Starbucks drinks are pretty expensive and this past weekend I realized why it is and it’s not that it’s a brand name or that they are selling an experience as well as a cup of coffee. No, the reason is the high cost of the water and cups they use.

This weekend, I was at the airport when I need a cup of hot water to warm the baby formula. The airport had free hot water in the food court where Starbucks is also located, but I needed a cup to hold the water. I went to the Starbuck counter and asked if I could have a cup of hot water and was told no and that I had to purchase the hot water. When I asked if I could just get a cup for it and that I’ll pour it myself from the hot water station, I was again told that I had to purchase the cup. How expensive is the water and cup they use? Anyway, I went to the California Pizza Kitchen next to Starbucks and asked the same question. The lady was more then happy to give me an empty cup and even guess that I might be using it to heat something so she gave me a small bowl to make it easier for me.

I went to my first NFL game when the Chicago Bears came to play against the Oakland Raiders. I’ve seen the Bulls, Cubs, White Sox and even the Chicago Fire play but the one team I never saw live was the Bears, so I was pretty excited. Hearing the stories about Raider Nation and Raider fans, I wasn’t sure if I should wear my Bears gear, but once at the stadium there was a surprising number of Bears jerseys. I guess because there isn’t much of a rivalry between the Raiders and the Bears there aren’t as much animosity for the visiting team.

It was a fun experience. The weather was great, the seats were much better then I expected (I could make out all the players on the field) and with only a few minutes remaining, the Bears staged a come-from-behind victory.

If the Bears play the Raiders again, I’d definitely want to try to see them play again.

The year is coming to a close and like every year at this time, it is good to reflect on the past year and look forward to the new year. 2006 was a significant year for me both professionally and personally that concluded with me becoming a father, an event that was like winning the Super Bowl (Chicago, you tease me so…). I didn’t expect 2007 to be like 2006 and as I look back I would say that this past year was an year of adjustments to all the changes that happened in 2006. As the year is ending, I feel that things are falling in place and that makes me excited for 2008.

Yahoo! Mash just completed its first month of existence outside of Yahoo! I have to say that one of the most eye-opening experiences for me has been the comments from the Y! 360 community and how passionate and loyal they are to 360.

I’m not exactly sure how the rumor started or why people assume that Mash is a replacement for 360, but the comments on the various boards are filled with how Mash is not 360 and they are absolutely right. Mash is NOT 360. A key feature of 360 is blogging and Mash doesn’t currently offer any blogging functionality. I appreciate the comments by the 360 community because as developers we’re happy to know that people use and like what we build, but before people get too hung up on whether 360 is being shut down please first just consider how different the two products are.

What the two does share is the idea that users are connected to each other in some way, aka the “social graph”, and it’s probably this element that causes people to link 360 to Mash. It’s probably the same reason that people accuse Mash of trying to copy MySpace and Facebook. In reality, there are hundreds of “social networking” sites out there that it’s almost becoming a standard type of application like word processors or audio players. Within this class of applications, there are basic functionalities that is expected such as a friends list. Not having a friends list in any “social network site” is like a word processor that doesn’t let you enter text or open a file. At the same time just because two applications can both open files doesn’t mean they are trying to copy each other.

In the end, I hope that the 360 community continue to vocal about what they want to see happen with 360 and at the same time let Mash, a different product, develop into something useful.

Today, I fired up the web browser and typed in ‘http://www.apress.com‘ to check out what new computer titles has come out and I realized that I used to go to O’Reilley instead. In fact, it’s been awhile since I’ve gone to O’Reilley other then to read some of their tech articles. O’Reilley used to be THE publisher of practical technical computer books related to development, UNIX and open source. They published the Perl book among other must have references that were on the desks of every programmer I know.

Now, though, their titles seems to cater to a more mass-market crowd and publish a lot of quick-reference guide. If I want to learn about something, I no longer think about O’Reilley. My last few purchases ( Building and Extending GAIM, The Definitive Guide to GCC, Foundations of GTK+ Development, Bginning PHP and PostgreSQL 8 ) have been from Apress who seems to have replaced O’Reilley in the area that O’Reilley used to dominate. I still have my old O’Reilley books which I reference frequently (Programming Perl, Essential System Administration, UNIX Power Tools, etc.), but now I have to do some research on a new O’Reilley title before I purchase one.

Fox advertised the Bears vs Chargers as the top game in week 1 so obviously the game being shown in my area is between the football power houses Lions vs Raiders. Nice!

Listened to the game on the ‘net and thought I was hearing an archived game. Bears defense playing great and put in some monster stops, but after constantly being on the field they eventually gets worn down but still keep other team’s offense out-of-sync. Bears offense then helps other team get some easy scores since they aren’t able to generate any TDs for their own team. After the game, team defends their QB and offense and comments that it’s hard to have 4 turn-overs and beat a good team like the Chargers.

