I don't post about politics much, and when I do it's out of frustration with both parties.  I vote, and I follow politics, but the fact is I am generally too cynical to rally people toward a candidate or party.  America is one of the great socieities of all time, and I love this nation.  It's just that I tend to see politics as a collusion between public and private power spheres trying to gain more power, money and dominance.  This goes for the Republicans and Democrats.

So, know what I am saying comes from a truly unpartisan stance.  Also know I hate writing about or discussing poltics in general.  I would not write this if I did not believe that the need was dire.  The fact is, I believe the time has come for you to act if you care about your personal liberty and privacy.

The House of Representatives passed CISPA last night.  I know most of you back one party or the other, and hence distrust at least half of the media outlets out there, which is why I linked directly to house.gov.  I've already written and called Steve Southerland, my Congressman.  Much to my dismay, Representative Southerland voted for this bill.  The ship has sailed in the House. Now we must look to the Senate.

The House rushed to this vote, and I believe it is because they are afraid of public outcry.  We nerds organized quite a campaign around SOPA, but it takes time.  By rushing a vote, the House moved before we could organize opposition.

Why should you care?  CISPA gives the governement the ability to ignore the fourth amendment online.  The government and private ISPs can collect and share any personal data about you: your emails, messages, web history and others without probable cause or a search warrant.  This is a stunning loss of liberty for Americans.

The worst part is, this won't actually protect our national security.  For those who wish to do harm to our country, encrypting and coding communications is trivial.  This bill does nothing to make us safer.  We are in a case where the least technically literate citizens of this country are trying to legislate policy for technical systems.

I believe that we all share some core values, regardless of if we are Republicans, Democrats or neither.  We believe that the power of the American experience is Liberty and Opportunity.  The Land of the Free attracts the best and the brightest across the world.  That soil allowed the industrial revolution to happen here with greater power than anywhere else.  That grew to the Space Age and the Information Revolution.  America has historically been at the forefront of Liberty and that has made us powerful economically and militarily.

The greatest form of free speech of all time is the Internet.  It is bringing down dictatorships and giving people unprecident abilites to learn, organize and change.  I absolutely believe we need to grow and change our policies to protect intellectual property and national security in this new world, but too broad, ham-fisted legislation like SOPA and CISPA attempt to roll back the clock and destroy liberty in the process.

Do your homework, and if you agree with me I urge you to contact your Senator and tell them you expect protection for your constitutional liberties.  A call is best, but a letter or email is better than nothing.  Also, see which way your Congressman voted and then hold them accountable.  I've added a widget below to help you in this process.

That's right: us.  I threw my first star party!

It started with a Facebook post inviting anyone interested out to a park near my home.  It ended with 25 people (many of them kids!) getting a great look at our neighbors in the solar system.  Most people were seeing Saturn and others for the first time with their own eyes, and I found it deeply moving to see they too were awed by the scope and beauty of our Universe.  Once it was too late for the kids to hang, some of the adults stuck around to check out some deep sky objects: star clusters and the occasional nebula.

If you've never been to a star party, I highly recommend it.  Just bring some bug spray!

A few weeks ago I picked up a pair of 30 x 50 binoculars that I could mount to a tripod.  The moon view available was amazing.  More amazing was seeing Jupiter go from a point of light to a tiny disk, surrounded by 4 points–it's moons.  Mars and Saturn were also disks, albeit much less dramatic than the giant of Jupiter.  If I stayed out long enough, and did a good job hiding from porch lights, passing cars and even people's indoor lights coming out of windows something truly amazing would happen-my binoculars would let me see nebula and star clusters.

Binoculars are fantastic stargazing tools, but they only set you up to want more.  And now more is what I have: I am the proud owner of a Celestron Nexstar 6se.  Here you can see it setup between my house and my neighbor's, a spot I selected to get the broadest view of the sky with at least some protection from street lights.  My backyard is dark, but it's also treed in, so viewing options are much more limited.

 My rig consists of the scope, included stand, optional SkyLink GPS, power tank and a set of 1.25" eyepieces.  After a lot of research, I settled on the 6se for a few reasons:

• The Schmidt-Cassegrain design balances the advantages of a reflector and a refractor while keeping the size of the scope down.
• A six inch scope can produce some great views while still being small and easily portable.
• The Nexstar 6se is computer controlled.  When combined with the optional GPS, I only have to aim the scope at one known star, and then correct it's aim at a second and it can then automatically point itself at any object I want to see.
• It looks really cool.

