Enjoy, -Paul

Next, I found a great deal on hotel on 95th street, a block away from Broadway and near the middle of Central Park, $67 including taxes.

From JFK to my hotel, $7.25 airtrain/subway, and same back.

Not bad for next day travel and 20minutes on the net

I switched my wednesday work day to tuesday (I typically commit to work only wed&thurs). Som already had wednesday off of work, so the timing worked out perfectly.

So I go in a bit early on tuesday, work a full day, then head home. There, my roommate Mark drive Som and I directly to the airport. Isaac my other roommate, graciously offered to pick me up on wednesday:)

Getting through the airport with simply a backpack was a breeze. Dulles looks so much better now that they have finished remodeling it and adding rail to the concourses. Upon arriving in JFK, we noticed lots of signage celebrating JetBlue’s 10 year birthday:)

When we got to the hotel, it felt like something out of hippyville. Each floor had different color walls. Some were orange, others were green, our newfound friends from Tokyo one floor down from us were yellow, the lounge was purple

That evening we walked down Broadway street. This city never sleeps. At the end of the night stopped in “Hot & Crusty” for some Manhattan style pizza. mmm mmm good:)

The next morning we took the subway to midtown and walked to Times Square. We had breakfast at the McD’s allowing for a great view of the square. The second floor was heavily decorated the NYC iconic theme, including a replica of the city.

After breakfast we went to learned more about Times Square at an information center, which included the New Years Ball that I’ve seen drop so many times in TV, and in person years ago with Angie.

Next we cruised through more of Manhattan and over to the NYC Public library.

Then up Avenue of the America’s to walk through the Rockefeller Center and see the NBC studios.

More sightseeing and eventually walked by the Apple store on the way to Central park. Had a great time in the park, such a beautiful piece of nature, surrounded by iconic skyscrapers and advertising blitz.

Including food, hotel, subway, and airfare, it ended up costing less then $100 each of us for a wonderful, last minute experience in NYC which didn’t interfere with work or any other commitments

Today I thought about two things, one to appreciate what we have at that exact moment, and second to live life to our potential at each moment.

Often we take for granted not only what we have, but also our ability to bring change, our capabilities.  We often function with a day-to-day routine which neither uses the gifts we have, nor expands the boundaries which our daily activities continue to fortify.For example, a typical routine might look something like this: I sleep about 6.5hours, wake up, walk to work, listen to music on the way, arrive and start work, go to lunch, more work, leave work, have dinner, then read, and finally sleep. Insert your own schedule here, and you’ll realize how typical it can be.

Routine can have the effect of walking with blinders, going from one step to the next, without change, without noticing opportunities, coincidence events, chance…

I just watched a movie where so many captured events were linked to coincidence.  If any of the characters would not have picked up on them, they would missed out on all the “made for movie” experiences that followed.

Often we hear stories of success that often stem from happenstance, or chance encounters.  I’m not only talking about huge, life changing, events like those experienced by Trump, Branson, Larry Page, etc.  I also include little things like: scoring an invite to a party, dinner with an attractive person, a great weekend road trip with friend, meeting a senator, etc., each of which could spawn even more happenstance events:)

Take away: Resist conforming routine, embrace change, and increase awareness for opportunities.

Many positive experiences in life can trace back to pivotal decisions, make sure you give yourself the opportunity by noticing the byways of your routine trodden path.

Here’s a related post about habit: http://unwiredthinking.com/?p=165

I learned many things in San Francisco, most jewels coming from my experiences at OneTaste.  One lesson was to follow your desire, especially if you hesitate for some useless reason like social norms, public embarrassment, fear of tarnishing your image, etc.  Those reasons just don’t make real sense, however they provide a “safe” sandbox for us to live our lives in.

Peter might disagree, but one area I think we differ in, is our willingness to live life the the fullest.  To embrace  change as an opportunity for growth, through new experiences.  This restlessness leads to my wanderlust, to travel and mean new people, cultures, cities, language, etc.  Whether that’s traveling in person, watching a foreign film, or a good book, a history lesson, anything to expand the borders of my mind.

Peter might have an opportunity to have lots of time on his hands in the near future and I could hardly understand his apprehension to enjoy his time away from work, rather he thought of ways to quickly return to work.

When talking to Isaac, I explained my view by telling a story.  Lets say you have two people, Brian, and Winston.  Both finishing community college, both hardworking, both average backgrounds.

