Lynne, Jessica and I had breakfast on Sunday, and were talking about some situations in our lives. Lynne said that when she was in a place similar to where I am now, she was inspired by a song that was on the radio at the time. She couldn’t remember the song, but she did remember the main line she liked from it. I went and found the song, which was “The Longest Time” by Billy Joel, and I think I’m adopting it because this is perfect:

I don’t care what consequence it brings

I have been a fool for lesser things

I’m not exactly sure yet if I’m heading into the next grand phase of my life, or stepping off of a cliff, but whatever it turns out to be, I certainly have been a fool for lesser things…

My friend Ginny had her Freedom Fest tonight… a party to celebrate her divorce being final.

It started out with food, then a “pleasure party”, then a video of a guy getting a Brazilian wax job (yikes!) and then a video called Puppetry of the Penis, which features two Australian guys on stage doing dick tricks. There may have been more, but Jessica and I left during the last video.

The most interesting part was the pleasure party. I’m not exactly inexperienced when it comes to vibrators, but some of these things were *wild*!!!! They had so much going on that I can’t imagine they would actually do the job; I think they would be more distracting than anything else. Not to mention the quality of these things is usually so poor that they probably would break after two weeks… I bought a few things but no serious electronics. :)

At one point a live waxing demonstration and a male stripper were both on the agenda as well, but apparently they ended up getting dropped. Or we left too soon, hard to say.

All in all, a successful evening; Ginny seemed to be enjoying herself, and nothing too wild and crazy happened.

I almost didn’t post this because so many of you won’t understand, but for those who do…

http://chocklock.com

Ok, it looks crazy, right? You might understand a bit more if you read some of this:

http://twitter.com/chockenberry

Also, be sure to click through to all of the links on the site, and whatever you do, don’t forget to View Source! That’s actually the best part….

Today’s Panda Express (sorry, Alex :) fortune cookie says “You have the attitude of a winner”. Can I skip over the attitude part and just *be* a winner, please? Having the attitude doesn’t count for much all by itself, ya know!

Sign at the vet office on my way home from dinner:

Dachshund + Yorkie = Dorkie

A dog for geeks and nerds

I resemble that remark! But I don’t think I want a Dorkie…

Got lots going on between now and the end of the year – all good stuff:

• First weekend in October – San Francisco
• middle of October – Ellensburg, Washington (hi Hollie! :)
• First weekend in November – San Francisco again
• sometime around Christmas – NYC with Jessica

The trip to NYC is going to be awesome… we had our first planning meeting last night. I’ve always wanted to go there when the city is decorated for the holidays, and I’ll finally get to skate at Rockefeller Center! Can’t wait…

Looks like I need to come up with an early December trip just to fill in the gap in my schedule. :)

Oh yea, and I want to start having some dinner parties for local friends, too. I have a great kitchen, and a kitchen full of high-end cooking gear, and yet the only thing I’ve cooked in the last six or so months is grilled cheese sandwiches. That needs to change… otherwise this will be another thing I look back on later and say “why didn’t I take advantage of that while I had it?”.

My friend Sherri just sent this. I don’t know who wrote it, but it’s sadly hilarious:

SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

DEAR AMERICAN:

I NEED TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH A TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE.

I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA. MY COUNTRY HAS HAD CRISIS THAT HAS CAUSED THE NEED FOR LARGE TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF 800 BILLION DOLLARS US. IF YOU WOULD ASSIST ME IN THIS TRANSFER, IT WOULD BE MOST PROFITABLE TO YOU.

I AM WORKING WITH MR. PHIL GRAM, LOBBYIST FOR UBS, WHO WILL BE MY

REPLACEMENT AS MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY IN JANUARY. AS A SENATOR, YOU MAY KNOW HIM AS THE LEADER OF THE AMERICAN BANKING DEREGULATION MOVEMENT IN THE 1990S. THIS TRANSACTIN IS 100% SAFE.

THIS IS A MATTER OF GREAT URGENCY. WE NEED A BLANK CHECK. WE NEED THE FUNDS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WE CANNOT DIRECTLY TRANSFER THESE FUNDS IN THE NAMES OF OUR CLOSE FRIENDS BECAUSE WE ARE CONSTANTLY UNDER SURVEILLANCE. MY FAMILY LAWYER ADVISED ME THAT I SHOULD LOOK FOR A RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTHY PERSON WHO WILL ACT AS A NEXT OF KIN SO THE FUNDS CAN BE TRANSFERRED.

PLEASE REPLY WITH ALL OF YOUR BANK ACCOUNT, IRA AND COLLEGE FUND ACCOUNT NUMBERS AND THOSE OF YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN TO WALLSTREETBAILOUT@TREASURY.GOV SO THAT WE MAY TRANSFER YOUR COMMISSION FOR THIS TRANSACTION. AFTER I RECEIVE THAT INFORMATION, I WILL RESPOND WITH DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT SAFEGUARDS THAT WILL BE USED TO PROTECT THE FUNDS.

