Tattoo
I've been wanting to get a small "command sign" tattoo on my wrist for a while now, but it was never "doable" while I was working at a fairly conservative job. Now that I'm emancipated from corporate monochromism, I thought I'd take the dive and put a little ink in my skin.



Xbox 360 Elite
The latest rev of Microsoft's gaming system will be hitting shelves on April 29th. I'm thinking about picking one up, but in doing so I'd be excluding Liz from all of my gaming bliss. She's been wanting a Nintendo Wii. I'm going to have weigh the pros and cons on each purchase and then I'll probably won't buy either one.

Digg Reality
You have to be familiary with Digg to understand this video, but who isn't a fan of Digg?

Tornados
We had some really bad weather in South Texas last night. Tornados touched down in several parts of the state and wreaked havoc. I went outside around 12:35am and it was totally surreal to see wind and rain of that magnitude.

Hot Buttered Mobile
I'm a gadget whore by nature and when it comes to shiny love, I'm a sucker for a sexy mobile phone. Nokia's new N95 model is probably the hottest phone on the market. It completely blows away my Treo 700p. It features Symbian OS, built-in GPS, EDGE/HSDPA data connections, 5 MP camera, etc. It's available unlocked for American GSM service providers. I'm super tempted to open up an account with T-Mobile or Cingular so I can start juicing some of Nokia's, LG's and Samsung's unlocked phones.

"I love you, Daddy"
Sophie is speaking more than ever. She's forming complete sentences and her words are more audible. Out of everything she's said or can say, guess which one is my favorite.

O'Reilly Media
O'Reilly Media has to be one of my favorite companies. Besides publishing books on anything and everything having to do with computers and technology, they offer online courses and various conferences covering topics such as Web 2.0 and Ambient Findability. Who needs college when you have O'Reilly?

***I wrote a much larger post, but Blogger dumped all of my input while trying to upload it, so here is the condensed version***

Bowling
I went bowling last night as part of an office team builder. I realized half way through that i don't really like bowling. How do I know I like where I work, when bowling got boring we started hacking the lane computer.

Wells Fargo
Today is officially my last day of being employed by Wells Fargo. At midnight tonight at lose my pay, benefits, etc. Possibly this would have been a sad event, seeing how I was at WF for over five years, but it's not. The last interview I went on left a horrible taste in my mouth (not to be taken literally). The guy interviewing me really had no clue. He had no idea as to what type of work history and experience I was bringing to his group. He was clearly a manager more afraid of losing his job than trying to lead people. He, like most managers at WF, is looking for an automaton that will won't hurt his department metrics.

MacBook Pro
It's official! I'm in love with my MacBook Pro. Sure, I've always been fond of my PowerBooks, but I have a whole new feeling towards my new machine. I don't know if it's the blazing fast speed, the brighter screen or the built-in webcam, but I can't get enough keyboard time with it.

Seriously though, my MBook Pro has been a great machine thus far. It has made me more productive and I am amazed at just how fast the 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo processor really is. Love is a strong word, but I think it applies in this case.

MacIntel
I hate it when people refer to their Intel Macs as "MacIntels". What the hell does that mean? It's also as ignorant sounding as people who refer to their Dells as "puters" - I didn't know trailers could generate the wattage required to power up an eMachine.

Just a quick announcement that JosephPalumbo.net went live on my server last night. It's far from a completed project (i.e. none of the links works), but I've been dragging my feet for long enough. I thought by putting the site on the internet it would be more of an incentive to keep working on it.

A Unix Side Note
I decided that I would try a two week one week experiment in which I would only use my MacBook Pro in Single User Mode (hold Command + S during boot up) and work exclusively through the Terminal while in regular mode. Essentially, I'm only allowing myself to move, copy and delete files via Unix commands and open and close processes using Terminal.

Why am I subjecting myself to this denial of Aqua-goodness? 1) I want to become more proficient at the command line and 2) my mom bought me a book for Christmas two years ago from O'Reilly, "Unix for Mac OS X Tiger" that I've just starting reading.

A few more days and I'm officially emancipated from Wells Fargo.

Today Bose had a presentation at La Cantera. As part of the presentation, I got a free Bose t-shirt with a huge  (Apple) on the back. Very cool.