We meet them as they both are finishing school, both are 20.  Now, Brian decides he really appreciated the 2+1 month summer and winter breaks he used to have in school, and decides he’s going to keep up that routine.  Winston on the other hand understands the value of hard work and decides he’s going to work hard, and hopes to do well, and maybe retire early.  He works his 9-5 job and takes his 2 or 3 week vacation per year, often simply catching up on personal activities he’s been putting off while working. He might take a week to go to Vegas or New York, something that isn’t too far, or costly, that he’s familiar with.

Brian decides he’s going to work for 3 months, and every 4th month, take the whole month off.  He spends a few days planing out his trip, and a few days later, bon voyage.  He’s on his was to Athens, or Rio, maybe Sidney or Singapore.  Take your pick.  He rarely visits the same city twice, and always tries to learn a few basics of the local language and tries to understand the culture, the environment, and how it shapes the local economy.  He tries to understand the how local influences have shaped the society, and compares it to others he’s visited.  He visits mueums and learns how art has changed and it’s significance with the locals.  He’s young, and certainly his trips are also filled with dancing in a local nightclub, 3-for-1 happy hours, windsurfing at the local beach, zip-lining through the wilderness, making friends with locals and other expats alike.  After wards he returns home refreshed, and appreciates certain qualities about his own culture/home.

Repeat those scenarios for.. lets say 30 years.  Now they are both 50.  whooh, 50!  :p  Well guess what, Winston has been working hard all these years, so much that he can now retire, he’s got 30 years of full time work under his belt and now it’s time to enjoy life.  He spends all his time now traveling, dancing, windsurfing, zip-lining, oh wait, he’s 50????!  Ok, so he spends all his time… visiting museums and seeing art.  He hangs out with Brian when he can and is always enamored by the exotic stories his friend tells him.  Memories of a wonderful girl Brian met in Cali Colombia who like most Caleña’s, was magic on the dance floor   Or the missed flight in Auckland which caused him to stay at a nearby hotel and at the last minute got tickets to see Sarah McLachlan. Or the hidden beach he and his friends found in Goa, India.

By the time they both reach 60, they will each have earned the same amount of money (assuming Brians frequent vacations were unpaid), however one spent his retirement time early while working to earn it, the other started to spent it after he finally finished earning it.

Who do you think enjoyed their life more?  Brian, who took 3, 1 month vacations per year for 40 years starting when he was 20years old, or Winston who took 10 solid years of free time starting when he was 50 years old?   Remember that by the time they are 60, they will each have worked the same number of hours, and both will be retired.

I’m talking about a pragmatic shift in my view of programming. Let me start by giving you some history. I started professional Java programming back when java 1.2 just came out and I worked for SAIC as a Java programmer doing CORBA work (basically a precursor to SOAP, which was a precursor to REST). Java was a good evolution for me, as my background was in C/C++. I appreciated how programming in Java was faster, yet still had the clean, logical, syntax and expressiveness of C++.

I programmed in other languages since then, but usually came back to Java. Of the others, I found one in particular quite interesting, Ruby with the Rails framework. I learned it while working on AIM Photos with Kevin Lawver at AOL a few years ago. He was very attracted to the rapid, convention-over-configuration, nature of Ruby development. At the time, I did appreciate it, though ended up still preferring to understanding everything that was happening under the covers as well as having more control over defining an elegant, even artistic, custom architecture and format for my code.

Shortly afterward, I got my wish, and Java was back in full swing after transferring to San Francisco and working with Bebo. I admit, I was a bit rusty, and my eagerness to crank out code did cause a few co-workers grief when my code was introduced into their delicate system which pushed code to production daily and whose QA team was a third the ratio to programmers that it was at AOL back in Dulles, VA. Looking back I wrote custom cache objects, even drafted caching expiration mechanisms for certain types of objects, things that were quite enjoyable to craft, yet looking back were a poor use of time. Infact you can see an example on the right of this page “memcache optimization.” In a nutshell, I realized that often, I was programming for the sake of programming, rather then for the sake of actually fulfilling a direct benefit producing feature to users.

(That last part if the crux of my discovery, which will change how I now approach development. Feel free to stop here, what remains is an explanation of the events and discovery process I went through.)

What sequence of parallel events brought on this paradigm shift in how I view development? Well some of the events started long ago, for example my C++ work at Univ of Maryland, to the Java I mentioned for SAIC. Most recently it came in the form of my excitement for the Google App Engine, which I recently found out supported Java in addition to their initial Python support.

