I Get To Attend an Opening…Again

Ah yes, I remember it well: The long lines in the Cambridgeside Galleria Mall, the T-Shirts for those nearer to the front of the line, the excitement as the doors finally opened… The Apple Store opening in Cambridge, Massachusetts was one of the first ones that Apple had. We were used to the fact that although we weren’t Cupertino (or even San Francisco), Cambridge was one of the East Coast centres for Apple’s presence. After all, in the early days of Macworld Expo (and I doubt if many people who own an Apple product know this at this point), there was a West Coast Macworld Expo in San Francisco in January and an East Coast Macworld Expo in Boston, usually during the hottest week in August. It wasn’t until that fateful day when Bill Gates’s 20-foot face appeared on the screen behind Steve Jobs during his keynote (and it was hissed by the crowd) that Steve made sure that there would be no more MacWorlds in Boston.

I know, I know, there were probably other reasons, but Jobs’s annoyance at the disagreement of the Boston crowd with his strategy of having Microsoft invest in Apple during their darkest hour probably didn’t help the show. In the following year, Jobs refused to give the keynote, and the show moved to New York City. It continued on a few years there at the Javitts Center, but attendance at that venue quickly petered out. As many have pointed out, the Internet can now disperse information about products far faster and farther than any show floor could. There is now only one MacWorld Expo, each January, and it remains a San Francisco tradition.

When we moved to Vancouver, I missed that sense of being on Apple’s radar. Despite the fact that many here use the Mac (in fact, in recent years it’s increased), I found the local Certified Apple Dealers a bit ramshackle, with relatively small variety of peripherals and messy, poorly maintained display areas. My first job was working for someone who hated the Mac, and he was relieved when I didn’t insist that I use one in his small office (I would have been the only Mac user in the shop). At IBM, we all were assigned Thinkpads, of course. The consultants from Victoria often had Macs. At Blogger and smaller business events, the Mac was predominant. Nevertheless, the absence of the iPhone in Canada, the higher prices for products, and constantly hearing the rumors that Apple Hated Canada didn’t help matters.

Our days of living in a relatively less important spot in the Apple universe are about to end. On this coming Saturday morning, I hope to be in line for the opening of the first Apple store in Vancouver. We’ve been waiting for this for some time. Its going to be in the heart of downtown, at the Pacific Centre Mall (actually the previous location of Holt Renfrew, a high end Department Store, who have moved into new digs nearby). I believe that it’s only the fifth store in Canada, with the other three in Toronto and one in Laval.

To put things in a bit of perspective, another Apple store opened in Boston (across the river from Cambridge, but certainly near our old home) last week. It’s the largest Apple Store in the world, taking up three floors and sporting an all glass facade, on Boylston Street. Oh well, I guess Boston still looms larger in Apple’s realm, but at least we’re no longer off the map.

Battle of the (Military) Bands

Never has there been a better musical metaphor for the disaster of the Bush Presidency than this audio clip from the visit of the Pope Benedict XVI to the White House on April 16th. Thanks to my hero, Tom Allen of the CBC (who will be tragically let go this fall, much to my agony, but enough about that for the time being), his sharp ears picked up this amazing fiasco of Hail to the Chief:

Here’s the quote from Tom Allen’s Junk Drawer:

Here’s the musical event Charles Ives waited for his entire life. On April 16, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI visited the White House. Two musical groups were there to welcome him - the Herald Trumpets from the US Army Band, and the President’s Own Marine Band. The President, not surprisingly, was there, too. Protocol says that any time the President of the United States turns up in an official role, the band has to play “Hail to the Chief.” As you hear from the clip, protocol apparently doesn’t say they have to play it in just one key. The story is that one group came to rehearsal and the other didn’t, so they ended up, at the big moment, playing the same piece in different keys. I’ve received, predictably, contradictory reports of which group, the Army or the Marines, fired in the wrong direction, but the result was a direct hit for music fans who like their military bands on the experimental side. It’s fantastic!

I found out this morning that it was because one of the groups was a ‘civilian’ group. This was the musical equivalent of ‘friendly fire’ between American troops and Military contractors.

