The airlines are hurting. Everyone is in this economy, but it's particularly evident in the airline industry. I took a round trip United flight, and I was simply stunned by the sheer amount of upsell they try to do during check-in.

All checked bags are an additional fee now: $15 for the first, $25 for the second. And you have the option of upgrading to Economy Plus (i.e. the amount of leg room that all of our seats once had), and they even try to sell you more frequent flyer miles.

I was a bit peeved about the luggage fee. But the since flight was free (using up my frequent flyer miles, before United goes under for good), I suppose I got a pretty good deal overall. And on the trip, I did figure out how to check your bags for free. I plan on doing this in the future. I encourage you and your friends to do the same.

Since all airlines are now charging for all checked luggage, most people now bring "carry-ons"--and I use that word quite loosely. The vast majority of these bags are rolled, dragged or lugged on, but never carried. With so many travellers carrying on, the overhead bins are full before the plan is even halfway boarded. So now the rest of the passengers are getting on with their luggage, and there's no where to put it. Well, there is the space under the seat in front of them, but let's be honest; it would simply be too base, too inconvinient, to stow it there. As if that monstrosity would even fit.

These poor souls are now wandering up and down the aisle staring wide-eyed at the row of full bins. They absentmindedly open the closed bins, as if one of these will magically turn out to be empty. It never is.

At this point the flight attendants are doing everything they can to get the plane boarded and pushed back for an on-time departure. They're not going to charge you to check that bag. They don't have time to deal with processing credit cards and making change for a $50. They happily take your bag, slap a tag on it, then fling it out the door for the ground crew to deal with.

So that's the secret: Carry everything on, then check it at the gate. It's more limiting in that you have to abide by the TSA rules du jour, but hey, you'll save enough for a nice meal at one of the fine dining establishments at the airport.

This sounds like a line out of Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen), but surprisingly it's not in there. It should be. It's exactly fits the seemingly trite but really profound advice in that song.

Take more pictures.

As my brother and I were planning for my mom's memorial service, we needed to get about 30 pictures of her throughout her life for a slide show. Dan already had 20 from the ones he found in her house, and the many he had of her with his girls (her granddaughters). So I just had to pick 10 of the best from my collection.

I found 9. 9 pictures of my mom in all of my digital photos. I've been taking digital pictures since I got my first digital camera around Halloween 1998. I have well north of 15,000 pictures. And I have 9 unique, good pictures of my mom.

3 of those I scanned in from my wedding pictures. And granted, I do have more of her at the wedding. But most of those are dupes; her standing in formation with various permutations of the family, with slight smile variants in each.

The last really good picture I have of her is from Mother's Day, 2005. 3½ years ago. I've seen her many times since. I have pictures from those visits. Mostly of the girls, my nieces. I have the side of her head. an arm holding a granddaughter's hand. Her fuzzy in the background.

I even have a bunch of my dad from this time. He had a stroke, on top of a litany of other heath problems. We're all acutely aware of his mortality. But we didn't think the same way about my mom.

I'm trying the be pragmatic about it. She didn't mind. To her, the granddaughters were the center of attention. They are a the ones that should have their pictures taken. But I can't help but feel a little guilty and a lot stupid. After all, it takes a minimal amount of time and effort to move the camera 1° and take one more picture.

So do it. Don't take anyone in your life for granted. And if you've got the camera out, get a picture of everyone.

My MacBook has one of the best designed power adapters out there: the MagSafe. Until we get wireless power, this is the next best thing to prevent your laptop from hitting the ground as you inevitably trip over the power cord on your rush to the bathroom between hands in a PokerStars tournament. Oh wait, that's me.

At any rate, MagSafe is a great innovation. As are some other features, such as the narrow design for fitting neatly into a power strip, and the folding prongs for travel. But the extension cord attachment, not so much. It's almost like there's some "conservation of design quality" law keeping the universe in balance.

You see, the brick by itself is not grounded. The plug has only 2 pins, and both of them are the same width, so it can be plugged into any outlet in either orientation.

But the extension cord is grounded. It has 3 prongs, meaning that -- aside from any hacksaw modifications -- it must be plugged into a grounded outlet.

