Apple has 3 new Get a Mac ads and they’re even better than the last ones.  My favorite lines are from "Out of the Box":

PC: What’s your big plan?

Mac: I might make a home movie, or maybe create a website, try out my built-in camera; I can do it all right out of the box.  So what about you?

PC: First I gotta download those new drivers, then I gotta erase the trial software that came on my hard drive...

Mac: Sweet.

...

Mac: Let me know when you’re ready to go.

PC: Actually, the rest of me is in some other boxes, so... I’ll meet up with you later.

These played fine under Firefox/Linux, but skipped horribly for me on Firefox/Windows.  In case you have that problem too (or if you just hate inline videos like I do) here are direct links to the ads:

Work vs. Home

I’m thinking of moving this site from nodivisions.com to antio.net.

The nodivisions domain name has served me well, but ever since I purchased the antio.net domain last year, I’ve been wanting to do something more with it than just have it be the address of my home network.  I just think that "antio.net" is so short and so cool, and I feel like I’m letting its full potential go to waste because no one except me ever uses it.

There are quite a few pages on the internet that link to nodivisions.com, so I’d still maintain this name for at least a year, and maybe indefinitely.  It would simply auto-redirect to the corresponding page on antio.net.

Any thoughts?

Apple has been in trouble lately in Europe, because the songs they sell on the iTunes Music Store are locked by a DRM scheme that makes them unplayable on any Digital Audio Player except the iPod.  When the average Joe goes into Best Buy, he can purchase any one of a bewildering array of makes and models of DAPs, of which the iPod is only one; but if he purchases one of those non-iPod devices, then the songs he buys from iTMS won’t play on it.  That’s stupid, and I know at least a couple people who’ve been in exactly that situation, so I can see why governments or trade groups are mad at Apple over it.

But according to a recent article on Ars, Apple may also be in trouble in Norway for a different reason:

Quoting Ars Technica:

Norwegian law provides a "cooling off" period after a purchase, during which the consumer can opt out of a transaction and return the merchandise for a full refund.  Needless to say, there’s no cooling-off period in iTMS’ terms of service.

Now that’s really stupid.

This is 2006.  You can’t just take old laws that applied to physical goods and slap them onto digital transactions without considering the differences between the situations.  In particular, digital goods (like music files, video files, and computer programs) are fundamentally incapable of being returned.  That’s because there’s no way to guarantee full return of a digital product; the merchant has no way to be sure that the consumer has deleted the original file, or that he hasn’t made any copies of it.

In general, I’m a big fan of the whole idea of return policies.  But when the product is instantly available with just a few mouse clicks, when it’s something that you’ve most likely already heard before, and when it costs 99-freakin’-cents, then I think that 1) the consumer needs to show a little restraint and take responsibility for his actions, rather than having a government force companies to give him a "cooling off" period, and 2) anyone who’s pretending that it’s a big deal to not be able to return a 99-cent song needs to just stop pretending.

Thought for the week from church yesterday: when we give (in tithe, or to charity, or just in general), God doesn’t consider the amount we give as much as the amount that’s left over.

I think I’m officially switching from Gentoo Linux to Ubuntu Linux.  Despite having what can only be described as one of the dumbest names imaginable, Ubuntu (that’s oo-BOON-too) seems to have largely achieved the holy grail of Linux computing: it just works.

I downloaded its single-CD installation file, booted a system with it, and within an hour had a completely up-to-date Linux desktop.  Checking the "sync with time servers" box on the Date/Time dialog actually works, with no need to manually install/configure any NTP nonsense.  It comes with Firefox, Gaim, and OpenOffice right out of the box, and you can install new packages from the GUI with automatic dependency resolution.  It even auto-updates just like Windows and OS X.

I’m sure I’ll be writing more about this, but for now I’m in shock and had to put something up quick.  It’s just so exciting to see a Linux distro that is both simple to install and simple to maintain.

