Ants on the Melon
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For a few years now I’ve dreamed of owning a Collings mandolin. I first learned about Collings Guitars shortly after I bought my Taylor, about 5 years ago. If Taylor is the Lexus of guitars then Collings is the Rolls Royce (the comparison in relative price differences holds up too).

I recently discovered the Redbone Guitar Boutique in San Antonio, pretty much by accident. I walked in and talked with Scott Stephens for a while and learned that they carried Collings (as well as G&L!). Scott told me that he personally drives up to the Collings facility outside of Austin to pick up each instrument, so that they never have to be shipped. After I left I started thinking about how neat it would be to custom order a Collings mandolin and be able to personally pick up my instrument from the people who made it. I spent a few more days thinking about whether I wanted to make the financial commitment and once I had I went back to Scott and ordered a Collings MT-O mandolin.

A couple days later Scott called back to tell me that he was arranging a private tour of the Collings facility for Redbone customers, and wanted to know if I was interested. Although Collings normally offers public tours on two Fridays per month, but I had never made time for it. This time I wasn’t going to miss it.

Not including Scott there were only three of us on the tour, which was really nice. Our tour lasted about two hours and we were able to see the entire process from raw wood to finished instruments. I’ve never seen a company so focused on producing perfect products. Everything they do is calculated, yet each instrument is a unique work of art. Every detail is considered, even down to shaving off six thousandths of an inch of finish where the bridge meets the top.

The other thing that struck me while I was there was how honest Collings is as a company. Never once was I told not to take a picture of something, and I even asked (my pictures are here). They are proud of the entire process and welcome you to see it. In order to produce a product of such high quality they have to stay honest. Even home grown innovations such as the machines that Bill Collings built himself are explained to visitors. Most businesses protect their trade secrets and proprietary processes for competitive advantages, but Collings doesn’t need to since the instruments speak for themselves. Even prototypes are destroyed so that no instrument with the Collings name on it goes out without being 100% perfect.

They also aren’t willing to sacrifice quality for quantity. Only about 1500 guitars are produced here per year, and about 500 mandolins, and 500 electric guitars. That comes out to about 7 guitars per day, 3 mandolins, and 3 electrics. And before you think “that sounds like a lot”, consider that is with nearly 70 people working full time – for 13 instruments per day. I think it is awesome that artists produce instruments for other artists.

I would certainly recommend this tour to anyone who lives in South Texas. Even if you aren’t a musician, the tour is fascinating because of the craftsmanship and level of attention to detail they give to every aspect of their work. And at the end a beautiful guitar or mandolin is the result. I can’t wait to pick up mine.

This past summer as my thirtieth birthday began to creep up on me I decided that I wanted to have something fun to look forward when the day finally arrived. I decided that I wanted to celebrate the occasion in Amsterdam.

Prior to this trip I had only spent one day in Amsterdam, when Jason and I visited there in June of 2006. I remembered that the city was beautiful and the people there were very nice.

By way of VRBO I found this great place to stay in the heart of the city called the Amnesia Apartment. It’s a standard Amsterdam style house – tall and thin. The Amnesia is five stories with a room per floor and a jacuzzi on the top floor. There is a tiny, tiny staircase in the back of the building that goes from the kitchen in the basement to the 4th floor bedroom.

Tate and I arrived on Monday morning, October 12th, and Sandy arrived the next day. Once she joined us we starting seeing the sights and eating at some great restaurants. Tate created a Google map of the places we visited during our stay. Here’s a rundown:

Restaurants

• Sama Sebo – This is incredibly good Indonesian food. The guy who picked us up from the airport was half Indonesian and recommended that we eat here. Here’s a picture of us with the spread.
• Japanese Pancake World – This is where we ate dinner on the night of my birthday. It came highly recommended from a friend of a friend who lives in Amsterdam. He was right, this place is amazing! Pictures here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
• d’Vijff Vlieghen – This was a more upper scale Dutch restaurant that Sandy had heard about. Evidently Franklin Roosevelt, Walt Disney, Elvis Presley and many other notable people have eaten here (and they can now add us to the list as well). The food and service were both fantastic. Pictures here, here, here, and here.
• Belgisch Restaurant Lieve – On our final night we ate at this Belgian restaurant near our apartment and it was incredible as well. Tate and I ordered beer pairings with each course. I still think Belgian food is my favorite of all. Pictures here, here, here, and here.