And the question is simply, why? Why does extending the  length of a wire place an additional constraint on an otherwise hippie-in-the-Haight-in-1967-like constraint-free power adapter? All the electronics for handling ungrounded power are clearly in the brick itself. Otherwise, the non-extended version would be unsafe, right? So why not simply have a 2 prong plug on the extension that is the same as the one on the unextended adapter?

Look, I know that any modern building is going to have 3 prong outlets, and for most use cases this is a moot point. But my house is not modern. Nor are many of the cheap office spaces in SF I've tended to visit as of late. And traveling with a 3-to-2 prong adapter is both a hassle and not in line with Apple design standards.

Screw it. I'm getting the hack saw.

I recently got a new Apple "Alimunum" MacBook for work -- the very latest, top of the line MacBook model. It has all of the great specs -- 2.4GHz Dual core processor, 4GB RAM, backlit keys, blah blah. In most respects it is a really great computer, and I'm thankful that I have an employer willing to buy such a capable tool for my job.

For less money, however, Apple still sells their previous generation MacBook. Dave has already mentioned what a great deal it currently is. It has a 2.1 GHz dual-core processor and inferior graphics and worse battery life. It's a bit heavier, probably less sturdy, and of course not as cool as the latest thing. It also has at least one important feature not present in current model: a trackpad that doesn't drive me freaking insane!

The trackpad on the new MacBook is a classic case of Apple over-reaching in the form vs. function tradeoff -- trying to be just a bit too clever with a slick design, and accepting a non-trivial drop in functionality. The trackpad lacks a real button -- really the whole thing is a button. You can glide your finger around it and when you want to click, just press. Or, if your prefer, it can be configured to recognize a light tap as a button press. Actually, there's a whole host of various configuration options for two, three and even four-fingered tapping, pinching, dragging and perhaps tickling. Mostly all of those options are a waste of time and there "just because we can -- see isn't it cool!"

I wouldn't mind all of these extra bells and whistles if the basic feature worked well. Clicking the main button is in the top three most important tasks in using a computer. (Looking at the screen and typing on the keyboard are the other two -- and thankfully both old and new MacBooks excel here). On the old MacBook, I had a nice big trackpad, with an equally nice big single button at the bottom. Take your hand, and rest it neutrally over a square directly in front of you. Your thumb will be exactly where the button is, and your index finger will be a centimeter or two above it -- perfect for the trackpad. When it is time for a click, you have two choices -- either push with your thumb, or -- if you have "tap to click" on, just tap your index finger. Nice and easy. The "right-click" or secondary button click is either a two finger tap, or ctrl + button press. Also reasonably easy.

In theory, nothing has changed with the new MacBook. However because there's no separate physical mouse button, and because people still rest their thumb at the bottom of the trackpad (as is natural, and as we have been trained by years of Mac usage), they already have one finger on the trackpad. If you move your index finger around, the trackpad on the new MacBook will "see" two fingers. Ah, but Apple are so clever -- they have accounted for this by declaring that a certain portion of the bottom of the trackpad -- you know -- the part where the button used to be, is an exception. If you rest you thumb in this magic lower region, you can still move your index finger around on the upper part of the trackpad, and still click your thumb or tap your finger to click the mouse. Despite having two fingers on the trackpad, only a primary click is triggered. Magic!

Except magic absolutely sucks when it comes to computers if the trick doesn't work absolutely, unfailingly all of the time. You can see what's coming next: in the case of the new MacBook, it doesn't. It almost does, but every now and again I find that instead of moving the cursor, I'm moving nothing. Or sometimes my thumb comes up off the trackpad for a second, and I accidentally click when it comes back down. Sometimes despite moving my index finder around, the cursor barely moves. The problems don't happen all of the time, or even some of the time -- just occasionally, but it's frequent enough to make me unhappy. There was a recent software update for the trackpad which I understand fixed some problems -- just not mine. The problems get even worse if I turn on the "one finger drag" option in the Trackpad system preference panel. That option is misnamed -- it should be called "randomly initiate mouse drags until your brain leaks out of your ears."

Where is this "magic thumb line?" Somewhere -- who knows. If you're in the market for a new MacBook, get the older, cheaper model -- add in a ton of RAM, and be happy. It's a great computer.

