I'm saaaailing away..., originally uploaded by kenjisan.

Okay, this is the last photo set I'm posting for the moment, I swear! I'm just now getting my act together and putting up these things.

The sun is almost gone, originally uploaded by kenjisan.

I just couldn't get over the palm trees.

Paris in the Desert, originally uploaded by kenjisan.

At last, some photos I took in Vegas. Not many, but maybe they give you some idea of my wanderings.

Obviously the man isn't a technorati.

In any case, my hat is off to you, Mr. Heineken (Not Light). While i suspect you may not be practicing what you preach, as they say--as you may have said yesterday--"It's the thought that counts."

Each have their obvious strengths. If you're reading this, you are either bored already or know what they are, but really quickly: LJ offers a long standing, established blogger community (via Friends list), kenjisan.com offers a huge amount of customization with very little of the community aspect, and Vox is something of a happy medium that's just now starting up.

As far as having an internet voice, though, varying yet overlapping forms of communication don't seem to make a whole lot of sense. Sure, I could make the same posts on all three journals, but the assumption there is that I'm posting simply for everyone to read what I have to say, rather than spur discussion. If it's discussion that I'm after, then posting three places that don't share comments doesn't make much sense either. Another solution would be to use each for different types of posts. Another would be to abandon the old for the new.

Ah well, if this is my biggest problem, then life sure is sweet. For now, I guess I'll just have to make due (yes, I am that good ;) ).

So now, what does it mean that I haven't had one of those recently? Am I ready for school again? I think I enjoyed that Corcoran class in retrospect, but I'm not so sure at the time. Maybe I've finally distanced myself from school enough that I've stopped having nightmares about it...

I hate the actual travel part. The turbulance on take off, landing, and everything in between. Babies crying, ears popping, I want to sleep but can't settle my head. Everything is swollen and the movie is never great, even when it's a great movie. We're told to appreciate the journey (I guess metaphorically speaking), but sometimes the journey is too much. Plane trips are like this for me.

And finally, I love the touch down. Deboarding. Stepping out into either an unfamiliar airport, or one I call home. Either way, it's refreshing. The adventure is just beginning, or just ending. And I'm part of that intangible feeling I first had stepping in here at the beginning.

So these two guys are at a meeting, trying to sell "innovation" to a bunch of business men. It's early in December and the first snow has fallen the night before. It's just below 32 degrees outside as the business men step from their taxis and are ushered into the board room that happens to overlook a courtyard blanketed serenely in white.

The men, the hockers of innovation, aren't quite sure how to proceed until just before the meeting has started. "I have an idea," one of them says. "Bear with me, I have an idea..." So this man gathers the business men around the window and says, "Gentlemen, I want you to look out there and tell me what you see, and how it makes you feel."

Somewhat confused, the upstanding men of corporate America look out and say, "I see snow," or "It makes me feel peaceful." The man continues to prompt, digging deeper. "I'm beginning to think of the holidays, of Christmas, of what I'm going to give to others, of my holiday bonus and how I'm going to give it to various charities because I'm in a generous mood." And so on, and so forth.

"Now, what if it was one degree warmer? How would you feel if you woke up and it was one degree warmer?" the man asks. The snow will have turned to slush, gross, cold and wet. The drive from their hotels, their houses, to this meeting would have been arduous. So cold it hurt their noses. The slush would be dirty and miserable. "I would have been in a bad mood. I would have been thinking about how I'm not looking forward to the holidays, to that annoying uncle, to giving presents to my ungrateful nieces and nephews, to how my holiday bonus was not enough and that I didn't want to share. To how I was cold and didn't want to go out, to this meeting." And so on, and so forth.

"But gentlemen," the man reminded, "it's one degree." One degree... Amazing how much things can change is we look at it even a tiny bit differently. The world doesn't need 180s to realign.

I wish I could take credit for that story, but all credit goes to Andy Stefanovich, from Play, who's "In Charge of What's Next." He was the first of a string of fantastic speakers at the How Design Conference. So how was Vegas? All I can hope is that maybe, just maybe, I've come to see things just a tiny bit differently.

What I didn't like very much was the black Macbook, and I'm not saying this because of the bloated price. They're matte black, not glossy like the white (or the iPods, for that matter). The store models were covered in finger prints, and I've heard that the track pad (black like the rest) gets easily marked up. Cyndi made the analogy to those stainless steel appliances: look pretty, not practical.

