Seriously, this should be illegal. This from the Wynn in Las Vegas.

And no, I did not pay the fee.

I’ve been cleaning through old files and found the copy of the April 30, 1999 issue of the Star Tribune that I had saved with the article about BigCharts being acquired by CBS MarketWatch. I couldn’t just recycle this before running it through the scanner. Phil sure had some hair back then. :-)

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A bunch of people at work got new iPad’s recently and I figured some may find it useful to know what productivity apps I’ve been using on my iPad. Over the last couple of months the iPad has really become a critical tool for me.

OmniFocus for iPad

I use OmniFocus all day, constantly on my iPhone, iPad and Mac. Everything I need to do gets put in it. It’s a GTD-style task tool. YMMV, but I find it very useful. OmniFocus sits in my home row on all iOS devices.

OmniOutliner 2

If I’m taking notes in a meeting I’m always keeping them in an outline, and a proper outliner is a huge win for that. I also use OmniOutliner 2 to frame out any presentations I’m giving. One thing I particularly like to do is have an outline document for each recurring meeting, and then have a “node” in the outline for each week where I put my notes. Makes it super easy to see last meeting items.

HipChat

I’ve been using HipChat for team chat. It’s awesome, and the iPad version lets me stay connected all the time. Great tool.

MindNode

If you are at all into mind mapping this is the best one by a mile for the iPad. Great tool for brainstorming a topic.

1Password

I use 1Password to manage 400+ unique passwords for everything I use. Critical to have it on iOS as well.

Skype

An obvious one.

Keynote

I know most folks are PowerPoint junkies. Personally if I can I prefer Keynote. The iOS version is on par with the desktop one. Enjoyable to work on slides on a plane using this.

PCalc

The calculator builtin is no fun at all. This is a serious, heavy hitter calculator that supports RPN for folks that are into that sort of thing. I don’t know if it does the beloved 12C functions for all the finance folks, but this is my preferred calculator by a mile. Nice bonus is you can email the “tape” if you’ve done a set of calculations.

OmniPlan 2

Like Microsoft Project but for the iPad. If you need to do any standalone project planning this is a great tool.

iA Writer

If you are brave enough to write long form text on your iPad, this is my preferred tool for that. Has great keyboard setup that makes writing longer form things much better.

Dropbox

Pretty much required.

Tweetbot

If your gonna Twitter, ditch the Twitter official client for Tweetbot. It’s about a million times better. At some point a new iOS 7 optimized Tweetbot will come out for the iPad, it’s already out for the iPhone, but until then this current version is the best out there.

A funny thing happened on Twitter yesterday. My wiki project that keeps a database of nutrition facts Tweets every 6 hours with a random food from it’s 28,000+ entries. Yesterday, it highlighted trout:

Nutrition facts for Fish, Trout, Mixed Species, Raw http://t.co/8XmR9NlCrl #food #random

— Wikinosh (@Wikinosh) November 4, 2013

Which promptly received an IRC-style trout slap!

@Wikinosh gets slapped around a bit with a large trout http://t.co/l1ye3fnjbq

— IRC Trout (@theirctrout) November 4, 2013

So great. Two bots being surprisingly funny. Trout slapping is a meme that started the 1990′s in IRC. It warms my heart to see it alive and thriving on the modern web. :-) See also, trout slapping on Wikipedia.

Mazie and I went to the Minnesota Wild game last night along with Alone and Dylan. It was Mazie’s first hockey game and although she thought it was too loud at times she had a great time. Of course chocolate ice cream helps! And we got these weird looking hats.

I think this is a thing I can do now.

On September 27th my sister Alona tied the knot with her fiancé Dylan! They had a very nice ceremony followed by a reception at the Maple Grove Community Center. The ceremony was family and close friends standing in the gardens off of the reception area. Alona and Dylan had a Bahá’í marriage ceremony which does not have an officiant. They asked me to start things off with a few words.

Good evening and welcome to the marriage ceremony of Alona Thingelstad and Dylan Maas-Morgan.

Alona, my sister, and Dylan have asked me to greet you all today and welcome you to this wonderful ceremony of love and dedication. I am sure that you have all been to a many weddings, however this may be your first Bahá’í wedding. You will notice that no clergy is present, we are not in a church and everybody is enjoying a wonderful Minnesota fall evening.

A Baha’i wedding is a simple exchange of a single statement. Once both the groom and bride make this pledge in the presence of two witnesses, Dylan and Alona will be married. Today, Alona’s mother Rosalin and I have agreed to serve as these witnesses.

While a Bahá’í marriage is a decidedly simple affair, Bahá’í’s take the institution of marriage with the utmost seriousness. From the Kitáb-i-Aqdas:

“And when He desired to manifest grace and beneficence to men, and to set the world in order, He revealed observances and created laws; among them He established the law of marriage, made it as a fortress for well-being and salvation, and enjoined it upon us in that which was sent down out of the heaven of sanctity in His Most Holy Book.”

That fortress is filled with that most important thing, love. From `Abdu’l-Bahá:

“…[I]n the world of humanity the greatest king and sovereign is love. If love were extinguished, the power of attraction dispelled, the affinity of human hearts destroyed, the phenomena of human life would disappear.”

In a moment Dylan and Alona will exchange those blessed words. This will be followed with a Bahá’í prayer. Please listen closely. As with many great things in life, it all goes by much too quickly.

And now a reading from Dylan’s mother, Cynthia…

Here are the photos I took. I also put them on Facebook for all the people that like that kind of thing, but I’m also putting them here so they are still around after Facebook (A.F.).

It was a great evening filled with family and fun. Congrats to my sister and her new husband and I wish them years of wedded bliss!

Tonight while on LinkedIn I was prompted for some people I might now, including this one.

So, yeah, in fact I do know my 8-year-old daughter. I didn’t realize she was on LinkedIn? I wonder what professional updates she might have to share with me? What?!

I know for a fact this isn’t a real LinkedIn account. Anyone know where LinkedIn gets this? And what are they doing here? My best guess is that the LinkedIn iOS application sucked this email address and name from my contacts and is now prodding me to click the “Add to network” button to allow them to start sending emails inviting this address to join LinkedIn?

Us at the top of one of the higher dunes at the midpoint of the Saugatuck Dune Rides tour. The dune ride was a lot of fun, if your in the area put it on your list. Kids had a blast too. You can see Lake Michigan from the top of this dune, and the driver gave a great overview of how the dunes were formed. Interesting note, all the trees around us are actually six individual trees that have been covered in over 100 feet of sand!