The Talk Show 2025

I attended The Talk Show Live From WWDC 2025 in San Jose last week. It was the first time I ever attended a taping, and it happened to coincide with the first time in the last 10 years where there wasn’t an Apple executive on the panel. It was still a good show, slightly over 2 hours long, covering Apple’s announcements the day prior. I took this photo using the iPhone 16 Pro Max, about 10 rows back, stage right.

Not bad, right?

The full video is on YouTube.

Nilay Patel, Joanna Stern, and John Gruber at The Talk Show Live

Getting New Tires Today

My MINI stripped of its wheels. Don’t worry, she’ll be getting some new ones soon.

Nighttime Photo with iPhone XS Max

This nighttime photo was taken with iPhone XS Max. It turned out OK, didn’t it?

Garbage at The Fox Theater

Concert photo of Garbage at the Fox Theater in Oakland, California last night. They played a lot of obscure or b-side tracks.

My Eclipse Time-lapse

My Eclipse Time-lapse

Not much of a timelapse. I’m impressed by the clouds more than the partial eclipse.

Breakfast the Other Day

The girls and I went to breakfast at the local diner the other day. They find eating at a diner so comforting. 📷

More Beach Time

Enjoyed the beach today with the family.

Hawaii Time

The beach last week.

Thank You, Mr President

Goodbye Mr. Spock

I always felt great knowing I shared a birthday with Mr. Spock. As has been said on the interwebs today, he did live long and prosper.

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.  LLAP

In The City Once Again

Mia and Graecyn at the Palace of Fine Arts. Photo taken by Farrah using the iPhone 5S

The girls are in the City once again. Farrah sent me the above photo from the Palace of Fine Arts. I wish I could be up there with them enjoying the day.

@SearsAuto My Experience Sucked

This is a simple story of a bad customer experience turning into a worse one by the day.

My truck battery was on its last legs. I managed to get it charged so I drove it to the closest Sears Auto in Cupertino. I was able to be checked in fairly quickly about 11 am, and told my car would be done a little after noon - or within the hour.  This sounded great.

The mall in Cupertino isn’t that great, so I called Farrah who, with the kids, picked me up at Sears. We decided to have lunch at the local park and let the kids play. This provided a couple of hours of fun, more than enough time to get the battery changed in the truck. It was strange, though, no one called from Sears Auto during the time we were at the park. As we started driving back I began to wonder if they even started work on my truck.

It was a little after 1:30 when I got back to Sears Auto. I saw my truck in the same spot which concerned me a little. But then I thought, well all they need to do is pop the hood, disconnect the old battery and put in the new one. They shouldn’t need to move it far. In any event, I stood in line to talk to one of the customer representatives. I stood in line for about 30 minutes, a line only 3 people deep, before I got to talk to what apparently was the one working representative. This was strange because earlier in the day, just a few hours ago, there were at least three representatives working. The representative told me that they hadn’t gotten to my truck just yet but it should be done soon. He would make sure.

I was a bit peeved but was able to occupy my time with Farrah and the kids by going across the street to do some grocery shopping. This ate about an hour of time. I asked Farrah to drop me off and just head home with the kids, thinking the truck would be done. Boy was I wrong.

All I could do was vent through Twitter:

then

then

 

Unfortunately, according to Sears, I was sending my tweets to the wrong account. Instead of @Sears I should be sending tweets to @SearsAuto. Silly me. I thought that a service with the name Sears would be concerned about the bad customer experience several people were experiencing.

Hoping to get some resolution, I sent tweets to @SearsAuto. They responded the next day:

But they have been silent ever since.

I don’t believe I will be hearing from them. Even if  I did I suppose I would only get some half-hearted apology with no rational explanation for the problems experienced by the many people that day.

Thinking back on what could have been done differently by anyone at Sears Auto that day I could only come to this conclusion: they should have set expectations appropriately. If they couldn’t do the work in a timely manner, then they shouldn’t have promised it could be done. They should have stopped taking new work in. Continually building up the workload for a number of workers had only frustrated the customers.

I am guessing this trend will continue at Sears, uh I mean, Sears Auto. In any event, Sears, as a whole entity has lost me as a customer.

Seeing Santa

The Santa Claus at Stanford Shopping Center has been our staple Santa over the years. The only other time we saw Santa Claus elsewhere was in Hawaii. This year we waited until the weekend before Christmas to visit Santa. It seemed like a lot of other people had the same idea, given the long line we encountered early that Saturday morning.

But the girls were very patient waiting. And when it was their turn to sit on the jolly old fellow’s lap, the girls were well-behaved - for the most part. I think Graecyn is going through a little stranger danger/separation issue right now. But Mia was all in awe of Santa. Mia even spent several moments after the photo session talking to Santa about her gift ideas.

Waiting in line. Waiting in line.

Mia tells Santa she wishes for this year.Mia tells Santa her wishes for this year.

Graecyn waits for Mia.Graecyn waits for Mia.

Sharing in the Morning

It’s always tough getting the girls ready in the morning. Sometimes they place nice, like this morning. This gives mom and dad the opportunity to actually get ready for work instead of rushing to work.

Mia Following Kaleb

Mia follows Kaleb up a hill during Kaiden's first birthday party. Mia follows Kaleb up a hill during Kaiden’s first birthday party.

Mia and Kaleb were blowing bubbles outside during Kaiden’s first birthday party. Kaleb decided to walk from the playground and down the sidewalk trail. Mia followed. There was a little hill past an intersection path that Kaleb decided to walk up. Mia followed. Up the hill, they both went toward a house. Kaleb made it all the way to the top. Mia - about 90% before she slipped, causing her shoe to fall off. I was there right behind her to fix her shoe and encourage her the rest of the way up to the top.

Getting down is a different story.

This photo was taken on March 2, 2013.