My quest to get fit for the Death Ride later this year caused me to ride twice up Highway 9 two weeks ago. Today, Jorge, Richard, and I twice went up the well-known King’s Mountain Road in Woodside. It was a beautiful day for riding over 47 miles with 4750 feet of climbing, but man, am I paying the price right now! The first time up King’s wasn’t so bad since I had relatively fresh legs and purposefully kept my heartrate below 170, averaging around 162 bpm. I rode about a minute or two behind Richard and Jorge with Derek, who accompanied us for one of the climbs up King’s.

There are many ways to reach Skyline Boulevard, and King’s is one of them. Others include the aforementioned Highway 9 down in Los Gatos, Old La Honda Road, Page Mill, Highway 92 and Highway 84. Once atop Skline, we made a bee-line to the rest stop next to Highway 84. Speaking of bees, during this point, a bee flew right into my eye, almost causing me to crash onto the side of the road! I need to start wearing my contacts and wraparound shades again!

At the rest stop, we ran into Dave King and his friend Cindy. Dave attended my wedding two years ago as the guest of Kathy. I saw Dave again last week at the wedding of Kathy and Brian (photos coming soon). Small cycling world! They were doing a long ride from Los Altos to Skyline (via OLH). We all proceeded to descend down Woodside before beginning the second ascent up King’s Mountain. The Death Ride features over 14,000 feet of climbing over a double-metric century (200 kilometers). Up one pass, down one pass and repeat. This training we’re doing is sure to intensify over the coming months. Jorge keeps saying, “Double Diablo! Double Hamilton!” I shudder at the very thought.

The second time up King’s didn’t feel so bad until the very top. Thankfully, Richard and Jorge rode with my slow ass up the road, but they soon dropped me as we hit Skyline. My legs were sapped, and I was cooked. My pre-race meal included a bowl of cereal and some Gatorade. I had hoped that last night’s meal at the famous Chez Panisse would have been enough, and it was nearly enough. I was able to catch Richard and Jorge on the descent to the Woodside rest stop, in large part to heavy blubber reserves. I would gladly exchange my descent speed for better climbing times, though!

We rode slowly back to our cars at the Canada Road/Highway 92 junction, running into Dave and Cindy again at the Las Pulgas Water Temple. With only meters to go, I saw a familiar jersey on the road. It was Michael Butler from Team Palm! We rode at the 24 Hours of Adrenalin 6 years ago! My Palm jersey is one of my favorites to wear on the open road.

With that, I’m off to eat some dinner and watch a movie with Rae. I got to finish my Class Book page this weekend!

Each month, COBA will feature an optional monthly assignment and contest. Members are highly encouraged to participate as the point of the monthly assignment is to motivate you to take photos, try new techniques, and learn.

Speed is the topic for this month’s assignment. Be fast or be slow, but be prepared to finish your photo in the next two weeks for the meeting!

Only new photographs taken from the previous meeting date to the next meeting date will be accepted. Please print a print of your photo!

If you haven’t seen the final episode of BSG’s third season, stop reading now…

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The rumors and articles predicting a Palm buyout have only intensified in recent days. What I don’t understand is why any company would consider purchasing Palm. Don’t they already know that it’s been dead for the past five years?

Sure, Palm is still enjoying record sales. In the last fiscal year ending in June 2006, Treo sales topped one billion dollars, with net income over 336 million dollars. How can I argue this point with sales numbers like these? John Lennon’s estate is still making bank, but you won’t be hearing any new songs from him. Palm has been riding the success of its Treo smartphones for the past several years and for far too long. In that time, virtually nothing innovative has come out of the company nor from any of its former incarnations: palmOne, PalmSource, Access, etc. Whither Palm OS 6? A technology that no major manufacturer signed up to use. Garnet OS, née Palm OS 5, hasn’t been updated in five years. When I worked at Palm, I remember hearing that Palm OS 5 was going to shake things up, change things dramatically in the OS for the better. They said that too about Palm OS 4.

