Tom Clancy has passed, 1947 - 2013

Tom Clancy - April 12, 1947 - Oct 1, 2013. During middle school and high school my favorite author was Tom Clancy. I first read Red Storm Rising and then discovered the Jack Ryan series. I read them in chronological order, and then re-read them…and then again…and then again. As he grew older, he began to publish less frequently, but I looked forward to each one. By the mid-2000s I had resigned myself to his 'retirement' as he had mostly stopped writing. During many of the Jack Ryan books, Clancy used George Mason University, in Fairfax Virginia as a prop/reference in his books. I knew that Tom Clancy was active on newsgroups and had been for years, so using Google's newsgroup search, I found some posts from him and learned his email address was simply Tom@AOL.com. This didn't surprise me, because it was well known that Tom Clancy was a long time computer geek, having bought some of Apple's very first machines and being one of the first people to have Internet access. He was an early AOL customer. Why did I care about George Mason University? I was a student there. I wrote Tom asking him why he used GMU in his books - he told me that he lived not too far away, in Falls Church VA, and that he thought it was a good school. So why not? He went on to answer, at length, a few other questions I had for him and wished me luck. I wrote him back, thanking him. One of my favorite Clancy quotes: “Never ask what sort of computer a guy drives. If he’s a Mac user, he’ll tell you. If not, why embarrass him?” – Tom Clancy Rest in peace Tom.

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Tom Clancy in his home library.

Making Apple Butter

This past weekend, my family got together with some friends (and a ton of planning on the part of my Dad) and held our 2nd annual Apple Butter cooking day.

This year's stats:

• 17 bushels of Stayman Apples
• 75 lbs of sugar (25 lbs less than last year)
• 1 dram of clove oil
• 1.1 fl oz of cinnamon oil
• 1.1 oz of powdered nutmeg

The copper kettle in the photos is a 50 gallon kettle. We started peeling apples on Friday at 10:00 AM and were finished by 3:00 PM. We started the fire under the kettle around 5:30 AM Saturday morning, adding the first bushels of apples + some apple vinegar. The apples were then ground through the antique grinder you see in the photos and added to the kettle. By 9:00 AM we had all of the apples grinded and added to the pot. Around 3:00 PM in the afternoon we removed the fire from the kettle and began canning. Total 2013 yield: 143 quarts of Apple Butter or 35.75 gallons.

House Update: Electrical and Plumbing Edition

On our way to the breeder today, we stopped by the house.

Since the last update we now have:

• a sidewalk
• most of the electrical wiring is done
• HVAC venting is done
• AV/telecom wiring is done
• plumbing is done
• kitchen island reinforcement is done
• we have tubs!

Housman Puppy 2.0

You can thank Marco for that title. I finally relented and gave up my fight with Steff to get a second dog. Given that Bertie is very attached to a Cavalier that lives next door who he plays a lot with, and where we're moving to has hardly any neighboring dogs, Steff has wanted to get a 2nd puppy for some time now.

I figured that a second dog for Bertie to get used to and to play with would be good for him (and the new puppy). Steffanie found a breeder not far from the new house, so we drove down to Literally In The Middle of Nowhere, VA today to meet her and the puppy.

Here are the pictures:

Sportscaster's Seinfield-rich Broadcast

This man is a genius.

The September 8th edition of #Sportscast focused on Seinfeld-isms. Using Twitter to crowd-source moments from the iconic show, I squeezed in 41 classic mentions in just a few minutes. (Make sure to read the graphics!) Enjoy.

David Pescovitz, at BoingBoing writes:

Sportscaster Adam Lefkoe of WHAS11 in Louisville, Kentucky dropped 41 Seinfeld references into five minutes on air. More at Syracuse.com.

Apple Event Predictions

Update: Post event - I've striked out the things I predicted incorrectly.

First of all, I want to state that I do not write this post with insider tips of what is going to be released on Tuesday. I am also not arrogant enough to think that more than 5 people who read this post really care what i have to say on the subject. Instead, I write this mainly for my own amusement and enjoyment to publicly state what I think will be announced so as to see how right or wrong I was afterward. If any of this is interesting to you, then so much the better. A lot of what I'm to say you've probably read elsewhere already. By typing these words to pixel, I'm forcing myself to be honest and serious about what I want to commit to and not.

