Redundancy

In the world of social networking on the internet, there seems to be a fair amount of duplication.

I was amused to see that a Twitter competitor was bought up by Google.

And iLike seems like a weaker version of Last-FM or Pandora. (Though I have to say that Pandora is an easier way to discover new music that is similar to other stuff I like.)

Competition is a good thing, but the weaker guys will eventually die off. (That's not always true. Microsoft still makes the Zune, for some reason.)

Traffic sources

I got a spike in viewership on Thursday June 26th: 287 views. I tracked it down to macsurfer.com. Their spiders found my story "Why Apple, part 3".

Kudos to those little robot spiders!

Environmental before it was hip

We used to own a Geo Metro (made by Suzuki). 3 cylinders, 999cc. Great fuel economy, not so fast.

I loved that car. We ultimately had to sell it because it didn't have 3 seatbelts in the back. (We got a third kid in 2001.) Why couldn't we just have installed a third seatbelt? I think a non-factory installation wouldn't have been very safe. Plus, if I'm remembering right, it had no air conditioning.

We sold it to a friends, Matt and Leslie. They got it for their daughter to learn on. Apparently it served them well, for three or four more years.

A buddy told me that they're now going for good prices on eBay. Shoulda kept the thing. Sigh.

A different world

Go here.

Claire is a friend, living in Nairobi. She describes just how different lives there can be. We experienced exactly what she is talking about. It's a great post.

Why Apple, part 3

Turn your laptop upside-down. It will reveal something about the philosophy of the manufacturer. My wife's Toshiba is at the top. My Mac is at the bottom.

This simpleness extends to much more than just the external design. The Mac software interface exhibits that same simplicity compared to the big other guy.

(Whenever I do these kinds of posts, I am too lazy to look up how many times I touched on the topic before; thus the title.)

Somebody's got money

We keep hearing about how the economy is in recession (or on its way there). That's not the case for some folks. Ferrari of Denver is expanding.

Bear in mind that a new Ferrari costs about $200,000. And it's not a fuel miser. The waiting list (if you want a new one) is about five years.

I'm not knocking Ferrari of Denver. They have a very clean showroom and some great deals, if you're in that bracket and want a used luxury performance automobile.

As I was taking the photos, the site construction manager ran up to me to basically chase me off. He escorted me to Bill, the kind gentleman that runs the place. Bill was very gentle, knowledgable and courteous. I learned a lot in the time we spent chatting.

Take me out to the ball game

Last week, Jay (shown) and I joined my father-in-law and sister-in-law for a Rockies game. (Our team even won!)

We truly enjoyed the experience, because we don't get to go very often. If we were season ticket holders, the thrill might be lessened.

It was a perfect evening. We brought along jackets, but we didn't need them. In my childhood, seeing the Washington Senators or the Boston Redsox meant being surrounded by a cloud of tobacco smoke and old men (who were probably were younger than I am now) swearing at the refs. Both were absent from our evening, thankfully. Tobacco smoke is banished to outer regions beyond where most fans venture. The old men around me were quite mellow.

Summer solstice and weird fertility

Lest you think I'm launching into some sermon on a strange seasonal cult, bear with me...

Saturday the 21st was the longest day of the year. When we lived in England, it was a big event for us. Since our English home was so much further north than Colorado is, the longest day was really long. (And the shortest day was really short.) Inevitably, though, it was a cloudy evening. When I got the video camera out to mark the event, dusk wasn't as impressive as it could have been.

So back to this life - summer has been fun. We've enjoyed sunny days and cookouts and our kids being able to play outside till much later than when school's in session.

Fertility? Somehow this summer has been marked by plants producing more spore than any other summer here in my memory. (See this post, too.) The photo? It's cottonwood fluff, along a neighbor's yard edge. It has been "fluffing" so much that some days, it's almost like a snowstorm.

Get thee to a post office

If you live in the States, there's a great new series of postage stamps that was released on June 17th. The sheet is in honor of Charles & Ray Eames, designers who created some really cool chairs - and more. (If I could afford it, I'd get one used, anyhow.)

"There is no absolute truth!"

Are you absolutely sure?