My ability to star hop is pretty limited, so the fact that this scope can key in on one of the handful of stars I can easily find and know the name of and then find everything else for me is really amazing.  Then there's the view.  I started out looking a Venus, because it's over the top brightness made it an easy object to find, test focus on and align the star finder to.  The Venus view was nice–I could clearly make out it's current phase. By the time I had the scope focused and figured out alignment Jupiter had passed below the horizon.

I spent some time looking at Mars, and the red planet was much more dramatic through a scope than I'd ever seen with my own eyes.  I tried checking out a few Nebula, but my night vision was reset to often by typical suburban activity, so I settled for some clusters instead.

We don't always realize just how much we miss of the night sky in an age of rampant light pollution.  The Nexstar 6se did a great job of cutting though the haze to show me dozens of stars where none were visible to the naked eye.

Time was passing very quickly.  Each hour subjectively felt like 15 minutes or so.  That means Saturn was out and available for view in a very short amount of perceived time.  I knew Saturn would be dramatic, it is often said to be one of the most amazing sights available to the suburban viewer.  It is.  I didn't take this image, but I did search for one that looked the most like what I saw, and this pic was taking with the Nexstar 6se:

Click to view original source

 Saturn took my breath away.  I fumbled around in my accessory kit to find my Barrow lens.  This particular Barrow just doubles the power of whatever eyepiece you are using at the time.  Here I could clearly make out the rings of Saturn, and the bands of clouds on the planet itself.  I brought Jenny outside, and she remarked that it didn't look real.

This is the first time I have viewed Saturn with my own eyes as more than a tiny dot.  I asked Jenny to rouse Madison out of bed so she could see it.  My neighbor likewise brought his son out to see it.  Looking at one of the giants in our solar system was awe-inspiring and humbling.

Today our species has very limited abilities to travel the planets, and no way to travel to distant stars.  We explore the reaches of our solar system with robots.  We've been to the moon, and we regularly sent people into low Earthorbit.  Last night, standing in my yard I was able to get a sense of our place in the universe and a vision or what we one day may be able to do.

I guess you could say I am happy with the telescope.

Facebook can let everyone you know find out how great last night was.  Foursquare pioneered the idea of sharing presence as it happened, and encouraged people to flock to each other.  The simple fact was that getting a group together to go out was a pain.  It was a ball of texting, calling, emailing, Facebooking and just generally herding cats.  There has to be a better way, right?

Why can't you use your social graph to organize everyone easily?  Further more, how do you know what place is worth hitting tonight?  No one wants to show up to an empty club.  What about those people in your social graph who you just don't want to be around, like ex-girlfriends or guys who are just a little too interested?  Why can't your social graph help you avoid them?

Enter MyNyte.  The idea is so simple, and yet very powerful.  Building an Entourage and assigning Wingmen take the pain out of organizing a small or large group.  Bumps allow MyNyte users to say when they are planning to attend, on their way to, at or leaving a venue–which lets groups of friends move together with a single action.  When that data is aggregated across all of MyNyte, we'll be able to see what venues will be busy before it happens.  That's right, there's now a future's market for night life and the currency is Plans.  Finally, the Frenemy feature will alert you when your activity will intersect with someone who you'd really rather not be bothered with.

Those three guys talked to this guy.  Out of that meeting the idea turned into a company, and my crew was brought in to help.  I became a part of Team MyNyte.

What a team it is!

It's not the first time I've worked on an iOS app.  It's not the first time I've been a part of ground breaking technology.  It's not the first time I've worked in social networking.  It's not the first time I've helped build dynamic, scalable infrastructure to support lots of users.  It's not the first time I've worked with several large, independent code bases that form a single project and mission.

It is the first time I've done all of these things at once while working with people who are the best in the world at what they do.

MyNyte is available for the world to use now.  There's an iPhone app, and a website made just for mobile devices like Android phones.

The long road to launch is just the beginning.  We've got teething pains, bug fixes and a product roadmap that stretches far beyond the horizon.

