…actually, I’m still sorting through my feelings.
I’ve been playing MMORPGs for about five years, and the last three years of that was playing WoW. A few weeks ago, I cancelled my account, but missed the renewal date by three days, which left me with a month of playtime. It’s not the first time I’ve cancelled my account, but it’s going to be the last.
Massive storms swept through Melbourne this afternoon.
I work in Nunawading. Thought the roof was going to lift off. Could be worse though.
You could work for Origin Energy a few doors up from our office.
That’s my car. I tried to check it for damage, but was waved off from moving it because it was ‘unsafe’.
I was working away yesterday when a Twitter from Andrew Sayer popped up noting that John Ilhan (aka “Crazy John”) had died. John Ilhan was the founder of Crazy John’s Mobile Phones. He was 42, married with four kids, and a self-made multi-millionaire. I was vaguely aware of him until Monday night, when Today Tonight did a story on him, where he had “allowed them into his private life”. The last question he was asked was “Where to from here?” He wanted to become Australia’s largest telco (or something along those lines).
The first thing that popped into my head when I saw that twitter was “check The Age“. The second was the parable spoken by Jesus in Luke 12:13-21. Not as a judgement of John Ilhan (I didn’t know him personally; by all accounts I’ve read he was a good & compassionate man), but as a reflection of the things that I sought to achieve for so long. John Ilhan seemed to have had all the good things most would aspire to; a wife and four kids, he reportedly had a personal fortune of $310 million dollars, a mansion in Brighton, was fit and healthy, exercised regularly. He had a heart attack while out walking in the early morning.
I’ve spent much of my life thus far reaching for more than I have. Caught up in the collective consumerist nightmare that most of us share. John Ilhan had already achieved that through determination and hard work. I wonder if he was happy? He seemed to be during his interview on Monday night. He spoke of spending nights sleeping on the floor of his shop while he was building his business; I didn’t sleep on the floor of either of my shops, but I came close. He succeeded where I chose to walk away. His hard work paid off for him, quite handsomely.
Now he’s gone, in the prime of his life (as they say). I guess that like any bereaved partner, his wife would give anything for just a few more minutes with him. If my life were suddenly over tomorrow, what would my legacy be? Could I look back and say that I lived a life worth living? Would my family be overjoyed at the time I spent with them, or regretful at the time I didn’t?
Sadly, I think that at this point in my life the answers would not be positive. Yesterday, I read an article in Newsweek that indicated that money “bought happiness” when moving some-one from “abject poverty” to “middle-class” but beyond that, there were diminishing returns on increasing wealth vs. happiness. Society is geared towards consumerism; making us unhappy with what we have and wanting something better. At this time in my life, I want for very little. I’m trying to learn to be thankful for, and satisfied with, the things I have; and to invest my time in the relationships I have with the people around me, for they are far more valuable than mere “stuff”.
The untimely death of John Ilhan reinforces this for me. At the end, whether you believe in an afterlife or not, the only things left behind for those who we love is the time and love we have given them. The stuff we had will rust and decay, but the time we invest in others can pay dividends far beyond our lifetime.
A precursor to my next post, I guess. I read Psalm 1 this morning during my … not-sure-what-to-call-it time; quiet time seems too trite, devotional time seems too clichéd. Verse 2 “but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” left me a bit thoughtful. I’m currently wrestling with how I feel about the Old Testament, the “law” if you will.
David was making a point, but if I’m no longer under law, but justified by faith (Gal 3:23-25), what use is it to me to meditate on the law?
Fast forward a few hours, and I’m cleaning the bathroom, a little frustrated with a member of my family for the state it was left in (no names). As I cleaned, I was thinking about how best to deal with this person. This lead to me considering what the most Christ-like response would be, and whether that response should just be an attitude of servanthood. After all, I’ve left plenty of mess behind for others to clean up.
And then it hit me. I was meditating on the best way to be Christlike, and in that process found my attitude changed. So, I hope that makes sense.
However, I still need to carry through with it instead of just thinking about it. That’s just a little bit harder 
Well, we’re a few days away from Apple’s big “Mac-related” announcement on August 7th. At this point everyone is assuming that it’s remodeled iMacs.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say … they’re probably right. I’m looking forward to seeing what I wake up to next Wednesday morning. 10am Tuesday Cupertino time is 3am Wednesday in Melbourne. Not staying up to find out.
