He's not Michael Phelps

"Steve! My name is Steve!"

The value of Privacy

Interesting article on the impact of Privacy on Society:

"If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me." "Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition." "Because you might do something wrong with my information." My problem with quips like these -- as right as they are -- is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.

Article Here

Got this one...

Way to go apple...

Cool video...

I found it!

It was in a small bookstore in Santa Cruz. If you spot it at your local borders...take a picture and send it to me...I'll post 'em here!

You can *cough*buy it here*cough*

This one still makes me chuckle

Album cover photo for the group "The Early Risers" for their single "I'll rise, but if you ask me to shine I'm going to stuff my fist up your nose."
http://www.flickr.com/photos/haseman/2649906231/

This was one of those random pictures I snapped without looking through the viewfinder.

MY first HDR photo

My first attempt at making a night shot into an HDR photo. I'd love feedback. Get a larger image by clicking on it.

Another walk in the dark fog

Dan and I took a walk through the fog in north beach with our tripods. Here are the results.

An Open letter to Steve Jobs

On reading this again....I've realized It's really not my best writing ever...mostly I think I was just too pissed to think straight ;-)

Dear Steve,

I'm writing, as an apple user of over 20 years, to express my outrage at having been advertised at while minding my own business using your operating system.
I was working on some software for my company when, from nowhere, I was alerted, by an annoying and blatant advertisement, that could update and purchase your product "Mobile Me"
This "alert" appeared without any input from me...I was working in another application entirely. I then had to track down how to make the mobile me menu item go away...because there was no setting in the menu kill the icon in the top top right corner of the screen.

This is a violation of my trust in your company. It is a violation in my trust that I will not be advertised at while using your operating system.

This is something I would expect from Microsoft. Frankly, if this is the direction in which your company is headed I will take my money somewhere else that will not harass me while I'm trying to work.

Thanks for your time,
Chris Haseman

http://haseman.blogspot.com

What's missing from this picture?

This picture was taking from the San Francisco Apple Store website. If you're an SF resident you should be able to spot it.

If you give up or think you have the answer, click here

No, it's not homeless people yelling at you, but that's a good guess

Back to the Fog

We made it back to SF safely. It's good to be home. Although I could do without all the over-cast.

Getting back to the gym today was painful both physically and mentally (when stepping onto the scale and seeing how much damage vacation had done)

All's well here, it's back to the grind for me.

Our last day in paradise

Since I know many of you have been plotting my death for the past week while looking at the photos I've been posting, it should come as a relief to many of you that today is our last day in paradise. It's been staggeringly beautiful...even this morning during a downpour:

I hope both of you have enjoyed the pictures, rants, and scenery posted here. I return to SF tomorrow and will return to my regularly scheduled hardly-ever blogging.

Since I took a picture from this spot on arrival, it made sense to post one taken from the same spot upon departing.



Aw Christ, there's even a rainbow on the left side I hadn't seen until just now.

Hiking outside Hana

More photos from the hike: here

The Elusive Double Fail

First, before I go any further, let me say that there are more pictures to be seen on the hawaii flickr set here.

Sparks, Meghan, and I woke up this morning at 5 am to catch the sunrise and witness the "Maui Blow-Hole"
The for those of you who don't hate yourselves enough to wake up at 5 am, let me explain what this entails.
The Goddamnit-what-the-hell-is-that-noise machine goes off at 4:50...and upon spreading bits of the aforementioned alarm clock evenly over the space of about 3 square feet like so much chunky penut butter one is immediately struck by two things.

First, It's EARLY, like, uh....early wow.
Second, the Sun hasn't come up yet.

At this point, a dialogue begins between two very important parts of my brain:

Meghan - Jesus christ, do we have to get up?
Me - No.
Meghan - good.
Me - Wait, that didn't go as planned....

This conversation would rinse and repeat until such time as there is light outside. Unfortunately, I during iteration "I have no idea" I remembered that Sparks was probably having a similar battle upstairs except by himself. So the next time round the conversation went something like:

Meghan - Jesus H. Christ in a Chicken Basket, do we really have to get up?
Me - No we don't.
Meghan - are you sure?
Me - ...maybe...

At which point Sparks knocked on the door.

40 minutes later we were somewhere on the coast of Maui taking photographs. Which is where, I might add, the title of this little post comes into play. See, as I said before, we were looking to see the blowhole and the sunrise.
Due to some unforseen water vapor hovering in the east-ish direction of our fair island the sunrise was almost completely obscured. You might call this hovering water vapor clouds, I would call it the first of two epic failures. Ok, no sunset...what was the other thing..ah yes, the "blow hole"
Here's the thing about the blow hole, it's caused by holes in the rocks being flooded by the ocean. Thus sending large founts of water into the air. But, there's a catch, oceans have these things called tides wherein the level of the sea isn't always constant. This "Blow hole" apparently requires a tidal status of "Not-so-goddamn-early-in-the-morning" and so we were faced with the second half of our elusive double fail. Low Tide = not enough water to make the blow-hole work.

At least, it seems, I got a few good photographs from the walk. Some of which might make delightful desktop backgrounds after I've gotten over the anger. Since you, oh sorta-faithful-reader, did not have to wake up at the crack-of-what-the-hell-time-is-it-again to get them, I suggest you check them out at the link I provided near the top. Or, because we can't be bothered to work the scroll wheel anymore, I'll link it again here.

Things, as they say, are normal here.