I finally broke down and did it.

I bought into the hype, the slick advertising, and the amazing fervor that is the Apple Macintosh community.

Today, I went to the Knoxville Apple Store and picked up my brand new Apple MacBook Pro, 17″, 2.4GHz variety. I decided to go with the old style anti-glare finish on the screen, in lieu of the glossy (which is really pretty), and picked up a pile of software apps to run on this bad boy once I get a second to actually play around.

Right now, I’m feeling a bit lost with the controls, but I think it’ll be pretty smooth sailing for the most part. I don’t feel lost because anything is difficult to understand or hard to use, it’s just a new interface to which I’m not yet accustomed.

So, for you long time Mac users, what’s a good estimate of time for how long it will take me to feel completely at ease with the computer and all its differences from the Windows world?

Any killer apps that I simply can’t live without? I really like everything so far, and I suspect as soon as I get my AirPort Extreme hooked up and going, all will be awesomely wireless and fast.

The computer itself seems really speedy and slick. I like the size (considering it’s a 17 inch) and the weight isn’t at all as much as I had anticipated.

The guys at the Apple Store were excellent to work with, very helpful, and since I had well more equipment than I could reasonably navigate through the mall on my own accord, they grabbed a flat dolly and hauled everything to my truck for me.

Anyway, here I am, Mac. Impress me like you’re supposed to.

Hey, maybe I should start a wicked rumor…

Ok. I think I will.

I just got off the phone with a friend of mine who’s been an employee of AT&T (and all its predecessor mobile-phone incarnations) for a long time, and he knows LOTS of people.

We had spoken just before the iPhone release a couple of weeks ago, and talked about the technology of the AT&T towers with EDGE (2.5G) and full-on 3G.

Today, we spoke of the iPhone again. This time, the 3G capability was discussed, in terms that made me actually think I should continue to wait to purchase the iPhone. From confidential sources, deep within the belly of the AT&T beast, it seems that a pre-Christmas, December 2007 release of the 3G enabled iPhone is an almost guarantee.

Don’t know if price point will change, or if they will have any added features beyond 3G, but this detail is a pretty big deal. I don’t think it’s going to be something that will be upgradeable for users of iPhone 1.0.

Anyway, take it for what it’s worth, but for me, I think I may be waiting a few more months before taking the iPhone plunge.

As far as the 4th of July is concerned, the missus and I headed down to an excellent party thrown by some friends of ours down on the banks of the Tennessee River. As far as rivers go, it’s a great recreational spot to get on the water, with the help of the system of dams put in through the Tennessee Valley Authority, lo those many years ago. Thanks to “government in action” the dams at Fort Loudoun and Tellico have made electricity cheap and recreational opportunities abound.

On the 4th, it served a lot of people with a great time, and an opportunity to enjoy some quality time in the great outdoors. A combination of sunshine, burgers, beer, and fireworks were the agenda for the day, and all were consumed in large quantities.

Anyway, here’s a couple of shots, taken with my relatively crappy camera. Hope you (especially any East Tennessee ex-pats) enjoy:

Ok, so well it’s his son, Al Gore III, not the former veep, but I had to do something to get your attention, didn’t I?

Early this morning, the Gore the Younger was arrested while speeding at approximately 100 miles per hour.

He was found in possession of marijuana, Xanax, Vicodin, Valium, and Adderrall, and had no prescription for any of the drugs.

The real story in this is that he was going that fast in a freaking Toyota Prius. “Hey, I was going too fast, and I had a bunch of drugs I wasn’t supposed to have, but I was saving the environment.”

Today, at the annual Independence Day rite of passage known as the Nathan’s World Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest, American Joey Chestnut choked down 66 Nathan’s hot dogs and buns in twelve minutes to wrest the famous Mustard Yellow Belt from Takeru Kobayashi, the previously undefeated competitive eating champion.

Chestnut, who had previously broken the world record of 53 3/4 dogs by taking down 59 1/2 in a qualifying event earlier this year, shattered his own record by downing hot dogs on a pace of one every 10.9 seconds.

