It all seems different

What a busy couple of weeks. So much has gone on to blog about. I have mainly been Tweeting it all so if you are a follower you got it all. I am loving taking pictures with the iPhone and posting them.

I downloaded a iPhone Twitter program called TwitterFON that is way better then Twitterrific which keeps prompting me to spend $9.99. I did not mind the ads. I am sorry maybe for $4.99 but TwitterFon is free and it is a lot better. Props to TwitterFon!

Follow me on Twitter
http://twitter.com/levisagedavril







I went to MacWorld last week. I walked the show with my friend Gene. We had a good time. I made him put on the glasses and he added the text.



We saw lots of new Mac things. I ran in to people I had not seen in a while it is always fun to reconnect with lost friends. I met some people from Apple and talked about the challenges of system integration at a lunch put on by Advanced Systems Group. I will post some more MacWorld pics in another blog.





This last week I have been working on several projects. There are three proposals I am either project managing or helping out on. All good news after wondering what was going to happen after the holidays. I also have been doing some engineering for the ongoing VZ project. It was my initiation to the project that has been going on for quite a while. It got me outside my normal world which is always a good environment for learning new stuff.

I added two more iPhone apps for learning Japanese. I am set up to go to Japan for our Buddhist Temple's Tozon pilgrimage in October. I am so excited. I always wanted to go to Japan and while I hoped to do it while I was at Sony I never got the chance before Sony sold our division. I have a plate my grandparents brought back from Japan on their trip around the world in 1956. It had a picture of Mount Fuji. I have always had a strong attraction to Japan, Japanese culture and Mt. Fuji. The temple is at the foot of Mt. Fuji.

Check out the plate picture.















Ohhh Awesome I can't wait.

I have also been working hard to improve my practice by chanting with the recordings I have. I want to be able to pronounce it right since chanting is all in Japanese. I am making progress I can see now. I think I'm turning Japanese and loving it.

I am very excited about the inauguration of our new president. I just watched the latest video he sent out. I like the idea of a continuing grass roots effort.

http://my.barackobama.com/future

It is interesting to have the first Internet President. Someone that gets it. I think Open Social, Twitter, and Facebook are going to make a huge impact. I have seen multiple ads for streaming of the inauguration. I am wondering how the Internet will hold up for all that. Ustream is going to have a client ready for the iPhone to watch it.

http://www.ustream.tv/

I watched a bit of the Bush farewell. Bye George! It was too stupid to watch the whole thing. If I were him I would just say. Sorry and leave. It would make a nice live shot moment when he gets on that big helicopter.

I am giving a talk for the PMI about the DTV Tranistion. I have been putting together the presentation using Keynote. I need to keep working at it. You know that plane that landed in the Hudson? Well now they want another reprieve to push back the date. Another crash landing. They are worried not enough people have a way to watch TV once it happens. They ran out of converter box coupons (blame George and the stooges) I swear for as much as they talk about Intelligence in Washington it is sorely lacking.

I am all ready for the transition. I am on the waiting list for a coupon. I am thinking of converting to DirecTV. Goodbye Comcast.


Ya I work in TV can't you tell? I am waiting for the prices to come down.

We have become addicted to Kitty-Cam. Sandi has been chatting with Josh and others on the site. Cat people!! Good times!

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/kittens-cam

We both have Ustream accounts now. So cool! Stay tuned!

Happy New Year

For New Years we stayed in stuffing ourselves and watching Food Network. Ya we had a food orgy. It was too painful to watch poor Dick Clark after eating.

Time for some fun!

Leap second [look first]

Well we saw Milk. It was really good and as with most movies (even funny ones) I cried. Sean Penn was amazing as Harvey and Josh Brolin was downright scary as Dan White. The movie brought back memories of growing up in the bay area and seeing Harvey on the news. I had clients and friends that knew him. I was working at a bay area TV station when Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk were murdered by Dan White. I remember people screaming when news hit the station. It was 12 days after the Jonestown massacre and everyone was more than a little on edge. November was a month of bad news. It seemed to me that the world had lost it. I had figured out I was bi so I identifed with what was going on but it was long before the LGBT umbrella. I met my first openly gay man friend in 1971 when I started doing work experience at a cable local origination TV station. I had already been with several guys by that time. He committed suicide in 1975. I think he would be amazed to see me now.

I have been reading about the leap second that will be adjusted this year. I don't think it will be as crazy as Y2K but in the TV broadcast world you might see some artifacts. Computers sometimes burp at time changes.

We are staying in for New Years. I am going to pop the bottle of French Champagne I got as I was leaving Paris.

I wish everyone love and strength for 2009.

