kyleandkelly.com

When we flew into San Francisco, we noticed some really odd-looking red, orange, and green pools just off the San Francisco Bay on our approach to the airport. You can see the same pools in the satellite photo below, courtesy of “Google Maps”:http://maps.google.com/.

You can “zoom in on the pools”:http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=37.510071,-122.060852&spn=0.168623,0.237442&t=k&hl=en over at Google maps; the astounding thing is the vividness of the colors. Like any good geeks, we became obsessed with discovering what these pools were via the Internet.

A search on “red water san francisco”:http://www.google.com/search?q=%22red+water%22+%22san+francisco%22&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official turned up the “winning match”:http://www.biologia.uniba.it/fisiologia/corcelli/en/saline/sal1.html. Apparently the pools are solar “saltern ponds”:http://www.saltinstitute.org/11.html for the “Cargill Salt”:http://www.cargillsalt.com/sfbay/T_solar_harvest.html company. Put simply, they’re growing salt in those ponds for your salt shaker. The colors come from the microorganisms that thrive in the ultra-salty environment.

Cool.

written by Kyle

Last night we went to the Cheesecake Factory in San Francisco for dinner. Take a gander at the “delicious slice of chocolate-and-peanut-butter heaven”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kyleandkelly/22393791/ I enjoyed.

written by Kyle

I’ve begun “posting photos from the JavaOne conference”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kyleandkelly/sets/513919/. Plenty of folks are taking “photos at the conference itself”:http://www.flickr.com/groups/javaone2005/pool/, so I’ve stayed away from those and stuck to more photos of San Francisco itself. Enjoy!

written by Kyle

As I “mentioned earlier”:http://www.kyleandkelly.com/scribbles/geek_stuff/live_from_woodland/, this past weekend was a very hectic one for us. We searched our house the last few weeks for garage sale items–the sale was held on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Saturday morning, I took off at 5 AM for the “grand opening of the Woodland Apple store”:http://www.kyleandkelly.com/scribbles/geek_stuff/live_from_woodland/. I stuck around there until 10:30 AM; when I arrived back in Muskegon at 11:30 AM it was only long enough to pick up Kelly.

We left Muskegon again (with garage sale still in progress under the watchful eyes of her parents and aunt) for the biggest event of the day: the wedding of Mr. Joshua Crim and Miss Renee Laurent. We left the reception early enough to make it back to Muskegon by 11 PM.

I was up again at 4 AM the next morning (Sunday) to make a 7:10 AM flight out of Grand Rapids. Which brings me to the end of the weekend and the beginning of the next few posts. I will be at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco for the next week (it’s a programming conference) with some other GFS folks. More photos and stories to follow.

written by Kyle

I’m posting this from the newly-opened Apple Store at the Woodland Mall in Grand Rapids. I arrived at 6 AM this morning and hung out with a bunch of Apple fans until the store opened at 10 AM. Today’s going to be a busy day, so over and out for now!

*Update:* after posting, I snapped off “a quick movie”:http://www.kyleandkelly.com/scribbles/images/grand_opening.mov using an HD video camera connected to a G5 and iMovie HD. I wish I’d shot more of the crowd, but I didn’t want to hog the computer I was working on. Don’t worry–more photos and movies to follow to give a more general taste of what things were like.

written by Kyle

One of my co-workers and good friends recently took the plunge into married life. While he was off enjoying honeymoon life at a Mexican resort, we decided his cubicle needed an extreme makeover.

Problem was, we came to this decision the day before he was to return; a bit of procrastination on our part. I was bummed until one of my co-conspirators suggested that we decorate Tim’s cubicle after his first day back. Genius! Tim knew we might be up to something, but his fears would be quelled by finding his cubicle untouched the first day back. Then, right when he thinks he’s in the clear, BAM!

Kelly and I had accumulated several months worth of Muskegon Chronicles that I happily donated to the cause. I could continue with a description of the prank, but in this case, “pictures of the dastardly deed are worth a thousand words”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kyleandkelly/sets/491220/.

Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Tim Bolman! Here’s to a long marriage with many moments of laughter and joy.

written by Kyle

Richard Stallman has written “an excellent explanation of why software patents are a very bad idea”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5219892-111020,00.html for the Guardian.

Go read that if you want an easy, literary-based explanation of the problem. Stallman uses the example of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables to explain, so if that tickles your fancy, don’t bother reading this post any further.
Continue reading »

written by Kyle

Well this summer started out with a bang. I decided to be one of the first nurses on my floor to become ACLS certified. For those who do not know, this ACLS business stands for “Advanced Cardiac Life Support”, so not only can I do chest compressions and breathing if I find you dead in the mall, but now I can give you proper medications and intubate you. Anyone want to volunteer for practice?

Next on my agenda is taking the GRE in mid-July. I am currently studying like mad in hopes of a good score, hence a good graduate school.

To tie up my summer, I will be taking an exam to become a CNRN, a “Certified Neuroscience Registered Nurse”. I am not really sure what this certification will do for me, but it looks dang good: Mrs. Kelly Adams, RN, BSN, CNRN. Between prefix and suffix, I have added twelve letters; I would like to get up to twenty or thirty. Heck, why not one hundred?

written by Kelly

Slurpees and iTunes are getting together to do “a free iTunes download promotion”:http://www.apple.com/itunes/slurpee/. That’s a wonderful combination of “a few of my favorite things”:http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/thesoundofmusic/myfavoritethings.htm: Slurpees, music, Apple, and “free”.

written by Kyle

Hot dog. Normally I stay away from geek stuff as that’s not the primary audience of this site. But this is just too big: “Apple is switching to Intel CPUs”:http://news.google.com/?ned=us&ncl=http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp%3Fguid%3D%257B7AAEF67C-D485-423F-975E-48C4C547C60E%257D%26siteid%3Dgoogle&hl=en. What does this mean?

Well, probably not much for normal folk, at least not initially. Doug and Katie can relax–their new “Mac mini”:http://www.apple.com/macmini is not obsolete, and will continue to be a good computer for the rest of its natural computing life (five to seven years).

It means we’ll see faster Apple laptops in the short term (one to two years). Beyond that, the crystal ball’s a bit fuzzy. It might mean even cheaper Macs, it might not. I think we’ll see Windows apps run faster and better on a Mac, via programs like “Virtual PC”:http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/virtualpc/virtualpc.aspx?pid=virtualpc. For the normal user, that makes it even more likely that your current Windows applications will run just fine on an Intel-based Mac.

One thing is always certain with Apple: they keep computing interesting.

written by Kyle