Ryan Thomas Goodenough

Adam and Suj stopped by Albany on their way to Maine today. I grabbed us some subs from Fiorello’s (great bakery) and met them in Washington park for a picnic/lunch (it was a very, very short “picnic,” but a nice visit nonetheless). They have finally moved out of Rochester and are on the way to Maine to celebrate Adam’s birthday, finish up his dissertation, and get back on the road to look for jobs out West. Should be quite the fun trip.

They are also bringing their cats, Dora and Titus, home to Maine so that my parents can take care of them while they are looking for jobs. Apparently, Titus acts scared in the car just as much as he does when he’s home. So scared, in fact, that Dora actually has to sit on him to keep him calm. Don’t believe me? Look at the pictures. Pretty amusing huh?

If this really was a car battle, I generally have to give the win to the party that ends up on top. Quite literally, actually.

Ah, refreshingly good. Best Days by Graham Colton isn’t going to shatter anyone’s universe or make them have a new found respect for the indie folk rock pop sound, but that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a great song. Acoustic guitar + orchestral backing + good lead vocals = a good song for me. I’m sad that the chorus wasn’t used more, since it would have made a nice connection between Colton and the orchestra. The lyrics aren’t anything new or really that interesing, probably most similar to Green Day’s “Time of Your Life.” The refrain is rather addictive.

Overall, a very pleasant and enjoyable song.

B

Food for thought based on my class yesterday with a speaker from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA):

If we were take all the oil that we could possible get from ANWR and add it immediately to our oil supply, it would only supplement the supply by 490 days. 490 days vs. irreversible environmental loss and destruction. Tough choice huh?*

*No.

Straight from The Unofficial Apple Weblog:

To use it, open Safari and point your browser to jailbreakme.com (which we aren’t linking to so folks won’t install this by accident, but you are prompted to confirm). Once there, read the directions, scroll to the bottom, and tap Install AppSnapp. If Safari disappears and you return to the main Home screen, you’re good. Just wait a minute more for your unit to restart–don’t touch anything until you see the slide to unlock screen. If Safari hangs, just quit out (press and hold Home for 4-8 seconds) and try again.

Once you get to slide-to-unlock, go ahead and unlock your iPhone or iPod touch. You’ll return to your home screen which will contain a new Installer.app icon. If you’ll want to ssh into your unit, install the BSD subsystem, Community Sources, and then install Open SSH–you may need to upgrade Installer.app (thanks Ste). With Open SSH and sshfs (part of Mac Fuse), you can open Finder windows that offer direct drag and drop access to your phone or touch.

Isn’t that easy? Just follow those directions and you’ll have Installer.app. A new app I discovered today: Sketches. It’s a complete drawing program that even functions like an etch-a-sketch when you want to erase something. Very useful program indeed!

Yes, I am a Red Sox fan by default. Growing up in Maine (or anywhere in New England for that matter), you don’t have much of a choice. Boston is our big city (no, believe it or not, Bangor does not count).

But now that the Red Sox are the 2007 World Champions, Red Sox fans are going to be completely obnoxious. They’re going to be walking around with their Sox caps backwards, wearing their ‘07 World Series t-shirts. They’re going to be talking their team up every chance that they get. Talking about how “clutch” Papelbon was or what a beast of a man Youkilis is (he is quite the Mountain Man).

Worst of all, Red Sox fans will be back up to their usual whining, complaining, and moaning about their team in a couple months. Hopefully the Pats will keep their spirits up until then (no, I don’t think Boston College will be at the top of the college football world much longer). Then again, if Red Sox fans weren’t complaining, they wouldn’t really be “Red Sox fans.”

Maybe we should send all of these fans to Mars, where they can annoy the Martians with their “‘07 World Series Champs”-chatter and, after a couple weeks have passed, have something to really complain about–Martian drivers.

I couldn’t hold it in: GO SOX! WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS! I’m such a hypocrite…

If you just can’t wait until Apple releases its SDK, then give iJailbreak a try. Follow the directions, making sure to keep iTunes closed and keep your iPhone connected the whole time (even when it asks you to go to the website to make Safari crash). This will install installer.app right to your iPhone. With installer.app, you can go ahead and add any of the currently available 3rd party applications including, but not limited to, a full dictionary (wedict), an NES emulator (NES), the Zork games (iphoneFrotz), and even Labyrinth (you know, the wooden game with the marble and the holes? Give this one a try). Have fun and make sure that you are upgraded to 1.1.1 first.

Emily and I finally did the apple thing this weekend. After calling around to various places in Altamont (all of which had ended their “u pick” season), we found that Bowman Orchards was still in that business. So, we headed over there Sunday afternoon and spent an hour or so picking apples (as you can see from the bag) and grabbed some other stuff (fudge, cider, and other unhealthy goodness). It was quite enjoyable–we’ll be baking later!

Over the next week (or whenever I get my hands on Leopard), I will be running Windows Vista Business Edition so that I can compare it with my copy of Leopard. The nice thing is that by using Apple’s Boot Camp, I can actually run them both on my iMac. When I’ve had a chance to use Leopard for a while, I’ll try to post a small comparison between the two.

Scary Kids Scaring Kids? That’s sort of a great name…sort of.

Alright, as predicted, this is sort of a hard rock/punk song, reminiscent of System of a Down’s Toxicity. The verses are definitely hard rock, but the refrain is rather plain and pleasant. At first, I really liked the switch from the verse to the refrain, but then the refrain tended to dominate most of the rest of the song. The harder rock sound finally comes back in the last 45 seconds, thankfully (the refrain is a bit much in large doses). The gradually disappearing instrumental background along with a long fade make for a nice ending, although not necessarily that memorable.

C+

I missed one piece of furniture in my photos last week: the new entertainment stand in the living room:

Is it weird to anyone else when cameras take photos of things like IR sensors (the bar across the top of the TV is an IR sensor) and you can actually see a color? Granted, it’s not the right color and it’s really a flaw of the camera, but it’s still pretty weird for it to be reaffirmed that our eyes just don’t see everything.