No... not involving me. I actually did it in a somewhat traditional manner, which may surprise you.

But while I may turn up my nose at people who attend sporting events like San Jose Sharks and Oakland A's games, only to propose via the JumboTron, with SJ Sharkie as the officiant, it turns out there are even more impersonal ways to ask that special someone to spend their life with you. Apparently, in the first day the Apple Store in SOHO New York was opened, there were not just one, but two, separate marriage proposals from uber-Apple geeks to the loves of their life. (No, not Steve Jobs...) And so far as we know, at least one of these young ladies said yes!

One of the engagements was proposed by a man who was #8 overall in line, waiting all night for the Apple Store to open. While the store itself is interesting, and may be a tourist stop the next time I'm in New York, I don't know that your future partner would want to recall that once in a lifetime opportunity with being up all night in the cold next to complete strangers. That's not right. And even more impersonally, one entrepreneur chose to propose via flashcards to Apple's Webcam covering the store opening.

What is this world coming to?

The best (in my opinion) marriage proposal in utter geekdom was pulled off by Rob Malda of Slashdot, when he proposed to his girlfriend via the well-read site on Valentine's Day. Her response, fifteen minutes later? "Yes, Dork. You made me cry. :)"

I guess in a world of drive-thru wedding chapels and chat rooms, these make sense, but I would hope that someone's loyalties, especially in family, could vault the digital divide - leaving behind the love of Apple or Google or Linux or what have you for something new and challenging in a different way. She will speak analog.

Listening to ''After Love (New Short Cut)'', by Piet Blank & Jaspa Jones (Play Count: 3)

The Giants and A's were back at it in the second game of three at the Oakland Coliseum this afternoon, and unlike yesterday's contest, which saw the A's prevail 1-0 and hold Barry Bonds hitless, the Giants prevailed 4-2 in extra innings, sparked by Bonds' 714th career home run that tied him for second place overall with the legendary Babe Ruth.

Although all of us A's fans love to boo Barry, and did through each of his at bats, we also respect history, so when he took a pitch from Brad Halsey and deposited a rocket into the right field bleachers, we stood and applauded, even through two separate curtain calls for the man who has been posting stellar statistics for the better part of two decades, even through scandal.

The A's had their opportunities to win this afternoon's game, which would have presented the ultimate story, coming home with both a victory and to witness something special, but it was not meant to be. Despite leading 1-0 early, the team fell behind 2-1, unable to break through stellar pitching by Giants ace Jason Schmidt, who labored through 130 pitches in a solid effort.

A one-run 9th inning rally to tie the ballgame was stopped cold when Giants third baseman Pedro Feliz speared a lineout double play from the bat of Jason Kendall, which caught Bobby Crosby for the final out in regulation. Had the ball gone through, it'd be a whole different story, but instead, we saw A's reliever Kiko Calero load the bases to the Giants in the top of the 10th, and the team came around to score two unanswered runs. Though Eric Chavez came up in the bottom half with a chance to win the ballgame, his outfield fly didn't have enough to clear the fence, and we returned home losers.

I'm really on the fence, if that's possible, about Barry. I yearned and hoped that he hadn't taken steroids, for the cleanliness of the game. I read the stories about his brusqueness with reporters and teammates, but have also seen tenderness and dogged determination. Today, we cheered his accomplishments, and understand its significance. But let's hope the A's can emerge victorious overall in the series by posting a victory tomorrow. We'll be there watching.

Listening to ''Secrets & Lies (Activa Remix)'', by Blank & Jones (Play Count: 1)

I wrote about Apple Dashboard widgets last night, naming some of those I use the most frequently. But how hard can it be to make a widget for this site? I've been trying now and again, and after some code mucking, we're ready to debut version 1.0 of the louisgray.com dashboard widget!

The widget acts like any other Apple Dashboard widget. You can activate it and move it to any portion of your screen. Utilizing RSS, the widget will check the louisgray.com site every 15 minutes for new posts, and will display their headline and date in the widget, so you can see if the site has been updated, and click directly to the post. In fact, the 1.0 version of the widget has all posts available from the site, going back to the beginning of the year!

A screenshot is below.


Download now!

More in an irregularly occurring series...

Thought Google was eating Yahoo! and MSN's lunch everywhere? Apparently, besides their significant lead in search, the company's coattails haven't resulted in dominant shares for their GMail or Google Maps properties so far. Though considered the most technologically innovative so far, the company continues to lead in search and ads, while Yahoo! and MSN, more traditional portals, continue to lead where they always have.
(More here: Hitwise: Google, Yahoo! and MSN: Property Size-up)

Speaking of Microsoft, the company had a big pow-wow on Thursday, discussing the company's competitive positioning, employee incentives, and addressing productivity in light of overwhelming pressures from their detractors, seen and unseen. Mini-Microsoft, as always, has their take on what the company got right and wrong, and whether these are steps in the right direction for the company - who continues to be recognized for how much money they've made and how big they are, and much less so for the quality of their products and innovation. Robert Scoble also noted the meeting in a report on his widely-read blog.

And... I have to admit, it's totally irrational, but I'm very much smitten by the new black MacBooks from Apple. I've never been much intrigued by the black line of iPod Nanos, or even colored iBooks, but the new black MacBook option introduced by Apple earlier this week is quite striking. Unfortunately for me, I just sunk $1k into my PowerBook G4 to fix the logic board, and I don't have enough good excuses to "upgrade", theoretically dropping myself from the professional line of laptops to the consumer line, and from PowerPC to Intel in a single bound. Still, it's black. Isn't that professional enough?

Listening to ''Sound of Machines (Short Cut)'', by Blank & Jones (Play Count: 1)