Finally, here was the opportunity for me to program in the same language at work, as for my personal projects. Before I was limited to programming in Java at work, and php or ruby at home. Now I could do Java for both, since I could host my Java with Google, and it was free! So I ported the Google Gadget I wrote for photo sharing to support both Bebo and Facebook, and I changed my thin middleware layer to Java, from PHP. Things progressed very quickly, the client side work in javascript took me about a day to port to support both services and I spend another day re-factoring for efficiency. The middleware code took me about 2 days to convert, and support multiple service providers (initially Bebo and Facebook). About a week later, and all I had left was to make file uploading work. Save the best for last right?

Well here is where the problems started, I switched all the API calls from GET’s to POST’s and while doing that, I looked at the server logs. Wow, there were a ton of errors there, mainly around “Security” concerns, rather threading that the one of the web service libraries I was using invoked. I realized how constrained running apps in the Google App Engine were, and spent about two days trying to hack my code to get it to work. Many revisions later, I still didn’t have it completely working.

Last week, I had told fellow programmers about how great it was that I was able to have Java code hosted for free. They responding with their own setups, one used a VPS, Virtual Private Server, on Dreamhost, the other a VPS on Slicehost. Better then my shared hosting, and not much more money. But at the time, having the VPS didn’t matter to me, since I had GAE separately for my Java.

Then the other day my GAE troubles started. Tinkering with it a bit this morning, I get an email from a collegue asking to pick up some Ruby work that another former team member was handing off. After looking at Ruby again, I realized how quickly I could develop yet I didn’t really feel as if the code was completely owned by me, since so much was done for me. Long story short, that triggered me to switch my shared hosting to a VPS, and again port my middleware, this time to Ruby. Rather then having to know everything under the covers, I instead trust that Rails is doing the right thing, and have enough experience to understand how it’s probably happening.

Later in the evening I stopped by work to pick something up, and talked with a colleague who was part of our QA team. We began talking about Java and Ruby, and in the course of the discussion, I laid out my reasons for now switching back to Ruby, it was at that moment were I fully realized the change in my thinking.

My colleague brought up the common concerns of development speed vs application performance. I tried to explain that it was more then that. That is was also about the time spent vs consumer benefit. I explained that anything which took away from me directly benefiting the customer should be eliminated, regardless of how good it feels to me. Any time spend hacking something to work, or away from some important program algorithm was a waste. Any language or environment that causes this type of waste should be eliminated. I compared it to giving a speech or reporting a news story. You can spend half of your time researching for the story, then another half of your time refining the delivery. Making sure your grammer is 100%, that your speech is articulate, that your tone is provocative, etc. In the end however, the only thing the audience is going to remember is the point you were trying to make, whether or not you spent the extra time on a carefully crafted/edited delivery.

In programming it is the same, the more removed you are from directly effecting the user, the less effective you are spending your time. Java is a great language, for sure, however it can to be perfect to a fault. Everything is reviewed by so many people, groups, committees, it is slow to develop as a language, and made to be generic/clean ad nauseum. It often promotes “textbook” style structure/syntax/abstraction. I am not saying java does not have its place, every application has a tool best suited for it, only that developers should be conscious of spending their time doing the right things, rather then being sidetracked with lower-value distractions.

I am reminded of others who have come to similar conclusions, people who felt the “cruft” of needless distraction taking time away from their true development work. People like Rod Johnson, a knowledgeable java developer to lashed out at the staple java EJB’s, or Dave Thomas, a Ruby advocate and author of several good development books.

The problem with this duality is, that in relationships, we should be with someone who wants to be with us for who we truly are, not who we pretend to be.  In the later case, you not only hurt the other person, but you hurt yourself, why should you spend your time with someone who doesn’t want to be with who you truly are, all disguises and falsehoods aside.  They often add complexity and only delay the inevitable.

I suppose the reason for having the pseudo-image we portray to others is two fold, first we want the other person to like us, second because we want control over judgment.  By telling the other person things that make us look good, we try to influence their interpretation of us.  If on the other hand, if you tell the other person everything, good and bad, you are leaving their judgment of you, in their hands.  Rather then knowing the probable reaction to fabricated or “chosen”  information, laying it all out there openly can be more vulnerable to interpretation.