It's a journey I'm happy to be a part of.

Even using the intro microphone, I find recognition to be pretty accurate. What's missing is the intelligence you find with Siri. I'm relatively fast typist, so I'm not sure I really save time with dictation.

Apple can't bring Siri to the rest of it's product line fast enough. In the meantime there's Dragon Express, and at least it never tells me the network is not available.

Imagine my surprise when the wall never came.  I did struggle a little more than usual on a couple of hills in the last mile, but I had enough on tap to power up the final climb and really push my pace.  I ended up about 10 seconds per mile slower than my last long run, and that's largely because I started out the run much slower than usual.

Feeling great, I went home for a shower and then I ate breakfast–a bowl of raisin bran.  It wasn't too long before I realized I felt very tired and my legs were weak.  The rest of the day I felt tired, and I had some lasting weakness even into Sunday.  I just lost any motivation to move.  I wasn't sore, just weak and tired.  It's something to be aware of as I start pushing into longer distances.

If only my Hundred Push-ups challenge was going so well.  Sunday I did my Week 2 assessment, and I only managed 10 push ups.  The program assumes the "base" level for Week 3 is 16.  Week 3, Day 1 has you do as sets of 10, 12, 7, 7, and 9 push ups.  I managed 10, 9, 7, 2 and 4.  I hit absolute muscle failure.  It's hard not to be a disappointed.  I try to find programs that offer a manageable progression of difficulty so I can follow my mantra of "Just Finish."  Today was the first time I was not able to complete an exercise I planned.

I'm going to repeat this day again and if I still can't do it, I 'll just repeat Week 2 until I can do 16 push ups.  I have to be in the bottom 5% for upper body strength among people my size.

At least I am trying to do something about it.

You see, I was a nerdy child. I don't mean that in a nostalgic, 80s kind of way. I mean that I was overly-imaginative, socially awkward, and utterly devoid of athletic ability. Worse than that was an undiagnosed learning disability that left me with poor short term memory, low mechanical dexterity and very few ways to put into action my profound ability for abstract reasoning. I suffered in school, academically and socially. I had few if any friends, and generally felt like a failure.

Until one day in the second grade some boxes arrived. In those boxes were Apple II computers. They were set up hastily in a ramshackle room. None of the teachers knew what to do with them, so they just sort of put kids in the room a few at a time to see what happened. I fell in love. Here was a device that you could make words without handwriting. You just pressed a key and magically a letter appeared on the screen.

Unlike TV, this machine would do what you told it. By changing disks, the computer would play whatever you wanted whenever you wanted it to. It didn't take long to figure out that if you pressed a couple of keys, the computer would stop it's program in in many cases let you view the magic behind the curtain.

I became an elementary school hacker and programmer. By middle school, I was handling support for teachers on campus and making radical architectural changes to the way systems worked.

I also met the Macintosh. In a room full of Apple IIs was a strange little black and white toaster. I thought it must be primitive, because the other Apple computers were in color. But it was strange. You didn't have to type commands to make the computer work. You just moved a mouse. There was no friction between thought and action. It was magic of the most powerful kind.

I fell in love and asked for a subscription to MacUser magazine for Christmas. I begged my parents constantly for a computer at home. I made persuasive arguments for why it had to be a Mac, that an IBM PC, DOS and Windows were tools of a bygone era.

All the while, I held in my mind that there were two men of Mythology, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. Never in my wildest dreams did I believe I would ever meet them. None my friends met Michael Jordan. No one ever though they would meet a move star or rock star. It just doesn't happen.

But then I met this guy named David Brightbill through a mutual friend. He owned an actual Apple Authorized Reseller and Service Provider. He offered me a job. I would get paid to work with Macs! He knew actual employees of Apple! Through this job I began to cultivate relationships with people at Apple. Dave even sent me all the way across the country to San Francisco where I got to where an Apple shirt and work in the Apple booth. I even got to shake hands with Steve Himself.

An amazing thing happened. Steve remembered me. When I would see him around Apple conferences, or occasionally the Apple campus he would greet me by name. At one point he even called to offer me a job in the company I admired most in the world, the company he founded. I even had dinner with him a couple of times. I remember eating at a Japanese place in San Francisco where he ordered a Mango Lassi. He got it.

