Steve Jobs Silhouette
I spent a couple hours making this Steve Jobs Silhouette look good enough to work against a dark background. Sharing it might save another artists some time.
Steve Jobs Silhouette (transparent .png file)
The Beauty of Facebook
It took me a long time to grok Facebook. Cali and I looked at from an entirely different perspective than a regular facebooker. We have so much love and appreciation for thousands of people who watch GeekBrief.TV that we added them as friends on Facebook when they asked us to. I stopped adding people after about a hundred because I found the flood of information about people’s personal lives to be overwhelming. Now I’m back to adding friends of our show, but Facebook is really about not letting go of those real connections we make in our lives.
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).
Read MoreWeekend Project #1
We can’t have a satellite dish at our temporary apartment without paying a crazy fee. It’s not a problem, though. If plans go roughly the way we hope, we’ll only be here through the summer and who wants to watch TV in the Summer?.
In the 9 years we’ve been married, we’ve opted to buy DVDs rather than go to the movie theater. The DVD collection is significant and we won’t have room for all the DVDs on the bus. We’re putting them all on a Drobo using Handbrake to produce Apple TV ready files. I expect it to take most of the Summer.
Today, I’m routing cables so we can watch the movies stored on the Drobo.
I’m using the Mac Pro to process the video files and to act as the player (quicktime). We have three video cards on the Mac Pro. One is connected to a 37″ Vizio display over a 25′ long VGA extension cable.
I ordered a 12′ TOS cable from Monoprice.com to connect to a JAMO home theater system. I also ordered an ethernet cable to connect the Mac Pro directly to the Airport Extreme so we get better reliability when watching movies.
Ultimately we want to incorporate Apple TV into the mix, but for now it’s just a quick and dirty way to kick back and watch a movie in our temporary little world.
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