Rock Star Family

Now I have not one but TWO brothers with albums available on iTunes. Naturally I highly recommend them. Benj actually has 3 songs that show significant popularity on iTunes! (Each song shows a popularity rating in the iTunes store.) Mark just released his but I'm sure his songs will catch up soon.

Benj's group is called Cows Never Die, so you can search for "Cows Never Die" on iTunes, or the album name, "She Usually Wears Mittens." Or you can link directly to the iTunes store page for the group. The album features smash hits such as "Snow Fort Heaven" and "Polydactyly".

Mark's album is called Tomorrow. Search iTunes for "Mark Tanner Tomorrow" or link to the store page here. More info available on the official album website here.

Iridium Still Flying

My first job out of college was with Motorola, in 1999. I was working on software for a satellite system called Iridium, which was created for global satellite phones and pagers. After I'd been there a year Iridium went into bankruptcy, and Motorola offered me the options of taking a job in another department, or taking 10 weeks of severance pay. I took the severance.

Over the years since, I'd heard rumors about whether the Iridium service was still being used, and whether the "birds" were still flying, but I hadn't seen anything very concrete recently, until I stumbled across this article on Computer World.

Apparently business is booming, relatively speaking. So that's pretty cool to see. I was disappointed though, that the article didn't mention me, or whether my code was still running. :)