When reached for comment afterwards, Chestnut, with a beaming smile on his face (I suppose it could’ve just been gas) said, “Mrmrmsggphthm.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Why, just why in the world would anyone pay over retail price for an iPhone? Seriously. I decided to check out the eBay listings for the iPhone, and there are tons of them listed for sale, in lots from one to eight phones.

I also decided to check the Apple website, to check on availability of iPhones at the various Apple Stores across the nation. There were only a handful of stores nationwide that didn’t have them. All together, I counted 24 stores nationwide that were currently sold out. Of that number 18 were in California. The rest were in Las Vegas, Miami, Atlantic City, and Austin, Plano, and Southlake, Texas. Of those stores that were sold out, there were available phones in separate LA, Miami, and Austin stores.

So why, I ask you, would anyone in their right mind pay between $800.00-$5,000.00 each, when they could get them for $499/$599? Some folks clearly don’t get this whole supply/demand thing. Guess they thought it was another Playstation 3 or something.

Weird.

UPDATE Apparently the Knoxville Apple Store (or someone claiming to be the Knoxville Apple Store) is putting all of the “scalpers-to-be” in their place on Knoxville Craigslist.

Heh.

UPDATE by David K.
Then there is this nut-job who is hoping someone will opt for his $30,000-$50,000 auction for an iPhone including personally delivering it to your door within 16 hours of the auction ending. Um. Yeah. Anyone think that paying 50x the cost of it is worth getting one within 16 hours when there are still Apple Stores with them in stock and people selling it for overnight service to you for under $1000 if you really want to have it? Yeah me neither.

What a novel concept. I’d never imagine that the Tennessee General Assembly, in its infinite corruption wisdom, could come up with something like this.

A sweet new law requiring retail stores to actually check everyone’s ID to purchase beer. What a great way to accomplish almost nothing and inconvenience us a bit more. Way to go Nashville!

I get it. You want to make it harder for under-21s to get beer. But, do you really get there by making Granny and Gramps flash their drivers license and AARP cards? This is nothing more than a symbolic absurdity that makes the state look foolish.

Maybe I should actually invest in making that Kegerator I’ve always thought about. That way, I can get by for at least a week at a time without running out to the store for more brewdogs.

For those of you who are into college sports recruiting, you’ve probably checked out a player or two on Tennessee based Rivals.com. With a new CEO in place, Yahoo! just inked a deal to purchase the site. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

This acquisition could be an indicator that Yahoo! is taking a step toward further expansion, driving in an additional 2 Million+ users of Rivals.com into Yahoo!land. The biggest of the potentially huge deals, could find Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp trading MySpace.com for a 25% stake in Yahoo!, which would be a huge boon to Yahoo! as it tries to truly make itself a “one-stop shopping” destination for online users.

Well, I’ve been using Safari Beta for Windows on my home PC for just over a week now, and I thought I’d offer some thoughts and see if anyone else had any as well.

The Good:
First, I really like the aesthetic of the browser. It’s clean, uncluttered, and nice.
Second, I really like the speed with which it works. It seems to load everything way faster than IE, and maybe even a bit better than Firefox (my default browser).
Third, I appreciate it for what it really is. It’s an opportunity for Apple to show PC users who might be on the fence on switching (i.e., Me) what a Mac feels like.

The Bad:
First, I know it’s just a Beta version, but it seems like almost nothing beyond a simple web page without plug-ins, etc. works consistently well.
Second, there are just way too many crashes for this thing to be released non-beta, IMHO. I’d say, out of every 10 attempts to use Safari, it crashes (completely shuts down) about 3 times. It seems to be related most of the time to a page that has some plug-in that’s not recognized.

I’m sure that they’ll clean up any issues before a full release of the product, and

Well, if that rather tawdry bit of headline didn’t get you, maybe some law on Internet privacy will. In a newly released (well, within the last day or so) opinion, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that, you know, the government actually has to get a warrant to get to your emails.

The case “came up” over a criminal fraud investigation into Steven Warshak, the purveyor of Enzyte (hence the “natural male enhancement”). The feds wanted access to his personal and business emails from his ISP without giving him notice. Hurts an investigation, dontcha know?