But what's worse is the marked up price. You can order a white model with the exact same specs (including the 80 GB hard drive) for $150 less than the black model. Is a different color plastic worth $150?

Needless to say, I want one. But then, whenever Apple comes out with this stuff, I want it. I'm a sucker. We all know that.

1.83 Ghz Core Duo White, $1,099
-Ships 1-5 Business Days
-60 GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive
-Combo Drive

2.0 Ghz Core Duo White, $1,299
-Ships 1-5 Business Days
-60 GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive
-SuperDrive

2.0 Ghz Core Duo Black, $1,499
-Ships 3-7 Business Days
-80 GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive
-SuperDrive

All Models:
-13 widescreen, 1280x800 display
-Front Row and Apple Remote
-Integrated iSight
-MagSafe
-Integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics with 64 MB shared graphics memory
-mini-DVI with extended display support
-512MB 667 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-5300)
-1 Firewire 400, 2 USB 2.0 ports
-Gigabit Ethernet
-Airport Extreme + Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR) Standard

In fact, I've decided to start a revamp of kenjisan.com. Since it occurred to me that it's pretty silly for both Cyndi and I to have separate blogs when neither of write enough to fill one on our own, I'm going to convert kenjisan.com into bohlinsan.com, or something like that, and migrate the few entries she's made on various blogs over to this site. I also want to give it a slight facelift and rework the navigation, so if you have any suggestions, please post them in the comments and I'll see what I can do (haha, like anyone reads this or cares). In particular, I think I'd like to rework the side bars.

I have so much that I've been wanting to say, but haven't. My excuse? Laziness, I suppose. I'd like to say I've been busy, but that would only be partly true. Time for me to make more of an effort. I have some thoughts on March Madness which I may try to post, even though the madness has come and gone. I also have some thoughts on Mactels and Boot Camp.

But for this entry, it's all about my last six months. They have been phenomenal. Cyndi continues to impress me and there are days when I wake up and can't shake the feeling that this is all some kind of wonderful dream. I think that someone said that newly weds were allowed to "disappear" for the first month or two. I feel like we've been out of it for the past six months. I think we're ready to emerge once again.

So I'm unpausing my life once again. Hey guys, we're back.

I, um, don't have much to say but this: for a team that just ended an 87-year-curse, do we really want to be letting any player go over to the New York Yankees?! I mean, sure, this isn't a trade, but why tempt fate? The 2006 Red Sox are starting to look like a bunch of strangers. Where are the idiots? Where are the cowboys?

My laptop has a busted CD drive (more my fault than Apple's since, well, I kind of dropped it). Taking it in to the Apple Store to get it checked out by some geniuses, I got a chance to play around with the nice new toys there (and had plenty of time, since the geniuses weren't available for another four hours). Now don't get me wrong, I love my little 12" Powerbook, but it's a laptop and seriously, a family (even one of two) should have a central hub, right? Something that's permanent, a symbol of our union?

So I've really been thinking seriously on a new computer. Nothing pricey like a Powermac. More like an iMac. Maybe even the 17"...

...okay, so I'll confess, I bought the 20"--I'm actually using it to post this. Go me! I'll give you my impressions after a "few" hours of playing World of Warcraft with its many nice new features.

SUMMARY OF FEATURES:

• Updated and streamlined Motorola RAZR V3 design
• 1.23 megapixel digital camera with 8x digital zoom, video capture and full screen viewfinder
• iTunes™ music software or Motorola’s Digital Audio Music Player** with mini-USB stereo headset
• Airplane mode
• Hot swappable TransFlash™ memory card
• 262K color wallpapers & screensavers on internal display
• 65K color support on external display
• Speaker independent name & digit dialing
• Dedicated browser and messaging keys***
• Integrated Class 1 Bluetooth technology with imaging, printing, peer to peer gaming profiles
• Motorola’s SCREEN3 technology* solution featuring zero-click access to news, sports, entertainment and other program content*
• Rich, pre-loaded or downloaded J2ME™ games, screen savers and MP3 ringtones

No announcement has been made to the cellular network, but my guess is it'll remain a Cingular only option. I also think that as the months go by, more and more of the phones will come with some type of music playback option, now that the technology is out there, and like the camera phone, it'll become more standard than outstanding.