I can't say that I've heard most of the albums released this year, but I have sampled at least a song or two off of many. But Narrow Stairs by Death Cab for Cutie stands in a class by itself. It is so good, I even included it on my list of best albums of  all-time.

The funny thing is, the song they picked for their radio single, I Will Posses Your Heart, is the weakest song on the album. The second single, Cath..., is one of the better ones. For me, the best song on the album is Your New Twin-Sized Bed, followed by Grapevine Fires.

But seriously, talking about music in much depth is pretty pointless when you could be listening. Listen to it for free over on Lala. If you like it, then buy it. It's only $5 at Amazon right now. Great album, great price. Buy it now.

The economy sucks. I'm unemployed. We've lost over a third of our net worth in the past 6 months. It's time for a good, hard look at the monthly budget.

The thing I'm looking at the hardest are the monthly recurring bills. Any savings here is recurrent savings, and the savings compounds.

First on the chopping block was the TV service. I've had DirecTV + a DVR for nearly 10 years, but $64/month is far too much in this day and age of Hulu and Amazon's Video on Demand service, paying that much (or really anything) for TV is simply unnecessary. I bought a digital/HD antenna, and we'll use that for local news, breaking news, and the occasional TV show. For everything else, it's the internet.

Speaking of internet, my DSL needs a trim too. I'm still on the $50/month plan with 4 static IP addresses. I don't need those anymore. (In fact, I really never did.) I can get to $40/month for a single dynamic address. I might even consider going to $25/month which drops my bandwidth from 3/.75 Mbps to 1.5/.4 Mbps. Although now that I think about it, that might impact the whole "watch TV over the internet" plan. Hmmm....

We already don't have Netflix; we use the library for DVDs. And some things just can't be easily cut: water, sewer, garbage... Although for that last one, I suppose I could distribute my garbage across my neighbors' partially empty bins the night before. But I don't think I'm quite that desperate yet.

And as for my mobile phone service, it's too soon to switch. I'm an iPhone guy now, and I need my smart phone capabilities. But I am hopeful that other phone manufacturers will get their act together in 2009 and truly compete with the iPhone. Ditto for other mobile carriers vs. AT&T. And then I'll happily shop for a new phone and plan, for less money.

Unless the user experience sucks. Then I'll stick with the iPhone. After all, some things are worth paying a little bit extra for.

Funny place, California. On the one hand, we pass Proposition 8 -- removing the right of same sex couples to marry. It alters the state constitution -- the highest, most sacred law of the state, with a simple majority vote. Meanwhile, the state legislature can't raise taxes one cent without a two-thirds super majority because of the (in-)famous "Prop 13."

I hear people on both sides of both issues complaining about the "rule of the majority" or the "rights of the minority." What I don't hear so much of, is how completely screwed up the entire state political system is because of one entrenched problem: the initiative system is fundamentally broken.

Don't get me wrong: I'm a democrat through and through. Churchill said that "...democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried.." and that sounds about right to me. But let's not forget that there are many forms of democracy, from systems where everyone participates in every decision, to those that essentially elect an autocrat every few years.

I'm not a historian or political scientist, but it seems to me that we in California are essentially expressing our dislike for a current political problem like immature kids. We lash out, throw a tantrum, and make a "They're never going to do that ever again!" kind of rule.

A representative legislature separate from the executive is expressly designed to give reasonable consideration to laws (and constitutional changes). In California, since the Brown Act and the rise of Open Government we have good transparency into the formerly "smoke-filled rooms." I'll go so far as to say there is nothing we have accomplished via a California initiative that we could not have done through the legislative process in a similar amount of time. (And yes, I know there's no way to prove or disprove that).

As an added bonus, if we didn't have to vote for 15 different initiatives, judges, dog-catcher, and so on, our ballots might be simpler, easier to count, and maybe more people might vote.

Fry's Electronics is a classic example of the "love it / hate it" dilemma. The exasperatingly low quality of their staff is well documented elsewhere, so there's little need to go into that again. If you happen to be in a Fry's in Silicon Valley, it's not an exaggeration to say that you are more likely to get help from the consumer standing next you in the aisle than the service rep. I have witnessed, and participated in several interchanges where an engineer responsible for some aspect of the product in question happens to be shopping there, answers questions from customers.

