Is Apple overwhelmed?

I don't mean to be such a kvetch but I'm into week two of not being able to purchase anything from the iTunes Music Store, can't even download the free music they offer every week. Great way to turn people to using LimeWire or BitTorrent or other means for their music Apple. I've noticed that others are also complaining about not being able to buy music, seems to be widespead.

It all started when I wanted to buy the Green Day videos Bullet in a Bible, 15 videos and a digital booklet. But I got an error like the above when doing the purchase. So I bought it via a gift certificate for myself. The gift certificate doesn't work and now their website says there are only 14 songs with the first song starting as track #2. Weird, they don't even really list the video album in you go to the Green Day page in iTMS. You have to search for Bullet in a Bible.

Okay, enough of a rant for now.

Was that a pig I saw flying by?

As much as I complained about golf and golfers I'm starting to golf. Since I said golfers shouldn't talk about golf off the golf course in a previous rant about the sport you shouldn't see any other posts about golf here. There's a separate golf blog in the links on the right to spare people. Nuff said.

The ones that got away

A line of turkeys make their way up my road, no doubt wise to the fact that it's past Thanksgiving Day.

Santa's Helper

Carolyn goes speeding through the aisles with a Christmas present...shhhhhh...it's a secret, don't tell Joe.

Thanksgiving in the fun house

Some fun with Apple's Photo Booth application click on the above image for the gallery. More Thanksgiving photos below.

Thanksgiving 2005 in South Kona

Some Thanksgiving Day Cams. Click on above image for video.


Mike cuts up the Turkey, the 'real' turkey, not the Tofukery Travis had for dinner.


Travis with all the great food he and especially Peggy put together for Thanksgiving dinner.


Joe and Carolyn make an attempt to put a dent into the vast amount of food we had as fabulous chef Peggy reaches in on the right.


More desserts than we could eat. We were more stuffed than the turkey by this point.

Lunch

My lunch. Photojournalist Mark says he hates turkeys, I guess today is payback time against them. Happy Turkey Day!

Thanksgiving Feast.

Thanksgiving Feast.
Originally uploaded by MediaBaron.

Salvation Army Thanksgiving in Waimea

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, especially for friends across the dateline where it already is November 24th.

I also figured out how to install Final Cut Pro on my PowerBook today. I own FCP v2 and the upgrade for v3 but could never install it because you need to boot-up my computer in OS9 which is impossible. I figured out how to install without the previous v2 install. Cool. Now I don't have to use iMovie though the learning curve on FCP appears to be steep.

Where art thou?

I've added a Frappr! map, you'll see the button in the column on the right. I'm a bit curious to see where everyone is that visits this blog. Just hit the button and add yourself to the list. Frappr! appears to be some kind of Frankenstein combo of Google Maps and Flickr.

No Poofy Whipped Cream

Andrea has a bite of her ice cream dessert, sans 'poofy whipped cream' according to her as I had some dinner along with her folks, Mike, Jim and Wil.

Out in the field

Click on the image for a larger version. Spent most of the day at about 6,000ft above Keauhou with a magnificent view of Hualalai, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa where I spent the day videotaping a presentation by the Kona Historical Society with a one woman performance recreating Isabella Bird's trip to the Big Island. A beautiful, cool and clear day.


Maile starts off the performance dressed in period costume with Mt. Hualalai as a backdrop. The site is Kaanahaha the site where a sheep station used to be with a building for shearing the sheep and compressing the wool for transport. All that is left of the structures are some planks of wood, some metal and a giant screw that was used to press the wool.


Me and Megan at the site of the sheep station. We were supposed to get about 20 minutes warning via CB radio before the crowd showed-up as we were in the advanced party setting things up. When Megan spotted vehicles driving up without warning we ran around like crazy to get ready for the performance.


Kona Historical travels in style with Bloody Marys at the ready for the crowd before the performance.


Back down to Pulehua for lunch. The site was used for ranching both for dairy and beef.


After the performance it was back down to the old saddle house at Pulehua to chow down on a whole lotta food. I was ready for a nap after that.


