Windows is a nice place to visit.

OK - so this morning I'm going to geek out a bit...

The impending launch of Diablo 3 has me feeling nostalgic.  I have pretty close to zero time for playing games these days, but I'll end up picking it up in the hopes that I can kill an hour now and again with my friends.  Anyway, I played around with the public beta for a day, and it had me feeling nostalgic.  So, given the amount of business travel I do, I figured I'd throw D2 and the expansion onto my MacBook Air (as the system requirements are so lightweight), and maybe find some time to play when I'm taking a break from work trapped in a hotel room somewhere.  I downloaded the install files from Battle.net, (which took forever), and went fire it up, only to get a terse message from my Mac advising me that OSX no longer supports PowerPC apps, (translation: my D2 install was dead in the water).

Undeterred, (and setting aside for a second how completely irrational it would be for me to invest the subsequent level of effort to install a game I'd likely rarely if ever play), I decided to take a more ambitious course.  I happen to have (1) a rarely-used MacBook Pro with an upgraded 320 gb HD (which I put in after the previous drive croaked following a precipitous nosedive off of my bed while the drive was spinning), (2) a licensed but as-yet-not-activated version of Windows 7 Ultimate (a generous gift from my friends at MS from a conference I spoke at a few years ago, and (3) the ability to rationalize spending a Sunday morning getting Windows on my Mac, on the goofy theory that it would be handy to have access to a Windows box again.  I'd set up Windows on Macs before, using Bootcamp, and was really surprised and impressed at how simple the operation is.  A bit of additional info may be helpful here.  I've been a computer geek since I was probably 8 years old, when my father bought us a Commodore 64.  I spent most of my time in the MS Windows environment, and computing has been a huge part of my life.  At times, I've had 6 or 7 PCs live in my home at a time (all mine), some serving as web servers, some as test boxes, some as gaming rigs.  I've had two or three versions of Windows running in parallel with two or three versions of Linux.  There was never any good reason for any of this technical complexity in my life.  I just loved it.

When I joined Google, this was one of the big sacrifices for me;  I moved from a house of absurdly inappropriate size and scale in a part of the country with a less-than-stratospheric cost of living, to (what feels like to me) a tiny little apartment in the prohibitively expensive city of San Fran.  Part of the resulting downsizing resulted in me resigning myself to compute exclusively on notebooks, at least for the time being.  I simply don't have the space for a full size box.  By way of full disclosure, I still manage to overdo it.  I have a 15" MBP for work, a 13" MBP of my own, an 11" MBA, and an iPad 3, which has actually taken on a lot of the mobile computing chores previously reserved for the Air.

That whole digression was really just to set up context for why I would bother spending a Sunday morning bootcamping the 13" MBP, to give me access to a Windows environment again.  Frankly,  I wasn't sure if I actually missed it or not.  I guess I assumed it would feel a little like coming home after a long visit to a beautiful but not-intended-for-hardcore-productivity vacation spot.  I was wrong.

To be fair, the Bootcamp process was again totally painless.  I credit Apple with this.  They've done an amazing job of making repartitioning the drive, installing the second OS, and getting the drivers, etc., in place absolutely painless.  Having done muli-OS installations on laptops using Windows, Ubuntu, Slackware, etc., I know how extremely frustrating this process can be.  Apple really has solved that riddle (leveraging the benefit of absolute tyrannical control of the hardware and software).

That said, once I got into Windows, I realized it just doesn't feel like home anymore.  It has amazed me how completely my perceptions of the "look and feel" of the OSes have completely reversed.  Windows 7 feels far less intuitive to me than OSX Lion does.  The alerts and instructions seem unnecessarily cryptic and oblique.  Maybe it really is just that I've crossed that threshold of familiarity where the world of Mac speaks to me and the world of Windows seems hostile and uninviting.  That's very possibly the case.  Still, I'm less confident that I'll bother building a dedicated Windows box when my square footage again permits.  I'll likely just tinker in Bootcamp to maintain some general familiarity with the OS for professional purposes.  More importantly, when D3 goes live, I'll likely be installing it on a Mac.  Never would have guessed that a few years ago.

Obsessing over Tough Mudder gear

[Disclaimer: this is a generally pointless post, but the subject is on my mind, and I like adding some white noise to the philosophical drivel I've been posting here lately.]

Looking forward to doing the Tough Mudder NorCal (Tahoe) race this September with some friends and colleagues.  As I tend to do with this sort of thing, I'm irrationally obsessing on equipment (perhaps to divert my natural anxiety about the adequacy of my training regimen).  At this point, I think I have most of the gear covered.  I picked up a pair of New Balance MX 20 trail shoes, which I've been training in a few days a week to condition my feet to the almost-barefoot feel.  For gloves, I went with a pair of cheap Carhartt gloves.  I'll likely cut some holes in the finger tips to let water drain a little better, and I'm curious as to their dry time, given that they're 50% cotton.  That said, their fit and grip are great.  My sense is that the weather is going to be challenging.  I see the temps in Tahoe at the end of September can swing from 18-70 degrees F.  That makes it tough to dress accordingly, especially when a key consideration will be clothes that dry quickly after each of the ice water submersion obstacles.  Presently, I'm leaning toward UnderArmor Cold Gear compression clothing, both a long sleeve shirt and leggings.  I'm mildly concerned I'll look like a wannabe ninja, but I want to stay warm, and give my knees some modicum of protection when crawling over rocks, etc.  If the temp swings to the high end of that spectrum, though, I'll cook in that gear.  Need to figure that out.

Probably my most uncertain selection so far is the CamelBak Classic 70 oz backpack canteen.  I think I'll wear it, as I hate to be thirsty, and the tiny storage pocket will be handy for energy gels, etc.  My only reservation is that it adds thickness for obstacles like Devil's Beard (crawling under heavy rope mesh net) and shimmying under wires 8" off the ground.  I'm going to keep researching this one before making a final call.

As for the training itself, I'm only really intimidated by the altitude.  I know it's going to be quite a shock hitting that altitude unprepared.  Perhaps I can get up there a few times in advance to condition, but it's not a convenient drive, and I'm not sure one or two visits in advance would be worth much.  We'll see...

Hard to believe we're deep into April already.  I'm definitely feeling the acceleration of time, and it's more than a little disorienting.  With several trips coming up, I imagine I'll be in the back half of the year before I know what's hit me.

Average everydayness

The problem with a life of perilous peaks is that it can make the average everydayness seem insufferable at times, even when the everyday situation is pretty damned good. -K-

Testing the image posting function...

... With this pic of my badge from a Korean privacy conference.

Twitter

I've neglected Twitter for too long.

For any interested, I'm at keith_enright

Obligatory disclaimer to my personal blog, focusing on privacy

I'll open with a fairly standard disclaimer.  Anything I post here reflects my own opinion.  I'm fortunate enough to serve as Senior Privacy Counsel for Google, but nothing I post to this blog is intended to reflect the opinion or position of my employer.

Part of my motivation in beginning this blog is to familiarize myself with the functionality of blogger.com.  For the past 10 years or so, I've maintained various sites at privacylaw.org, keithenright.com, and several other domains.  I've used Word Press, Joomla, Drupal, and other blogging and content management systems, and I'm curious how blogger differs.

I'm not sure yet how frequently I'll post here.  After joining Google, I pulled down privacylaw.org, as I knew I wouldn't have time to maintain it.  In the short term, I'll just post here as the opportunity presents itself, and see where it goes.