After seeing my daughter over the past few weeks use and really understand the iPad user interface, my experience at the Apple store today with my daughter completely convinced me. The future of the computer interface is a touch screen.

Watch this video and tell me you aren’t convinced.

I might expand upon what happened in the future, but you could have easily substituted my name for Jesse’s in this blog post:

Wanted

(Via Rands In Repose.)

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

- John McCrae

“I will never forget standing outside the chemo treatment room knowing that the medication needed to save my life was only a few feet away, but that because I had private insurance it wasn’t available to me,” Linda wrote. “I read a comment from someone saying that they didn’t want a faceless government bureaucrat deciding if they would or would not get treatment. Well, a faceless bureaucrat from my private insurance made the decision that I wouldn’t get treatment and that I wasn’t worth saving.”

Likewise, Americans take 10 percent fewer drugs than citizens in other countries — but pay 118 percent more per pill that they do take, McKinsey said.

Remind me again why people don’t want to change American health care?

Op-Ed Columnist – Unhealthy America – NYTimes.com

(Via .)

Fall Colours, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

Testing my new Canon S90. I’m going off of the “the best camera is the one you have with you” – so I chose this one, good sensor and pocketable.

This September I will be returning to Canada to participate in a walk on the 12th to raise funds for Parkinson’s research. My family in Canada (pictured above) have been doing it for years now, to support my father, who has had Parkinson’s for over 10 years now.

Click on this link: http://my.e2rm.com/personalPage.aspx?SID=2308262 to go to the donation page and click on the Sponsor me button at the bottom of the page.

If you live in the US, yes you still can donate funds – they will be in Canadian dollars, and you will get a tax receipt emailed to you.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

“You can avoid reality but you can’t avoid the consequences of avoiding reality!”

I’ve asked him who said it – I’m presuming it wasn’t him. If it was, I have even more respect for the young man.

I’ve had the great fortune of being able to help test this the past few months, and even with all the other great iPhone Twitter clients out there, I keep going back to using his.

Best Twitter so far on Birdfeed?

@erikprice: Birdfeed is, without question, the Helen Hunt’s rain-soaked breasts of iPhone Twitter clients.

If you complain about the price of $4.99 – just think, it’s about the price of a good loaf of bread – and I guarantee you’ll be supported for a long time on that $4.99.

Del Oro theater in downtown Grass Valley, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

Pretty good picture for the iPhone.

• Being a father to a wonder 10 month old daughter.
• Exploring iPhone development

Yes, that can take up a ton of time.. well, all my free time.

The set

A sampling:

Snap Of A NYTimes feature, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

This is a very cool feature by the NYTimes – people can drop by and enter one word a day on how they feel about the economy.

Check it out, and enter your word:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/30/business/economy/2009-economy-words.html

I entered ‘optimistic’ today.

Playing some Warlords on a vintage Atari 2600, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

It’s very surprising how simplicity brings out the excitement. Or the
lack of expectations of the graphics?

A brave man just deletes his Twitter account.. I often wonder how many great blog posts and discussions we’ve missed since the rise of Twitter. Worth clicking through and reading in it’s entirety.

(Via Rands In Repose.)

A must read if you have great ideas and you want to share them with friends…

Maybe someday… .

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. – Mark Twain

Tonight’s Fun, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

Cirque De Soleil Corteo tonight. And yes, it’s raining… Welcome to
Portland canadian friends.

My brother and I inside Andretti Winery.

My wife Jennifer reminded me that Tyler Florence was in Portland today for a book signing at Macy’s Downtown. (The grand reopening is today and tomorrow).

He is a really down to earth guy – we chatted very briefly about the iPhone that I took this picture with. He has an iPhone, and asked me about my battery life, which on his is really poor. I told him I always turn wifi off on mine, as it’s really hard on the batteries. Turns out he always has it on..

Tech support to the stars I tell you!

This is a great article by Daniel Jalkut on someone who realized his dream by changing professions.. worth the read.

(Via Red Sweater Blog.)

My every other friday post at the Extensis blog is about risk. Let me know what you think.

(Via Manage This.)

I am helping out back stage, and went to the dress rehersal last night – it’s pretty darn good! They have a few numbers that are quite innovative, and Jennifer has a small solo in one of them that, IMHO, she kicked some butt on.

Linda Sohl-Ellison and Monti Ellison are their guest performers tonight, and I hear they are quite good.

If you are thinking about attending, feel free to sign up for upcoming.org, and add yourself to the list. Tickets are $25, which seems expensive to me, but I think it’s going to be a pretty good show, with the guest performers I expect it will totally be worth the money.

More about my NYC trip sometime soon. I am still debating about getting an iPhone tomorrow. Or trying to get an iPhone.

