The Chris Cardé Experience

There's been a disturbing trend in life of late where only seldom do I have both time available to blog along with a simultaneously-available glut of things to say. My new, enlightened view of the [or, more accurately, my] world is that there's a sweet spot between being bored (with nothing to say) and being too busy (with too much to say and either no time or mental horsepower to express it). My life has been alternating between those two extremes for most of calendar year 2006 with precious little time in the intervening sweet spot.

Man, this does make a fellow miss his Treo 650. If I could only take the 1.5 hours per day that I ride Caltrain and devote it to blogging with a non-craptastic device (e.g. Pretty much anything besides a Blackberry), I'd have the most active site ever. Unfortunately, it'd still be me writing, so you'd have to deak with the same old crap, just Caltrain-enhanced quantities of it.

What's new? Clearly I can't summarize a full month worth of going-ons from my crackberry keypad (because keyBOARD is too generous of a term here), but I fel compelled to mention that this last weekend is a strong contender for best skiing weekend, ever. That is, if I hadn't shredded a tire on I-80, necessitating the purchase of a disposable replacement. (Let me tell you something about the Prius tire economy in South Lake Tahoe: It doesn't exist!)

Sweet! So I just got tickets to a Paul Oakenfold show at Caeaser's South Lake Tahoe on President's Day Weekend! For the [vast majority] of my friends who haven't been to my "cabin" (more like a crashpad for tired skiers and snowboarders) yet, this is only about a 10 minute drive away. What's more, it comes with free admission to Club Nero (Caeser's nightclub) after the show. Should be good times. I just can't find any friends who a) like trance, b) live on the West Coast, c) are available, d) aren't old and married. Ok, I kid on that last point, but some frustration must be evident in my writing.

So I've been getting some complaints lately that I haven't been blogging lately. It's nice to know that you all care. :) It's not that nothing's happening. On the contrary, too much has been happening. When all's said and done at the end of the day it's all that I can do to get myself into bed and ready for the next one. The little voice inside me that says "Blog!" is being downed out by the other, more beefy voice that says "Eat! Sleep! Go to work! Talk to friends!" I'll try to fix this in the future. :)

On to the topic of this post. A project that I've been working on at work all year has finally gained some public attention after it was announced at both MacWorld San Francisco and the Detroit Auto Show this week. Check out the press we've been getting!

• MSNBC Article
• Arstechnica Article
• Autoblog story

There are many more articles where those came from. Try a Google News search for "Chrysler iPod" -- or if you're lazy just use this link. I was lucky enough to be invited (as a VIP, no less!) to the Steve Jobs keynote address at MacWorld. I sat in the same section as Al Gore! I must have been the only person who didn't know he was there. After the address was over and I met back up with my boss, he asked me if I shook hands with Al Gore and Steve Jobs. I was like, "WHAAAA??!?". Man, I still need to thank that guy (Al Gore, not Steve Jobs) for funding FutureCar and FutureTruck and giving me my career.

I took a short video of the relevant portion of the keynotes. It probably won't stream terribly well, but you get what you pay for. ;)

Oh yeah, and something happened at the keynote that I never, ever thought possible. I actually wanted to buy a Mac. Between OS X, iLife, and the new Intel powered hardware, it's a pretty compelling package. It's too bad you can't do embedded development in any meaningful way on one.... I'd buy one as a media machine / toy, but I'm trying not to buy toys these days.

It occurred to me (in a fit of insanity) one afternoon that I wasn't doing enough on the weekends... It just so happened that the same afternoon, I got an email invitation to join an instance of The Go Game that was to be played this last weekend in North Beach. If you haven't heard of the Go Game (and don't worry, most people haven't), it's a kind of high-tech scavenger hunt where each team is given a cell phone with which to receive "missions" (more on this later) and send back the proof of each mission's completion. Each team also has a camera with which they can provide photo (or video) documentation of their missions as necessary.