This situation is so out of Apple’s character. Mac.com/Me.com web apps has not been fully functional for almost two days. I’ve always believed that Apple is more adept in making sure everything runs smoothly in all their product launches. But this situation bothers me and wrinkled my trust in their ability to deliver what they promise. I’m aware that this is a global launch tied with the whole iPhone 3G circus. Still, this is Apple we’re talking about.

I like Target. And we are Costco members. Lately though, I’ve started frequenting Walmart. To be honest, I used to visit Walmart years ago but stopped when the quality of their products dipped. Today you just can’t ignore Walmart anymore, I just purchased a Sony clock radio for $9 where it sells in BestBuy for $19! There are other examples. I’m still not too happy with this company dotting every possible open space with their huge stores but cheap is cheap. And they just redesigned their logo which I like.

You cannot imagine the joy that filled my heart when the Doctor said ‘It’s benign.’

- Ernie Agtarap, June 25, 2008

I had a grand time shooting Erik and Jane last weekend in Central Park for their engagement book. We got there early thanks to the express train and the second we alighted from the cab ride from Penn, I started clicking. The weather was perfect. Not too hot and not too humid for the most part. New York is simply amazing as a backdrop. One minute you’re in the thick of a crowd with sirens all around and then the next minute you’re in the middle of a forest with nothing but the birds and the sound of the stream. We had originally planned to shoot within the park but our energy was still high we ended up walking up and down Broadway for more shots. Looking forward to your wedding guys.

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There are a couple of different ways to discover the answer to this question, but here is one way to estimate it. Sources say the United States consumes about 20 million barrels of oil each day. A barrel of oil (which contains 42 gallons or 159 liters) will yield something like 19 or 20 gallons (75 liters) of gasoline, depending on the refinery. Therefore, in the United States, something like 400 million gallons (1.51 billion liters) of gasoline gets consumed every day. That truly is an amazing amount of liquid, but when you consider that there are about 100 million households in the United States, it is only 4 gallons per household per day. Each family doesn’t consume that much, but a huge number of families are doing it.

In a year, therefore, the U.S. consumes about 146 billion gallons (about 550 billion liters) of gasoline!

There are two ways we typically see oil and gasoline moving around: tanker trucks and oil tanker ships. A tanker truck can typically hold about 9,000 gallons (34,000 liters) of gasoline. It would take 40,000 tanker trucks to carry the gasoline the U.S. consumes in one day. A large tanker ship like the Exxon Valdez carries about 1.26 million barrels of oil, so it takes about 14.25 of these ships to carry all of the oil that the U.S. consumes in one day.

Where does all of that gasoline go? When it burns, it turns into lots of carbon dioxide gas. Gasoline is mostly carbon by weight, so a gallon of gas might release 5 to 6 pounds (2.5 kg) of carbon into the atmosphere. The U.S. is releasing roughly 2 billion pounds of carbon into the atmosphere each day.

One thing that’s been in the news lately is the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It currently stores about 570 million barrels of oil in underground salt caverns along the Gulf of Mexico. Given that the U.S. imports about half of its oil, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve holds about a 60 day supply of oil if all imports were suddenly cut off.

The White House estimates there are 18 billion barrels of oil offshore that have not been exploited because of state bans, 10 billion to 12 billion in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve, and 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the Green River Basin.

If the current President will have his way, he will drill every corner of this country for oil with the hope of getting approximately 900 billion barrels of oil. So let’s do the math 900 divided by 145 = 6.2. That’s 6.2 years worth of oil. Now I ask you, is 6.2 years imported oil independence worth the cost to the environment or should we consider alternatives not only to the way we consume oil resources but also to our lifestyles.

It’s a little disconcerting to see Steve Jobs weight loss at yesterday’s keynote at WWDC. I’m praying that the cancer isn’t back and that this is all brought about by his reported new diet. He looked dangerously thin though you wouldn’t notice it by the spunk and spirit he had at announcing the iPhone 3G. So concerned I was that I immediately took to Google to see if anyone else had noticed and viola. The web is abuzz with discussions about Steve’s health. Here’s hoping it’s nothing.

It was a year ago, I was in Nashville getting ready to don my neatly pressed Barong Tagalog (Google it) and head out to attend my parent’s golden wedding anniversary. It was at that time when my head was also anticipating and agonizing whether to get my hands on the just released iPhone from my favorite fruit company. Oh it was hellish I tell you, the mac fanboy that I am. Hellish to pull my head away from the notion of getting this first generation of a gadget that will soon revolutionize the way people think of cell phones.

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