An Impressive (and Maybe Historic) Speech

I’ve not said much about the US election to date. I’ll be voting in it, as an American abroad (even though I’m not really ‘abroad’).  Still, being a citizen, it’s my right to do so, at least up until I give up American citizenship, which for practical reasons I doubt I’ll ever do, no matter how expensive the US government makes it to keep it (but who knows what the future will bring).

It should come as no surprise that I’m supporting the candidacy of Barack Obama. I was never a fan of Hilary Clinton. She was always too strident and never owned up to the mistake of voting for the Iraq war. A simple apology would have been fine for me (like the one Richard Clarke gave to the 9/11 widows). Lately she’s struck me as so unpleasant and shrill in so many ways (including more than a whiff of some of the worst intrusive and meddlesome self-righteousness that Modern Liberalism in the US  can be; It Takes a Village indeed…) that I can even imagine her losing to John McCain on pure backlash, and a McCain in the Oval Office would be far worse then Hilary. I also hated the idea of the Presidency being a trophy tossed back and forth between two families that each felt themselves uniquely entitled to it. After Hilary’s stint, it would be Jeb Bush for two terms, and then it would be Chelsea’s turn, followed by… the twins? Sure; By that time the US would have been reduced to Third World Nation status, and it wouldn’t matter any more which Dynasty got their four or eight-year Time-share slot in the Presidential Palace.

But I digress…

Obama struck me as far more inspiring and interesting, (although admittedly not as much as Howard Dean did), but I couldn’t put my finger on why until the speech he gave today. He made the speech because he had to deal with the toxic statements made by the Pastor of his Church,  and why he hadn’t distanced himself from the man who made it (in addition to leaving the Church itself).

That was the reason for the speech. What I heard instead, was a clear and eloquent meditation on why the US is still so divided, how it got to where it is today, and maybe, how it can begin to move forward.

Bush and the Republicans had been using Race as a way of splitting up the electorate, mainly to keep the South in their pocket. It has always been in their best interest to keep the dialog on racial inequality a taboo in public life, or to simply ignore it. With this speech, I think Obama began to open up the dialog about this topic, touching upon one exposed nerve after another:  Slavery and the Constitution, Welfare, Affirmative Action, Immigration… He mentioned them all. In essence, both sides of the debate on race have merit, but we have to all move on now, if we have the courage to. It was the kind of speech that a patient, educated, and dare I say it - a wise Statesman (rather than merely a politician) would give. Whether or not Obama wins the election, I have a hunch this speech will be talked about and studied in history texts for a long time.

But don’t take my word for it. If you have the time, watch the speech on YouTube. I’ve embedded it here, despite the mediocre quality of the video and audio. If I find a better source, I’ll link to it. (I’ve done this, thanks to Al ‘Bokashi-man‘ Pasternak’s pointer.)

Am I Really a Sports Jinx?

Back when I was working at RIPE, I used to joke to my co-workers that I’m bad luck to any team that I root for. When the BC Lions were in the Grey Cup, some of them either discouraged me (or encouraged me, depending on their preference) from watching the game on TV, because somehow they would always win when I missed the game and lose whenever I watched. It was almost uncanny how the act of observing the game, like some sort of twisted Heisenberg Principle, made the team lose.

This year, I didn’t watch a single game that the New England Patriots played in, except for one: The SuperBowl.

After winning every other game they played during the whole year, they lost this one game I watched in the last 35 seconds. It was probably one of the biggest Super Bowl upsets in history. In fact, ESPN.com is now having people rank and vote what they think are the biggest upsets in history, and tonight’s Super Bowl XLII (42) is listed among the candidates: (here’s a screen capture for posterity:)

Oh, and by the way, after missing their regular season, I also saw that ball go through Bill Buckner’s legs in the 1986 World Series, when the Boston Red Sox lost to the New York Yankees, which is, naturally, in the list.

Note to self: If your team is playing, and you’ve not seen them play in any other game, and they’ve won every other game, be sure to watch them, and bet against them, big time, particularly if it’s any team from New England vs. New York. At least you can profit from the misfortune you seem to emanate.

Post MacWorld Reckoning

Now that we’re back, unpacked, and somewhat caught up on email, laundry, grocery shopping, and all of those other chores that await when you return home, I can write a little about the past week.