With reference to my previous post, could I have been more wrong? I don’t think so (*cough* iPhone *cough*). I think I’ll give up on predicting the future and stick to drawing webcomics.
At the time I started writing this post, it’s exactly 22 hours until WWDC 2007 starts. Every Apple nerd/geek/fanboy is waiting to see what Steve Jobs will pull out of the hat in his keynote speech. For the non-Apple-n/g/f, WWDC is the World Wide Developers Conference.
The interesting thing is that two of the major Apple rumours sites are predicting different things for Steve’s keynote address. Think Secret is predicting the release of a brushed aluminium iMac. AppleInsider is arguing that the focus will be on the “Top Secret” features of Leopard. I think they both could be right, in a manner of speaking.
Late last month I received an email from an Apple dealer that I bought my iMac G5 from. He was asking if I was interested in following up on the quote I had requested for a 24″ Core 2 Duo iMac. I sent back a reply explaining why I intended to wait before purchasing a new iMac. I intended to write a lengthy post with my theories, but wanted to finish my blog re-design first, and life got complicated, and now the keynote is less than 24 hours away.
To summarise my theory:-
1. As of today it is the second longest period of time that the iMac range has gone without an update – 277 days (September 6, 2006 to June 9, 2007 – US dates). The longest period of time between updates was November 18, 2003 (20″ iMac G4) to August 31, 2004 (iMac G5) – 288 days. So the timing appears to be about right (thanks MacRumors for dates and Mactactic for the widget).
2. Australian Apple dealers across the board have had a sale on iMacs that appears to me to be unprecedented. A little birdy told me that it was Apple bringing prices into line with the Australian dollar. I’m not buying it. A sale that ends on the 9th of June? Two days before WWDC. To me, it screams “clear stock from the channel”. I don’t remember a sale of this scale on Apple products before. With that said, there wasn’t the same market penetration of Apple products into the general electronics “superstores” and department stores that there is today. So, maybe I just didn’t notice it before.
So, here it is. I think that AppleInsider is right. I think Steve may focus the keynote on the “Top Secret” features hinted at in January. For the sake of every Apple fanboy, they are going to have to be mind-blowing. I fear they won’t be. I think the anticipation built up by the “Top Secret” stunt from MacWorld SF is almost going to work against Steve here, and his much vaunted Reality Distortion Field may not be enough to keep the faithful drinking the Kool-Aid.
So, when Steve is about to finish, we get the “One more thing…” – and Steve announces the new iMac.
I may be wrong, but we’ll know in 24 hours…
Alister got Dugg
A friend of mine, Alister Cameron, got Dugg. This is something he appears to be very happy about, and in a couple of days I’ll ask him about the details to unpack the post-digg results.
The post in question was regarding Alister’s unintentional uncovering of a list of credit card numbers through Google. While I’m not terribly concerned about someone uncovering my credit card number (let’s face it, it’s hard to buy stuff on a card with no available credit), I did think about the advice he gave about searching Google for your own credit card number.
I think his suggestions are reasonable, if a little misguided. As several people have since commented (and I swear I thought of this before they left the comments!) punching your entire credit card number into Google might not be the wisest move. Apart from being transmitted in plain text, the search can be stored in your search history, and thus is stored in Google’s enormous database. Also, advising that the number is useless without a CVV2/CVC2 number is incorrect. You can still make a card-absent transaction without these numbers in many cases, but (as I understand it) it just means that if the card-holder disputes the transaction, there is a much better chance of the dispute going the card-holder’s way.
In addition, in my experience with dealing with client credit card information (I’ve had some interesting jobs), most credit cards have a two or three year expiry date. It brings the potential range of expiry dates down to 24-36 months at the outside. It’s just information I wouldn’t want to risk.
However, Alister’s advice is good, with some modifications. If you want to Google your credit card number, drop off the first four, and last four digits, enclosing the middle eight digits in quotation marks. The first four digits give away the card type (eg, 4564 is a Visa card). Removal of the last four digits renders the card number useless, even if some nefarious individual was able to guess your card type.
Thus, if your Visa card number was 4564 1234 5678 9012, you would search for “12345678″ and also “1234 5678″ (including the space). This logic would also hold for Alister’s advice about searching for your password – if it’s something unusual, but I don’t think I’ll be doing any password searches all the same.
Posted in Commentary