YOURS FAITHFULLY MINISTER OF TREASURY PAULSON

There was some consternation when the iPhone first came out and the only place you could buy apps for it was through Apple’s Application Store. Some felt that Apple would abuse the power, but most of us had faith that they would do the right thing. Now, however, it’s time to worry.

First, they threw out a few apps which clearly had questionable value, such as “I Am Rich”, which cost $999.00 and didn’t do anything but prove that the user was rich enough to afford it. Stupid idea, and although I would have preferred they allow the marketplace to sink that app to the bottom of the pond, I could understand why they pulled it. Then there was “Pull My Finger”, which made fart sounds (complete with making the phone vibrate). Even less defensible, but I could see where they would not want news articles being written that contained both the words “iPhone” and “fart”, so ok… I don’t think the world is worse off without a fart sound generator, even though I think they were wrong to reject it.

Then things got worse. They denied a couple of apps for duplicating existing functionality. This is wrong on so many levels… first, there, is nothing in the developer agreement that says you can’t do this. It’s called competition, people! And even worse, they are only doing this with apps they feel duplicate *Apple’s* functionality. They don’t care if there are 15 sudoku games, but if you want to play podcasts or display email messages, even if you do both of those things in a clearly different way than Apple’s apps do, you’re shit out of luck.

Even worse, there’s no way to get an idea pre-approved, so the only way to find out whether Apple will accept your app or not is to do *all* of the work of building it, submit it for review, and cross your fingers.

Their last smooth move was to deal with the uproar, which is growing by the day, by putting an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) notice in the rejection letters. So if your app is rejected, you’re not allowed to discuss that fact in public. WTF??

And all of this is happening coincidentally with the release of the first phone to run Android, Google’s open source mobile phone OS. Apple, please…. could you *be* any more stupid?? Do you really want developers turning their attention to Android because they are afraid to trust you anymore???

This has all been written about many times, by far bigger names in the community than mine. But there’s one thing that strikes me that I haven’t seen anyone else mention: this tactic Apple is using, of putting an NDA on the rejection letters… is it just me, or does that seem an awful lot like those National Security Letters the Bush Administration is so fond of? The ones where they send you a letter demanding some kind of information in an unlawful manner (ie no warrant, no probable cause) and you are not only obligated to give it up, but you can’t tell anyone about it. Not even a lawyer, so you are incapable of defending yourself. Of course the stakes are a lot higher in that situation but still… the tactics seem similar to me, and equally indefensible.

It all makes me sad… I love my iPhone and I want to see it and Apple succeed beyond all our wildest dreams, but this is pretty hard to support. I have a couple of app ideas that I’d love to build, but even if they are accepted and do well in the store, the ick factor is going to take away a lot of the joy. And I know quite a few people now who are abandoning their iPhone dev ambitions, at least for now, because they can’t afford to put in the time and then have Apple reject their app.

*sigh* C’mon, guys, just admit you blew it and fix this, m’kay? Preferably before you do so much damage to the brand that it never fully recovers….

Update – Gruber is questioning the part about the rejection notices being covered by NDA. I’ll update this post if he publishes any conclusions.

I bought a purple iPod Nano today. 16 GB, of course – 8 would never be enough!

I certainly didn’t need another iPod; I already have one of the previous model, plus the one in my iPhone. But purple! How could I resist? In fact, most of the colors are pretty cool; I was also very attracted by the black (which looks more like dark grey to me) and the red. But purple has been my color for a very, very long time, despite my recent flirtation with red, so I had to go with tradition on this.

I’m still loading it up with stuff so I haven’t tried to use it yet. It doesn’t appear to be much different than all the ones that came before, except for a bigger screen and curved face and back, giving it a football-shaped silhouette from the ends. It also seems to sync faster, though that could be my imagination.

It appears to share one annoying feature with my previous iPod – the screen stays on when it’s plugged in to my iMac. This can’t be good for the screen; I’ve always been taught that it will eventually damage the screen if a single image is allowed to “burn in” like that. So I have to eject it from iTunes to turn the screen off. Seems like a bad idea, especially since the previous models had a screen saver that turned off this image after a fairly short time.

I guess this just shows how much of an Apple fan I really am; whatever they come out with, I can find a reason to buy it. It’s kind of surprising that I haven’t found an excuse to buy an iPod Touch yet…

A picture of the glorious purple color, courtesy of the online Apple store:

I can’t be sure without going through old email I’d rather not read again, but I think today is the one year anniversary of Mike and I deciding to separate, which of course lead directly to where we both are today.

It’s always sad when a relationship falls apart, but I think we are both way better off now than we were a year ago, and for years before that. So I ignore the sad parts and focus on the good stuff, of which there is a lot. Friends, fun, and the freedom to do almost anything. Who could argue with that??

I know it’s an 80s cliché, but it’s also true -the future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades…