Norway won 23 medals with only 4.89 million people. That’s way above #2, Austria, with 1.93 medals per million people. Canada is 8th and the US is 20th out of 26. The big loser is China with 0.01 medals per million.

So, congrats Norway, you must really like the snow up there.

It was impossible to concentrate or watch a video on it with all the buzzing and vibration. At work the next day I exiled myself to a conference room all day, partly embarrassed by the noise and partly to save my coworkers’ sanity.

I installed iStat Menus (a great little utility, by the way) to see what my fans were doing and clearly the left one – where the noise was coming from – was not doing well. When the right one was running at 3000 rpm, the left one was barely around 1000 rpm.

Not only was this noise annoying, but the left fan wasn’t doing its job, making it possible for my computer to overheat.

Luckily, I’m not the first person to have this problem. I found a nice blog post with instructions on how to take apart the computer, get to the fan, take it apart and lubricate it with some WD-40. I cleaned the right one too while I was in there in case it has problems in the future. I also used some compressed air to clean out all the accumulated dust in there. The whole process took me a little over an hour.

Magically, it worked. When I booted up again, my Mac was whisper quiet – quieter than I can ever remember it being. iStat menus reported that the fans were running at the same speed again.

Even better, the lubrication and dusting allows the fans to do their job better which means my computer is running cooler and the battery is lasting longer since its spending less time whirring fans around.

I can even watch YouTube videos without my computer sounding like it’s getting ready for takeoff.

You can buy replacement fans for your MacBook, but they’re $50 and take almost as much work to install as just cleaning your noisy ones.
I highly recommend giving your Mac an occasional lube and oil change. It makes a big difference!

My next challenge is to perform surgery on my wife’s MacBook with its sticky mouse button. I suspect there will be some interesting bits of food and who-knows-what in there to find.

Steve Jobs unveiled one of his typical sexy devices in his demo, but I think it will fail. Here’s just a few reasons why.

10. It doesn’t replace your laptop or your phone. It’s not a full laptop and it’s intended to be synced to a computer for content. It’s clearly too big to use as a phone even if it did have phone functionality. This means if you buy into an iPad, you’re buying and maintaining a 3rd device (and upgrading every few years). Few people would be able to use an iPad in place of a traditional laptop or desktop.

9. It doesn’t have a camera. As something like a kitchen computer, it would be ideal if it could do video conferencing, but there’s no camera on it. This is something they could easily add in a future revision, but it’s not there now.

8. There’s no keyboard. Yes, there’s an optional keyboard accessory and theoretically you could pair a bluetooth keyboard with it, but now you’re just pushing up the price of a device further into a price range that could get you a reasonable laptop or a very capable desktop. It’s hard to call this a credible email device when there’s no real keyboard on it.

7. The battery life isn’t great. The quoted life is 10 hours, but Apple wasn’t specific about what kind of usage that included, be it web surfing or watching videos. In contrast, the Kindle’s battery lasts for weeks. If I’m going to own a third device, I don’t want to have to remember to charge it nightly too.

6. It doesn’t multitask. Want to listen to music while you surf the web? Sorry, the iPad is not for you. Considering the beefy custom processor they put in it, this is highly surprising.

5. 3G Internet access is expensive. $14 a month for 250GB of usage on top of the $130(!) extra for an iPad with the 3G modem. There’s got to be some serious profits in that upgrade or they’re using the profits to pay AT&T. The Kindle’s wireless internet access is free. Admittedly, the web browsing experience on the iPad is a lot better than the Kindle.

4. The screen resolution is relatively poor. It’s 1024 x 768 vs 1280 x 800 for a MacBook. Many laptops at this price range have even bigger 15 inch screens. 1024 x 768 is a bit cramped for web browsing, even if it’s full-screen.

3. It’s twice as expensive as a Kindle. It is superior in most ways, but if what you want to do is read books, the Kindle is a way better deal.

2. It doesn’t support Flash. Steve Jobs touted the iPad as having the full web experience moments before he displayed a web page with a big hole in it where the Flash content couldn’t load. The fact is that most video on the web uses Flash today because Flash support is so ubiquitous in browsers. So if you want to watch video, you need Flash, not to mention all the other games and other sites that require it.

1. You can’t run OS X software on it. Apple chose to use iPhone’s software store meaning the only way you can install software is through the App Store. This is terrible because you have this device that’s kind of a laptop that’s restricted as to what you can run on it. You can’t just download some software on the web and you can’t customize it unless Apple has approved that software. Apple has gotten a terrible reputation by rejecting applications from their App Store for questionable reasons. Their justification was that you didn’t want some rogue piece of software breaking your phone. The iPad is not a phone, so why does Apple want control over what software you can install on it? They take a cut of every software purchase through the App Store, that’s why.

