As most of you know, Sam is sometimes a slighty particular eater. Ok… he's really picky and it drives Holly and I nuts. So to persuade Sam into better eating habits, we've started to say no snacks at bedtime if he doesn't eat a good dinner. Well what typically happens is a temper tantrum around 7:30pm and Sam whining that he's hungry all the way to bedtime.  Well Sam has come to realize not all snacks are created equal. Tonight Holly made dinner, and in typical fashion, Sam turned his nose at it. Holly said fine, no snacks tonight. 7:30 rolls around and Sam starts whining about being hungry. Holly tells Sam no because he didn't eat his dinner. Not 5 seconds later he comes back and says what if he had a good snack, like an apple or banana.

Really?!?! At three years old he already knows how to work around the 'no snack, because you didn't your dinner' rule. I'm already starting to get worried about when we get have to start working on curfews and car usage.

At the MSP airport there are 5 screens setup that previously held the standard ad posters. The ads are now interctive so when someone walks by, the picture gets distorted as if the person walked through some leaves. This works everytime someone walks in front of the ad. I think there was a 4 and 6 year old that had been entertaining themselves for over an hour because the Mom had set up shop on the floor across from the ads and had the whole thing going – McD's dinner, on the phone, and kids jackets and sweatshirts scattered near her. The picture doesn't do the ad justice, but it gives you an idea of what happens.

I definitely have to give the ad a 5 stars in originality.

(UPDATE: The picture I posted from my iPhone didn't work well, so I'll repost when I get back to my laptop later tonight.)

For those of you who didn’t see Evan at Christmas, he’s starting to walk pretty good. For those who did, he hasn’t stopped walking since Christmas. Starting last Wed/Thur, he just decided that he was done crawling and had started to walk everwhere. Holly had to work this morning, so there was more than one occasion that I’d turn around wonder where he was at. Summer is definitely going to interesting with TWO highly mobile boys.

Microsoft was set to release an evaluation version of their next operating system today.  What ended up happening was the crushing demand for getting a copy of the beta caused Microsoft's servers to choke.  Most of the links to download the beta start to work fine (where the web site is just presenting text/info), but once someone gets to a point where actual data needs to be transferred the process starts to breakdown.  I spent the better part of my lunch break trying to the get the download to work.  On the last screen, where the actual download was to occur, I got a nice error message from the site asking to come back tomorrow due to 'minor technical difficulty with the site'.

Guess I'll go back to my Mac and be happy.

Most of you know I’m a Mac fan, but the reality is that it’s still a Windows world.  Starting tomorrow, Microsoft will open the beta testing of their new operating system – Windows 7.  I know the name isn’t a real awe inspiring update, but it’s what’s under the hood that counts.  Initial reports on the first round of closed door testing revealed that Microsoft has listened to complaints about Vista and has made the necessary updates.  The best news from the preliminary testing is that the new operating system hasn’t relied on updates to computer power to overcome bloated feature.  This has been the bane of every OS update Microsoft has put out since Windows 3.11.

One of the more fascinating things I watched over the past election year was how tech played an important role in the election.  Now the issue is spilling into post election choices for President-Elect Obama and whether or not he'll get to keep his Blackberry.  In this day and age, every CEO of a company (and there's no reason not to equate his position to a company CEO) has a smart phone of some sort – be it a Blackberry, iPhone, Palm, etc. 

Why should the President of the United States be any different?

Here are the biggest updates that I think were relevant from the MacWorld keynote:

1. iPhoto update: iPhoto is the Mac’s default photo storage tool.  Instead of having a folder or directory full of picture files, iPhoto let’s save them in a manageable fashion.  It has basic editing tools and can apply tags for grouping.  The update to iPhoto now allows for geo-tagging and mapping (so you can see where a photo was taken) and links into Facebook and Flickr.  This is the best feature I’ve seen added in a long time.  So now when you’re in iPhoto and uploaded your pictures from your camera, you can easily post to Facebook or upload again to Flickr to share with family and friends.

Yep, that was it.  One update out of a 90 minute keynote.  No new Mac Mini, no new iTunes Media Center, no iPhone Nano.  I guess Apple saves the good announcements just for Steve. 

One of the best rumors to spring up prior to MacWorld is the potential for iTunes to now sell DRM free content.  DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and is a way for providers to know their content (music, audio book, movies) cannot be illegally shared between consumers.  To date, iTunes has had almost all of their content locked by a form of DRM called FairPlay.  Over the past 12-18 months, some content from specific providers has become unlocked.  In a new move that would allow variable pricing for music, content providers and Apple appear to have worked out an agreement to allow all content to be DRM free. 

This is great because there have been cases in the past year were a company who also used DRM on their content and then suddenly shut down their store – Yahoo Music and MSN Music.  In both cases, users would have lost their ability to listen to their purchased music if they ever needed to rebuild their computer or bought a new one.  The reason is the DRM needs to be validated against a 3rd party computer.  When these companies shutdown their music stores, they also planned to shutdown the authentication servers needed to validate DRM keys in the music content.  Fortunately both companies have taken steps to minimize the hurt on end users due to the closing of their respective music stores.

Of all the rumors I've heard to date, DRM free iTunes is the one I'm hoping comes true.  Even better would be the ability to retro-actively unlock existing purchases.  I can only hope…

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard