While driving around San Francisco trying to find parking for the fireworks on the Fourth of July, I came across this scene atop of California Ave. What a great idea for a wedding pict!!

I came across these while browsing around on the Apple site. 

Made in association with Monster Cable so I suppose I shouldn't expect any less at $350.  Nice looking phones though!!

When Leopard was released earlier this year with its many new features I thought I could hold out a little while longer with my always reliable upgraded PowerMac G4 (Sawtooth), but after a number of discussions with friends and family and a trip to the local Apple Store, I was convinced now was as good a time as any to take the plunge.  Ready to pass on my bulky desktop (to my semi-computer illiterate older brother) for something more sleek, powerful, and stylish, I decided that it was time to go mobile.

An avid fan and Mac user, I had a pretty good idea of my needs but four things stood out for me:
   
    Ability to manage growing media stores
    Interest in photo processing with Aperture
    Audio and video editing power
    Connectivity to a Sony 57" tv (right out of the box preferably)

After listing these, the Macbook Pro seemed like the clear choice.  Let me say however, Apple's pricing made this a much harder decision for me to make.  Why they gave the low end MBP & the higher-end black Macbook the same processor, take away 50gb from the HD on the MBP and post a $500 difference in price was aggravating; it took me a while to rationalize that in my mind (bigger screen, video card with dvi output, multi-touch pad).  Nevertheless, rather than wait for the new quad-core based Macbooks speculated to come out in the next year, I just grabbed myself a standard Macbook Pro (MBP). 

2.4Ghz Duo Core processor, 2GB ram, 200GB HD, Aluminum casing, 15.4" widescreen monitor, multi-touch trackpad, plus many more!

So, now that I've owned it for a couple of weeks, how do I feel?  Well, I'm still suffering from the sticker shock and to be honest, it doesn't seem that much speedier than my old G4 now that I've finally got everything installed on it and running the way I want.  I even notice that it hangs (colored spinning wheel) when I'm performing multiple functions much like the old system did however, being mobile is awesome and I think once I start doing some 'heavy lifting' in FCP & Aperture, I think I'm going to be pleasantly surprised.  We'll see in time.  Keep you posted!

I just had to put it up.  The other day i was disgusted about the rise in gasoline prices and a few days later I run past this gas station in Burlingame, CA.  This is a few weeks old now.  I went by there last week and the prices are $0.30 more each.  Just ridiculous.

Now I'm not heavily into politics, but being that elections are in the air I thought I would put up something "political" that kinda annoyed me this morning.  I stopped off to fill up on my car on the way into work today and paid $3.74 a gallon for (Premium) gas here in the Bay Area.  I've been watching gas prices the last couple of weeks and they've been slowly on the rise and we've not even hit the peak driving season yet 

This morning while reading an article on CNN regarding the economy I see:

When asked what advice he would give to the average person facing the prospect of gas prices hitting $4 per gallon, Bush stopped the reporter and said, "What did you just say? You're predicting $4 a gallon gas?"

"That's interesting. I hadn't heard that," he said at the Thursday news conference.."

As an average person feeling the pinch of rising gas prices, the fact that our president didn't even signify the question with a sympathetic response was just annoying!  Surely there are more important issues present today and the press conference was about the recession that we are currently in but this is just one more reason why I'm ready to see a change in our current administration.

You can read the full article here

I'm just putting this up for personal reference. 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/26/BALCTHUJR.DTL

Oil spill hits poor anglers hardest

Monday, November 26, 2007

Two days after the Cosco Busan spilled 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel into San Francisco Bay, Khamnoi Vilaikam grabbed his fishing poles and drove to one of his favorite spots: a shoreline minutes away from his home in Richmond.

Vilaikam, a Laotian American, had not yet heard about the ship's accident. He'd been working long hours at a factory job, and when he set up his angling gear near the east end of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, it was nighttime - too dark to see any cleanup vessels that might have remained on the water.

