Note: I've been 39 for 327 days and I'll be 40 in 38 days.

MacBook Air Wake-Up Fix

MacBook AirThe MacBook Air is the best laptop ever made. There’s really no arguing this point. But when I upgraded from Lion to Mountain Lion, suddenly it started to take for-freaking-ever to wake up when it went to sleep.

Before the upgrade I could reliably open the machine and immediately type my password to start working. Ever since late July, though, I was ripping my hair out waiting fifteen seconds or more — I know, I know: #firstworldproblems — before I could use my computer. The best part of having the SSD was the fact that everything had been instantaneous, and it seemed like a software glitch had ruined my baby.

It was driving me crazy, and nobody else I knew was experiencing the same issue.

And then I stumbled upon “Fixing” Slow Wake for MacBook Pro W/ Retina Display while browsing my stellar.io feed. This guy was having the exact same problem I was! He even described the symptoms the same way I did. And his fix works perfectly. I really can’t tell you how much happier I have been with my laptop since I read that article a few days ago.

Official White House Response

Death StarOne of the (many) cool things Obama has done since he became POTUS is allow anyone to submit a petition to the White House. If you manage to get 25,000 people to sign your petition, you are guaranteed a formal response from the Obama Administration. There are petitions from nutjobs in Texas who want to secede from the United States. There are petitions to deport Piers Morgan back to the United Kingdom. Basically if you can get enough people to sign it, the White House will respond.

So, of course, someone created a petition to try to convince the U.S. government to Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016. And of course the petition managed to garner enough supporters, because there are a lot of Star Wars fans in the United States.

The Official White House Response is amazing. It’s titled “This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For” and includes a note that, “The Administration does not support blowing up planets.”

Paul Shawcross, the Chief of the Science and Space Branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget, goes on to detail some of the incredible things NASA is doing right now, including floating robots (Holy crap!) and the Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office. (C3PO!?!)

Gorilla Sales Skyrocket After Latest Gorilla Attack

Gorilla Sales Skyrocket After Latest Gorilla AttackI saw a link to this story in my Twitter feed, and then I saw several people linking to it on Facebook, and I chuckled at the title. The Onion has made me smile on such a consistent basis over the years; I seriously hope the people that work there are paid well, because they deserve it. I finally got around to actually reading the article this morning and it made me literally laugh out loud.

As evidence, Simmons pointed to a 2011 University of Maryland study, which found that 98 percent of Americans who own a gorilla have never used them for defense against a home invasion. Simmons also cited widely reported studies confirming that people who keep gorillas in the home are 12 times more likely to have their arms torn off, and children in those households are 19 times more likely to be picked up by the legs and bashed repeatedly into the ground.

Another Half

Nike Free 4.0I ran another half marathon this morning before work. Add that to the one I ran on New Year’s Day and that gives me a solid 26.2 miles this year. My wife gave me a great pair of Nike running shoes for Christmas. They felt very strange at first — they’re the lightest sneakers I’ve ever owned — but now I love them.

The only bummer is that my right knee seems to only last about six miles before I start experiencing excruciating pain. As my friend is quick to note, I’m no doctor. But to me it feels like my lateral collateral ligament is what’s causing problems. I can’t tell if it’s simply getting inflamed or if I might have damaged it somehow. Aspirin helps, but I think I’m going to have to see a doctor about it.

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Office Quotes

Brandissimo!There’s a guy in my office who surreptitiously records the absurd things we all say, then sends a company-wide email with his collection to ring in the new year.

Here are my out-of-context comments which made the list this year, and a few of my co-workers (with their names removed):

Mine:

  • “David is a great name for a girl.”
  • “We could all be dead in seven minutes.”
  • “Who would drink orange juice with pulp?”
  • “Rudolph’s dad is a dick.”
  • “Rudolph comes from a long line of reindeer dicks.”

Co-Workers:

  • “I have a couple thoughts on chili.”
  • “But look at all those words I spelled correctly!”
  • “Who doesn’t love wombats?”
  • “The best way to get nothing done is to send an email to two people.”
  • “I think most songs are about love, crappy things that happen, and death.”
  • “I find chickens very persuasive.”
  • “I neither love nor hate Jack White … kind of like cilantro.”
  • “Peacocks are assholes.”
  • “He looks like Barack Obama. If Barack Obama was a little albino and blind.”
  • “Catamarans make great beds.”
  • “Can we find a way to balance your desire to make it scalable, with my desire to have it not look terrible?”