The fundamental problem with the iPad that it’s a larger iPhone instead of a smaller MacBook. Give me a touchscreen MacBook and I’ll be happy. If the iPad had one killer feature, like perhaps facial recognition or camera-based gestures, it might make it more compelling, but for now it’s a little of this, a little of that and not enough of anything.

While it’s convenient to be able to check our voicemail via email, the transcriptions are not always helpful. Today’s example:

“Hey and and stabbed calling. I wanted to wish you guys lock today and let me know if you need anything and let me know how everything I don’t take care bye.”

The other day we had one that was even better:

“They brought up much to meet you at it. I will affect your insurance benefits. Rick diabetic supplies. We’ll but if it’s Peacock or restricted. Because of this diabetic experts has created a survey for research and educational purposes together, fax I can help diabetic if I wait your insurance benefits, during this historic debate, so if you are diabetic or know someone who it is and currently using, or would like to use insurance to pay for your diabetic supplies, please press 1 now to take part in involuntary servitude and your voice heard about benefits diabetic Snead again press one now, or press 2, to decline. Thank you.”

What they lack in usefulness, the make up for in amusement.

The good

1. The keyboard is nice. It’s easy to peck away at and lights up when dark.
2. The camera takes good pictures. With 3.2 megapixels and autofocus, it’s light years ahead of my old Treos.
3. The screen is beautiful. It’s bright, detailed and clearly visible even in broad daylight.
4. There are plenty of apps. I have Google Maps, Facebook, SlingPlayer, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Messenger, Amazon and bunch of games. They’re not as sophisticated as iPhone apps, but they’re sufficient. I can download them from anywhere without anyone (Apple) telling me whether or not I’m allowed to install them. Unfortunately, there’s such a wide variety of BlackBerries out there that you’re not guaranteed that any particular app will work, especially on a new device like the Tour. Some only work on the Storm or other devices. Some say they work, but once you run them, you realize you can’t use an app because you don’t have a touchscreen. That’s frustrating.

The bad

1. It’s surprisingly bad at handling email. For a company that started making devices that originally ONLY did email, I’m startled at how bad it is. Messages are not threaded. When using an IMAP account, it doesn’t keep in sync with messages on the server. You can’t view folders.

   The built-in IMAP client is so bad, I moved all my work email to an Exchange server so I could use their push service and moved my personal email to Gmail so I could use the Gmail App. There are some third-party IMAP clients out there, but they’re very immature.

2. It sometimes freezes for long periods of time. Inexplicably, it will just stop responding for 10 seconds or so every once in a while. It doesn’t crash, but it’s annoying to just have to sit and stare at it.
3. It doesn’t have a touchscreen. This was obvious to me before I bought it of course, but it doesn’t make it less frustating when I can’t figure out how to do something that would be simple if I could just tap the stupid screen. It’s a hard habit to break after many years of Treos. RIM, you seriously need to fix this. It’s 2009 for crickes sake. The trackball is pretty agile, but it’s still limited in apps where you can use it to click anywhere.

I’m still working on getting it configured to all my likes. I prefer to have my phone always on vibrate except when it’s charging. I can’t figure out how to do that. The default seems to be for it to vibrate and ding for every email, SMS or calendar alert that pops up. If I left that in the morning, I would be throwing it out the window by noon.

I haven’t figured out how to get it to tether with my Mac for free. The best solution seems like the $50(!) TetherBerry.

It’s still a pretty nice device and for the price, you can’t beat it.

Since my 2-year contract was up and I was eligible for an upgrade, I did some research (mostly on SprintUsers) and decided on the BlackBerry Tour. With some finagling, I managed to get the phone for$11 and without changing my plan.

Here’s how

Step 1: Get your service credit. Call Sprint on your current phone (*2), and tell them you’d like to get your $70 service credit for renewing your contract. I got transferred a few times, but eventually someone will apply the credit, enslaving you to Sprint for another two years. You can still get the $150 upgrade credit after this.

Step 2: Get your Tour. I went to Best Buy because they had it on sale last week for $99. While the price was now $149, I talked them into honoring the $99 price (which includes the $150 upgrade credit). You could probably talk Sprint into matching their price too. There was no activation fee at Best Buy. The other nice thing about Best Buy is that there are no mail-in rebates for the upgrade credit, unlike Sprint.

They told me at first that my plan was not compatible with BlackBerry and I’d need to get a $30/mo data plan added. Pshhaw! I just told them I’d use the phone without the internet services. We’ll get that back later. They activated it and sent me on my way.

