my nephew

, originally uploaded by beths96.

"Pittsburgh" Pirate Lemur

"Pittsburgh" Pirate Lemur, originally uploaded by PirateLemur.

a good friend of mine has a a lemur with a patch over one eye; his name is "pirate lemur" and he's been all around the world.

this shot is from his recent trip back to his spiritual motherland, PNC Park, home of the pittsburgh pirates ... he's slated to start tonight against the angels.

WWDC for IT nerds

Here's a nice article about what to expect at WWDC if you're a programmer, found at the über-awesome Darling Furball site. 

Some people don't know it, but Apple does kind of shoehorn an IT track into the conference, and it has its own list of things for which one should be prepared.

This year I attended with some old colleagues from a previous, corporate IT life, and we spent the time staring at all the hot women, eating all the delicious food and basking in Steve Jobs' warm glowing warming glow ... and after we all sobered up, we came up with our own list.

So, in a transparent attempt to goose my page views, here's my "12 Things Every IT Nerd Should Do @ WWDC 2008."

Skip anything that says "State of the Union." Monday will be dedicated to lesser keynotes, all involving the state of some sort of technology. The IT one invariably is a snoozefest, punctuated by semi-veiled cheerleading and a few vendor commercials. You can skip and not miss a thing.

Attend anything that says "Feedback Forum." Nothing will let you learn what's really going on with your compatriots quite like feedback forums. And bring good stuff, not just complaints -- Apple's engineers are human, after all (though coated with a thin layer of coolness that only an Apple badge brings).

Go to the labs. You can learn quite a lot here, especially if you come armed with a specific list of questions/issues. It's like one-on-one coaching from Apple.

Avoid the wraps. In fact, avoid the food altogether ... this year they plied us with a hot lunch on Monday (after the Stevenote) that was actually tasty -- a cruel trick, for the rest of the week we were served old carpet, twigs and berries and road gravel. Oh, and they're cheaping out on the snacks, too -- what used to be Jamba Juice and tons of candy bars now is fruit and cookies. It's welcome, but I went to Walgreens and stocked up on things I liked instead.

Comfortable shoes are a must. You'll be standing in line. A lot. Be ready for that. Woe be unto you who wear dress shoes or high heels. (What you do in your free time is totally cool with me, though.)

Newbie? Prepare to be amazed. Oh, the pointless minutia that will fill your mind (and notes) -- it comes at you so fast, and it's all so new, that your head will be swimming by Tuesday afternoon. This is how professionals do it! 

Seasoned veteran? Prepare to be skeptical. Fuck this, you'll mutter to yourself after the fourth annual "This time, our AD plugin really works!" session. And that cool new feature in (insert OS name) Server? It only works with Open Directory because "we write it for what we use internally" ... Fuck this running, you'll mutter. Over and over.

Name badge says "Apple?" Go bug that person. This is about the only way you'll ever get close to Apple software and hardware engineers, and they're attending precisely so that you can talk to them, directly, about your wishes and dreams. Take advantage, because you're not likely to get this kind of access for 12 months.

Swag +eBay = Profit! Not saying it's ethical, but I am saying it's profitable.

Stay in school, don't do drugs, call your mother. One of my former colleagues suggested these, and I'm sure he lives by most of them. Well, some of them. Maybe.

WWDC wrapup

, originally uploaded by pr9000.

So this was the annual week where Mac nerds return to our virtual Capistrano -- Moscone West in San Francisco, for the annual World Wide Developers Conference. That's the official name, though the pedant in me wants to say "Developers'" -- shouldn't it be possessive? I've been wrong about these things before.

The week was dedicated to the official unveiling of Leopard, the next version of the operating system; unofficially, everyone and their brother wanted to talk about the iPhone. Rumors were swirling (why do rumors always "swirl?") about a SDK for making iPhone apps, or all of us getting a free iPhone under our seats, or even the presence of real, live women we'd like to see naked among the ponytailed and sandaled attendees.

Technologically, WWDC didn't disappoint, though I am under orders not to talk about anything I learned outside of the aforementioned hot developers.

So instead, I'll talk about seagulls.

, originally uploaded by pr9000.

A client and I spent two evenings down by Municipal Pier, taking pictures of all sorts of stuff. I focused on seagulls, because they're right there and we don't have any in Minneapolis. I got some nice shots, I think, and didn't get pooped on once.

landing, originally uploaded by pr9000.

, originally uploaded by pr9000.

WWDC usually has a "bash" on Thursday nights; in the past, we'd all be shepherded onto buses and taken to Cupertino, to wait in line at the campus store for two hours and freeze our asses off once the sun when down over the mountains. This year, they let us go to Yerba Buena gardens; the tradeoff was better food but shitty beer selections, compared to last year anyway. But beer is not the point of the bash, or at least it isn't anymore. Some of the graybeards still call it the "beer bash" and give past events an almost mythic quality, but I'm sure it was the socially awkward nerds interacting with socially awkward engineers made cool by the Apple imprimatur.

the official photographers of WWDC™, originally uploaded by pr9000.

Ozomatli was the band, and they kicked ass for a solid hour. Lots of great music -- a good party band.

, originally uploaded by pr9000.

, originally uploaded by pr9000.

On the whole, it was a fun, fun time. But I'm dragging ass and I'm about as saturated with Apple propaganda as I've ever been.

presidents: let me smack them, too.

What I came in time to believe is that the great shortcoming of this White House, the great thing it is missing, is simple wisdom. Just wisdom--a sense that they did not invent history, that this moment is not all there is, that man has lived a long time and there are things that are true of him, that maturity is not the same thing as cowardice, that personal loyalty is not a good enough reason to put anyone in charge of anything, that the way it works in politics is a friend becomes a loyalist becomes a hack, and actually at this point in history we don't need hacks.