One could argue that they’ve succeeded in improving Windows Mobile with the Treo 700w. Well, you can put as much sugar on crap as you like, but it’ll still be crap you’re eating. Just because a company sells hundreds of millions of dollars worth of product doesn’t mean the product is any good. On the other hand, having a good product doesn’t guarantee financial success Take a look at Newton. Great technology, poor sales. Apple is going to try again with the iPhone in June, 2007. We’ll see if the second time is the charm for the company that seems to be doing all the right things lately.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that Palm was the best company to create the iPod a good year before Apple made it happen in 2001. At the time, they had the engineering expertise and global marketing position to be wildly successful. Palm made several critical mistakes:

• Launching new handhelds that weren’t any different from the previous models.
• Developing smartphones and wireless handhelds that couldn’t compete with the competition.
• Purchasing companies left and right without thinking how to properly integrate them with the rest of the company.
• Trying to capitalize on the Internet boom with poorly-planned and managed Internet services.
• Not thinking outside of the box with advanced research and development groups.

I feel sad when I write about some of these mistakes, as I worked on some of these products when I was at Palm. I remember having numerous conversations with co-workers about what’s wrong and how we could change things. I felt powerless, however, to really do anything. Was I completely powerless? Probably not, but I couldn’t see any way to improve the situation given the climate at the top the company. Crisp execution wasn’t what was needed. Better vision and leadership was.

So what if a company buys Palm? The new owner will certainly add dollars to the bottom-line, yet nothing innovative will come out in the years to come. Eventually, the Palm division will become a dead weight, forcing the company to either dissolve or sell the group off to someone else. That seems to be the modus operandi of Palm based on its history. Please, someone stop the record before it starts to repeat again! Is it too late for Palm to reinvent itself like Apple did in the late 90’s? I’m sorry to say, but Palm has been dead for the past five years; the company and the public just don’t realize it yet.

As a matter of disclosure, I have owned and still may own Palm shares. The exact number — if I have any left — is a question I have to answer every year around this time. Palm has experienced so many stock changing events over the past seven years that I’m constantly recalculating what I own and its value. In October, 2002, Palm performed a 20-1 reverse stock split to help raise the perceived value of the stock. A year later, the company spun out into two companies, palmOne and PalmSource. In 2005, Access purchased PalmSource and turned it into a wholly-owned subsidiary and not a publicly traded company. Each of these events has caused me headaches when recalculating the stock’s cost basis!

Looks like Chinese food is in the crosshairs for restaurant foods that are unhealthy. The Center for Science in the Public Interest released a report declaring the typical Chinese menu is loaded with calories, saturated fats and sodium. A few weeks ago, another study targeted chain restaurants such as Ruby Tuesday and The Border as particularly similarly bad violators. What else is new?

This article should have been titled, Eating Out Every Day Can Be Unhealthy. Let’s see, today I’ll have Chinese. Tomorrow will be Mexican. For the rest of the week, it’s gotta be American, Italian, and Japanese! If I did this every day — and millions of people do — it’s certain that my waistline will be bigger than it already is! The sad fact of the matter is the convenience of eating out has trumped making your own meals.

I grew up around the restaurant business all my life. Growing up, I’m sure I would have liked to have fried shrimp and egg rolls every night, but my parents wouldn’t have any of that. They prepared healthy and nutritious meals for us at home. Because of that, I would rather cook than eat out, provided my fridge is fully stocked. As the saying goes, you not only have to eat smart, you have to cook smart! I see eating out at restaurants as a nice thing to do once a week or on special occasions, not an ever day occurrence.

What do you all think?

Another year, another set of birthdays. A week’s gone by, and I’m just getting around to posting photos from our birthday weekend. In the past, I used to be much faster at getting journal entries and photos posted. What’s happened since this? Life and work just seem to be getting in the way. My workflow seems to have definitely slowed down, despite the promises that new technologies give to make us more efficient and productive.