Macworld is still fun, but its even more fun when Pam comes along, because it really just turns into a mini-vacation for both of us with Mac nerd activities thrown in. We got there on Monday night, only a little late. Our hotel was the whimsical and friendly Triton Hotel, a boutique inn on Grant Street, right by the gate to Chinatown. Besides the decidedly off-the-wall decor, they had a free wine and beer happy hour every day, and the young and hip staff frequently hit the switch to open the front doors for us so we often felt like we were making grand entrances (and exits). While the room was small, it was certainly usable, and the free wi fi Internet in every room wasn’t too shabby either.

Rather than get up at 3:00 AM to get in line for the Keynote (like some people I know) we arose at a decent hour and spent most of Tuesday at the two show floors, seeing new products and occasionally bumping into old friends. We had a great dinner at the nearby organic foodie restaurant ‘Roots’ (no relation to the Canadian clothing chain), including a Duck confit salad and an exceptionally delicious ‘Dungeness Crab/Mac & Cheese’ dish that I think should become a classic.

On Wednesday, I managed to make it to several Conference sessions. The one on using the new Finder in OSX Leopard turned out to be far too basic for me, so I left early and dropped into a nearby session on using the iWork applications (and got some very good tips on Numbers, the spreadsheet package in iWork). I also went to a session on iLife which was heavily weighted toward using iPhoto, although I did get a better feel for how to edit in the new version of iMovie. I guess you could say that it was a highly ‘i-centric’ day. In the evening Pam and I decided to go out for some lighter fare, and ended up in a small Thai restaurant that oddly enough was the very same site (a 1938 diner that has seen countless restaurants) where I had first discovered fusion cuisine in Barbara Tropp’s now long-gone China Moon Café of the mid 1990’s. It was sad to think that restaurants, like the people who run them, are all too mortal.

On Thursday I caught a few more sessions, but I really wanted to spend a bit more time at some key booths (Parallels, Microsoft, Filemaker, and El Gato were all on my list), as well as make a short trip to the Apple Store to get…(drum roll, please) an iPhone. Now, with the swiftly shifting sands of the jailbreaking of Firmware update 1.1.2, the new 1.1.3 Firmware update that adds new functionality, and the soon-to-be released Developer SDK next month, I’m frankly a bit torn as to how to Unlock this phone. While hardware solutions might be the the most effective, I really would like to be able to update the phone like everybody else, especially to add the whole new raft of 3rd party applications due to hit in the coming months. So, I’m going to have to go slowly and carefully, with the goal of getting my iPhone working in the least invasive and destructive way (hopefully without sawing off pieces of my SIM, or doing some other destruction). It would have helped if Rogers would finally offer the iPhone, but if Telus rolls out GSM and offers it first, I’ll switch carriers before you can say “Ring”. Hear that Rogers? You’ve kept me (and thousands like me) waiting long enough, so I’ve got zero loyalty to you.

On Thursday evening we, we met with an old friend of mine for dinner (at a nearby bistro - Steak with Bordelaise sauce, Frites and Leeks Vinaigrette - Oh yeah!), and then took a taxi to Davies Hall, where we heard the San Francisco Philharmonic. They gave a concert of Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2 (with the flute soloist being Timothy Day, an old friend of my parents who even performed a piece of mine years ago), Xenakis’s surprisingly beautiful and affecting L’Ile de Gorée for harpsichord and large ensemble, and Schubert’s 9th (’The Great’) Symphony in C Major. I hadn’t heard Michael Tilson Thomas conduct since I briefly met him many years ago in London, so it was great to see how he had matured as a conductor. The orchestra was first-rate and played everything beautifully, and I had to admit that I was probably grinning for nearly all of the Schubert —it’s a fun piece, full of good ideas, great tunes and rich colours, but I also know it really well. I could have almost sung along for the whole performance (but I didn’t, thank goodness for Pam and all the rest of the people sitting around me).

Friday morning, after a light breakfast (incredibly buttery croissants from the Café de la Presse next door), we headed on to the airport, and caught the Qantus 747 home. By 3:30, we were back, which takes me to the chores I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Now it’s late Sunday night, and having gone through my mail for work, I see that I have a busy week ahead of me. Oh well. The iVacation is definitely over.