But, if you constantly show your partner your “genuine” self throughout the relationship, it will either end sooner, which leaves you looking for a more suitable match, or it strengthens your relationship through trust, learning, and understanding.  No one is perfect, we all have anxieties, imperfections, issues, etc, but we also have desires, self-potential, feelings, aspirations, and the need for companionship/community.

Throughout the rest of the day, I realized the extended significance of this self-image vs public-image idea.  Co-workers, managers, friends, etc are all effected by it.  As humans we unconsciously make judgments of people based on what we know of them.  The more similar your portrayed image is to your genuine image, the less stressful/complicated your life will be.  Additionally, a dissimilar public vs genuine image, acts as a crutch, which placates the need for true growth and self-improvement, since you artificially are the way you want to be, at least as you portray to others.

To summarize, I believe we should strive to be as genuine as we can be, and work on improving areas we might otherwise be tempted to cover up through “creative marketing.”  Similar to having a messy room as a child, then learning the virtues of organization as we grow older, I think the rapid progression to being more genuine with ourselves and others, leads to a more fulfilling life of self-growth, and improved relationships with others.

I look forward to hearing your views of this topic and maybe sharing your own experiences.

warning: Late night thoughts before bed, take them for a grain of salt.

I’ve come across many “eurika” moments in my life, however this one seems to be a bit different.  Often the others were fleeting, I would have a temporary surge after studying things like: Zen Buddhism, filled with thoughts of an, “unyielding will & indomitable spirit,” or Covey’s Habits, Og Mandingo’s Scrolls, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, etc.  These things came, and went, leaving a small, but lasting impression on me.

My discovery today feels like the others, however not so strong at first, yet making practical sense, enough to endure beyond a fleeting moment.  It’s still the same day, only later, but I’ve reflected on my earlier thoughts for much of the day.  I noticed things like being more aware of my surroundings as I took it all in, meeting the gaze of all I passed.  I reflected on moods, and how up and down our emotions and self image can be.  One moment we are highly adept at something, ready to take on all comers, the next we feel insignificant and just want the moments to pass quickly.

So often we have the desire to please others, often by bending our own personality at the time to meet some stereotypical concept or preconceived notion of what will work best in that situation or at that time.  I suppose this is ingrained in our life from childbirth, always wanting to please our parents who provided us nourishment when we couldn’t provide for ourselves, our only ability then was to make our parents happy.

I reflected on these things, and tried to shed that often changing, “Public Image” that I had expressed in the past.  I was surprised to realized that this extended to more then simply what we “tell” others, but even how we see ourselves.  I found contentment in simply living the singular “genuine self,” without the burden of changing, environmentally influenced, pseudo images.  This, over time, fostered increased confidence in things, and acceptance of who I am, which empowers me to grow, conformable in the constant base I start from.  For how can you build on an unstable, easily changing foundation?

goodnight, & forgive any typos

Paul

Ironically last time I posted about OSX was due to my talk about disk partitioning/optimization.  Well this time around, I went the SSD route and I have to say, it’s immensely faster.  Most benchmarks put it at about 4-6 times after.  I ran an xbench with my similar MBP from work which scored about a 50 on the disk section, while my MBP with the SSD scored 225.  Boot up feels quite peppy, button to full gui in <15 secs (most used by the Darwin boot loader).

Overall my experience has been positive, though it’s pretty similar to Leopard with a few tweeks rather then any new features.  Is it worth $29 upgrade… yes.  Anything more then that, no.  Also, not all hardware can even do 64bit.

It’s about time I updated my recommended applications list, this time for Snow Leopard, with more refinement through time/usage then my older list.

Free Apps

AppCleaner – Ok, so we’ve all installed software and later changed out minds.  Well with OSX, you typically just take it out of your Applications folder and put it in trash.  Well only problem is that most programs store preferences and other things in other places.  This app makes sure you get everything when you delete an app, I recommend that you turn on smart deletes from the preferences window.

AppFresh – Great app for keeping track of which Apps have upgrades available.  However it doesn’t always do a good job of updating apps itself.  Typically I run the AppFresh, then manually update those apps which need it by running the app, then selecting “Help – > Check for upgrades” from the menubar.

Cyberduck – A handy little utility for various types of FTP connections in a easy to use drag n drop GUI.  Don’t forget to save sites as bookmarks (took me a while to find that part : ).