Grilled beef, chicken, the fixings and cookies made for lunch. Not exactlly roughing it but the ride up and down was definately for a 4x4 vehicle with good ground clearance. I was in a F-250 4x4 truck and we bottomed out a few times on the rough terrain on the ranch roads.


The old butterhouse at Pulehua. Butter was churned at this higher altitude, almost 5K ft, then taken down to sell in stores. I asked Sherwood Greenwell once long ago how did they keep the butter from melting as they brought it down on horseback. he said butter in those days wasn't like butter as we know it today. it was more like lard, or oleo for those who remember. But they did make it high up in places like this where it was cool.


Inside the butterhouse. I've been in other butterhouse structures where there was an opening in the floor so they could have a cool pool of water for cooling. Maybe this one didn't have it or it was boarded over in later years for safety purposes.


The old fireplace at the Pulehua site with what looked like a shower stall to the right.

I hadn't been on one of these tours for years since I work on Saturdays, I had been on a number of them before and it's always a treat to go places normally off-limits to the public and to get the backstory on the area from historians, experts and family from the area. I would have shot more photos but I was busy with the video gear.

Aaaarrrrhhh

Never forget your cellphone with your parents if they've never used one before.

I'm at the airport now in Honolulu waiting to fly back to Kona. I forgot my PDA/cellphone in the car since I drove and was busy getting my stuff out of the trunk before my folks drove off with my cellphone next to the driver's seat. I realized I had forgotten it when I was at check-in and already knew I was going to miss the early flight which was boarding in 20 minutes. So I rushed around doing all the crazy bag tagging, security screening drop-offs for checked-in baggage and made my way to a pay phone. I figured I'd just have to call my phone, my folks would answer and I'd tell them to come back and drop it off since the next flight was two hours away.

Well after wrestling with the hassles of using my phone card to dial the phone, the crazy pay phone doesn't even have a price on it to make calls then when I tried to call my cellphone it said $1.00 for the call...grrrrrr Lucky for me I keep my phone card number and pin stored in my wristwatch.

I called my cellphone, no answer. Strange since the ringer is pretty loud and I know I left it on and it's right there in the car it can't be missed ringing. I tried 15 times in total, once even getting to my voicemail but no answer. Tried three times to call my folks' home number but I knew they wouldn't be back home yet.

Finally my mom showed-up in the terminal, saying they had my gizmo. I went back out to the car and there it was still sitting exactlly where I left it. Despite all the noise it was producing and the screen lighting-up with a big button saying "Answer Call" they never touched it. They didn't even know it was a cellphone, probably Lynard Skynard as a ringer didn't help.

But they did come back to drop it off for me. So I missed my early flight and I'm on the last one back.

I taught my mom how to use an iPod and how to use a digital camera while on Oahu, using a cellphone was a lesson I should have given too.

Better quality Sandy Beach images

Okay, got back to Kona and adding more images from Sandy Beach on Oahu. This one is a panorama I quickly stiched together, quick and dirty so some seams show. Click on the little image above for a bigger version.


And a little movie of the surf.


And it wouldn't be Sandy Beach without a lunchwagon in the parking lot.


Click on the menu above for a bigger version. Herb crusted mahi mahi? I'm old enough to remember the days of something like four manapua for $1.

Sandy Beach, Oahu

Sandy Beach, Oahu
Originally uploaded by MediaBaron.

A good place to break your neck while bodysurfing. I've 'gone over da falls' here many times in my youth. Sorry for the crappy cellphone photo.

Birthday 2x

Carolyn and Jim's birthday today as we gathered at Kona Brew Pub for some food and drinks. We didn't get Jim plastered but there's always the weekend.


Sylvia laughs as Glennon tries to act serious. Something about karaoke and kal-bi.


Melita and Mike discussing world issues like, is a lapdance bar going into Zac's Business Center?


The birthday boy with his first beer and Andrea, sans lunchwagon costume from an earlier post, hang out at the brew pub.


Mike is revved and ready to take off on the bike as Glennon has ahold of his piece of ass. When Sylvia, Glennon and Melita's pizza arrived the pub accidently put anchovies on it, most thought it smelled like ass so they brought a new pizza but let them keep the original. Glennon's Saturday lunch.

