Techno/Marketing/Creative Gun For Hire
Every city has it’s nicknames but I’ve never seen a city with so many as Portland. The Rose City, Stumptown, P-Town, Bridgetown, Rip City, PDX. Did I miss any? I think I read that The City of Roses is now the official nickname so congratulations, at least we decided on something. My favorite is Stumptown. It is a somewhat obscure historical reference and has a good ring to it. I also love the coffee.
Coming from California to Portland this year we were really looking forward to some snow this winter. Boy did Portland ever deliver for us. Not only did we get some snow but from what I understand it never snows this early. I hope that means we may get some more as we get deeper into winter. We are so appreciating getting some actual seasons here. Summer was warm and dry, fall was fantastic with color and winter is actually wintery. I think it’s easier to enjoy summer when you’ve been through a cold and wet winter. In California it’s hard to appreciate anything because it’s warm and dry all the time. It’s monotonous. So thank you Portland for some actual winter. That was fun.
Being a diabetic I’m always on the lookout for new and promising developments in the field of diabetes research. Here is a super cool new technology from Japan where injectable glowing beads can indicate glucose levels. The technology could lead to 24/7 monitoring of glucose levels without any pin pricks to draw blood from a finger as is commonly done today. It’s a nice first step but still a little short of my ultimate dream which is for nanobots to not only do the glucose monitoring but also automatically release insulin as needed based on the glucose levels.
More politics. Sorry, I can’t help myself. It’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to…or something like that.
I really liked this article by Matt Miller in the Washington Post on American exceptionalism. I’ve always thought the whole concept was a bunch of bullshit. Not only that, it’s obnoxious and arrogant. America is awesome and everyone else sucks. If you don’t believe in that, than you suck too. Really?
Is America a great country? Absolutely. Would I rather live somewhere else? Nope. Unlike some proponents of American exceptionalism I have traveled the world some and experienced other countries that I though were really great. How can someone like Sarah Palin crow about American exceptionalism when she’s barely been out of the country? How can you know everyone else sucks so much compared to us? Just a completely uninformed opinion which is much like many of her other opinions.
I think America is awesome and so are some other places I’ve been and that’s ok. There’s plenty of awesomeness to go around. And let’s just get it on the record, America has plenty of problems too. We’re hardly the perfect country. If we close ourself off to other countries and become unwilling to believe we might have something to learn from others, that’s our loss and we will be weaker for it.
I love my country but excuse me if I don’t thump my chest and wave my flag in your face to prove it.
Donald Trump has been talking about the pressure he is getting to run for president in 2012. He is taking the typical stance of I don’t really want to do it, but gee, if you really, really want me to…
I actually think Trump would have an excellent chance to win and might even make a decent president. Here’s why.
Name Recognition
It goes without saying Trump has the biggest name recognition of any potential Republican candidate. What’s better, I would bet his positive ratings are fairly high. It’s pretty easy to accomplish when you have never held elective office and had to answer to anything. Still, name recognition is critical in elections and Trumps got it.
A True Outsider
There has been so much talk about “outsider” candidates lately, people are in love with anything that doesn’t appear to come from Washington. But the truth is, many of the Tea Party candidates are not outsiders at all. Many had previous dabblings in and around politics. Trump is truly an outsider as he has been a pure businessman his entire life and everyone knows it. Trump seems to be the least tainted with anything vaguely political. While he surely is a Republican, I don’t see any grand political agenda which frees him up from having to cow tow to any particular interest group.
A Straight Shooter
For all his bombast, ie. You’re Fired, Trump is known as a straight shooter. He’s going to tell you the way he thinks it is and he’s not afraid to fail now and then. He may decide to run for president but if he doesn’t make it, it’s not going to kill him. Some of these other candidates I get the feeling they want it too badly. Trunp’s straightforwardness would be refreshing and I think people would really respect that.
Its The Economy Stupid
If the economy has not recovered sufficiently by 2012 and the jobs are not there, it’s going to come down to who can finally fix the economy. What better man for the job than someone who has already proven himself a master of economics.
Achilles Heel
Of course the big weakness in Trump is going to be his experience outside of economic issues. Does he have enough foreign policy and non economic domestic experience to get the rest of the job done? Generally Trump is regarded as a pretty smart cookie, so he may be able to slide on this one but if he is too much a one trick pony, he may fail.
Today The Beatles finally became available to purchase on iTunes. I’m a big Beatles fan and I’m going to grouse about it because so much money was left on the table for both The Beatles and Apple.
It’s been seven years since the iTunes store opened. Seven years to get The Beatles on what is now the number one digital outlet for music. I won’t pretend to understand the why’s and wherefore’s of the situation which I’m sure are complex, but it’s still ridiculous. I will take back the too little part of my title simply because it’s The Beatles. No matter what the situation, The Beatles will always be one of the greatest bands of all time and unequalled in their influence over music. But too late, absolutely.
