Well, after revising the release date and pushing it back a week (like that’s never happened to me – cough, cough), Apple released iPhoto 2.0 and iMovie 3(.01) today for download. Go get it. But, make sure you’ve got a healthy pipe to the Internet; iPhoto is 32MB and iMovie is almost 82MB. Thank goodness for T-1s.

The SOTU last night was dead on.

Some people still just don’t get it. It’s not the responsiblity of the UN and the Inspection team to go into Iraq and locate WMD while Saddam Hussein plays hide-and-seek with them… It’s the responsibility and requirement of the Iraq leadership to take the Inspection team to them, show that they are being destroyed or have been destroyed, and prove that they aren’t attempting to obtain or create more. The onus is on Iraq, not the UN. There is no “let the inspections have time to work”. It’s obvious that they haven’t worked from day one, and Iraq has no intention to make them work. Any attempt to spin it another way is a complete exercise in futility; you can’t prove a negative, and it’s not up to the UN or anyone else except the Iraqis to prove anything.

And if you think Saddam doesn’t have WMD and is willing to sell, give, or even finance their use through agencies like Al Queda, pass me what you’re smoking because it must be pretty good stuff.

And did you catch it? Iran is next.

Once again, Apple has quitely introduced speed-bumped PowerMacs (up to dual 1.42Ghz) and a new 20-inch display, and price-dropped the 23-inch Cinema-wide HD display by $1,500 (down to $1,999). According to the apple store, the ultimate (as I configured it) was about $9,100 (fully-blown box with 4 180GB drives, 2GB RAM, 23-inch and 20-inch displays, Airport Extreme with basestation, Applecare, yada-yada-yada). Now I gotta go find a towel to wipe up the drool…

So I got into the office this morning early to see why my servers were so slow in responding (if they responded at all)… after tracing things for about 45 minutes, I discovered that we had been hit by the Slammer virus/attack, which targets Microsoft SQL Server 2000. I didn’t realize we had a SQL Server on the outside of the firewall, but we do (apparently for a project another team is working on). I pulled it’s cable from the network card and whammo! Everything is back to normal, traffic-wise. Argh!

I figure there’s three reasons people target Microsoft products for attack: 1) Their products are full of security holes. 2) Their products are everywhere. 3) They’re hated primarily because of 1 and 2. These three things cause a pretty strong feedback loop.

Looks like the release of iLife has been delayed. Some sources say a week, and some are speculating that a new machine is going to be introduced (probably a speed-bumped iMac) and that’s the reason for the delay. I’m thinking it’s probably related to OS X 10.2.4, which is probably required for some reason, and needs to be released before the new versions of iMovie, iPhoto and iDVD are.

Phew, I’m exhausted. The concert last night was a blast, and we were able to rebuild the stage amazingly fast and I reset the board in record time. I actually made it home by 11:30.

By the way, if my server has seemed slow to access (or in some cases inaccessible altogether), I know… I’m not sure what’s happening, but for some reason traffic from the Internet at large to the server (and vice-versa) is extreemly slow. I think a router might be clogged, but I’m not sure.

If you thought the movie Signs (by the excellent screenplay writer/director M. Night Shyamalan) was about aliens, I suggest you go back and watch it again. It’s out on DVD now. Of course, Star Wars isn’t really a sci-fi movie either (it’s a western)…

Busy week… Finishing final coding on the big project I’ve been working on for the past several months, attending a conference all day Friday and Saturday morning, and helping out with a concert at my Church Saturday afternoon and evening (I’ll be mixing monitors for the artists, Rachel Lampa and Souljahz, as well as helping out in any other technical details)… After the concert, we’ll have to tear down and rebuild the stage for Sunday morning. Fun!

Bright Blue Beetle in the House! Well, actually it’ll be in the garage as I can’t fit it thru the front door, but after 36 days, I got it back… and am very glad to be rid of that poor excuse for a car I had as a rental. Woot!

Running on fumes… I’ve only had about 7-8 hours of sleep since Saturday (96 hours or so)… another all-nighter last night to finish up a project and three sessions of training today. Then maybe sleep… ah, sleep… yeah, that’d be good…