Firefox – A great webapp with lots of great extensions (for another blog post;) not super stable however   But until the others get all the great extensions, I put up with it crashing every now and again.  They are working on a 64bit version and even have a beta out, maybe it’s worth a try.

Geekbench - Good benchmark app for OSX, there is also a paid version with a few more features, but if you are looking for a quick bench using up2date measurements, it’s the way to go.

Monolingual – Ok, this app is a real space saver, select languages besides english, all keyboards besides US, and all architectures besides intel and intel64, and you’ll save TONS of space.  Highly recommended!

Onyx -  Not yet out for Snow Leopard yet, but my experience with Tiger and Leopard has been very good.  They come out with new versions quickly, and I’m sure the SL version will be out very soon.  This app cleans caches, optimizes the system, and allows for advanced settings/configuration of the OS and a few OS utilities.  Check the site for Leopard.

Open Office (Aqua) – Ok, lets face it, we all need a package for things like documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.  Well if you want free desktop software, this is the way to go.  Also free, though online, Google Docs are quite nice as well.

Remote Desktop Connection – This app is not for everyone, but if there is a windows machine you need to use, simply start this up, and connect to it as if you were infront of the windows machine itself.  It’s great for remotely running windows apps if you aren’t running parallels.

VLC – This a good media player for OSX which keeps fairly up2date.

Xbench – An oldie but goodie, it’s a small app which allows selectable area’s of the system to benchmark.  Also because it’s older, everyone will probably be running the same version of the application hence results are easily comparable.

UnRarX – No more winrar, you’re on a mac now   This lightweight app allows for extraction of rar archives, including support for passwords.

Paid Apps

CoolBook – A while back, over-clocking was all the rage:)  Now with laptops and battery life, it’s all about under-volting   I haven’t used this yet with Snow Leopard, but it worked great in tiger on my MBP and dell mini.  Basically you are feeding the processor enough voltage to function fine at whatever speed it’s running, however less voltage then it’s set to run by default.  This increases battery life, and makes your laptop more quiet since the ran runs less.  Hold off until support for Snow Leopard however.

Microsoft Office 2008 – When you want a slightly more polished app for MS documents then Open Office, this is a decent alternative that ensures compatibility with your windows using peers.

PandoraJam – Ok, this 15 dollar app is well well worth it, especially when paired with subscribing to Pandora One ($36/yr).  It allows desktop control app of your pandora stream, as well as recording which is auto organized with album art in iTunes.  Later you can play the song all you want with full control.  Pandora One subscription gives higher sound quality (192kbs) and removes listening restrictions and ads.

PhoneView – If you’ve got an iPhone, this app is for you.  It allows a deep level of interaction/control over your iphone, have a look at the website and play the video there.  Cost $20.

ScreenFlow – A bit pricy ($99) but worth is as one of the best screen cast software packages for OSX.  They also have an intro video.  Click the link and have a look.

Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner – Until Onyx for Snow Leopard comes out, I’ve been using this and have been quite pleased.  It’s only $15, and allows for cache cleaning and disk optimizations.

SuperDuper! – A paid app for disk backups ($28).  Slightly better and more up-2-date then another competing product which is free, Carbon Copy Cleaner and I also recommend.  They both have Snow Leopard versions, the later being a beta.

Xslimmer – I was turned on to this app when optimizing my OSX Dell Mini9 install.  It’s quite similar to Monolingual, but provides a nicer interface and slightly more space savings.  Based on the low cost, $15, it’s hard to say which is better I’d recommend over the other.

Developer Apps

Eclipse – Ok, if you are doing development and need a more full featured project IDE this is probably the best free editor around.  It’s got a ton of plug-ins and lots of community support.  If you would like the 64bit version for Snow Leopard, read this page to set it up.  If you want to use it with Google App Engine (GAE), read here.  Last, if you want to interface facebook API’s with it and the GAE, read here.

IntelliJ – Although I’m very comfortable with Eclipse, this IDE has more features like better code refactoring, guild building, Javascript debugging, etc. that I could grow to appreciate.  It’s quite expensive, $99 for students, $250 personal use, $600 commercial use.  But if you code in Java, it might be worth it, even better if they spring for it.  Ping me later for my experiences as I’ve only been using it about a week.

