Fiat Lux

Harry Truman famously said on learning that he had become President of the US, “I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”

Not that my new job is remotely comparable to becoming POTUS, but even so, I think I know how he felt.

I’m at the Adobe Community Summit this week, meeting scores of new faces and getting inundated with information. My new gig has gotten Twittered, blogged, and announced at the keynote. It’s enough to inflate anyone’s ego, but the sheer amount of new stuff that I have to assimilate is a good counterbalance.

I was more than a little nervous about starting this job, but everyone has been so warm and welcoming, all I feel now is excited to get going!

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It’s a lovely weekend, too nice for substantive blogging. Here’s a few quick notes though:

• I did a little playing around with Muxtape recently. Uploading songs is slower that I’d like, but other than that it’s a pretty pain-free process. The results are here.
• We’re all set for my Vassar class reunion next month. Thinking about how long it’s been since graduation makes me feel very old, but I’m psyched to be going back to one of the most lovely college campuses in the US.
• Obama has passed Clinton in committed superdelegates, as well as elected delegates.

And finally, a Tennessee Williams quote that’s been floating around my head this past day or so, after wrapping up my time at 4D:

People you’ve known in places do that: they go when you go. The earth seems to swallow them up, the walls absorb them like moisture, remain with you only as ghosts; their voices are echoes, fading but remembered.

The new gig starts Monday.

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Heading out with Scott to check out the show. Should be fun! I’ll post pix if I get any good ones.

UPDATED: We’re back. Had a great time, here’s a few highlights:

Adam Savage from Mythbusters, taking about his life of making things. I like the show but hearing Adam speak in person and show some of the many non-Mythbusters things he’s done increased my respect for him significantly.

What a cool guy! A true creative geek in the best possible sense of the word.

Those guys from YouTube did a live … performance(?) …. of their demented yet oh so cool pairings of Mentos & Diet Coke.

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Gas prices continue their journey upwards, but fortunately for me, my 60+ mile a day car commute will shortly be no more.

I’ve accepted a new job at a different company, and will be able to do my commute via CalTrain most days.

More details after I start on May 12th.

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I’m not sure if I have gone over to the Dark Side or to the light, but as of last night I’m the owner of a Blackberry Curve 8310.

Setting the BlackBerry up is kind of a pain, especially since my old Cingular SIM card needed to be replaced by a new AT&T card. I had to call to activate the phone, then go through three different setup procedures to get my BIS account and associated email activated. It’s not a very user-friendly process and had me seriously wondering what I’d gotten myself into.

Once that was all done, though, things got easier. I love the over-the-air install, and already have three 3rd party applications running on my Curve: Twitterberry, the Gmail client, and a multi-IM client called WebMessenger. I still don’t really know how to use all the features of the Curve, but I’ll learn.

On a side note — switching SIM cards, while not a Blackberry-specific issue, brought to light exactly how unorganized and messy my personal address book management has become over the past few years. I run Thunderbird on my desktop and my laptop, and neither of those address books is complete or up-to-date, with some more key data living only on the SIM that I can no longer use.

No matter what I do for a PIM solution next, it’s going to involve a bunch of tedious manual data entry to bring all the bits and pieces of contact info I’ve accumulated together. I’ve got to figure out how to minimize that. I’ve even found myself wondering if this might be a good job for Plaxo (I’ve heard that they are not a grubby spamhaus anymore).

Thoughts?

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I was puttering around on Facebook this morning, and it occurred to me that I might want to set up a Fan page for one of my favorite food writers, Michael Ruhlman. So I did (you may need to be on Facebook to see that link).

There’s not much content there yet other than a brief blurb, photo, and link to his site, but I’ll work on it as I have time. Please feel free to join and add stuff if you’re so inclined!

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The AP reports today that despite Microsoft’s repeated insistence that it really, truly is going to stop selling Windows XP in June, Steve Ballmer did not slam the door on the possibility of yet another life extension for the OS.

I can’t help thinking that as far as Microsoft is concerned, XP is the evil zombie that won’t die. They can shoot as many Windows Vista bullets as they like at it, but popular demand keeps driving XP relentlessly forward.

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We’re heading out early tomorrow AM for a quick Passover visit to NYC.

In the meantime, check out this recipe and video for Matzoh Lasagna.

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High gas prices are bad, but as the Wall Street Journal reminds us, it could be a lot worse. At least I have a kitchen full of groceries and the ability to keep it that way.

For the world’s poor, the situation is getting worse.

Surging commodity prices have pushed up global food prices 83% in the past three years, according to the World Bank — putting huge stress on some of the world’s poorest nations. Even as the ministers met, Haiti’s Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis was resigning after a week in which that tiny country’s capital was racked by rioting over higher prices for staples like rice and beans.

Rioting in response to soaring food prices recently has broken out in Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Ethiopia. In Pakistan and Thailand, army troops have been deployed to deter food theft from fields and warehouses. World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned in a recent speech that 33 countries are at risk of social upheaval because of rising food prices. Those could include Indonesia, Yemen, Ghana, Uzbekistan and the Philippines. In countries where buying food requires half to three-quarters of a poor person’s income, “there is no margin for survival,” he said.

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One month ago, gas was $3.73 a gallon at the midprice gas station that I pass by pretty much every single day. Here’s what prices were like earlier today:

That’s right … $3.91 a gallon on the low end. *sigh*

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