Here’s the problem, Chicago has to win games where they give up turn-overs because they are a turn-over prone team starting with Rex Grossman and down to their running backs. This is the type of offense that Chicago has decided to go with when they decided to stick with a quarterback that flip-flops between being great and being terrible. Even if it is not a reflection on the quality of the QB, it is the quality of the coaching staff. Given their philosophy, I’m surprised that they made any change for this year.

Why didn’t they just stick with the same core of talented players and depend on luck to get to and win the Superbowl? Obviously, I disagree with this and I’m sure that it wasn’t the team’s real intentions, but the truth is that they didn’t put out a better team. They put out a mentally weaker offense from last year because their “leader” is just trying to survive each game without screwing up regardless whether the team wins-or-loses. He’s not ready to take a team on his shoulders and carry them to victory so first he must try to hold on to his job and make sure blame doesn’t fall on him.

Some comments on chicago bears forum are pretty reflective of how the fans feel about the team. String the two extreme ends of the criticism, the feel is still that the Bears are unpredictable and can’t win without an early big lead that put pressure on the other team. Trailing 0-3, fans were already giving up because they don’t feel that Grossman can be counted on get a scoring drive together. They didn’t necessarily give up the game since the Defense can scrore some TDEs, but the a QB needs to be both a good player and a person who can inspire confidence around him.

The new NFL season starts this week and as a Chicago Bears fan it’s been a long off season. In the weeks leading up to the start, the stories has not been the usual camp reports and draft signings news but rather the news of Michael Vick. Wherever a sports fan turn, the Vick story was there right in front of them. At one point, I remember watching ESPN and they had the ticker of upcoming stories with nearly every other segment on Vick’s trial!

How much coverage can they squeeze out of one story? Michael Vick’s crime is pretty heinous. At the least it demonstrate a lot of cruelty in what he did to another living creature, but with the constant barrage of news coverage I started to get numb to it and the story became another statistical news item. I wondered whether it was orchestrated by Vick’s PR machine to save his career and if it was then the people responsible are geniuses. From the initial reaction of “Vick’s career is over”, ESPN put so many commentators in front of sports fans to argue that Vick shouldn’t be punished by the NFL that I’m sure that people started thinking, “Just shut up about this story, who cares if Vick plays.” In the end, it really took the focus off Vick and put it on everyone else.

The media can be scary…

For the backpack I reviewed here, the dimensions are: 11.4W x 53D x 5.5H (camera compartment), 12.2W x 1.8D x 15.9H (notebook compartment), 12.6W x 5.5D x 11.4H (top daypack department).

On a recent trip to Hawaii, I got introduced to Apple’s iPhoto software on OSX. I thought it was a decent piece of software, but a bit basic for me and there were a couple of minor bugs. My trip did show me that I probably should use something to help me manage my digital photos as my collection has gone past hundreds to thousand(s), so once I got back I tried out Picasa. Picasa is a photo management software that was bought by Google and then released free. I heard good things about it including that it was a better iPhoto then iPhoto. It runs on Windows with a Linux version in beta.

My experience so far with Picasa has been good. It is as simple as iPhoto and has the same basic functionalities. When it is first installed, it asks you if you want it to search your computerfor all graphics files (pictures and movies) or limit the search to the “My Documents” folder. I wish it allowed me to enter a different location since I don’t keep my photos there For some reason, PNG files aren’t enabled by default, so you have to enable that yourself.

Overall, a neat program with a great price. If you take a lot of digital photos and need a quick, fast and easy program to management those photos then definitely give it a look.

I recently came back from a trip where I flew on one of the major carriers (American) instead of a low-cost carrier such as Southwest. While I’ve read the troubles that plagued the airlines, I didn’t realize how bad flying has become until I flew American. When it comes to low-cost carriers, I don’t really think about the flight. It’s like riding the bus or transit… it’s just a mode of transportation. This is not a good thing to have your transportation be something you remember after your trip (imagine if your summer vacation is dominated by memories of that long painful drive). It could be that I don’t expect much service on these flights and that is why it seems like the flight attendants are typically friendlier and happier, but on the major carrier the attitude is different. They want to distinguish themselves as higher then “low-cost carriers” at the same time that they reduce service and quality to below that of the low-cost carriers.

They try to be more formal, but because the service is subpar it just makes the flight uncomfortable. On my flight, I was asked by the flight attendant to step back 6 inches since I crossed the invisible line between coach and first class, and besides the fact that the flight only served a couple of drinks or sell you food the attendants somehow had to keep walking up-and-down the aisles throughout the flight so nobody can stand up.

In the end, flying the major carriers doesn’t leave you with the feeling of having had a good flight. It doesn’t even leave you feeling neutral and not noticing it. It is now decidedly un-enjoyable and unpleasant.