SQL Developer – As far as a GUI for database access, Oracle’s free client is hard to beat.  It’s got everything that you expect and beats sqlplus from the command line

TextMate – The swiss army knife of text editors for OXS.  Great coding support when you need a simple editor with file layout support.  Many ruby programmers swear by it.  Cost, $58

Here’s a detailed explanation:

First thing is home owners insurance.  I saw mine steadily increase over the years, and since the falloff in home value I started to wonder, why are my insurance premiums increasing when the value of my home is decreasing?  So I called my insurance company and posed the question to them.  They looked at the current structural assessed value and updated it (lower), as well as a review of my account.  After the call which lasted about 10-15minutes, my semiyearly payment decreased about 26%.  chaa ching!

Second, property tax escrow with my mortgage company.  So, with the decrease in value of my home, my tax payments, were also decreasing, yet I was paying into escrow based on old assessments.  Here I got two benefits.  First, I had the current payments in to escrow adjusted based on current tax payments, this didn’t yield a lot, since they were only about 5 months of assessed value behind, but did lower my monthly payment about $15.  No big deal, but it adds up, and that’s where my third change comes in, and that was substantial.

So over the term of my mortgage I’ve been making all these escrow payments where the updates to the tax assessments have been lagging.  Well turns out that I had accumulated about 1k worth of extra funds in my escrow.  Money that just sat in the account, and made me no money, and with inflation, even decreased in value over time.  So I instructed the rep to apply it to my next months mortgage payment.  Done.  That call took only 10 minutes, including the payment adjustments.  I’d recommend keeping your online account history open, and noticing your escrow balance after tax (and for some insurance) payments are made.  Whatever is left over, is your surplus funds that just sit there.  You can apply them to your principle balance, or your next payment (the better option since paying down the interest payments doesn’t adjust until you refi or your ARM re-adjusts).

I spent more time writing this blog post, then it actually took me on those two phone calls, but I hope that others can benefit from those free and easy adjustments as well.  It pays to stay on top of your finances

Am I crazy?  What am I talking about?  Imagine this, you have a mobile, always connected device like an iPhone, with even more computing power, and faster wireless connectivity to others and to a massive datastore, i.e. virtual network storage of 10 TerraBytes.

When mobile, you can use the device to stream video from your network storage or from a video service like netflix, you can call friends and have a voice or a video call with them, you can check your schedule and invite friends to play basketball or over for dinner, you can receive a reminder from your dentist about your appointment coming up tomorrow.  All this, and you are doing it from anywhere.

Ok, how about some real work?  You sit down at your desk, take your phone out of your pocket and toss it onto a pad on your desk where it starts to wirelessly recharge and due to the proximity with another device, a peripheral hub connects over some other wireless signal like Bluetooth x.0.  The hub then turns on other local devices, displays video from the device over to your curved, 1mn thin, OLED external monitor, and accepts inputs from the now “powered” wireless keyboard, and mouse.  Also since your mobile device now has the extra power source, it quadruples it’s max CPU and video processor clock speeds.

Also, since you are in your home or what that your office… it switches to a faster, but local network automatically, where you can still take calls, make calls, and video conference seamlessly all without manual interaction, outside of setting it all up the first time.

You check your spreadseets, schedule meetings, program a bit, and later take a call over your wireless bluetooth headset while walking over to the kitchen and making coffee.  You wonder where your wife is, so u tap the device in your ear and say, “locate Jessica.”  She has already granted GPS access to you, and her device (also connected wirelessly) says she is 5 miles away, traveling at a rate of 4km/h).  Hmm, she should be on her way home by now, I wonder what she’s doing, maybe getting dinner.  You then make another voice commend, “read, schedule, tomorrow” where a voice named Jack reads you tomorrows agenda.  You think to yourself, that was good coffee, I’ll have to add it to the grocery list.  You then say, “add, grocery list, Petes Dark Colombian.”

It just so happens that Jessica is on the way to the grocery store before going home.  She is already looking at the family grocery list and sees the new item appear while picking up some fruit.  She checks off her current item and goes for the coffee isle.