Since I've retired my 12" PowerBook, I decided to start putting some of my stickers on it. The only one that I have right now is Laughing Squid logo. I just bought a japanese hacker sticker to go across the top of my PBook. I think the next logical choice is to put a grateful dead sticker, since that was the first sticker to go on my old PowerBook 540c that I had in college. I'm also thinking of putting my "Mugen" emblem somewhere on the chassis, but since it is a raised sticker that supposed to go on the back of a car I'll need to think about that one.

Stickers aren't the only change I'm making to my old 12" PowerBook. I'm loading it full of open-source software in place of all of the normal applications that come with it. So instead of Safari, I'm using Fire Fox and instead of Mail.app, I'm using Thunderbird. I loaded NeoOffice in place of Office for Mac. When I get some time I'll swap out Photoshop for GIMP.

In some other news, my South Dakota/Kansas connection, "Big Jess", is making his way to back to South Texas for a visit. Can't wait to see him and his hetero life-mate, Sara(h).

It's been along week. Liz and I spent tonight watching the Planet Earth mini-series on Discovery Channel. We also caught the latest episode of Entourage. After that we watched episode 93 of Diggnation (Live in LA) and the pilot of The IT Crowd.

Liz told me about a documentary she saw on children's beauty pageants. Essentially, it broke it down as impoverished, uneducated people who live vicariously through hollow victories of their children. I might be a little too harsh in my paraphrase of the description, but Liz and I agree that, from what we know, dressing little girls up like adults and making them wear false teeth is probably not instilling them with any valuable experience for the future.

On a side note, I bought Liz the Samsung M620 "Upstage" by Sprint. I've actually been using the phone for the past couple of days because I wanted to show some of the guys at work, but I'll be handing it over tomorrow. So far it's a cool phone, but I'm not sold on the two-sided multimedia set up. I'll need to read the manual to make sure I'm not missing out on any of the functionality, because so far I see the two-sides as very limiting.

Apple is about to make me broke, again. I spent some time this morning reading the rumor sites to find out when Mac OS X Leopard might drop into the marketplace. I also read about the next rev of the MacBook Pros and possible upgrades to the iMacs. The rumor mongers also seem set that Apple will release an ultra-portable flash-based laptop some time this year.

Between upgrading my Macs to Leopard and picking up the new Revs of the iMac and the MacBook Pro, I'm going to need another job.

Alright, it's been a while since I've posted on Blogger. I've been working on josephpalumbo.net, but haven't had time to make any real headway on it. So I thought I'd throw a post onto my old pal, Blogger, just for grins.

So, as of three weeks ago or so, I got a job at the local Apple store. Things have been working out great. Apple is a tremendous company and such an enjoyable place to work. I'm hoping they can fit me in full time so I don't have to go back to work at the bank.

I bought a MacBook Pro (2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, 15.5" screen, 2GB RAM, 120GB HD) to replace my 12" PowerBook 1.5GHz. So far it's been a tremendous upgrade. The screen alone has been such a job to work with. No more mashing my F9 key to spread all of my windows out. Since out 17" PowerBook 1.6GHz has a failing LCD, Liz has inherited my old 12" PBook. I'm hoping to save up the money to buy her a black MacBook soon.

I'm right on the edge of buying a new digital camera. The Samsung NV7 OPS dropped $100 in price since the last time I looked at it and it's really, really tempting. One of the only reasons I'm not jumping on that like a free buffeet is that I was looking for a super-small, ultra portable camera that I could carry around with me everywhere. The Samsung NV7 does not quite fit in that category. It's got a non-retractable lens that would keep it out of my pocket - which might be a good thing. If only I could find a Samsung custom made case/bag for it. I'm really big on buying accessories from the original manufacturer, even though they tend to be overpriced most of the time.

Also in my Apple news section. There might be a chance for me to go to Cupertino in the not-so-distant future. I can't really go into detail about it, not because it's secretive, but I don't want to jinx myself. Having said that, it would be so friggin' cool to hang out at 1 Infinite Loop!

That's pretty much everything for right now. Be on the look out for my new personal blog: The Palumblog, hosted by Media Temple.

Talk back soon!