April

Christmas Bash 2008

Yesterday we spent the day with Sandi's family in Napa. Sandi's daughter has an awesome cottage near a vineyard in Napa. We ate well and had some nice wine to go with it. I tried posting a picture to Twitter using my iPhone and Twitterrific and wow it worked. Here is the picture.



I am so happy to be done with Christmas. Yaaaaaa! Let the after Christmas sales begin.

I topped out on Christmas music about half way though the day yesterday. I heard Run, Run Reindeer covered by every artist about every third song.

Do you all believe the Pope, the Vatican's answer to GWB? What a bunch of crap. I am so, so, so very happy to be done with that part of my former life. Just because you were born in to something and your parents made you do something does not mean you have to continue it. Oh Pope please curb your dogma.

How people can be LGBT and continue to be Catholic is beyond me. It's like those wind up toys. Wind them up and with watch them fight with themselves. Done, done done.

I was reading a post someone put up about how if Jesus came back and saw all the people wearing crucifixes he would freak. It is kinda like someone taking a picture on the worst day of your life and posting it everywhere.

Hey maybe the church will come out with a special edition cross with a transwoman in a cute top and skirt.

We are going to see Milk tonight. You might see us. I will be the trans woman with big trans cross target on my back!

More like Christmas than last

We hit a few holiday parties over last weekend. There are still more to come. My partner brought the Christmas music along on the drive to our first party. I was driving, listening to the music and totally loving it. I was surprised how nice it was. I kept wondering why it sounded better. I thought back to last year and remembered how last year sucked. because of our salon. I remembered hating hearing Christmas music last year.

In December of last year we were trying to decide what to do about the hair salon we owned. We had purchased it a year and a half before. The business had not exactly gone according to plan. We had one surprise after another from all the things the former owner did not disclose.

Even though we are dealing with personal bankruptcy because of the salon, I am much happier this year .

If anyone is dealing with the same issues right now I feel for you. It is tough running a business. I have had several and this one in this economy just did not work.

Happy Holidays!

Yahoo's new direction and Twitter

Tech Crunch posted a piece about Yahoo and the new open application platform they are developing to develop an social open web.

It will not be based around anything like Y360. Look for changes in your Yahoo profile in the time ahead.

I found this today on Twitter from a person I follow. It is kind of a Hot or Not / Twitter mash up called Twit or Fit? I am going to watch it over the next few days.

On the same line of my Blog yesterday here is a Twitter feed about the Death of Media. The New York Times and Gawker and others featured information and a link. After I started following that said they hit 5000 followers.

I am thinking the fact that Yahoo stopped y360 is the best thing that ever happened. I feel like I have discovered a whole big new world outside of Yahoo.

Laying off people and saving trees [multitasking]

I have been watching in amazement as the economy unravels. I think we are going to see changes like no one has ever seen before ever.

Magazines and newspapers are folding at a high rate ;). I stopped taking the newspaper long ago. We traveled so much it was too much work to turn the newspaper on and off so they would not pile up by our door. As much as I loved having the Merky News to have and hold they would pile up by the door after we read them. At some point we would carry them down three flights of stairs and across the parking lot to the recycle bins. It seem wasteful back even back then.

Yesterday when we were shopping for treats to bring to a holiday party a nice woman asked me if I had a second. [Pet Peeve Alert] I could feel that get ready for the sales pitch feeling coming on. She asked me if I wanted to take the Merky News for 30 days for free and as a bonus I would get a $50.00 gift card to Safeway. I love to chat with people even over stuff they are trying to sell. I have played this game on the phone with sales people over this same thing. I explained I am morally opposed to wasting paper since the Internet is where I get news from these days. I can travel anywhere I have a connection and get the news I like. I followed the pre-election festivities from France so when I came home I was not it total culture shock.

I recently revamped my Yahoo home page and made some adjustments to my news. I had some feeds that had died like Planet Out. They must had a falling out with Yahoo or something. I added a bunch of blog sites feeds I like and reformatted the page. I have a lot of those new feeds now in to my Google reader so when Yahoo fully tanks I will still have a place to read news.

News is moving away from the heavy hitters. The Tribune filed for bankruptcy the New York Times is getting there.

You can see a lot of my favorite blogs over on my list to the right. One of my favorites is Gawker. They have been following the death of print. They have had some challenges as well. They have cut back on Valleywag writers.

I remember as a kid getting the Sunday SF Chronicle comics and sitting on the family room heater vent in my bathrobe reading the Sunday comics. I used to get Scientific American, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Popular Electronics and oh remember TV Guide? I learned a lot of my electronics knowledge from Popular Electronics.

Gawker has some memories as well of some other magazines some with interesting covers. Even skin mags like Playboy are not safe from the crunch.

Check out how Mac World has slimmed down.

Do you have any favorite magazines you remember? Are they still alive?