When she goes to checkout, she walks with her basket though an “arch” where all her items are tabulated and her “eCoupons” stored on her phone are added to the order.  The receipt is displayed on her device, she glances at it, sees that it is inline with her historical cost based on her items, and taps pay.  This initiates a transfer from her central PayPal account to Harris Teeter.  After getting into her car which was unlocked and started by her unique Bluetooth ID coming from her mobile device, she stops at the electricity station (what else is powering her car?) and afterwards, again accepts the charges from her mobile device again pulling funds from her Paypal account which suddly notifies her that her balance is x, but her scheduled payroll transfer of X is coming in 6hrs.  Good thing today payday she thinks

On the way home, she always says, “read, schedule, tonight”  Noticing that she’s totally free, she then says, “read, movies, new” which looks up her preset movie host, Netflix, and dictates the new moves (that she has not previously ordered/seen) that week, based on her predefined preferences.  She hears the summary and reviews of one she’s interested in and says, “order.”  The movie payment comes from her Paypal account and she smiles thinking about how much her husband should appreciate a movie about espionage in Latin America.

She get home to find her husband in the multimedia room playing golf with his brother Peter, or I should say “virtually” golfing.  The room contains a huge curved OLED screen, and is also wireless connected to the home processing unit, which had synced up the scheduled game invite he accepted while on the way home himself.  Peter sees over the video feed that Jessica walked into the room and says, “Oh, I see the misses is home, lets pick this up again tomorrow, ‘game, save.’”  After a “ding” which indicates his command executed successfully, he says, “I’ll be in NYC tomorrow, but the place I’m staying has Media Rooms, good thing my wireless device firmware flashed itself to be compatible with the Open Interface standard Marriott just certified as compatible.  Next time, I’ll invite the other guys and we’ll try that course you like in Hawaii.” You smile, and after saying goodbye, you turn to your wife who tells you dinner is on the way and switches to the media screen to video->netflix queue.

————

Ok, I started and went a bit further then anticipated, however you get my drift. I’m working on a few of these ideas, and a few others

Well, here at work, we have corporate email, but it’s hooked up to the gmail interface.  That gave me the idea of hooking up my own domain email accounts to use the Gmail interface, rather then the plain ol web1.0 mail style.  When setting it up, I noticed I could add others, five others infact.  Hmm, I really do like the dynamic/threaded style of Gmail, maybe I could also add Yahoo, AOL, and MSN there…  yeap, it can be done.

Now in-case you are thinking, yeah but it will get all cluttered, how will I keep track of them all?  Well you can use a trick that I’ve been using for a while, and those are filters.  Also, if I have some time, I’ll show you some nifty keyboard shortcuts you can use.

Basically we will be applying “labels” to designate the source of the incoming message.   You are probably familiar with folders.  Well in Gmail, labels take the place of folders and have the advantage of allowing multiple “labels” for any single message.  For example, you could have a “label” for  your brother, another for the source email address, and last one for projects.  Normally you could only put the message in one folder, but with labels, you can add numerous meta data to each message and also select messages based on multiple criteria.  For example, select all messages with the family label delivered t your yahoo account, or anything from your bother, regardless of which of your email addresses he sent it to.

Lets get started.

• First you need a gmail account.  (go to gmail.com and  click “create an account” on the lower right”)
• Next, lets create a filter to label emails from that google account.
  • click settings, labels, then in the labels area, type a new label name in the create new label area.  ie [username]_gmail
  • then click the filters tab at the top, at the bottom, create new filter, type your email in the “from” field, click next, then apply the label: (select the label you just made), click the checkbox for apply filters and click “Create Filter”
  • On the left, you will now notice your filter, and if you click on it, you will see all the emails associated with that account.
  • *this is a good time to clean up any emails in this account, it will be easier to do now rather then once you’ve aggregated your other accounts.  You might wanna start with “subject: FW” in the search mail box, I’m sure you don’t want to save all of those:)
• Now that you are all organized, lets get more mail.  click settings, then accounts, then “add a mail address you own.”
• Enter the external email address you want to use with gmail, next, enter your password
• Now if it’s one of the popular email services, it should already have to pop server populated.   Go ahead and enter your password, I also recommend labeling the message which you can do by clicking the associate checkbox  and click add account.
• Next, I recommend you setup the outgoing mail service now, click next
• Type your full name, next,
• I do want to be able to send mail as the account you are importing, not gmail.
• Again, since it is probably a popular service, it will be prepopulated, except password, enter that now and click add account.
• That other account will receive an access code, so one last trip over to the original email client to retrieve the key and paste it in the gmail window.
• Now you should be back in the Settings, Accounts pane.  Make sure the “When receiving a message:” option to “Reply from the same address the email was sent to” is selected.
• Give it some time, and you should have a ton of new messages again.  Good luck organizing them. Once done, repeat for each email address you own.

Add offline storage, and you’ve got a near perfect email system