What a fun day I had today.

I first went up to San Francisco for a small O'Reilly event at LinuxWorld, and in doing so I got to meet my book's editor, Andy Oram, in person for the first time in perhaps four years. I was so shocked at how good he looked, having trimmed down from the decidedly chubbier Andy I knew from before, that I almost didn't recognize him.

He has two musically-gifted children (aged 5 and 9 when I last met them, now aged 17 and 21). Although they got their gift from God, it would have never realized its potential without nurturing from their parents, so we talked about how to provide such opportunities to your kids. He and his wife have been so clearly successful that I wanted to absorb what I could.

I then started a short walk across downtown San Francisco to meet former Yahoo! Finance friends, and on the way, happened to run into another former Yahoo!, Parker Ranney.

There had always been a somewhat of a dark mood about Parker, and I'd always thought that was just who he was, but when I ran into him today, he was clearly a different person than I'd ever known. He had an aura of happiness that was wonderful to see. A network/IT guy and Yahoo! employee #27, Parker had been working 24/7 for a couple of years by the time I started in April 1997, and so was simply exhausted. By the time I became the same way, his image was already set in my mind. It was wonderful to see him, and we chatted a while with a promise to get together again later in the afternoon.

I continued on to Montgomery St to meet Wade Lagrone and Hill Ferguson, who are now at the US venture of Zopa, a UK peer-to-peer lending service. Unlike how Andy and Parker had changed, Wade and Hill were exactly as if I'd last seen them yesterday, and I had a wonderful time with them. They seemed to have some very good things in the works with their company, but I hope they pick a better name before they launch in the US, because “Zopa” sounds a bit dopey. Okay, a lot dopey.

After a few hours there, I headed back to meet Parker, now a network guy at AdBrite, an online ad marketplace. We talked for hours about the old days at Yahoo! and his current work at AdBrite. I really enjoyed myself in a technically satisfying way that I hadn't in a long time. (Well, last week I'd enjoyed myself in a similar way when I visited friends at Yahoo!, but it's been a long time otherwise.)

Coming home from our trip to Portland today I was happy to find a box of books from my publisher, O'Reilly. It seems that they were able to get my book out earlier than expected. (Yikes, I don't have the web site updated yet!)

The timing is good, because I'll be at O'Reilly's booth at LinuxWorld tomorrow for a bit (Tuesday, from 12:30 pm) to sign books, and now I'll be able to do so with the new edition.

Fumie on Lost Lake, with Mt. Hood in the Background

We just got back from a weekend trip to Portland, Oregon. We went for no special reason – we just wanted to give it a try. The trip included a drive out to near Mt. Hood. I took this picture of Fumie while in a rowboat on Lost Lake.

The peak of the mountain is 10 miles (16.2 km) behind her, rising 2,462 meters (one and a half miles) above the lake.

We spent an hour and a half out in the boat, and had a very pleasant time.

The image is geoencoded, so you can follow this link to view a map and satellite photo of where it was taken. (Following the Map Via Encoded GPS Coordinates link on that page results in a better satellite photo than the one embedded below the main info, due, apparently, to Google's data licencing restrictions).

I finally received the larger, 160GB laptop disk drive I ordered some time ago. I turns out that they were back ordered and that the supply wasn't coming in as quickly as the folks at Trans International thought, so they kindly cut me a deal on a different 160GB drive that they'd just received a shipment of, and as a bonus, they overnighted it to me.

I had some issues with the minixpress 825 firewire drive that I also ordered. It's a new product and they're still having to work out some kinks in the housing design. After a call to the company and some futzing around (involving some shims under the disk where it connects to the board), it was working fine.

I used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the laptop's entire 80 gig drive to the new one 160 gig one, then shutdown to swap the small drive out and put the large drive in.

Replacing the hard drive on a MacBook is really quite simple, but still, here are some small points of advice:

• Although not mentioned in the instructions, the laptop does not recognize the disk if installed upside-down.

• Pressing the disk in harder does not help.

• The correct orientation when the MacBook is upside-down is “disk label-side down”

• There are thin rubber glides on the sides of the bay, connected tenuously with small dabs of glue. Leave them there. Do not shove them back into the bay while trying to insert the disk.

• If you shove them back into the bay, installing the disk (even correct-side-up) is a challenge, at best.

• Tweezers can help to retrieve packed-in-the-back rubber glides

• There is a thin protective strip of metal that covers the disk and memory bay. While it's possible to reinstall this thin strip even when the disk has been inserted upside-down, it is not recommended. It's much easier to install if the disk has been installed correctly.

I hope these bits of advice are helpful to someone.

I now have 70 gig free, and will start filling with converted copies of old home video on Hi-8 and SVHS tapes.

Anthony and I were kicking a ball around in the backyard when the sprinklers came on. I ran to get my camera and he ran around.

About to make another pass

Dancing

(the thing on his arm is a Teddy-bear sticker)

Sitting direcly on the sprinkler head

The End