Attractions

Other stuff we did or saw while we were there:

• Diamond Museum
• Van Gogh Museum
• Rijksmuseum
• Heineken Experience – a brewery tour
• Boom Chicago – an improv show
• Blue Boat Company canal tour
• We rented bikes at StarBikes Rental and spent Saturday afternoon at Vondelpark (Wikipedia article)
• We caught a train from the Amsterdam Centraal Station and rode out to visit the Rackspace Amsterdam office (Rackspace Benelux)

The trip worked out even better than I could have planned it. The weather was wonderful for almost the entire week we were there, and the apartment turned out to be exactly what we wanted and in an excellent location. Amsterdam is such an incredible place. Everyone is so friendly, the city is beautiful, and it’s very easy to get around and communicate with people. All the pictures from the trip are available in my gallery.

Great friends, great place, great time!

Today I discovered an iPhone app that I can’t wait to get my hands on: New York Nearest Subway by acrossair.

This is one of those “augmented reality” apps that have been getting attention lately. The idea is to overlay information onto a 3D view of your surroundings. The new iPhone 3Gs makes this possible, and acrossair has taken advantage of it to produce something really useful – locating nearby subways. Watch the video below to see how it works.

Currently they are waiting for approval from Apple to get it into the AppStore. I’d love to see it in there before Saturday morning, since I’m heading to NYC this weekend and I can’t wait to try it out.

This weekend Sandy and I celebrated our third year together. Over those three years she’s managed to surprise me with some really cool gifts, but this weekend in NYC I think she topped everything she’s done so far.

Around 3:30 on Saturday afternoon she took me to Penn Station, bought two round trip train tickets to the Ronkonkoma train station on Long Island, and hopped on a train with me. I had no idea where we were going or what we were going to be doing. An hour and twenty minutes later we arrived at the Ronkonkoma train station and someone came to pick us up. You know when you put a dog in a car and the dog doesn’t know where its going (to the vet? to the park?) the dog is all wound up and hyperactive? Yea, that’s what I was like. Suddenly I see a Southwest jet so I figure we are at the Islip airport. Then the car we were in pulled into a little driveway, and that’s when I saw the sign for the Heritage Flight Academy. It was like when the dog realizes he isn’t going to the vet, but to the park!

I guess I’d mentioned to her a few times over the past three years that I might one day like to take flying lessons. She found the Heritage Flight Academy flight school out at Long Island Macarthur Airport, and they have a special intro course where they let you fly the airplane.

We met the instructor, who was a really cool guy, and then he showed us a map of the area where we would be flying. Specifically, we were flying from Macarthur Airport over Fire Island, over the Atlantic Ocean, and then back inland. He also showed us two big thunderstorms that had formed to the north and that were heading towards us. After chatting about this stuff for about 5 minutes we headed out to the airplane that we would be flying, a Cessna 172.

After checking the plane over we finally hopped in and started taxiing out to the runway. On our way we had to wait for a Southwest Airlines jet to land, which I thought was pretty funny since we were going to take off on the same runway. I asked if there were any flocks of geese nearby, and he told me that there were not, but that the prop on the Cessna would chop them up if we hit one. Sweet!

As we moved into place the instructor went over a few last things and communicated with the tower, and then we revved up the engine and took off down the runway. The instructor told me to pull back, I did, and to my surprise the plane lifted off the ground in what seemed like 5 seconds! Sandy was recording everything from the back seat with my camera, so here’s what it looked like from back there:

After we leveled off it got really fun and I was able to look down and see what was below. Here’s another video Sandy took from the air:

We flew around for 30-40 minutes before it was finally time to return to the airport. Of course, the instructor handled the landing for us which was awesome because I didn’t want to have any part of that. It was smooth as could be, contrary to the way it looks in the video.

All the videos Sandy took are in this YouTube playlist. There are videos of taxiing to the runway, taking off, in flight 1, in flight 2, in flight 3, in flight 4, and landing. All the pictures from the day are in my gallery.

This was such an awesome surprise! The only problem now is that I think I’m hooked.

The S&P 500 has dropped 48% in the last 13 months. That is $6.69 trillion in value, gone.

Monica posted this to Twitter and it has to be one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

Whapow!

I’ve been to New York many times, but until today I had never been to the top of the Empire State Building.

