So I indirectly referenced Shun knives in one of my posts awhile back. They have a couple of videos on YouTube and Google Video about knives and knife sharpening.
What I never mentioned was that I did some research on them, and found them to be exorbitantly expensive. Just take a look at this Shun Classic 23-Piece Knife Set with Bamboo Block. $1849.99 for 23 knives!?!? That’s crazy. Or can you imagine paying $116.99 ($155msrp) for a 3.5″ paring knife?
That’s definitely a lot of money. As Charlene put it, “Dang! For that much money, it had better cut the food for you.” They may not cut the food for yout, but I’m inclined to believe it’s worth it.
Good knives always cost a lot of money, and if we can believe the hype about the VG-10 Steel and the multiple layers of stainless steal used in Shun’s, then they’re very good knives.
The Firefox Download Day 2008 Challenge is officially over. It appears that over 8 million copies were downloaded in 24 hours. That’s a pretty amazing feat. If you haven’t downloaded it, you really should.
(I won’t post the links again because you should be able to find them in the posts below.)
Just over 10 hours to go, and Firefox 3 has already been downloaded 4.5 million times. It’s been downloaded over 2 million times in the US alone.
Keep checking the Download Day 2008 site for the latest updates.
Hmm…this is curious. Earlier today, the deadline was 10:00AM PST on 6/18/08. It seems that the timeline has been shifted back an hour and 16 minutes until 11:16AM PST. Weird…I wonder if they’re gaming the system or trying to compensate for downed/drowned servers from this morning. Interesting…
In any case, I guess that means there’s more like 11.5 hours to go.
Today marks the release of Firefox 3. In celebration of the release (and presumably an ingenious marketing ploy), Mozilla is celebrating Download Day 2008. Mozilla is asking people to
Please download Firefox 3 by 17:00 UTC on June 18, 2008. That’s 10:00 a.m. in Mountain View, 1:00 p.m. in Toronto, 2:00 p.m. in Rio de Janeiro, 7:00 p.m. in Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Rome and Warsaw, 9:00 p.m. in Moscow, and June 19, 2008 at 1:00 a.m. in Beijing and 2:00 a.m. in Tokyo.
So that they can set the record for most software downloaded in 24 hours. Their hope is to set a Guinness World Record. That shouldn’t be too difficult, because I think that’s a brand new category. But if they play their cards right, it might be a difficult record to break.
According to the statistics as I write this, about 1.87 million copies have been downloaded in the last 8 hours. That’s not bad, working out to about:
- 310k downloads/hour
- 5.2k downloads/minute
- 86 downloads/second
If that pace keeps up, they should have around 5.5 million downloads by the end of 24 hours.
Anyways, you should do your part to become part of the record and download Firefox 3.
Man! This past weekend was a blast. The fun started Saturday morning with our Segway Ride in Pismo Beach, courtesy of Segway by the Bay. It was so much fun. I totally recommend it. I’m amazed at how ingenious those machines are. It’s almost like they’re thinking and moving as part of your body.
Almost immediately after our Segway Ride, I headed back to SLO to go on our Father/Son hike up Bishop’s Peak. Apparently, it was a long time in coming, because even though it was for his birthday (which was back in March), he said he’d been waiting 24 years for this. So I guess pretty much ever since I was born he’s been waiting. Now that’s a lot of patience 
The hike was very strenuous, but well worth it to see the view from the top.
Lastly, we had Daniel’s graduation on Sunday. This was another event a long time in coming, but Daniel finally made it.
It’s been a few weeks since Shellie’s wedding, but I was finally able to post the pictures. I was a little bit upset because most of the pictures I took at the ceremony came out blurry. There just wasn’t enough light, and I really couldn’t use my flash to light up the scene from all the way in the back of the church.
Fortunately, a lot of the other pictures I took (some with my point and shoot) came out fabulously. There are some great ones of my folks, as well as some cute ones of Charlene and me.
Go ahead, take a look!
A few weeks back, one of Charlene’s close friends and accountability partners graduated from San Jose State. So she had a party to celebrate. It was a lot of fun, with beautiful decorations, and delicious food.
Charlene and I are headed to SLO for graduation this weekend. I think the only person I know who’s graduating is Daniel, my friend, former room mate, and partner in crime. We had a lot of good times together in college. (Of course, it wasn’t without it’s bumps, but what relationship doesn’t have those?)
I did a quick check on the weather in SLO, and it looks like it’s going to be gorgeous! We probably couldn’t have asked for more beautiful weather. Praise God!
Charlene and I are headed to Pismo Beach on Saturday for my much belated 1 year anniversary present to her: our Segway ride. We’ll be renting from Segway by the Bay in Pismo Beach. It should be pretty fun, as we’ll have the off-road, sand-worthy models to cruise around the beach. Can’t wait!
Costco has the Canon 40D on sale right now, and they’re even throwing in a 4GB memory card for free. It’s the body only, so you’ll have to spend some additional Benjamins to get a lens. But that is a pretty good deal to me. B&H has it for $939.99, but they don’t include a memory card. Amazon.com 
has basically the same deal as B&H–no memory card. If I was in the market for a 40D, Costco’s deal would be pretty tempting.
I saw this new website on Yahoo! Finance today. It’s called Glassdoor.com, they do salary comparisons, and company reviews for various companies, particularly companies located in Silicon Valley. The site still seems a little buggy, giving me frequent error notices. But the concept is cool.
I gave it a spin and signed up to see how my salary compared to others at Accenture. It seems like I’m right in the middle of the pack, so I’m not skewed way on either site. That’s a good thing.
The one thing I thought was really interesting from the article on Yahoo! Finance was that apparently, Apple pays significantly less to its engineers than the other Tech Giants: Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! I also thought it was interesting that Google pays the most of the 4. Someone had told me that because of the “air of exclusivity” surrounding Google (I mean, who doesn’t like 3 free meals a day?) that they paid significantly less than Microsoft. But that was maybe 9-12 months ago, so maybe Google’s stepped up to the plate and decided to pay its engineers more. Who knows…
I’m not sure how Glassdoor is different from Payscale, or how they intend to make money. But I’m glad that someone is adding transparency to a once-taboo subject.