The long arm of the law

Hawaii has put disclosure a mouse-click away with these two databases online. The first is for sex offenders, the second is for stuff like traffic violations. Yep, even if you were pulled over for an expired safety check you may be in the online database. Now don't go too crazy typing in your name, all the people you know.

• Sex Offender Registry
  
• CourtConnect database

I had heard rumors that he and Flea had bought some land in Honaunau, don't know if it's true or not but for the CourtConnect database type-in the name Anthony Kiedis and hit Submit. We know he's been on the island, in Kohala anyway.

As Adam Curry would aways say on his podcast, "There are no secrets, just information you don't yet have."

Taco Time

Me talking to 'C' about PDAs and guitars over Mexican food.


Practicing on getting RSI on my Treo 650's little keyboard.


Documentary photographer. Is Ernst Leitz turning in his grave?

New iPod

Okay, I finally got a new iPod to replace my 20GB model that was filled to the gills with music. The new model is nice and I can even watch Tiki Bar TV videos on the go. But more importantly I now have enough room for computer files in the extra space. The only bummer about this iPod is that it doesn't support Firewire.

My old iPod? That's going to my mom along with a bunch of audiobooks.

As a photographer I noticed that with QuickTime Pro converting QuickTime movies into .m4v files for the iPod pulls the gamma curve up. That's geek-speak for lightening the dark areas of the video. The iPod doesn't display millions of colors and this is also probably done since the iPod has no brightness control.

Writer's Pad

Click on the image to see a bigger more detailed shot.

It's 3a.m. and I just got off Second Life where a group got together with author Cory Doctorow where he shared his thoughts on writing, being a writer and answering questions as best his jet-lagged fingers could type. This is the ideal kind of situation to use the virtual world of Second Life. You get a better feeling of actually meeting the author and chatting them up rather than just going to an online chatroom where all you see is text.

Of course I still had to deal with the time differences between where everyone was. The small group was from all over the world so local time differences varied. The get together was hosted, get this, in the basement bar of a library. And yes, this library does have books that you can read. A pretty cool place and venue for an event like this. And being a photographer of course I had to shoot some photos of the event which the program allows me to easily do.

For more info on these kind of events see the Second Life Writing Wiki.

Almost free coffee machine

These Senseo single serving coffee machines cost about $50 each but you can get one for free, or at least almost free since they charge $15 shipping. You just have to send them a photo of your ex-drip coffee machine. Go here to get your machine, you've got until the end of the year unless they run out.

Senseo obviously figures they can make their money back selling the coffee pods that go into these machines. Kind of like how companies give out free razors and then you have to buy their blades to refill that nice handle. I myself have gotten free razors this way too.

I just got my confirmation in email that my machine will be on its way. And Pssst...you don't have to buy your coffee pods from Senseo, I like to buy my espresso pods from PodHead.com and with a name like that you gotta love 'em.

May cause drowsiness, do not operate heavy machinery after ingesting

Whoa! Went to the Swing Zone driving range today for lunch, I had heard that Big Jake's Island BBQ was there so I decided to visit since I had one of their pulled pork sandwiches last month at the Kohala Country Fair in Hawi. I decided to go for a cheeseburger since Brian and I had toyed with the idea of rating the cheeseburgers around the island. Only cheeseburgers under $10 count so that $25 Kobe Beef burger at the Mauna Lani is out.

I ordered this burger from Jake's and it was more than I could eat. It had a handmade burger, nice homemade type bread, kinda looked like that JITB cibatta bread in the commercials, fixings on it and seasoned curly fries. After consuming as much as I could I had to go home and take a nap, it's a good thing I never ate one of these things during my lunch break from work. Co-workers had commented with glee about all the ribs they got when ordering a 'full rack' at Jake's. The burger was pretty good so it goes up there on the list along with the Harbor House. Gotta make up a page for a listing.

See the menu below. And remember, don't eat and drive after consuming one of these things, have a designated driver who just orders the coleslaw.


Open 11am-2pm for lunch, 5pm-7pm for dinner at the Swing Zone. Call the South Kona location for their times.