Normally I visit the city on weekends, or even holidays like New Years Eve, and the crowds waiting to get to the top of the building are ridiculous. But today there were no lines and we were at the top in less than 15 minutes from the time we arrived.

The 86th floor observation deck is the one that most people visit. However, I learned last night that there is a very small observation deck at the top of the spire on the 102nd floor. For an extra $15 you can go up there, and believe me, it is completely worth the money. While the 86th floor deck had around 200 people on it, there were only 5 people on the 102nd floor when we arrived. There were only 3 people there when we left about 45 minutes later. The view from up there is incredible.

The 102nd floor was originally intended to be used as a landing platform for airships. The observation deck there was closed for several years, but re-opened in 2005. They plan to close it again soon to complete some renovations, but if you have the chance to go up there I highly recommend it.

Oh yea, I am terrified of heights.

I could talk for hours about why I think religion should stay out of politics (my coworkers can attest to this). The guy below asked people to pray for rain during the Democratic National Convention. I guess he thinks God favors one political party over the other.

In fact, the weather was pretty much perfect for the DNC.

Maybe all those prayers were delayed, or maybe it’s punishment for all the jerks who felt it was a worthy thing to pray for. Either way, it was funny to learn that the first day of the Republican National Convention has been delayed due to really bad weather, Hurricane Gustav that is. Maybe they should start praying for lower gas prices, instead.

Republican Party, please stop making it hard for me to like you. I want to support you, really. Please sever that evangelical arm and focus on what the party is actually supposed to be about. You know, things like limited government, conservative spending, etc.

I could almost like McCain if he were younger (click that) and not so war-hungry. But his VP pick, Sarah Palin, really bugs me, and here’s why:

• She does not accept evolutionary theory (maybe she also rejects the theory of gravity?)
• She opposes funding stem cell research
• She supports teaching Creationism in public schools as an alternative theory to evolution
• She opposes birth control pills and condoms even among married couples
• She opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest

She takes all of these stances in the name of religious extremism. Contrary to what many believe, the United States was not founded as a Christian nation. In fact, quite the opposite. The only mention of religion in the constitution by the founding fathers is that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .” The founding fathers were wise men. They knew how things play out when there is an official state religion. Religion and politics do not mix well.

For example, after pressure from evangelical groups, Bush has proposed to change the definition of abortion to include birth control. Birth control is abortion? Apparently, if you support evangelical politics. This is what we get when religious ideology guides our politicians.

Religion is fine and dandy, but imposing your beliefs on others is not. Religion should be a personal matter. People seem to think it is fine for a Christian politician to make Christian laws. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, including the U.S. There are now two Muslim congressmen, and there will be more, which is fine since everyone should be represented. But I wonder, how will evangelicals react to faith-based legislation when it’s introduced by a Muslim politician?

McCain is 72 and already has a history of health problems. His father and grandfather were both dead by 72. If he goes, Palin takes over. Honestly, I think it would be great for a woman to be president because she’d be less likely to be in a good-ole-boys club and would probably have a better chance of making the big changes that need to happen in Washington. But Palin just is too much. I give it to her, she’s committed to her stances, it’s just that I strongly disagree with much of what she supports.

Ugh, don’t get me started…

I wasn’t all that great of a student in college. Actually, I wasn’t a great student in high school, either. I really like learning things (across many subjects), but I guess I just didn’t like having to prove that I actually learned it. Of course, that’s how you earn good grades.

Probably the one thing that got me through college was being able to write. Math and science majors have to prove their answers and back them up with facts. We History and English majors just had to write and be able to B.S. enough to get by. Worked for me!

But lately I’ve been writing about something I find far more interesting than History, namely Linux and DNS. I know that most of the world disagrees with me, but I find it a lot more fun to write about DNS internals than about the Storming of the Bastille.

Fortunately, I’ve had the opportunity to write for the premier Open Source magazine, Linux Journal. My first article is published in this month’s issue (September 2008) and is titled “djbdns: More Than Just a Mouthful of Consonants.” It is amazing how much fun writing can be when it’s about something you are really into (djbdns is my favorite piece of software). So far I’ve received email from several readers saying that they liked the article and decided to switch to djbdns after reading what I wrote. Sweet!