Here is the crux of the problem. The majority of Beatles fans already have their music and likely already have it ripped digitally to iTunes. These fans have bought the CD’s. There is no reason whatsoever for them to buy any of the music now coming out on iTunes. Young people I really wonder about. I just don’t see it. My daughter (11) certainly isn’t going to buy any Beatles. It’s not at all what she or most of her friends are into. Not even close. It’s a different world. Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Kesha rule these days. I’m not saying The Beatles won’t sell at all on iTunes, they’ll probably sell fine, but nothing close to what they could have sold if they were on a few years ago. The equation is simple. If you do not give people the music they want on their platform of choice, which is digitally now, they will get it from the Internet. It’s all out there and pretty easy to get these days.
The Beatles are on iTunes, hooray I guess. It all seams very anticlimactic. The real opportunity has been lost, gobs of money already left on the table.
I’m constantly amazed at the number of tattoos I see in and around Portland. All kinds of people, young and old, male and female, every race and creed is tattooed in Portland. I once read Portland is the most tattooed city next to San Francisco. It certainly makes for a colorful and interesting place. Forgive me for my naiveté for remember, I came from Orange County, CA, one of the most conservative parts of the country. While we are on the subject, let me also recommend a great book called Tattoo Machine by Jeff Johnson of the Sea Tramp Tattoo shop right here in Portland, OR. It’s a good read and provides real behind the scenes insights into the tattoo world and the running of a shop. Have I thought about getting a tattoo? Sure. Will I ever get one? Doubtful.
I am a coffee lover and while I try to shy away from large corporate giants like Starbucks, I have to admit, the VIA product of instant coffee is a pretty cool idea. The packaging is great and the large travel mug I got where you can store the VIA packages right in the side of the mug itself is awesome.
Up until now they have only had regular coffee or decaf. Now they have released several flavored coffees including cinnamon and vanilla. I was pretty excited to see this as I do love flavored coffee. Ah, but once again, a check of the label indicates large amounts of sugar in each one. As you know if you read this blog regularly, I am diabetic, so me and sugar don’t get along too well. I am continually frustrated at the lack of attention in the product world for diabetics. So many products, many that even promote health, are loaded with sugar. It’s no wonder diabetes is the nation’s most quickly growing disease. I still see lots of low fat labels and products around, but it’s so much more than just the fat. Sugar and carbohydrates are the real bad guys here but the anti-carb fad died out with the Atkins diet.
I wish, if possible, Starbucks would just use natural cinnamon and let me add my own sugar, regular or Splenda. That way, everybody can be happy and healthy.
I rarely do politics here, but I’m going to give you my analysis of the state of our nation as it stands politically and as we move into the presidential election year in 2012.
We are in a state of continual political overreaction. The pendulum always swings, but lately it has been swinging harder and faster than ever before. When the Republicans were swept out of office completely in 2008 their reaction was to believe their problem was they had not been conservative enough. The Tea Party was born and Republicans took a hard right turn. Now Democrats have been swept out of office just as dramatically in 2010. What will their reaction be? I am already hearing it. Progressives, liberals, whatever you want to call them; the hard left of the Democratic party has decided their problem is that they were not liberal enough. Too much compromise with the Republicans will be their diagnosis. The Democratic party is going to take a hard turn to the left going into 2012.
Where will that leave us? Going into 2012, Republicans dug in hard on the far right and not giving an inch. Democrats dug in hard and not giving an inch on the far left. When you have two opposing forces pulling that hard in opposite directions, I think we will be reaching a breaking point. As the saying goes, something’s got to give. Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity was great and well meaning but I fear it was a shout into the darkness. What are true moderate independents like myself to do when left with these choices? I’ve often lately wished for a third party, the Reasonable Party I call it. Anyone else interested?
I’ve just gone hands on with a new 11″ MacBook Air and I can report to you that it is a fantastic computer. As you may remember, I changed over my computing life completely, abandoning my MacBook Pro for an iMac desktop machine. The plan was to use a very small and cheap netbook as my primary mobile solution. For this I got a Asus EeePC and it seemed to fit the bill. What I have learned over time, however, is that the keyboard on this machine is nearly unusable. It’s too small and the key placement is too close. It’s been a flurry of mistyped characters. This netbook is also fairly slow. It’s not a top of the line netbook so I’m sure that explains it, but I didn’t want to trade price for performance at the time. Long story short, I’m very unhappy with this netbook.
When the new MacBook Air was announced, the smaller one looked just like a netbook but with a full size keyboard and a faster processor than I have now. It looked like a dream machine. It is. Downside is the price at $999. Still the least expensive laptop from Apple but more than twice as much as I spent on this EeePC. Damn the old saying, you truly get what you pay for.
The keyboard on the MacBook is the standard full size MacBook keyboard which is one of the best keyboards I have ever used. It’s superb. The trackpad, again Apple standard and wonderful. The precision of the trackpad on the netbook I’m using, pretty bad. The MacBook Air screen is great. High res and clear as a bell. At 11″ it’s just a bit bigger than this 10″ netbook but that one inch makes a big difference.
In every way possible the new MacBook Air is so much more usable than the netbook I currently have. I wish it was just a hundred or two dollars less expensive, but we’ve gone over that already. As soon as I can figure out a way to buy one without getting killed by the wife, look for me to be sporting a new MacBook Air, a true work of art.
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