My wife Jennifer works in IT at Nike – on Fridays she works at home, and often has meetings early in the morning before I go to work. I often overhear the conversations because of the speakerphone.

These folks work hard. They work hard planning the computer systems that run the entire supply chain for Nike. They are the unsung heros of Nike. You could have the coolest shoes in the world, but if the supply chain isn’t working, no one is going to be able to buy them.

So, next time you see an IT person at your company, say thanks. Say thanks to the unsung heros of the world economy.

In any sense, it sucks. Now that my MBA is done, I am going to change my priorities to my health and stress, and exercise more to.. well, really, get healthy. I might blog about it, but I think I’m still finding my voice here..

Here’s my first post, a day in the life of me.

I ask, because last night I had an incredible vivid dream about a youth who hasn’t attended youth group in a while – in my dream she and I went out for coffee and got caught up.

Which, well, hasn’t happened. I haven’t thought about her for a few weeks… and I thought to myself when I woke up today, what caused me to have that dream? If you believe in God, could it have been God whispering to me to call her and actually do that?

I don’t know – I’d be curious what you think causes us to dream – but it kinda freaked me out. Enough that I’m going to call her this afternoon and see about coffee at some point soon.

On Sunday the youth met with the volunteers (everybody but me because I’m down at Apple right now) to talk about the what they liked and disliked about small groups in the past.

In Jennifer’s group, a sophomore named Kelsey who was in my small group last year mentioned that we had a great small group. Jennifer asked why and she said it’s because I let them be serious when they needed to be serious, and let them be goofy when they needed to be goofy.

This has gotten me thinking today about how to apply that to business. I believe if you are running a meeting or getting a group of people to talk about a topic, you should allow people to talk. Don’t forcefully cut things off. Allow some frivolity in your meeting before getting serious. And if it gets serious, let it. Don’t be afraid of frank and serious talk.

That’s my learning for today from a 13 year old teenager. Are there any young people in your life you can learn something from?

Some of you may feel that this is too political for Daring Fireball. But I’m not calling Limbaugh a jackass because I disagree with his politics on this issue. I’m calling him a jackass — and it’s taking a lot of restraint not to call him something far worse — because his response to Fox’s honest, genuine advocacy regarding an important, serious issue is one of the lowest, most demeaning cheap shots I’ve ever seen.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

Rush Limbaugh is what is wrong with the political system in America. Cheap shots, personal attacks. Folks, let’s work on the problems, eh?

Stupid stupid American political system.

Link to my Vox Blog with the song you can listen to for free.

Lucien in a Bandana, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

Most of us went to Stubbs in Austin for a free BBQ lunch… and is seemingly normal in Austin, it was freaking hot out, and my head was getter burned.. so I borrowed a bandana from one of the First Pres Portland girls, and became instantly cool. And fat, mental note start working out more when I get home.

Click through to see a few more pictures.. bandwidth is bad here, so I’ll save more uploading for when I get home.

I’m not sure what to expect – the only convention I’ve been to has been MacWorld.

I’m planning on blogging my thoughts on the convention here, so stay tuned.

Here’s Team Lou, decked out in their shirts that my sister Michelle made:

And here’s the back of my brother’s shirt, with a few extra additions to the back:

I say having because today was my last day at Intuit. I’m sad, as I fondly remember those late nights swashing Quicken bugs in Mountain View, Ed’s “Hamster Dance” (this is a video, but think of the song) at 1:30am when we signed off on a release. I remember us switching QuickBooks to Cocoa a few releases ago, and really having fun learning and developing in Cocoa every day.

However, time marches on. I’ve been working at home since my wife got a position at Nike almost 6 years ago, and we moved to Oregon in November of 2000. The one thing I’ve learned since that time is I’m a people person, I don’t thrive working at home, staring at a screen with no people interaction. What’s really helped me in learning this is going to school to get my MBA, graduating in February of 2007. I might write more about my MBA soon…

So, new job! I start with Extensis on Tuesday morning! Downtown Portland, commute on highways and taking the Max train and all! I am really really looking forward to it – one from seeing people again during the day, to working on something different than finance software for 6 1/2 years. Time to diversify, time to learn, time to have fun!

It’s also really amazing to see the devastation down there. It seems basically that no one had ‘flood’ insurance, and the insurance company classified the damage the homes got as a ‘flood’, so the owners are out of luck.

Take this family:

This is what’s left of a multi-million dollar home on the waterfront. Notice the FEMA trailer in the background behind the beams of the house.

Part of me doesn’t get it… why not rebuild? I guess if insurance doesn’t pay, what do you do? Submit a request to the First Presbyterian Church in Bay Saint Louis and pray people like our youth group keep coming I guess.