I have a new favorite beer, or at least in the top 5.
If I had to choose a favorite beer in the past it would be either Beck’s or Guinness. Recently, I wanted to try some Red Hook ESB but I want to buy a single bottle. Safeway only carried six packs. So I finally went to Bevmo. After extensive looking around I found that they only carried Red Hook in six packs as well. At $13-$15 a six pack I did not want to try a new beer and possibly be stuck with 5 extra bottles. Although, I have had Red Hook in the past it was many years ago and I don’t remember the taste.
I did not want to leave empty handed. I really wanted to try something new. I came across the Stone Brewing Company display and read the review cards. Arrogant Bastard Ale looked promising. Excellent choice! Arrogant Bastard tastes as described. It has a refreshing crisp flavor with a nice bite.
To my surprise Safeway also carries Arrogant Bastard, at least for now.
Two other beers I picked up that I enjoy from time to time were Old Rasputin Stout and Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout. Samuel Smith Imperial Stout is in my top 5 of favorites.
The Night of the Living Book Club will no longer meet at Books Inc in Mountain View after the September selection. I no longer work for Books Inc. and communication about dates and times as become difficult. I will discuss with the few participants if there is any interest to continue the club elsewhere. I may continue it on my own at a local coffee shop. If that happens I will make the club bi-monthly. Once a month is just too far apart per book discussion. I am reading 4-5 horror books a month plus at least 2 more of non-fiction topics. Most horror books are not difficult and average 400 pages.
July selection: Urban Gothic by Brian Keene
August selection: Ghost Story by Peter Straub
September selection: Sparrow Rock by Nate Kenyon
I have switched to Google’s Chrome 6.0.453.1 dev as my main web browser of choice from Apple’s Safari 5.0 (6533.16). Safari has been acting up more often recently. It will hang or freeze at seemingly random times. Facebook games do not work well with Safari any more. Getting the spinning beach ball too often with Safari 5 has made the decision for me. Firefox has always been too slow for me, with or without extensions. Safari has been twice as fast as Firefox.
Importing my Safari settings into Chrome was simple and fast. In Chrome tabs are located on the top of the window versus below the bookmark bar in Safari. There are other subtle differences that will be easy to adjust to as time goes by.
EDIT: Chrome imported all bookmarks from Safari but without my folder organization. Import order was as if folders did not exist, not alphabetically. This will make it easier to re-establish some kind of organization. Using six extensions with Chrome does seem to slow initial launch down a few seconds until google reader and gmail indications load, still not a decision to use deal breaker.
A little while ago I purchased a refurbished iMac i7 to replace my aging iMac 20-inch. My last four Macs have been refurbished models. The 27″ screen is amazing. The size allows me to have two full page windows open and viewable at the same time. I only have 4 GB of RAM for now, which should be plenty for what I do, but 8 GB couldn’t hurt.
I initially was using the wireless small keyboard with the Magic Mouse, but have recently changed back to a more traditional set-up. I now use a wired Apple full-size keyboard and a Logitech M500 corded mouse or a Kensington Expert Mouse trackball. I prefer the full-size wired keyboard with number pad. The Magic Mouse works great, nice feel and responsive to Multi-Touch but was a bit twitchy at times on some web sites I visited and would occasionally lose the bluetooth connection. Battery life was not a big deal since I used rechargeable AAs and would monitor remaining charge. But I did grow tired of that and wired components don’t bother me and I never have connection issues.
Current: iMac i7
Past: iMac 20-inch
See a more complete computer history under About tab.
Activation of my new iPhone 4 was extremely easy online through iTunes. I gave my now de-activated iPhone 3G to my father to use as an iPod Touch. He is still new to touch screen technology.
As expected the 4 is much faster than the 3G.
I got my iPhone 4 today, which is a week earlier than originally expected.
Recap: I pre-ordered on June 15th at 7:00 pm online. The initial ship date was July 2nd.
Shipment Travel History
Jun 29, 2010 10:09 AM
Delivered
Jun 24, 2010 5:16 PM
Picked up
SHENZHEN CN
Package received after FedEx cutoff
Jun 24, 2010 1:54 AM
Shipment information sent to FedEx
Well, my iPhone 4 left China on the 24th and now has arrived in Anchorage, AK today. According to FedEx tracking information my iPhone 4 is still due to be delivered by the 29th, although on apple.com it states the 30th.
This will be a greater change for me than most since I’m upgrading from an 8G iPhone 3G not a S model.
I got an email with tracking number showing that my iPhone 4 has shipped TODAY.
I placed my order early evening on June 15th with Apple and my confirmation stated that my iPhone 4 would ship by July 2nd with an arrival between the 6th to 8th. I had read that some iPhones had shipped early. Since then I have been checking multiple times a day to see if my ship date got moved up. It did. So basically, I will get my iPhone 4 a week earlier than expected.
Apple handled the iPhone 4 ordering excellently. They gave a reasonable initial ship date in order to cover their demand. Once things were sorted out and initial exceptions were being realized Apple SHORTENED the ship date. This of course make customer happy. Not like other vendors that cancelled confirmed orders and increased ship time. This demonstrates that Apple does know how to judge demand with a new product. Having good balance between customer expectations and actual quantity to manufacture is difficult and risky.
I upgraded 2 products to the new OS, my 2G iPod Touch 32G and 3G iPhone 8G.
First was my iPod Touch. I synced it with iTunes 9.2 and initially iTunes stated that the OS was up-to-date. After pressing the check for update button I was then asked if I wanted to upgrade to iOS4. I selected yes. First iTunes downloaded the update then asked me if I wanted to install, yes of course. iTunes backed-up my Ipod Touch then installed the new OS. Then restored my settings from the back-up. This process took 90 minutes. After it was done my iPod Touch was not longer connected to iTunes and iTunes was frozen. I had to force quit iTunes in order to get things back up again. Before re-syncing with iTunes I checked out the operation of the iPod Touch. Everything appears to be working as before. The new Mail app is much better with the choice of handling multiple email accounts.
Next I upgraded my iPhone 3G (no S). Once connected iTunes 9.2 immediately told me that a new OS was available. I selected yes to all appropriate menus. First iTunes downloaded iOS4, next backed-up my iPhone 3G, installed new OS, then finally restored my settings from the back-up. Same process as my 2G iPod Touch. Except for the time. The iPhone upgrade took over 3 hours. I had the same frozen iTunes after all was done making me force quit iTunes again. My Phone 3G appears to be working as expected. No problems. I really do like the new Mail app. I have not tried using folders yet.
As for battery life , maybe a little more. The current battery life before re-charge seems to be very low to me. Starting with a full charge in the morning, I check email and read news on a break at work thats about 15 minutes. Then on lunch I check email again and read more news and sometimes play a game, that lasts about 30-45 minutes. When I get home and check battery life I am down to less than a quarter of life left. Basically I get about 2 hours top between battery re-charge cycles. That seems to me to be way to low. SInce I carry multiple battery rechargers for back-up when I am way from home I am not concern yet. Of course I will be getting a new iPhone 4 next week. We will see how that goes.
I am currently running WordPress 3.0 using the K2 theme nightly version 1.1 r1105. When I previewed the theme first the format was not showing up correctly. I had to re-select ‘Use K2 Styling’ in order for the site to be displayed correctly. I only mention this because on two other sites with a different hosts I did not have to do this. Strange – no matter everything is working.
Also, I had to re-select ‘Header Menu Home tab’ selection of Custom and re-enter ‘Custom Home tab’ name: Start under the K2 Options tab.