Last Friday, we went out to the ever popular Korea House for my birthday dinner. The best part of Korean food is often those little appetizers they give you before the main entrees arrive. I love the salted seaweed, kimchee, and tempeh. People who were at the dinner included the Changs, May and Salim, Vanessa and Levi (hope you’re having fun in Italy), Randy, Eric, Dardy, Daniel, Cyndi, and Soo. After feasting at Korea House, several of us joined Bryan and Susan in San Jose to watch 300. I would have liked to have seen the movie at the IMAX theater, but the Tech Museum wasn’t showing it. Still, the movie was quite impressive visually. Yeah, there’s blood and gore, but it’s stylized like a comic book. Don’t go to the movie looking for a history lesson, but for a high energy retelling of a myth.

On Saturday, Rae and I went up to Berkeley for dinner at the Ethiopian Restaurant Cafe Colucci with Edna and Petrice. We enjoy Ethiopian food about once every quarter, and we rarely leave the restaurant with empty stomachs. Next time, I’m going to have to try something different from the vegetarian and meat combos. What can I say, though, I like variety!

We saw the closing night of the Women of Color Film Festival at the PFA in Berkeley after dinner. The first two films, which took up the first 20 minutes, were especially painful. The films got better, but not much more so. Rae agreed with me that the films was less than inspiring. We ended the night hanging out at Petrice’s place and eating yummy cake.

Tomorrow, I’ll be working all the weight off by climbing Highway 9 with Jorge!

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The recently announced and anticipated Canon EOS-1D Mark III was on hand at the March 2007 COBA meeting. Jim Rose, our local Canon Technical Rep, demoed the camera to a very eager crowd. I noticed a number of current 1D Mark II series owners, who no doubt came to check out the 10 fps, 10 megapixel camera for themselves. Nelse from Elite Flight Photography was especially interested in the high ISO capabilities of the Mark III. Paired with his 200/1.8 lens, a Mark III will give him more tools to achieve higher quality images in gymnasiums around the country. Jim commented that this is a ground-up revision to the 1D-series, not an evolutionary update like the Mark IIN was. I was more impressed with the Live View mode than I thought I would be. I can see it being extremely useful when doing any type of macro, landscape, or tripod-mounted photography.

I will, however, have to get used to the new system for navigating the menus and for changing controls. I’ve gotten used to the press-and-hold method with the previous 1D-series, even going so far to say that I prefer it to the 20D/5D/Digital Rebel method. Change waits for no one, so I guess I will have to get used to the new method should I decide to pick up a Mark III. At the moment, I’m fine with the Mark II, though things might always change once the Mark III begins shipping. I could tell a number of COBA members will be getting ready to purchase one (or two) in the coming months. Others would prefer to wait for the successor to the 1Ds Mark III. There have been rumors that this camera will be a medium format competitor with a new (and backwards compatible) lens mount. Time will tell!

Chris P. gave a great recap of his time at PMA in Las Vegas last week. The Photo Marketing Association holds one of the largest photo conventions in the world each year. Next week, photographers from all over will be returning to Vegas for the Wedding and Portrait Photographers International Convention. The conventions never stop in Vegas! I didn’t realize how big the Sigma 200-500mm f/2.8 lens truly was until I saw Chris’ photo from the conference. One thing’s for sure, you won’t be hand-holding that lens anytime soon;tThat thing is a beast at over 35 pounds!

Following the two presentations, many COBA members stuck around to handle the Mark III and look over the monthly assignment photos. Only four people submitted entries for this month. Let’s try to triple that amount for next month! Any suggestions for the next assignment? I’ll be sending out a preliminary meeting notice early next week with details.

Nearly a week after screenshots of the new uniforms were leaked, the Chargers held a fashion show at the U.S. Grant Hotel in Downtown San Diego to showcase the new duds. There are three new uniforms: a navy blue home, a white away, and a home alternate powder-blue uniform. Changes in the new outfits over the previous ones include:

• Colors: Navy Blue, Yellow, and Powder-Blue
• Two-point lightning bolts on helmets, shoulders, and pants
• Shoulder strip goes around the shoulder
• Numbers on top of shoulders
• Chargers name on front of jersey
• White or blue collar
• White helmet

There are videos from the event on the Chargers website and at the Union-Tribune. Models today included RB21 LaDainian Tomlinson, LB56 Shawne Merriman, WR81 Kassim Osgood, C61 Nick Hardwick, and FB41 Lorenzo Neal.