Step 3: Get your internet service. Call Sprint’s BlackBerry technical support at 1-877-654-9111 from a phone other than your new Tour. When you finally talk to a human, just tell them you need your “service books” pushed. They did it for me on my first try, but others have said it took several calls without them telling you that you needed the $30/mo extra plan. When it’s done, your icons for browsing the web, email and other stuff will show up.

So the final tally was

I had a Best Buy gift card lying around that I hadn’t used in over a year, bringing my total to $11. Pretty good deal! If I was a real cheapskate I could have driven up to NH and save the $6 sales tax.

If you got a cheaper phone such as a BlackBerry curve for $49, you’d make money!

It’s a pretty nice phone and definitely an upgrade from my aged Treo 755p. I’m still getting used to and setting everything up. I’ll share some thoughts on that soon.

Of course, it is impossible. I don’t have 500 “friends”. I have 500 people comprised of a small number of real friends, along with hundreds of current and former coworkers, relatives, and people I’ve only “met” online.

Years ago, I was obsessed with “collecting” friends on Facebook. It wasn’t popular outside universities back then and you’d friend people you barely knew just to see what would happen. Now that everyone and their mother (literally) is on Facebook, it’s time to raise the bar.

500 people is too many to keep track of and I’ve decided to never go over that number. Every time I add a new worthy Facebook friend, I’m removing another. Here’s who’s on the chopping block:

1. You, who devotes all your status messages to promoting your product/company/service/religion. If I wanted to watch advertisements, I’d turn on a TV.
2. You, who does nothing but complain about your significant other/parents/pets/kids/job. I have my own problems and I don’t want to be constantly be confronted with all of yours too.
3. You, that person from high school who never wanted to talk to me in high school. Now you want to me my “friend”? No thanks.
4. You, who logs on to Facebook only to share your results of the “Which Potato Chip are You???” quiz.
5. You, the obnoxious, arrogant Yankees fan. At least until January. Win at least one recent World Series before you start talking about dynasties, OK?

I’m still in awe of the power of Facebook in connecting such an incredible number of people. It has truly changed the internet forever. I can’t wait to see where it goes from here, along with just 500 of my closest friends.

I was curious how much we’ve actually flown with her, so I went through all our old itineraries and made a map.

View Audrey’s Flights in a larger map

How far has Audrey flown? Over 60,000 miles. That’s just straight line distance without connections, so the real number is even higher. That’s around the world twice. If it was all on one airline, she would have at least one free flight.

Her earliest flight was when she was 3 months and 2 days old. Her latest was at 1 year and 364 days. She’s been to 12 destination cities.

She’s been a pretty good traveler too. She loves to walk (or be walked) up and down the aisle and say hello to everyone.

I’m sure we’ll be going on many more trips with her, but I’d say she’s had a pretty good start.

I never used threads until I started programming in Java 10+ years ago and it seemed pretty easy. You create a new thread, let it do some stuff and join() on it if you want to wait for it to complete. It makes it easy to access things in memory across threads. Of course if you want to modify things in that shared memory, you have to implement some locking on those objects, but that’s not that hard either. Perhaps it’s a bit harder if you’re programming threads in a language that doesn’t manage memory.

So tell me, am I a programming genius that finds threads easy (unlikely) or am I missing some big usage of threads that makes it impossible for a mental peon like me (more likely)?

Then I heard a noise that was extremely unsettling – the distinct sound of crinkling insulation coming from the attic directly above our bedroom. Something was up there.

Immediately I thought of the venting holes under the eaves of the roof. Sometime during the winter, two caps had fallen out of them, leaving a hole right up into the attic. I saw a bird fly into there last week and who knows what else could be settling into our attic.

I got out of bed and went upstairs. I quickly noticed that the small door that led from the finished part of the 3rd floor to the attic was ajar. So whatever was in the attic could also now be in our house. Wonderful.

In the attic I turned on the light and crept towards the area where I heard the noise. There was nothing. Everything was quiet. Then, as I got closer, a huge animal suddenly darted across the attic in a blur of gray fur. It took me a second to process what I just saw. It was our cat.

I have no idea what he was doing up there, but I guess the door to the attic came open and he decided to explore. I wasn’t sure where he went, but he was heading towards the door into the house, so I closed it behind me and went back to bed.

In the morning I told Anne about the incident and went to work. As we were eating dinner that evening, I asked her if she had seen the cat. She said no. I immediately went up to the attic and opened the door. Sure enough, the dumb cat was still in there. He didn’t run out like I thought he had. He sheepishly wandered out and I jammed the door shut.

I still need to get those caps replaced.