Marc Andreessen offers answers questions from a Stanford audience about topics from the state of VC and the stock market, to Facebook’s market dominance, to the rebirth of consumer electronics.

1. Shows the App on the second page of my iPad (click image to see full size shot)

2. Shows the Netflix opening logo.

3. Shows the Netflix iPad App page for titles available to “Watch Instantly.”

4. Shows a landscape screencap from The September Issue, a documentary about Anna Wintour

5. Shows a portrait screencap from the same film.

My system disk is almost full according to a warning I received earlier today. It’s a 300GB drive and I don’t store many files on it. It’s primarily applications and system files. iTunes has a handful of songs. iPhoto is empty. All the apps that store files are empty. My Final Cut scratch disk is on a Drobo. There is no reason this drive should be even half full, but if I Get Info on the system disk it says I’m using 297.87GB of 300GB.

I ran OmniDiskSweeper and it only found that I was using 146.71GB of disk space. I ran Filelight and it showed me using 140GBs.

What am I missing? Thanks in advance!

A few weeks ago, I connected with my favorite cousin from growing up. She and I spent as much time as we could together singing, watching Cinemax and eating Doritos. Around college time, I pulled away from friends and family for a stupid reason. I had a nickname that everyone, including teachers in school called me. I HATED it made me feel small and avoid social situations because I hated being called that name. It’s an Arkansas thing, I guess. I have a great aunt who seems to have no qualms about being called “Mutt” her whole life.

When I left for college, I used my real name and started life fresh. Lots of good came from the fresh start approach, but I regret so deeply that I lost touch with all those people who meant so much to me growing up. I should’ve just told everyone to stop calling me that stupid name!

This morning, I checked in with Facebook and had a friend request from one of my best friends during the high school and early college years. I approved the request and started browsing her friends and saw so many names of people I care about and miss having in my life. Clicking around led me to a memorial page for one of my best guy friends from childhood. He was killed in Afganistan December 30, 2009. He was one of the best kids I knew growing up. His dad is a doctor. They were wealthy. He didn’t have to serve the country by going to war. He had to have done it because he wanted to do it. I never would have known he was gone if it wasn’t for Facebook.

An earlier generation told us about the hardship of walking to school uphill both ways. I think my generation will tell our kids about how we used to loose touch with the people we loved when we moved to a different city. That doesn’t have to happen anymore and it is a beautiful thing.

I’m going to spend some time this weekend connecting with people I miss in memory of my old friend, Jeremy Wise (1975-2009).

For my personal computing and iSocial needs, I use the same powerful Macs I use for work. It is a lot of power coming along for the ride on tasks that don’t require it. The MacBook Air was an ideal solution for accomplishing the more personal stuff, but the price made it seem like more of a luxury that I could live without.

The iPad may disappoint some, but it is exactly the kind of tool I’ve been wanting. I want to accomplish light processing tasks like writing stories for Geek Brief and interacting with friends online on a lighter, less energy consuming machine. The iPad is light, small and portable while still retaining enough functionality for many people to skip laptop ownership altogether.

The only thing missing that gives me pause is iChat. iChat, for me, is the most important tool on my Macs, apart from video and graphics programs. If AIM and Skype can run on an iPhone, why not voice and text chat on an iPad (and an iPhone)? It must be a decision Apple has made based on all the mysterious reasons Apple makes choices that puzzle those of us living outside the Infinite Loop.

The technology community seems to have greeted the iPad’s arrival with disappointment, just like Cali predicted. Other than with the name, I can’t say I’m disappointed. The lower than expected price makes up for everything missing for me except iChat.