But like I keep trying to say, that's not the point of this post. This post is about your civil rights. In 1788 Patrick Henry said "You ought to be extremely cautious, watchful, jealous of your liberty; for instead of securing your rights you may lose them forever." Here's a tiny little thing you can do at Fry's to be a patriotic defender of liberty: stop fricking showing you receipt at the door!

Fry's is not Costco -- it is not a "club," you did not pay any money or sign a contract to "join" Fry's. Shopping at Fry's does not constitute an agreement to give up any of your rights -- it's a public establishment. When asked for your receipt at the door, just (politely) say "no thanks!" and keep walking. Not having a pink mark on your receipt doesn't mean you can't return an item -- I've easily done this many times. (OK that's a lie, returning things to Fry's is never easy, but you get the idea).

I have been doing this for years, and I have never had a single issue -- in fact the employees at the door have always been polite. They understand that they can't stop you -- you should too.

My wife read Kitchen Confidential by Tony Bourdain a few years back, and I vaguely remembered that she mentioned he had some snarky comment about vegetarians in it. When a friend was talking about the TV show with the same title, I decided to search the book on Amazon to see exactly what the quote was. It was much worse than I expected.

On the dust jacket, Tony straightforwardly mentions his "naked contempt for vegetarians, sauce-on-siders, the 'lactose-intolerant'...", and he isn't kidding. (By the way, I love how he puts lactose-intolerant' in quotes, as if it were some alleged condition with no scientific evidence to back it up.) Here's the paragraph from the book that is the real stand-out (bold is mine):

Vegetarians — and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans — are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body — these waterheads imagine — is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. It's healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I've worked with is brought down by any rumor of a cold. Oh, I'll accommodate them, I'll rummage around for something to feed them — for a "vegetarians plate" — if called on to do so. Fourteen dollars for a few slices of grilled eggplant and zucchini suits my food cost fine.

Wow, really? "The enemy of everything good and decent"? That's pretty damn extreme. And as for his "accommodation"... I've had chefs at wedding banquets from Colorado to Michigan do a better job creating a vegetarian entree than him. It speaks volumes of his attitude towards his profession if the best vegetarian entree he can summon is to grill a few vegetable slices.

Tony, if you're truly interested in growing yourself as a chef — or even if you're simply interested in seeing how good vegan cooking can be — then you owe it to yourself to try a meal made by a top chef who considers the lack of animal products not a constraint, but a freedom. Have a meal at Candle 79 in New York. Try the black bean torte at Millennium in San Francisco. Have one of the fine chefs from VegAdvantage cater a meal for you. Or maybe try one of your own recipes that the have been veganized by the people you so despise

But you shouldn't pass judgement on vegetarians without at least trying the experience yourself. And if you're worried about the cost, then worry not. Dinner's on me.

I like Pandora Radio a lot, and listen to my various custom channels on it quite frequently. At work I experience non-stop Pandora-izing by my colleagues. Their musical tastes are eclectic and entertaining and edifying -- it's fun to hear new music. But after months of listening to Pandora-programmed radio I have switched my habits at home.

At my previous job we designed and built SIRIUS Satellite radios, among other things. Over the past couple of months I have rediscovered the glory of real-live human DJ-programmed radio music. I don't give a rat's behind about Howard or Oprah or the extensive live sports coverage on SIRIUS. But First Wave (channel 22) is absolutely fantastic, as is Symphony Hall (80), the Coffee House (30), and Classic Vinyl (14). These are all live DJ-programmed stations (or at least appear to be), and have a decent variety of music and of course no commercials. If those stations don't appeal to you, there's about 75 others that might. Not all of them appear to be human-programmed -- Spa (73) is great, but a giant squid could do an effective job there...

I think there's a place in my life for both algorithmically and human-programmed music selections. Pandora has done a fantastic job of making their client available everywhere I could possibly want it, and SIRIUS' pay-extra-for-high-bitrate streaming policy is complete crap (IMHO). Still, with a good external antenna, when I need some music to program to, it's invariably SIRIUS.

We've written about the Chumby quite a bit before here on KPAO (start here, continue here). One year later and I still love it and use it every day. The folks at Chumby, Inc. continue to improve the software (the updates come nearly automatically), and through that process it has become the best alarm clock ever.