One day, a man approached a rabbi to ask him a question.  "Rabbi," the man said, "when the Israelites were wandering in the desert for 40 years, why did God make them go out every single day to collect their food?  If God was going to supply them with manna from heaven, why didn’t he just give them a month’s supply, or a whole year’s supply, at one time?"

The rabbi responded with the following story: "There was once a rich king, and the king had one son.  And on one appointed day each year, the king would give his son enough money to last him the whole year.  It didn’t take many years of this before the king noticed that he only saw his son on one day each year."

At church on Sunday, the pastor was preaching about how just as soon as we get past one struggle in our lives, there is another one to meet us.  One of our first reactions is often, "God, why are you doing this to me?  Why am I faced with problem after problem in my life?"  Probably the most common response is that problems allow us to learn and grow, which is true, but in this sermon the pastor was emphasizing a different idea.

Like the rich king from the story, God wants to be close to us; he will provide for us, and he wants us to seek after him daily.  It’s so easy to be overly proud of our accomplishments and abilities; problems are reminders that we aren’t in total control of our lives -- God is, and we are dependent on him.

hey i can post on this site? sweet. i’ll havta think of something worth.. uh. posting next time maybe. alright. awesome

Yesterday I returned from my fourth Appalachian Trail hike.  Here’s a little recap for anyone interested, and for my own use in planning and packing for future hikes.

(The first hike was in 2001 before this blog was born and I don’t think anyone took photos; I did post commentary and photos about the second and third hikes though.)

This fourth AT hike was a 2.5 day trek in New Jersey, from Buttermilk Falls to High Point State Park.  I can’t find a single online map that shows Buttermilk Falls, but based on a low-quality hand-drawn map of the area and my memory of the roads we took, I’m pretty sure that this is it (in the center of the map, just south of Mountain Road).  High Point State Park is much easier to find online; here’s the parking area next to the trail where our trip ended.  I was able to locate that by looking for route 23 and then using a map of AT shelters to see approximately where the trail crosses 23.

In general I haven’t found a particularly good AT map online, but the "Topo" mode on mapper.acme.com does show it.  The quality of Topo mode isn’t that great, but it’s still useful because you can find what you want and then switch to the regular map or the satellite photos to see the same location.

This trip featured the usual suspects (me, Brian, Chris, Jason) except that Rolly came along and Josh stayed home.  We covered 22 miles, doing about 9 on Saturday and Sunday and then 5 on Monday (which we finished around 2 in the afternoon).

My pack weighed in at 31 pounds this year, a big improvement over the 48 and 45 pounds of previous years.  The main reason is that I carried much less water (only 1.5L) because there were lots of water sources along the way.  (I think about 2L would have been perfect, assuming you can refill daily.)  I also learned from earlier hikes and brought a little less extra clothing, less food since I always come home with lots left over, and I saved ~3.5 pounds by leaving my camera behind since Rolly, Jason, and Chris were all bringing their (smaller, lighter) ones.

The hike started with an extremely steep climb right next to Buttermilk Falls; there were steps for some of it but they were spaced really far apart so it was still pretty tough.  Once we got to the top of the falls, there were no more steps but it was still uphill for quite a ways.  After about 2 miles, the Buttermilk Falls Trail ran into the Appalachian Trail and we proceeded towards the northeast.

Even though my pack was about 15 pounds lighter than before, I’m about 20 pounds heavier and out of shape, so the going was pretty tough on me.  I did prepare by going for walks and runs and bike-rides about 3 times per week for about 2 months before the hike, but none of the walks/runs were anywhere near 9 miles and I didn’t have a 30 pound pack on my back. So while they definitely helped a lot, I should have prepared more by doing exercises that were longer and more frequent.

My calves and feet were the areas that were hurting.  I decided to wear normal socks instead of the fancy smart-wool type socks that cost $7/pair, and I think that helped keep my feet cooler, but they were still pretty warm, and the bottoms of them were hurting by the end of the first day and all thereafter.  My Merrel shoes are made of water-resistant pigskin so they don’t ventilate your feet at all; I wore them because there was rain in the forecast, but in the future I’d like to take a second pair of shoes that are part mesh and more breathable.