Only when Vilaikam returned home that Friday night, and he and a son had eaten some of the fish they had caught, did Vilaikam watch a TV newscast and realize the bay was polluted by oil that killed birds, shut down beaches and prompted state officials to consider a ban on bay fishing.

Vilaikam, one of scores of subsistence fishers in the Bay Area, hasn't fished in the bay since.

"I got fish - striper bass," said Vilaikam. "The fish was OK. We come and eat. After that, they said it was an oil spill. After that, we didn't go."

Subsistence fishers - low-income anglers often from immigrant communities - rely on their catches to feed themselves and their family. On a single outing, Vilaikam can take in more than 30 fish - enough to last him, his wife and their three children for a week. In the wake of the oil spill, Vilaikam and other subsistence fishers have abandoned their usual places along the bay for rivers and waterways in the outer regions of the greater Bay Area. Vilaikam has gone as far as the Russian River to fish.

Although subsistence anglers usually work out of the public view, state agencies are aware of them, and after the oil spill, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment issued advisories on its Web site in Cambodian, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese and Spanish - but not Lao, the primary language of Laotian Americans such as Vilaikam.

David Lewis, executive director of Save the Bay, calls subsistence fishers a "transient population" that includes undocumented workers who fish in out-of-the-way areas to avoid being detected by Fish and Game wardens, who make spot checks to see if the anglers have fishing permits. Lewis, whose organization has studied subsistence fishing in the Bay Area, said state and local bodies could do a better job of reaching out to the fishers in their native languages.

"It's an issue that still doesn't get enough attention," Lewis said. "But given who the population is, I think they're always going to get less attention and services than people with money and people who vote."

The number of subsistence fishers in the Bay Area is difficult to gauge, but their numbers aren't limited to immigrant communities, said Sharon Fuller, executive director of the Ma'at Youth Academy, an environment-oriented organization in Richmond. Low-income African Americans, she said, are among the Bay Area's subsistence anglers.

For the Thanksgiving Day meal he shared with family and friends, Vilaikam cooked several fish he recently reeled in, including a large catfish he caught near Suisun City.

Vilaikam, who has a fishing permit and legally moved to the United States in 1988, said fishing gives him unbridled joy. He often brings his wife and at least one of his children, and aside from greatly reducing his grocery bill, fishing lets him be in nature and provides a respite from his factory work. Since he arrived in the United States, Vilaikam has worked on and off in factories and warehouses that package electronics, candy sets and other goods.

"Right now, I work six and seven days a week," said Vilaikam, standing in his backyard, where he grows vegetables. "Fishing is fun. When you go out, you're happy."

In the weeks ahead, Vilaikam said he will return to his usual spot by the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. He has other favorite areas, including one by Marin County's Rodeo Beach, where he goes crabbing at night. Besides crab and catfish, Vilaikam likes mussels, which he finds under, and on, shoreline rocks around the bay. He and his family cook their fish on grills, slice it and mix it with lettuce for fish salad, and use it in other creative ways.

Vilaikam said he and his son didn't get sick from eating the bay fish they caught two days after the oil spill. And he said neither he nor his family members have gotten ill from their heavy intake of fish, despite government warnings that an over-consumption of bay fish in general could be dangerous because they contain potentially high levels of toxic chemicals.

Sometimes, Vilaikam said, he gets itchy skin from fishing, but he attributes that to irritants in the water he wades in with his fishing pole. He said his 11-year-old daughter gets itchy skin when she eats too much fish or crab.

Vilaikam, who also shoots game birds for food, said he earns about $2,000 a month after taxes from his factory work. When he subtracts the money that goes for Medicare, rent, gasoline for his car, fishing equipment and other costs, he's left with little. Growing up in northern Laos, Vilaikam fished for fun with his father. Now, with his father and mother living with him in Richmond, Vilaikam fishes so they don't go hungry.

The Cosco Busan oil spill has affected him, he said, but he and his family have learned to survive much bigger upheavals.

"In Laos, it was war - we had to run out," he said. "It's good here. My family is happy."