Oh man, this is gonna be ugly. UGLY. Let’s see how we’re doing.

Closing Price: $3.90

Holdings Value: $3,900.00

Loss: 71.13%

I’m down $9,610.00. Painful.

Painful painful. I’m glad this is imaginary money.

So I saw the YouTube of Kobe Bryant “jumping” over an Astin Martin.

To be honest, I thought it was pretty cool. But it’s obviously both a commercial by Nike as well as a trick of the camera. Use of perspective can easily fool anyone. Kobe is jumping behind or in front of the car as it races by. It looks like he jumps high enough to do it in reality, but the car is on his left or right. He’s not jumping “over” it meaning, he’s not jumping in front of the grill.

Here’s my stills from the video to support this:

Note the perspective here. The shadows on the ground are probably put in (i.e. post-effect) to make the perspective seem legit, but I think they help show how he isn’t over the top of it. Look at Kobe in relationship to the “light post” shadow. It looks like Kobe is closer to the camera than the middle of the car in this one.

Note length of Kobe’s shadow and car’s shadow and perspective. Still looks like he’s closer to the camera to me.

This one he just looks closer too. But the car actually does drive over the shadow of the light pole - a nifty illusion.

It’s also highly likely that Kobe and the car weren’t even in the same state at the time of the “stunt”.

Anyway, do you think the Lakers would let him do such a crazy thing? Not a chance.

And yes, I had too much time on my hands today.

There comes a time when you’ve eaten up your whole MacBook Pro’s hard drive with all sorts of stuff. Downloads from iTunes, podcasts, stock photo images, project files, whatever. Honestly, I don’t really know how I could have used up 100 Gigs so fast, but oh well, that’s how it goes.

Since I’m working with digital audio most of the time, I need a reliable drive to either work off of or move files to once I’ve finished. Drive space has gotten remarkably cheap over the years, and if this was for my desktop box I’d probably just slap another hard drive in the case. Since my laptop is my main “axe”, and I’m less comfortable fiddling with the innards of a laptop (and much less comfortable paying Apple to do it for me), I figured an external drive is the way to go.

My Criteria

• Fast drive–7200RPM or better
• At least 500 gigs of space
• Firewire 800 connection (or better)
• Reliable company with a good reputation
• QUIET. This device must be quiet and must not throw off all sorts of errant RF signals or have a loud fan

Initially I thought firewire 800 might be the best I can do for data transfer speeds. In digging around I found out there’s something called eSATA; this basically will allow you to connect your external drive at speeds that are supposed to rival that of an internal drive. That’s pretty hot.

The Contenders

Western Digital and Seagate had good reputations for reliable hard disks when I used to poke around with desktop hard ware, so I thought they might be a good choice.  The Western Digital My Book Studio appeared to be a decent choice. I’ve read some reviews (which for the life of me I can’t find links to for now–ugh) that have said the drive is prone to failure, and the unit can run loud. Yeesh. Since silence is one of my critical issues, it’s on to the next drive.

LaCie seemed to be the darling of the Mac community for a while–the design studio hard drive of choice. These devices seem to get good reviews, and the LaCie d2 Quadra in particular looks like it might serve well. But my one real-life experience with a LaCie drive was not good; it made the most horrible high-pitched whining sound. Whether this was an issue with that particular drive or with all LaCie drives, I’m not sure. But I’m hesitant to mess around with a pricier brand that might raise such a racket.

Finally, one of the guys at the Mac Store pointed me to the G-Tech G-Drive Quad. I’d never heard of G-Tech, but it’s fanless design (and the guy’s rave review) caused me to take a closer look. It has all the connectivity choices I wanted, and reviews seem to be good. The only downsides I see are 1) they are quite a bit pricier than other brands and 2) they apparently are hard to come by.

The Decision

I plan on purchasing a G-Tech G-Drive. If the extra $$ translates to a reliable, quiet drive then it’s well worth it I think.

Does anyone have experience with these or any other drives they care to share? Let me know.

A few weeks after my previous Clinton/Obama post, here’s an Op-Ed post from the New York Times in many ways reiterating what Hart (and many others) are saying:  The Long Defeat - New York Times

Maybe—just maybe—Hillary can win. This article suggests her advisers are giving her a 5% chance. But if not, what is she doing for the party?

Meanwhile, on the other side, voters get an unobstructed view of the Republican nominee. John McCain’s approval ratings have soared 11 points. He is now viewed positively by 67 percent of Americans.

I kept up with election news daily for a while, but this has been a long campaign. By this point I’ve done my research and made up my mind. The occasional shock piece has emerged, but mostly it has been pundits speculating and repetition repetition repetition.
McCain has had the luxury of changing his stride and focus on his general election messages while the Democrats continue to wallow in turmoil.

What a crazy year this has been for American politics.

The Huffington Post is sporting a nice little blog entry by Gary Hart—check it out here: Breaking the Final Rule.

It’s interesting reading the perspective of someone in the system characterize Hillary as being too power hungry for our good. It makes a lot of sense: this is a mighty close race, and in the event that Obama gets the nomination, where does that leave the Dems? McCain and his crew will tear apart whoever is nominated—that you can be sure of. And the Democratic nominee will go after McCain. That’s how it works.

But to have these types of attacks within a party—especially when Obama is narrowly leading the delegate count—is dirty boxing. It’s worse than that. As Hart says, it’s an all-or-nothing tactic, and if Hillary doesn’t win the nomination guess who gets the “nothing”.

Hillary aired an ad that questioned Obama’s ability to govern, invoking fear that When Bad Things Happen It Better Be Her Answering The Phone. Obama’s response to the ad is elegant and well said (as usual). His argument is rooted in the fact that he spoke against the Iraq invasion—something that’s turned out to be the type of call Hillary is proposing will happen at 3am.

You can see the ad and Obama’s response below.

Hillary’s “Red Phone” Ad

Obama’s Response