Met up with Nancy and Bryan

We’ve reached Megacon

The Slingshot

Getting on a go kart

It’s a multilevel track!

On the way to Megacon

Stefan lives up to his nickname of Psycho.

What I’m doing right now

Yes…I am outside.

My Biggest Influencers

Damn you, Eric…this is like a blog chain letter.

There’s a list of people who I can think of that influenced me. People who have inspired me in one way or another that have stayed with me for a lot longer than I expected. It’s people I think about daily, and wonder what they think.

The biggest influence is my grandmother Martha. I can’t think of anyone in my life who has lost more than her. Over the course of her 80 years she has lost her country, parents, husband, son, and brother. But throughout all of this, she has remained optimistic, hopeful, and happy in her life with the family she has. Whenever I think I have it bad, I think of her and how she not only continues moving forward but does so without a trace of pessimism.

My parents were working parents from day one. Both of them had college taken away from them, so it was hard raising a family especially when we grew into four hungry mouths before their 10th anniversary. My father’s attitude has always been to get the job done…if you’re hurt, walk it off and get back to work. His father frequently said that he would work until the day he died, and he did. My father doesn’t think like that, but he works very hard so he can enjoy the latter part of life traveling around the world. From him, I have my work ethic…get the job done, no matter what, and above all else get it right the first time.

My mother gave me, of all things, my attitude. I’ve never fit in with typical Miami behavior. When her family came from Cuba, they moved up to Connecticut where my grandparents made sure she went to the best school in the area. All of her childhood friends were from Connecticut, some for several generations, so she took on their manner of speaking and behaving. This also gave her a worldly knowledge, and wherever she goes, she does as they do. She would speak french while in Paris, learned a little italian in Italy, and is one of the few people in this side of the pond who can keep up with the British. It’s not a matter of assimilating or being obsequious, but respecting where you are. You’re a visitor, and you should accommodate them, not force them into accommodating you. It’s because of her that I am a social chameleon, because it shows you understand the crowd you’re with.

Finally, my grandfather Efrain…not a day goes by where I don’t think of him. He died in 1986, when I was 9, and every day since has been tinged by just that little bit of emptiness. He impressed on me about doing things in the proper manner…how to pick your friends, your actions, your place, everything. Doing things in the proper manner insures two things: that you are never unsure of what you are doing, and that you are never lone in what you do. His rules for friends was simple: befriend those who are like or better than you. That you should always seek the right thing, even if it’s the hardest thing to do. From him I have my conscious, and it is always speaking in his voice.

Lastly, I need to mention my brothers and sister…not because they influence me, but because I hope I influence them. I’ve always maintained that of the four of us, I should be the worst one…that whatever success I have should pale next to theirs. I don’t do this out of my self-effacing nature, but because I want all four of us to have successes beyond our own dreams. I may not be doing exactly what I love (maybe I will someday soon), but I love the industry I’m in. I fell in love with computers and technology a long time ago and I’m right where I’ve always wanted to be. I want the same for them, and better.

In looking over my list, all of my influences come from my family. Very few days go by where I don’t feel blessed for both who and what I am. And it’s for my family that I want to be blindingly successful in life. Family is a team sport, I’ve said a couple times…when one of us succeeds, we all do.

MacWorld 2008 thoughts

Well, the internet has once again been crushed under the mass of Apple fans waiting to listen to Steve Jobs’ latest pronouncements. I think the fans should ask for their money back, frankly.

Steve started off talking about Time Capsule, an appliance to consolidate all of your Macs backups in one 500GB or 1TB box. Here’s a case of Apple being beat to the punch by Microsoft with Windows Home Server. Problem is, Windows Home Server does more…media sharing, efficient backups by scanning sectors instead of files, and data redundancy. All of this in a user-configurable box. If you need more hard drive space, just toss in a new drive. None of this is in the Time Capsule. If the Time Capsule backups are as efficient as Time Machine, you’ll need one Capsule per iMac. This is the dud of MacWorld 2008, and is probably this year’s Apple TV.

Speaking of Apple TV, now we can rent movies…something Steve dismisses in his introduction! Nice. The rental system is $3 for catalog titles, $4 for new releases, and add $1 for HD quality. HD quality is undefined…it’s probably 720p with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. Anything else would be prohibitively large. It streams quickly, and is purchasable from iTunes, the iPhone/iPod touch, and Apple TV. The Apple TV is also getting a software update called Take 2 (how appropriate) and a price drop to $229/329 for the 40/160GB models. That puts it closer to the sweet deal mark, but it’s about $30 too much. If it was an upscaling DVD player, $229 would be a steal. For the old price of $299, a blu-ray drive would make this a must purchase for anyone in the market.

We also have an update to the iPhone and iPod Touch, which is the video Gearlive leaked out a while ago. It’s exactly what they show, so it’s not really news. The real news was that Apple is adding Mail, Weather, Stocks, Maps, and Notes which catches it up to the iPhone app suite. All of this will be free for future iPod Touch owners, but current owners need to cough up $20. I smell a rebate coming.

Finally, we have the Macbook Air, and no it’s not a new pair of sneakers. It’s the world’s thinnest laptop (until the next one). You have an ultraportable with a 1.6Ghz Core 2 Duo ULV chip, 2GB RAM, 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, and 80GB drive for $1800. For only $1300 more, you can get a 64GB SSD and 1.8Ghz processor. This is horrifically overpriced, even for Apple. For $200 more I can get a bigger screen, a faster processor, and a hard drive that is both larger and faster. This should be priced closer to the Macbook because thats the target market: people who like the macbook but want something more portable. The Macbook Pro market wants a desktop replacement, and this will not suffice.

I don’t think anyone could have seriously predicted this MacWorld would top last year’s iPhone announcement, but this was a disappointment for anyone hoping Apple would continue their momentum from 2007’s launch of the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Leopard. I think Apple’s announcement saying only 20% of their customers have moved up to Leopard is telling. Leopard has a lot of technical hurdles left to overcome before it can become as rock-solid as Tiger. I think 2008 will be the same…there’s some hurdles that need to be jumped with these new products before anyone can look back fondly on MacWorld 2008.

Seeing spots

Friday marked the release of Apple’s new OS, OS X 10.5 which everyone just calls Leopard. I feel a bit left out because I don’t know a real Apple machine. As I’ve told others, my Mac reads HP on the front. I’ve got 10.4 (Tiger) running on this box and it works beautifully. In fact, I’m using it for this post right now and it has an uptime of 5+ days. That’s more than 5 days without a reboot. I installed it September 17th and it’s been rock solid. I really wish I had a real Mac, but that’s next year.

The one thing I would like is that it played nicer with my XPS laptop. For now I run XP on the laptop because Ubuntu still isn’t ready for that laptop and I still want to play games. My next computer will be whatever Macbook Pro Apple is offering next year, though, and I’ll see about handing down the XPS to one of my brothers.

Right now I’m still waiting for a new version of Leopard for the hackintoshes to hit the net. Usually some of the install DVDs out there are rock solid, but considering this computer rocks a GMA900 video card, it’ll need some massaging to get going. Here’s hoping I don’t have to wait too long.

James’ Birthday

Yes, he actually said this. And then posed for the photo.