Getting that preamble out of the way, I am going to categorize my predictions into:

1. What will be announced (Confident Yes)
2. What won't be announced (Confident No)
3. What might be announced (Unsure)

Confidently Yes

• Two new phone models: iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C.
• iPhone 5S in: White/Champagne, White/Silver, Black/Silver, Black/Black
• iPhone 5C with plastic backs in assorted colors
• iPhone 5C contains mostly or all iPhone 5 internals, with possible "weaker" components here and there.
• iOS 7 GM demoed (and released to developers for download)
• Sell and ship dates; pre-order Sept. 13 starting early in the morning, and delivered(FedEx/UPS) or on sale in store on Sept. 20.
• iTunes 11.1 + iTunes Radio demoed; available for download late Sept 19/early Sept 20
• AppleTV will receive some type of software update. Not sure on exact features as I haven't payed much attention to it in this beta period. AllThingsD said enchanced Home Sharing functionality to easily access your own content on foreign AppleTVs (as in ones at work or a friend's house). This plus whatever updates are being done to it to work with functionality being added in iOS 7.
• iPhone 5S will be faster, have a better camera, support new AC Wifi spec....you get the picture. Almost all existing hardware components will improve in some way.

Confidently No

• OS X 10.9 Mavericks will not be released
• No 'iWatch' or whatever it is to be called (and I'm still not convinced this will ever be a product)
• No new Apple TV hardware
• No Mac Pro or any updates to any Macs

Not So Sure About

• 128GB option for iPhone 5S Leaning yes. Somewhat confident
• I'm not sure if we'll see new iPads and iPad minis, but I'm leaning towards a no given that would be a lot to announce during a single event and we've seen very little to no rumors about these. I believe the iPad event will be in October along with the new Macs and Mavericks. Leaning no. Somewhat confident.
• iPhone 5S (maybe 5C too???) finger print scanner on the Home Button. There has been a lot of smoke about this one. Code for it was event found in the iOS 7 SDK. Leaning yes but not confident.
• Pricing shift with regards to storage due to the 5C being introduced:
• iPhone 5C will come in 2 sizes - 16GB and 32GB
• iPhone 5S will come in 3 sizes too - 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB at the existing pricepoints we're used to. Leaning yes but not confident. I can't help but feel that 16GB is much too small of a storage size on their premium model 6 years in. Adding the "cheaper" iPhone 5C for casual customers allows them to keep a 16GB option and to entice those same people to spring for the 5S due to 32GB size option on the low end. While everything I’ve listed above are a lot of things, something seems missing. Perhaps there is some sort of surprise related to any of these things - or something else entirely? Only Apple knows for sure. And they tell us one way or the other, tomorrow.

House Update: First Time Inside

My Mom and Dad met Steffanie and I for lunch in Warrenton and we drove by to take a look at how the house had progressed since a few weeks ago. The roof is finished and we were able to walk through the interior. Pictures are below.

Old Town Suds Re-lauches On Shopify

And now I would like to take some time out from my normal posts about technology, politics, and Cool Stuff I Find On The Internet™ to let you know about my wife's wonderful new website she just re-launched over on Shopify.

As you may or may not know, my wife runs a side business on her own (with minimum lifting of heavy objects help from me) in which she makes homemade soap of various types and sells at local markets. Artisanal, you might even say. Early on, she began hosting via Etsy but Esty's high fees drove her off to her own site, which I helped start on WordPress. She later found a designer to help her make it look a lot better and we were using a plugin called WooCommerce to host our own e-commmerce solution. Due to the clunkiness of this solution, and some of the fees that the payment provider that we had to use with WooCommerce, Steffanie decided she wanted to try out Shopify. With minimum help from me, over the past few weeks she has slowly migrated over and a few days ago she relaunched there.

So far I've been very impressed with the backend dashboard of Shopify and how simple it is, especially for a non-developer/designer type to use. Migrating her color scheme/theme over was very simple and it required minimal effort on my part to solve the one or two technical issues she came across (CSS tweaks ).

So far the experience has been great. Their themes are responsive and look equally great on mobile as well as desktop browsers. If you get a chance, and have a pressing need for bar soap (or other types) check out OldTownSuds.com.