Anyway, the Sixth Circuit upheld the District Court in entering a preliminary injunction preventing the disclosure of these emails.

My initial thinking is that this is a good thing. I don’t know how limited in scope the opinion is, or whether it will go up to the Supreme Court (and what they’ll do with it when/if it gets there). It’s a long opinion, and I’m tired of reading it now, but wanted to post it for any night owls or early birds who wanted to take a gander at it. I’ll try to get through the whole thing and give you my take on it tomorrow, but, then again, I might not. At any rate, it’s here for you to discuss amongst yourselves.

Here’s a link to the AP article.

I’ve also attached the PDF of the opinion for you to review, should you choose to do so.

You Domerlaw types out there should know (if you didn’t already) that Prof. Patricia Bellia was part of an academic team on Amicus Curiae on this one.

Well, Paris Hilton’s not in a jail cell anymore.

Way to go California Criminal Justice! Your sterling reputation for dispensing fair, dispassionate justice to all can hardly be questioned.

Looks like there’s some prospect for getting some law school student loan forgiveness, but there’s a decent sized hitch.

The House passed a bill yesterday that would forgive up to a maximum of $60,000.00 of law school loans for lawyers who agree to work as a public defender or a prosecutor for three years.

The bill would provide loan repayments of up to $10,000 per year - up to a cap of $60,000 - for law school graduates who work as criminal prosecutors or public defenders instead of taking what are often more lucrative jobs at private firms. The measure, which would expire in 2013 unless reauthorized, has backing from the American Bar Association and other legal groups.

This would seem to work out well for any law student who had aims of being a prosecutor anyway. I don’t know a lot of law students that set out to be P.D’s, but nonetheless, they’re out there. I know that law school was expensive enough when I started eleven years ago (at an in-state, public institution), but couldn’t imagine the cost of law school these days.

P.D.’s and D.A.’s (especially the P.D.’s) are largely thankless jobs, but they’re excellent ways to get tons of experience really quickly. You won’t be trying murder cases anytime soon, but you’ll see the inside of a courtroom, and be in charge of your own minor cases right off the bat.

I know I said earlier that I’d keep the league open for signups through 12:01 a.m. Eastern on Friday, but due to overwhelming response thus far, we already have 14 teams signed on. Some are already of the opinion that 14’s too many, but I’m leaving it open for TWO more spots in the league this season.

Please email ASAP if you want one of ‘em. For those who’ve emailed and gotten the password already, if you snooze, you lose. Get me an email to irishtrojanbaseball AT yahoo DOT com to get the password. I’ll send the password to any who ask for it, but when it’s full of 16 teams, we’re all done.

So, get on it, if you want to join our league!

UPDATE–Really, really, the last call. 15 teams in, only one left.

FINAL UPDATE–League’s full. Looking forward to a good season, and a lot of fun. For those in the league, I’m going to give you until 6:00 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday to set your preferences for the autodraft. I’ll then run the draft, and you’ll have your starting team to work with. League games will probably start either on Saturday or Sunday. I’ll let you know.

Per the wishes of our esteemed leader, I have taken the role of Commissioner of the Irish Trojan Baseball League on Yahoo! Sports.

I currently have the league set up as a straight roto league AL and NL, with a maximum of 16 teams (this can go up to 20 if there’s interest)

Here’s the link to the league’s homepage. I’m going to close registrations for the league at 12:01 am on Friday, April 27. I’ll set the automatic draft to run on Saturday night, so you can configure your lineups on Sunday for league play starting on Monday, April 30.

So, in order to avoid some unwanted troll playing in the IrishTrojan League, I’m going to ask that you email me at my commissioner’s address, irishtrojanbaseball AT yahoo DOT com. In your email, if you would please note who you are in the Bloysphere, I’d appreciate it.

Cheers, and good luck!

Oh yeah, and BTW, when you’ve sent the email to get the league password, please leave a comment saying you’ve done so. That way I have a way to double check that everyone who wants in has been sent the password.

For those of you who may be interested, there is a live webcast of the murder trial of Mary Winkler, the preacher’s wife accused of shotgunning her husband in Selmer, Tennessee last year.

Here’s the link.