Puerto Rico
Well, I got back last night from a 3-week vacation at home (Puerto Rico). Given I was at the beach three days ago in the not-very-cold-at-all Carribean, San Jose seems pretty darned cold. Of course, my buddy Eric Peyton, in town from Chicago, begs to differ. Vacations are good. I did my Christmas shopping rather frantically on the 23rd; an eight-hour marathon at the Majagüez Mall with my cousins did the trick. Went to the movies a lot (it's cheaper there)... Played dominoes a lot… And I rented a Cessna 172 and took each of my two sisters up for a trip around the island. Anyone know where I can buy Puerto Rican food in the Bay Area? I'm sure it can be done, but I'm terrible at finding such things...
In December I bought a digital camera, the Canon PowerShot G1. Not to plug a product, but that was one of the best purchases I've made (eBay, $800) in a long while. I have this rather expensive and quite excellent camera that I bought a long time ago, a Mamiya 7. It's a wonderful camera, and takes beatiful photos on 6x7cm film, but it's the sort of camera one doesn't carry around all the time, and I tend to take few pictures with it. Plus, since I left the proximity of the MIT campus, I no longer have a darkroom to play in. So this new Canon G1 is great because it fits in my jacket pocket, and it's easy to use, and it's trivial and $FREE to get the pictures onto my Mac, whereas on my Mamiya, I need to get the film processed somewhere (in my case, Palo Alto), then scan them in. Needless to say, I took a bunch of pictures in Puerto Rico, and I'm very happy with my new toy.
MacWorld Expo 2001 started today in San Francisco, with an impressive suite of new product annoucements at Steve's keynote. Everyone's wondering where they are going to find the cash to buy a new PowerBook G4... I'll be at the show tomorrow, and probably again this week, depending on what's going on. I should be dropping by the Mac OS X booth every so often, this that tends to be a hub for people I know. The Stepwise BoF is tomorrow, I'll be there for that, as usual. This time I won't be sick and hoarse (probably).
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