Since the Chumby is really a Linux computer, it runs some pretty sophisticated software. The Alarm Clock application lets me specify multiple different kinds of alarms for different days of the week, weekends, weekdays, and so on. On some days, I have the Chumby alarm play a favorite Pandora channel for a while and show a nice weather forecast. On other days I ask it to play the KQED NPR news for 10 minutes while scrolling stock values. It's all easy to setup and understand -- about the only thing I can't get it to do is feed my cat.

The Chumby also has two USB ports on the back -- these are intended for connecting mass-storage devices like USB-sticks or iPods for playing back music through the Chumby. I don't use the ports for that purpose, but it turns out that these ports provide enough power to charge my iPhone and other USB devices. That's one less transformer that needs to be plugged into the wall, silently wasting energy.

About the only complaint I have is that it doesn't remember its last powered state. We recently upgraded our electrical panel, and the power was on and off quite a bit during that time. When the power is restored to the Chumby, it does not automatically turn itself on. Most modern computers will turn themselves back on if they lost power while on. I do have one more complaint -- it has become such a capable music player, that it really needs a remote control but now I'm starting to pick nits...

The title of this post aside, I actually like Country Sun Natural Foods in Palo Alto. They have a pretty good selection of vegan and vegetarian products, lots of locally grown organic produce, and a knowledgeable staff. Of course, one-quarter of the floor space is dedicated to supplements and homeopathy, but if they want to sell worthless-crap snake oil to clueless morons that's their business. Hey -- it's capitalism -- give the customers what they want, right?

Well almost right I suppose. I won't complain too much that Country Sun doesn't accept American Express, even though the Amex Blue Cash is my new favorite credit card and every other grocery store in the county accepts it. And I certainly can't complain they there is now better produce available cheaper right outside their own door every Sunday morning at the local farmer's market. After all that's not their fault. What I will complain about is their refusal to accept more than one coupon of any kind. That's their rule: one coupon per household per day. The only reason I that I can think of for this policy is that it must be too much of a hassle to redeem tons of manufacturer's coupons. (Cue the tiny violins).

Maybe there's some other reason? No clue -- they wouldn't say. The helpful clerks just kept repeating the rule: "one coupon per household per day." There's no shortage of organic groceries available in Palo Alto these days (we invented "earthy crunchy" in the Bay Area). Even mega-corp Safeway has good organic food these days, and since they're based in the Bay Area they even qualify as local I suppose. Plus they take all of my coupons, and my American Express card.

We recently canceled all of our credit cards and switched (mostly) to the American Express Blue Cash card. The old cards were linked to various airline frequent-flyer programs. Airlines miles used to be OK if you could work the system, but the availability, restrictions and hassles have outweighed the benefits for sometime for us. On top of that, the annual fee means that you are starting out in a hole as far as value is concerned. Yes, we could probably negotiate to get the fee waved, but then we would have to remember to do that every year (and maybe run a balance every now and again for that privilege).

Instead, we have opted for the no-fee, cash-back cards. The Amex Blue card seems to be the best deal -- typically averaging about 2.5% cash back based on our buying habits. Most of the grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, drug stores, etc. that we frequent accept Amex. For those that don't I got a Citibank CashReturns Master Card. It's not as good a deal as the Amex, but they are both free, so it is a good backup. The money we save in terms of fees and typical cash-back can more than compensate for the occasional free airline ticket, and of course was have the option of using the cash for anything we like.

OK, I'm a bit late on this one since the election was 6 weeks ago. But I recently watched this video where Sol Sender describes the process of creating Barack Obama's brand and the now legendary "O" logo. And designer that I am, I couldn't help but think, "Why not combine the logo and the Gotham font into an Obama branded version of the font?" So I did.

It was pretty straightforward. I grabbed the 1-color logo from the Obama downloads page. I then used VectorMagic to convert it into a vector. Then I opened Gotham Bold (which was the weight closest to that of the logo) in TypeTool and replaced both the majuscule and miniscule O's with a proportionately-scaled logo.

A bit cheesy, perhaps, but then there have been far worse abuses of the Obama brand.

Update: And just for fun, I created the Obama sez "LOOK..." site.