First day of the new semester

Back to school! I have 3 more classes to take to get that Associates degree, and 2 of them had their first meetings tonight. First up was History 4B, which is the history of Western civilization from just prior to the French Revolution until today. The teacher seems alright, if a little underwhelming in his tone and cadence. He does seem to know his crap at least. He's got a Masters in religious history (intriguing to me at least; I'm waiting to see how this colors his history), a Ph.D. in some other history thing (I forget what), and he was apparently one of the authors of HIPAA (weird). Seems like an easy A, knock on wood.

The class was lightly attended, to the point where the teacher was asking us to tell friends to join the class so it wouldn't get canceled. The really crappy part is that this is the only section of Hist 4B offered this semester and I need it to graduate, so if they cancel it I'm screwed.

My later class is English 1B, in which we're going to read short stories, poems and a play and write about them. Seemed incredibly boring to me at first, but the teacher has a fun attitude and some of my classmates kept things light-hearted, including the girl sitting next to me who actually at least pretended to think I was funny. I don't think this will be as easy an A but since it's been like 12 years since I took an English class, it's hard for me to judge after one night.

Dangers of blogging

As a history buff, it should have occurred to me earlier that one of the dangers of blogging is reporting on an event before all the details are in. Take for example, my last post.

Now I can't say for 100% certain that what I had was food poisoning, and I further can't be sure that if it was, I got it from my dinner. But we'll just say that I had quite a terrible Saturday and spent the day in bed, eating a bit of rice, apple and toast, along with some VitaminWater and club soda. By my count, I ate the equivalent of 15 WeightWatchers Points all day; I'm supposed to eat 39. And I won't be eating a burger for a while. Or returning to The Counter.

On the bright side (and as Monty Python says, "Always look on the bright side of life."), I did drop 4 pounds. So I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

First Beer Bash and Dinner

Every 3-5 weeks Apple has a Beer Bash on our main campus. Now, while the invite posting always says "Badged Personnel Only", I still never felt comfortable as a contractor going down there, even though technically I was a "badged personnel" person. So tonight was a New Products Beer Bash, where they toted out the new MacBook Air and also showed off the updated Apple TV. First off, let me say the the MacBook Air kicks major ass. It's tiny, it's light, yet it's a fully functional laptop. The whole "full-size keyboard" thing doesn't sink in until you pick it up. You sit there and realize, 'Yes it weighs 3 pounds, yes it's tiny as hell, but holy crap, I'm not missing anything I've come to expect from a laptop.' I'm totally getting one.

The updated Apple TV looked pretty sweet. My initial reaction to the product almost a year ago was 'ho-hum' but now it looks pretty nice with the whole HD thing and the beginnings of streaming movies through it. Now, I have no insider knowledge leading me to this conclusion, but I would say it's a safe bet that within the next year or two this product will support you ripping all of your DVDs to your Mac and streaming them through it.

The overall Beer Bash experience was very cool. It was packed in Caffe Macs (where they held it) but not to the point of uncomfortableness. They were serving ice cold kegs of Marzen, Guinness, Harp and Heineken, along with wine, water and soft drinks. There was some decent-looking finger food, of which I only sampled the pizza bread (tasty enough). They also gave out MacBook Air posters, and if I can find an image of it I will post it. I heard from other employees that the poster thing is not the norm, but I hope it may be going forward because it's a neat memento.

My parents offered to take me to dinner to celebrate my new job and I picked The Counter on Santana Row. It's an "upscale" burger joint where you can custom order your burger down to the type of lettuce. It was very tasty and all of us were highly pleased with the food. I'll have to give it one more try before I toot its horn too much; suffice to say it was gooooood. I've decided next time I'll try a chicken "burger" with peanut sauce, scallions and shredded carrots for a Thai experience.

Job update

So I started at Apple this week as a full-time employee. I've been working here as a contractor since August and they offered me a position last week. I'm part of the User Experience team for Apple Support; basically our team is in charge of the design of all pages under apple.com/support. As a contractor I was wholly focused on one project, our so-called "Online Self Service" drive. Now I'll be picking up other areas of the site along with my main project.

It's been great so far to actually be on the team and not just a "hired gun." A cube recently opened up next to my other team members so yesterday I was able to move there and actually feel connected to them. I've got a nice new MacBook Pro for my work computer. I've already used my employee discount to buy a nice new bag for my laptop and a shirt for Lucas.

The name of this blog is...

The name of the blog, "The Bright Center of the Universe," is based on a Luke Skywalker quote from Star Wars (later retitled as Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope). C3PO asks Luke where he has landed and Luke replies, "Well if there's a bright center to the universe you're on the planet its farthest from." I thought this quote was rather apropos for a blog, in that sometimes in life we as individuals feel like we are far from the warmth that others can offer us and it helps to share your experiences with others, even in a disconnected medium like the Web. Of course, there are some times that you feel like you are the bright center, and those times are worth writing about too.

Look for me to put down in blog form my random thoughts along with some well-formed ones. Hopefully I can add a chuckle to your day or give you something to think about. I welcome your comments.