Eve

Christmas EveWe were always an “open your presents Christmas Eve” family. UPS packages from my dad and Nana Rainy and extended family would start arriving weeks before Christmas, and my sister and I would pester my mom incessantly about opening some early. She would always cave and we’d get to open one each night for a few nights until Christmas Eve. Somehow even though we picked the gifts “at random”, the early ones would inevitably be socks or underwear or other incomprehensibly boring things. I have no idea how my mom managed to do that.

Then on Christmas Eve we’d get to open everything in a mad Dionysian fête of cardboard and wrapping paper.

We’d have insane meals that lasted five hours.

But first there was dinner, of course. We’d have these insane meals that lasted four and five hours. My 100% Italian grandmother would make 100% Italian lasagna and spaghetti and meatballs and sausage and peppers and onions and fried eggplant and zucchini and a half-dozen pies and cannolis and usually rum balls and wine biscuits and coffee and the telling of many jokes and stories and the church pastor would drop by and that old — ancient — couple from “the old country” would bring a fruit cake and then some other friends from bingo would bring pastries and the whole time my sister and I would be going out of our minds thinking of all the toys we’d circled in the 800-page Sears catalog that came in the mail before Halloween and just wanting everyone to hurry up and wash the dishes and get the hell home so we could open the damn presents.

And we would. We’d get home and mom would let us open our presents. One at a time, each of us respectfully watching the other and when we finished opening all the gifts from New England there would be the finding of more presents behind the tree and behind the couch and under the couch and there was no way — no way in hell — that mom could have afforded all these other presents when we were so broke we often (the three of us) would split a box of macaroni and cheese for dinner or share a chicken breast and a single can of string beans (things I remember from when we lived in Holly Hill and my sister probably doesn’t remember at all but God I remember how small that apartment was) and somehow after we finished opening every box and every wrapped item was gone and we sat there playing with new toys until two or three in the morning and mom playing with us and having just as much fun as we did because she loved toys and games and playing with us more than anything else in life and we finally fell asleep and yes I did fall asleep hugging an X-Wing one year and incredibly, inconceivably, impossibly the next morning there were more presents from Santa and it made no sense it never did because Santa wasn’t real but it didn’t matter there were stockings full of candy and practical items and then the “big” presents that we had even forgotten we really wanted the most and I will never, ever, ever understand — or know — how she did it but, fuck, our mom was a Christmas magician.

And now she’s gone.

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Like a Lizard on a Window Pane

I Do Not Like This – Facebook Mystery Likes

FacebookI have been telling a friend of mine for a few weeks now that I do not “like” Zoosk, the internet dating site. He’s not the only one who questioned why that news appeared in his Facebook feed. It’s even more annoying because I’m quite happily married, which is — of course — why people keep asking me why I like a dating site.

I assure you: I never liked Zoosk.

And so it was with some intrigue that I clicked on a link I saw on Twitter this morning. Tim Carmody retweeted Clive Thompson who linked to an article at readwrite.com titled Why Are Dead People Liking Stuff On Facebook?

At first, like others, I thought perhaps there was some way — as hard as it would be for me to believe, because I am painfully attentive to this kind of thing — that I might have accidentally “liked” Zoosk while trying to dismiss an ad or flicking through my feed on my iPhone. But that’s really a tough sell for me. And to learn that people who are dead are liking things on Facebook … Well …

I really hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but as Douglas Adams wrote in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, one of my all-time favorite books:

“If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.”

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K, my friends.

Runnin’ Down a Dream

Los Angeles SunriseIt was raining when I got home last night so I was worried I’d have another soaking run, but when I hit the road this morning the sun was rising and the clouds had mostly disappeared. It was pretty brisk — low 60s, I’m guessing — but I ran hard to compensate for the pizza and beer at last night’s office Christmas party and was nice and warm after a mile or two.

Usually I shoot for five miles on Thursdays, but I decided to knock out a 10k today instead. A 10k is just a little less than six and a quarter miles, I learned from my Nike Running app. Bad route-estimating on my part led to me hitting a full seven miles before I made it back to the house, though. (I knew I shouldn’t have added the extra loop into Beverly Hills, but I love seeing all the Hannukah lights competing with the Christmas lights over there.)

Sidebar: Yesterday I learned that Norah Jones is the daughter of the recently-deceased Ravi Shankar. I’m learning something new every day!
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