On the second day we got some rain, but overall the weather was pretty great.  It was really cold at some points, like at the top of Sunrise Mountain in the extreme wind, and during the second night, so I was glad to have brought my winter hat.  And those smart-wool socks did come in handy for keeping my feet warm at night and in the mornings while making breakfast.  I did bring one white t-shirt for each day (in addition to socks and underwear for each day), because even though you can’t really bathe, it helps a lot (especially for sleeping) to be able to put on some clean clothes, and t-shirts are pretty light in weight so I think it’s a worthwhile trade-off.

One thing that’s always been sub-par in my camping experiences is the camp pillow.  The technology seems to improve every year or two though, and I got a new one this year.  But I washed and dried it the day before the hike, and didn’t realize there was a small amount of dampness still in it after it came out of the dryer.  I put it into a zip-lock bag and into my pack, only to take it out the first night on the trail and find it cold and damp.  So next time I’m definitely throwing the pillow into the dryer for a second run even if it feels dry.

I found 3 new just-add-water meals that I really love: Mountain House Pro-Pak Lasagna with Meat Sauce, Mountain House Granola with Blueberries and Milk (takes cold water, not boiling), and Maruchan Won-Ton cup-of-soup.  I decided to try a new-looking Beef Stew MRE, but I continue to not really like any of the stews.  I brought mainstays like beef jerky and mixed nuts, and though I did bring applesauce cups, I forgot to bring some fruit cups.  I brought 4 Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain cereal bars, but wished I had more of them.  Some things I want to take next time are actual packs of Ramen noodle soup (as opposed to cups), some kind of drink mix and an empty bottle to mix/drink it from, and some Bottle Caps candy like Jason’s which I ate most of.

And on a food-related tip, bring an extra bottle for middle-of-the-night potty use, so that you don’t have to leave your tent and get eaten by the bears.

Actually, we did see a bear, for the first time ever on one of these hikes.  But it wasn’t on the trail; we saw it while driving from the trail-end to the trail-head to pick up the second car.  This young blackbear comes barreling out of the woods, across a few yards of grass, and right across the street!  The little guy was flying and Rolly had to speed up to avoid having the thing run into the side of the truck.  Though clearly young and small for a bear, he was probably 300-400 pounds, I’d say.  Seeing this bear may well have been the highlight of the trip; we were all so excited.

We also saw some really cool bright orange salamanders, and we saw 4 black snakes.  Two of them were seen slithering away under rocks as we came upon them on the trail, but the other two were actually up in the rafters of the Mashipacong Shelter.  After arriving at the shelter area a little ahead of the other guys, Jason and I were sitting at the picnic table there.  But he went to sit in the shelter to get out of the wind, and I joked "how are the bats in there?"  I went to sit next to him and looked up at the rafter about 4 feet above my head.  As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I saw a honeycomb pattern and thought it might have been a bee’s nest, but a second or two later I said "Uh, I think that’s a snake."  We ran out of there pretty quick.  Once Rolly, Brian and Chris arrived, Jason managed to knock the thing down from the rafter (which took several tries -- it did not want to move) and we saw that he was about 4.5 feet long.  Not only that, but there was a second snake up there too.  So although you’re technically not allowed to camp anywhere but the shelters on the AT in NJ, the fact that they’re usually a haven for bats and apparently snakes too means that I’ll never stay in one.  Nobody else does either, if the 3 or 4 other tent-sites we saw along the trail were any indication.

Overall it was a great trip, like the other 3 Appalachian Trail hikes I’ve done (except for that one where it was 30 miles of ankle-twisting rocks the entire time).  It was interesting to see endless mountains and rocks and trees in New Jersey, because I typically only think of either the Jersey Shore or the crusty Camden area when I think of that state.  I hope it’s not too long before I’m back out on the trail again.

Hopefully Rolly will post his photos soon, and I’m going to try to get Jason and Chris to send me their photos so I can post them here.

Update: Rolly’s photos are now online!