I’ve also been contributing stories to the Linux Journal website. It’s especially cool to see my stories get posted to Digg and Reddit and become popular. Here’s what I’ve written so far:

• djbdns: More Than Just a Mouthful of Consonants (only available to subscribers for the next month or so)
• Understanding Kaminsky’s DNS Bug
• The DNS Bug: Why You Should Care
• Rebooting the Magic Way

My buddy, Will, also wrote an article in the September issue, titled Nginx: the High-Performance Web Server and Reverse Proxy.

And there’s more on the way, both on the web and in print. I’m currently working on article for the December issue of Linux Journal, so be sure to check it out!

About a year ago I watched “The Rockefellers“, a PBS documentary about the famous “rags-to-royal” American family. The documentary was fascinating, but something that stuck with me was what John D. Rockefeller Sr. did with all the money he accumulated.

In the late 1880’s if you had a lot of money and wanted to “give back” then you would support soup kitchens or homeless shelters, or give to churches. This is how charity worked back then. But when Rockefeller decided to begin giving back he had a small problem: how was he to give away hundreds of millions of dollars?

You may remember Brewster’s Millions, the movie where Richard Pryor plays Montgomery “Monty” Brewster and is tasked with spending $30 million in 30 days in order to test his value of money. Rockefeller had a similar task (although he certainly knew the value of his hard earned bucks). It’s like going into a dollar store and being told you have to spend $10,000 before you can leave. It would be a lot harder than you think.

Rockefeller, like Andrew Carnegie, disliked the idea of funding soup kitchens primarily because he saw it as a sort of band-aid approach to giving. Giving to those less fortunate was indeed a noble thing to do, but he felt that it did nothing to move humanity forward. Instead, Rockefeller took a page from Carnegie’s essay “The Gospel of Wealth” and formed The Rockefeller Foundation with his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr.

Together they gave large sums of money to support education, particularly to help start colleges for African Americans in the southern states, as well as to fund medical research. They gave $35 million to help jump start the University of Chicago. They restored Colonial Williamsburg and Versailles (yes, that Versailles). They donated tens of thousands of acres of land to create several national parks. They supported science, and built churches. To date their foundation has given away over $14 billion dollars, and still has around $4 billion in assets today.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett both had the same problem as John D. Rockefeller Sr. After much research, Gates decided to model the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation after the Carnegie Corporation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Buffett followed his lead and nearly doubled the size of the foundation when he pledged to donate $30 billion dollars worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock over the next few years, bringing the total endowment to nearly $70 billion.

Like Brewster, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a deadline. The foundation has to give away its last penny within 50 years of the death of the last living trustee. The foundation has three trustees: Bill Gates (currently 52 years old), Melinda Gates (44), and Warren Buffett (77).

The primary goals of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are to improve health care and decrease extreme poverty around the globe, and to open up more opportunities for education in the U.S., especially with respect to technology.

John D. Rockefeller Jr. once wrote:

“I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty”

It sounds almost like a quote out of Carnegie’s “The Gospel of Wealth” essay. Andrew Carnegie was convinced that successful wealthy entrepreneurs had a duty to dispense their wealth back into the public, preferably through calculated giving to worthy organizations. He felt that there was a responsibility to do good things with ones wealth, and that future generations who would inherit the wealth were prone to squandering it in less than noble ways. Soup kitchens did not qualify for Carnegie’s charity, nor those who couldn’t be bothered to help themselves. Carnegie funded more than 1,700 public libraries across the United States because he felt it could give less fortunate individuals a way to get ahead if they just were willing to put in the effort.

It is an interesting problem, to say the least. These men all used their creative abilities to amass enormous amounts of wealth, more than they could ever spend in a lifetime. (Andrew Carnegie tried to spend it all, and when he realized it was impossible he created the first philanthropic trust in the United States, the Carnegie Corporation so that it would be able to continue spending after his death.)

It got me to thinking about what I would want to focus on if I had the resources of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. It seems that most of these efforts are focused on third world countries, which no doubt need the most help. But I think I would invest in science and education in the United States. It’s pretty clear that the U.S. has fallen behind in our science programs (stem cell research, anyone?). And the state of our public education system is a also serious problem, not just for the students, but also for the rest of us. After all, we have to live with the citizens those schools are producing (they will be our neighbors, our coworkers, and most importantly, they will be voters). It’s quite scary, really. I’m not sure the problem with the U.S. public education system can be completely solved, but I am sure it’s something that can be improved. I also believe it’s a problem where money can help a lot (almost certainly more than $1 billion though).

What issues would you focus on if you could start a foundation with $1 billion?