Dreamforce ’09

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There was a Dreamforce yesterday and today, and it was a lot of fun. There’s something about seeing huge crowds of people (19,000 attendees this year, apparently) that finally makes you realize that, hey, those numbers that you see in your inbox about features are actually people and, holy crap, people are using the code you wrote and, holy crap, they like it.

Also, as confirmed last Christmas party and at the dev party a month or so ago and last night, Salesforce is really good at throwing parties. Plenty of food and festivities and stocked, open bars. Win.

Photos from the past two days will be posted to photos 2 eventually… maybe tonight, if I’m feeling motivated, but likely tomorrow since I’m feeling tired.

But mostly I just wanted to link Colin Powell’s keynote this evening. It was one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard, and certainly the most impressive that I have had the pleasure to see in person. Go and watch it if you have some time. Seriously.

Also… new episode of Glee? Perfection. Quinn’s actress is excellent.

Edit: Posted.
Our mascots are awesome.

RIP Nikon D50 3/22/06-11/15/09

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My camera utterly and completely died today. Remember how it was having some shutter issues where the mirror wouldn’t flip all the way, meaning I had to use it upside-down with high shutter speeds?
Well, today, it decided to completely die. The mirror won’t flip at all anymore. It makes an odd grinding sound when the shutter button is pressed, then displays “Err” in the viewfinder and on the little screen.
Here’s the last picture it took.

It had a nice long life. Got it March 22, 2006 and it’s taken well over 100,000 photos since then and has travelled from New York to San Francisco to Thailand to France.
(It’s also funny, given that the first photo I posted from this camera was a photo of Mark, and this last photo I am posting from it is also a Mark. The first photo it took, however, was Keith.)

Relatedly, today was board games at Jeremy’s. It was a lot of fun. I played Through The Ages, which took a while (as promised before we started). I was doing decently well (was making the second most research points each round, and the most culture, and had 9 civil actions to spend each turn) until the guy with a massive (75+ power) military declared a Holy War on me. Given that I had exactly two points of strength (and only had two military actions), I lost massively and all of my guys were killed except for one lonely worker producing 2 food. Oh well. Nevertheless, I only came in fourth by two culture points.

On the way home, I decided to walk (from 3rd and 20th) while Mark took the Muni. I managed to beat him home (the Embarcadero and Brannan stop). I was actually quite impressed. Either I walk faster than I think I do, or the Muni hit more red lights than I was expecting, as he only had a 3 minute wait for it when I started walking.

So that’s been my day. It has been a good day.

Edit:
A list of all my cameras and statuses, for my curiosity’s sake, along with the cost at the time. (Ordered by date of acquiring.)
Intel Pocket PC Camera – $200 – Functional, back in Arizona. Not really worthwhile to use. (640 x 480 max resolution with fixed focus and aperture and shutter speed.)
Olympus C-3000 Zoom – $400 – Partially functional. Light meter is broken, causing photos to come out completely black.
Kodak DX6490 – $550 – Dead. Very dead. Smashed into pieces dead.
Nikon D50 – $570 – Dead. Shutter is broken, mirror no longer flips up.
*Nikon 28-80mm f/3.3-5.6 – $0 – Partially functional. Can no longer focus to infinity.
Canon AE-1 – $120 – Functional. Not used as much due to lack of film and darkroom access.
*Canon 50mm f/1.8 – $0 – Functional
*Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 – $100 – Functional.
*Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 – $200 – Functional.
*Nikon 50mm f/1.8 – $130 – Functional.
Samsung SL30 – $80 – Functional. Still new, still happy.

Baking!

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Life has been pretty awesome lately.
I recently bought plane tickets for Carnival. I’ll be in Pittsburgh April 10 through April 18.

Last night was baking and Rock Band at Sharon’s. I tried making Elephant Ears using this recipe and they turned out pretty awesome. I also made cinnamon cookies and they turned out pretty tasty (not greasy at all, because I didn’t use very much butter).

Elephant Ears

1/4 c butter (actually more like 1/8 is sufficient)
1 c flour
5 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 c milk
1 tsp cinnamon

Melt butter. Mix flour, 2 tbsp sugar, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Stir in milk and 3 tbsp butter.

Flour surface, knead dough a few times, then roll out. Brush with remaining butter and sprinkle with 3 tbsp sugar and cinnamon.

Roll up dough, cut into four pieces, place onto cookie sheet (cut end up) and flatten into cookie-like shapes. Bake at 425 for 10 minutes.


Cinnamon cookies:
1 c sugar
1/8 c butter
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 c flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Mix everything together to form dough. Form into 1/2-inch balls and place on cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes.


Attention Spans

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Today, I was bored, so I decided to go down to the computer room and watch some TV. It was the first time I had watched TV in well over a year. Caught the tail end of Access Hollywood, then switched and watched a bit of the new Survivor.

The thing that I kept noticing, and that eventually drove me crazy enough to stop watching (after only about half an hour), was the number of cuts shows and commercials nowadays have. You’d think there’s a new FCC regulation that you can’t have a single shot longer than a second or something, for fear of offending someone.

Seriously, I think the only shots I saw that lasted longer than literally a second were commercials where the background was changing constantly (annoying), shots where a single person was talking to the camera (Survivor interviews, at least… the Access Hollywood interviews constantly cut between shots even while they were interviewing someone…), and the long scenic shots in Survivor like where they focus on a bug and then shift the focus out to the tribe banner or something. (The new Survivor intro is particularly guilty of this… even when showing the people, they show at least two shots of each competitor in the 1 second of screen time they give them.)

I noticed this a while back in music videos as well… the new (and old) music videos for Daughtry, for example, feature almost-constant cuts between scenes.

Has our society really gotten so ADD that we require constant changes in imagery to remain engrossed?
Or have shows always been like this, but I’m just now getting old and weird enough to notice?

Lifeness

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So this weekend was full of worry, worry, worry oh god worry.
Had a doctor’s appointment today and everything was better. Yay doctors. I have a followup appointment in a month, but he doesn’t expect any issues.

Relatedly, I have to say that I’m a big fan of Kaiser. This makes two randomly-assigned doctors now, and both have been extremely knowledgable and friendly and approachable. Neither rushes you, and they both joked and chatted and generally made you feel at ease. I also like the convenience of having everything there… last time, I headed down one floor to get blood drawn, and it took very little time due to the HUGE number of blood-drawing stations they had.

Besides that, today has apparently been SPEND MONEY OMGZ day. This morning I bought this 1TB HD. I maybe should have waited until Black Friday, but I kind of need it now (my external drive is down to 4GB of free space), and it’s a good price anyway (assuming I get the rebate sent in and such). I can always buy another one during Black Friday if they’re really cheap. And if not, I can sleep in instead. Yay.

There was also the $15 copay for my doctor’s visit. Not a lot, but meh.

There was also also going to Best Buy (which was right there) and picking up the complete Firefly series. That’s another chunk of change.

My credit card is sad now. :P I’ve more than doubled the balance on it today.

So that’s been my day. Yay my day.

Edit: Yes, I voted. I voted by mail a month ago.
Also, now that I’ve actually updated my spending spreadsheet, looks like I nearly tripled my credit card balance today. Awesome. :X

Also, Maine, WTF is wrong with you? This is upsetting.