I didn't take the job, but Steve always returned my emails. Can you imagine what it's like to be personally known by your hero? This guy created an entire industry that provides my livelihood. He created machines that were my lifeline as a child. He gave me business advice. He told me he respected my stance that my family was the most important thing in my life.

And now, just a week after my grandmother died from cancer, Steve is gone too.

If he was anyone else, I would call him an acquaintance. He is not anyone else. He's Steve Jobs and he will always be my hero.

It's interesting to note that sales of the iPhone 4 increased across the product's entire life as Apple's flagship phone.  It's also interesting that AT&T's second best selling phone is the iPhone 3Gs.  For all the talk of the rise of Android, Apple isn't losing sales to Google's platform.  Apple's primary limit on growth is not demand; they sell every phone they have the capacity to manufacture.

It seems that with the current iPhone lineup (iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S), Apple is primarily concerned with devices that can make in high volumes quickly.  The 3GS becomes a value device free with a contract, and available in volume.  The iPhone 4 at $99 puts considerable pressure on RIM and value Android phones, and van be built in high volumes.  The 4S still matches and exceeds any other phone on the market in terms of hardware–but goes with tech proven in the iPad 2 and iPhone 4.  Apple should be able to build a lot of iPhone 4s units, and production should ramp up fast.

I've read that a great number of Android's activations come from low-end feature phones that use Android simply because it's free.  These phones never use apps, or surf the web, or do anything more than simple messaging.  For all the hand-wringing on Wall Street, it's clear to me that the 4S will lead the iPhone onto it's most dominant year ever.  Android may have impressive unit numbers, but iOS will remain in the lead across all devices–and when you factor in revenue and profits for the entire ecosystem, it's not going to be close.

It's going to be a big year.  Tim Cook's first product introduction is going to be Apple's best selling product in its history.

Thursday will be an easy recovery run before Saturday's 6.5 mile long run.  That's very near half the distance I'll do in the actual race, and I'm interested to see what happens to my pace in a run that is longer than an hour.

So I started exercising and watching what I ate.  The pounds melted away, and I felt much better.  Only something strange happened to my body.  My exercise of choice is running.  Over the last few months I've found I have very strong, muscular legs.  My legs look better than they ever have in my life.  The only problem is they are attached to my still pudgy midsection and the tiny stick-arms I had as a teenager.  In terms of measurements, I've lost more than 3 inches from my arms since I started running.

Some of that was fat, but most of it was muscle.  Everything I've read says that running burns fat–and muscle.  In my chest and arms I've burned a lot of fat and a lot of muscle too.  There's not much left.

I tried the gym, but I'm too weak in my upper body and my core to perform exercises with any kind of form.  I got discouraged.

Then I remembered I'd been here before.  There was a time–just last year-that running any distance seemed impossible.  The key was a gentle, steady difficulty progression in the form of Couch to 5k.  Surely there must be some similar system for starting from zero in the muscle fitness world.

I scoured the Internet for an answer.  A surprising set of exercises appeared as well-researched tools for building full-body strength: push-ups, crunches and pull-ups.  Here's the problem: I was too weak to do more than a few push ups, or any pull-ups at all.  I hate crunches.  Still, I have to start somewhere and push ups seem the most doable.

I found a system that many of my fellow nerds reported success with: hundredpushups.  The program is designed to take you to doing 100 push ups without stopping in 7 weeks.  You start with an assessment to see how many good form push ups you can do without stopping, and then enter one of 4 tracks based on how many you did.

With a grand total of 5 pushups, I made into the lowest possible zone.

Doing 5 push ups won't build strength fast enough to make progress that encourages you to continue, so the program has you do sets of push ups with rests.  On Monday I did 12 push ups.  On Wednesday I did 16.  On Friday I pushed to 22.

Today I started week two with 24 push ups.  I feel stronger already.  Week 1 was easy and I didn't have much soreness.  Today was tough, and I feel a little weak today, but like my c25k experience, I didn't stop when I wanted to.

Sadly, there is no "runner's high" with these workouts.  On the positive side, it takes less than 10 minutes.

I'm also doing 45 crunches a day to try and build more core strength.  Hopefully these two routines will make me strong enough to actually go to a gym.