Alvin Alexander

I do like my donuts, and when I first moved to Colorado, I was very disappointed to see this news about Dunkin’ Donuts:

Hopefully they’ll get a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise opened somewhere around Boulder, Colorado in the near future.

In happier news, I did find a Krispy Kreme donut location just down the road, in Westminster, Colorado (I think it was Westminster):

There were no donut chains at all in Alaska, so as you might imagine, I enjoyed my visit at Krispy Kreme. (I had a little catching up to do.)

If you know me, you know I start hanging the Christmas lights indoors as soon as it starts getting dark outside early. Of course in Alaska that was really early, and here in Colorado, I started hanging the Christmas lights in my apartment in mid-November:

Of course, if you also know me, you also know I start baking fresh cookies around the same time. (Cookies not shown … but they sure do smell good.)

When I first moved to the Boulder, Colorado area in October, the first several news stories I heard were about mountain lions in the Boulder area. This photo of an indoor cat and outdoor mountain lion shows the problem pretty well:

Or, as I wrote on my Facebook account, “Little kitty looks in the ‘mirror’ and thinks, wow, I’m looking pretty fierce today.”

It’s currently December, 2011, and I think I bought my 24″ iMac back in 2009, and a simple picture will show you what I think is the best iMac design feature:

I’m not sure what you can that ledge/stand for the iMac, but it sure is a handy design feature.

As I was driving home last night I got to see this spectacular scene of some storm clouds coming in over the Rocky Mountains, getting ready to pound the Boulder and Louisville, Colorado area with some fresh snow:

That photo doesn’t really do justice to those snowstorm clouds … just seeing them, you knew we were in for another big snow storm here in the Boulder and Louisville, Colorado area, the results of which you can see in my Boulder, Colorado blizzard/whiteout post.

In 2012 I plan to restart my computer programming company, Valley Programming, here in the Boulder, Colorado area, but until then I’ve been working on some personal programming projects, and also taking a little time off for things like, well, bowling:

That 233 score is one of my highest scores ever, but beginning that game with six consecutive strikes is something I’ve never done before, so I’m pretty happy today.

I’m writing this post on December 3, 2011, and again today we’re having another blizzard/whiteout here in Boulder, Colorado:

If a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll just leave it at that (other than to say that you should be able to see the Rocky Mountains in the background of that photo).

I ran across this Albert Einstein quote recently, and it reminds me of what I think of myself some times:

If you can’t see that image for some reason, the quote is:

“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

I like to think that I’m pretty good at a lot of things related to computers, like being a business analyst, computer programmer, and so on, and I’m also very good at most sports, but when it comes to things like auto repair, I’m pretty useless.

So, lesson of the day: We’re all good at some things, and not good at other things, and there’s no shame in that.

As a new resident of the Boulder, Colorado area, I’ve quickly grown to love the views of the Rocky Mountains from here. Without much introduction, here’s one view of the mountains during the day:

And here’s a second view of the mountains near Boulder, this time at sunset in late November, 2011:

Both of these photos were taken from my apartment, which, as you can see, has a pretty incredible view of the Rocky Mountains.

While driving a lot lately (thousands of miles) I’ve been listening to the Steve Jobs audiobook, and somewhere in that process, I decided to look for Steve Jobs NeXT business card, which I eventually found:

If you don’t know his history, Steve Jobs:

• Founded Apple with Steve Wozniak
• Was run out of Apple in 1985
• Founded NeXT
• Bought Pixar
• Returned to Apple in 1997
• Saved Apple from financial ruin, “discovered” Jonathan Ive at Apple, and helped create all the Apple products you know and love

The Mac OS X operating system is actually based on the NeXT operating system, which was named NeXTSTEP. The primary programming language used with NeXTSTEP, an object-oriented programming language named Objective C, has evolved into the programming language of choice for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

(This post sponsored by my Apple and Mac tutorials on the devdaily.com website.)