It’s been 18 years since the Chargers last dramatically changed their uniforms. Though I knew that teams had to submit any changes to the NFL about a year in advance, I wasn’t aware that the league allowed uniform changes once every five years. I remember the Patriots changing out of their previous uniforms quickly, but a quick search revealed that the time difference between those ugly unis (1993-1999) and their current ones was 7 years.

As for the new Chargers’ uniforms, I’m still a bit disappointed. I’m not against updating the uniform, but I am let down with the execution. For instance, there’s simply not enough contrast in the bolt logo when you have navy blue next to powder-blue next to yellow. On the old uniforms, you had yellow over blue over white, three very different colors that made the bolt stand out. Though this is not so bad on the helmets, the lack of contrasting colors really hurts the overall look of the jerseys. On the white away jersey, for example, the two blues next to the yellow make the lightning bolt look really small. The bolt is further diminished by the blue shoulder stripe. If you watch the video, the bolt is barely visible on big players like Hardwick and Osgood. The photo of Philip Rivers wearing the new away jersey also makes this problem very apparent.

Possible solutions to this problem would be to (1) add a white outline for additional contrast, (2) make the lightning bolt bigger, (3) make the shoulder stripe larger and go over the shoulder instead of around it, or (4) do away with the stripe altogether. A number of people on the Chargers forums have also pointed out that the shoulder lightning bolt has a different orientation on the powder-blue jersey than on the blue or white home/away jerseys. Fix the shoulder problem, and you’ll solve a lot of problems with the uniform’s look.

Other random thoughts. I’ve always liked the player numbers to be on the sleeves instead of the tops of the shoulders, so I won’t add anything there. The chest and back numbers look a little heavy-metal-ish to me, but I don’t mind it all that much. The white helmet looks nice with a lighter colored uniform, so it looks a bit out of place with the navy blue jersey.

As I said before in my previous post on the subject, I won’t mind the look of the uniforms so as long as we’re holding the Lombardi Trophy next season. We came this close to going to the big game last year; we’ve got to take the next step in the 2007-2008 season.

Update: My thoughts on the fashion show are here.

There’s always excitement when you hear that your favorite team is going to be changing their uniforms. Sometimes, it turns out for the better, as in the case of the Jets and Falcons. Most of the time, however, the new change looks like it came straight out of the Arena League or the defunct-XFL: Bills, Vikings, Cardinals, and Bengals. My beloved Chargers have had some of the best looking uniforms for the past several years. I’ve always like how they have incorporated the lightning bolt logo into the shoulder area; most teams just have a solid or striped color there. The curve of the bolt provides a natural place below for the player’s number, whereas the trend today is to have the number on the shoulder top.

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These are the cheapest prices I’ve seen yet for SanDisk Extreme III CompactFlash memory cards. I hear from Alex that CostCo is selling SanDisk Ultra II cards for cheap too.

• 1GB Extreme III SD: $34.95 $39.95
• 2GB Extreme III SD: $47.95 $49.95
• 1GB Extreme III CompactFlash: $34.95
• 2GB Extreme III CompactFlash: $49.95
• 4GB Extreme III CompactFlash: $75.95 $79.95
• 8GB Extreme III CompactFlash: $119.95
• 12GB Extreme III CompactFlash: $169.95 $174.95
• 16GB Extreme III CompactFlash: $229.95 $237.95

I remember paying those prices for 2GB cards a few years ago. If you’re looking for cheap cards, this is the deal to get. Supplies are limited at MyDigitalDiscount so act fast!

Update: Looks like they’ve raised prices slightly. I ended up purchasing 2 8GB cards. The price I paid was how much I paid for one 2GB Ultra II card years ago!