I just heard that there is a major five car accident on route 495 in Methuen at the exit for route 213 and that there is one fatality so far and a medivac helicopter is flying to the scene.

Guess what exit I would take if I were heading home on route 495?

Further reading told me that the accident was on the South bound side of 495.  That is the opposite side that I, or my wife, would be traveling during our evening commutes.  However, it completely failed to dissuade my sudden irrational panic over the safety of my family.

A text message was immediately sent to Jen, informing her of the accident and asking her to let me know she was okay.  A google chat instant message was being written about 1.5 seconds after sending the text.  It would have had the same message, but my sweet Jenny answered the text before I could finish.

Irrational panic abating.

My heart is still pounding though.  I hate it/dispise it/loathe it whenever the thought of mortality peeks through the cracks of my loving family reality.  Damn that feels awful.

Everyone gets an extra hug tonight.

The entire 9/7/12 Rush show from the Verizon in Manchester, NH is up on youtube.  This song dates back to ’85 and it was the first time I’d ever heard them play it live.  It was a nice treat.

I swear I had something in mind to write about when I sat down five minutes ago… what the hell was it?  I got a work email stating that a bug fix I had been seriously waiting for had been upped to a status that was high enough that I can consider moving it to the customer… and then…

Empty brain.

We’ve got a ton going on this weekend.  Lots of kid stuff and maybe mattress shopping again, and maybe some cribbage. 

The new iPhone comes out today.  There are lines at Apple stores everywhere.  I had considered standing in line this time just to say that I had done it once.  I passed though.  I have too much going on at work to take time off for such foolishness.  Now I have to wait 2-3 weeks for my new phone to be shipped to me.

Want to know how much of a dork I am?  I was driving the kids to their dad’s this morning and we passed Canobie Lake.  There was mist rising off the water and it looked cool.  After dropping them off I pulled over and took a quick picture (see my previous post).  As I was taking it I thought about maybe making note somewhere that it might be one of the last pictures I take on my iPhone 4.  Then I realized that, if I did that, it would be pretty much the most ridiculously awful nerd thing I would ever do.  So I put it here instead, to make fun of what a dork I am.

Enjoy your Friday, folks, and if you got a new iPhone 5 today then I am jealous and you suck because I am a jealous geek.  Blah!

Mist rising off of Canobie Lake.

I just routed my iMac through my Apple TV so that I could monitor the computer on our television.  It worked… sort of.

Audio wise it was nearly perfect.  The output was pretty low, but it was as real time as I could tell and it wasn’t choppy at all.  It sounded pretty good.  The video though…  I have never in my life seen worse lag.  It took about three minutes for something I did on the computer to register on the television.

So I don’t see us watching videos from the computer via the television any time soon.  Get cracking on that, Apple.  But fix the damn Maps app first, please.

It’s funny that hockey season always seems to draw my internetiness to Twitter.  What’s funnier is that even when there is no hockey I still seem to be drawn to Twitter.  I’ve been posting there a bit over the last week.  Generally bitching like a madman about the NHL lockout.

My current feelings are thus:

I hope the league dies.

A number of players have headed over to Europe already and I hope they stay.  I hope they are made welcome and to feel appreciated so that when the time comes to return to the NHL (if that time ever comes) they decide they prefer making big money in a good environment to making huge money in a league that is ridiculous enough to lock them out three times during a single commissioner’s term in office.

I hope that when the league comes back (if the league ever comes back) they play to empty arenas all over the continent.  I hope we fans show our displeasure by not spending money on tickets, or merchandise, and by not watching games on television or listening to games on radio and thus drying up the broadcast revenue streams.

I sincerely want the National Hockey League to die for the way it has treated us.  Not just us, either.  Teams have begun cutting down staff work schedules to four days a week, effectively a 20% pay cut, and some teams have even started laying people off.

I do not want them to come back again ever.  I want that at some point in the near future, the owners of the 30 NHL franchises sit around an empty board room with no press following them, and no fans interested in them, and absolutely no money coming in.  I want them all to look at each other and think, what did we do?  We were making billions and we threw it away over (relative) chump change.

I want them to stand over the decayed ruins of a once proud and massively successful league and know that their greed and their lack of respect toward the fans ruined everything.

That’s what I want.

This morning I gave the new Apple Maps app a test.  I had to take the kids to their dad’s house before school so I plugged in his address as we were leaving to test the turn by turn directions. 

It didn’t work.

At all.

By the time I had pulled out of the driveway the app had gone to sleep.  Yes, I did have it plugged in.  The old Maps app would not go to sleep when the phone was plugged in.  Apparently, that is not the case with the new app.  A few miles, and a few turns, down the road I woke the phone up and it was still showing the first turn as if it were the next turn.  Pretty huge fail.  Now I have to say that I was running on an iPhone 4, so I do not have Siri.  Siri is the source of the turn by turn function’s voice, so maybe that was related.  Who knows.

Based on my teeny tiny bit of testing though, I’d have to file the Apple Maps app as disappointing.

I have updated both of my iOS devices to iOS 6. My iPhone 4 took about two hours to complete the process while my iPad 2 needed closer to three hours.

I have done some initial testing and so far so good. The new non-Google maps app found my house. I posted a link to Facebook directly from Safari. The new App Store comes as advertised and I like the new update page, but it seems to run a bit on the clunky side. I’ll try the turn by turn directions in the morning. The best of all though is that when I went to the Music app and scrolled through my very long list of iCloud playlists it did not lag a single time. FINALLY!

Jen got up early for work this morning.  She left the house at a little after 6:00am (I think) and I got up to walk her out and give her a smooch at the door and say, “Have a good day, love!”

Then I went back to bed.  The plan was to get up by 6:40 at the latest.  I just wanted a quick nap before starting the day.  Of course that wasn’t going to happen.  I sleep-snoozed until 7:10.  That pretty much guarantees that I will be late for work.  Damn my sleepy head!

Yes, I was late to work.  Five minutes late.  Here’s the punchline.  I was 15 minutes earlier than yesterday, and yesterday I did not over sleep and I left on time.

Ahh, Boston traffic.