery store. He was stopped by a dude with a pistol (not a shot fired). The news mostly skipped that little fact. That HCP is sounding even better. Also, in unrelated news, Todd Bailey (Special Weapons) posted pics of his upcoming MWS that he’s been working on for a couple years. I like it. I want it. We’ll see how long it takes for it to really be available. The SP-10 .40 caliber he said would be ready “in two weeks” (4 months ago) aren’t ready yet. Maybe I’ll be able to afford them when they come around, I just need to find an FFL I like.

I got a job!  One month and three weeks after graduation I got my first post-degree job.  We’ll see how it goes in the coming weeks.