My most beautiful wife, Becky, has taken on a New Year’s resolution to get into blogging. Since I’m hardly worldly in such matters I can only give her a meager amount of tutelage so feel free to provide her any feedback or suggestions as she takes on this new endeavor.
If you are so inclined, take a look at her Random Thoughts.
My work traditionally gives us the week between Christmas and New Years off and this year is no different. Not only do I get 11 days off (12/22-1/1) but the real advantage is the fact the entire office (with the exception of one of the game studios who is behind on their schedule of a springtime game) is also off which means I don’t have to worry about work piling up.
Aside from getting together with friends and family for Christmas, one thing that we are all planning is a Harry Potter marathon on Thursday as we just got the Harry Potter 1-5 box set for Blu-Ray. That should be fun.
This week, Apple released an updated iLife ’08 which is their creativity suite (iMovie, iTunes, iPhoto, GarageBand, iDVD, and iWeb). One of the new features of iPhoto is a Web Gallery that allows you to quickly upload pictures to your .Mac account for easy sharing with friends and family. The presentation on the web is quite impressive with a very dynamic display not normally found in a web site. A related feature is the iPhone is able to directly upload to that Web Gallery which will in-turn download it to your home library.
Becky and I are going to the DCI semi-finals tonight at the Rose Bowl. I’m going to try to “photo-blog” the whole experience so feel free to follow along or see the results.
Late June, we had a wonderful vacation with a 7-day cruise to Alaska out of Seattle, Washington. Since I wanted to be able to download pictures from the camera, we brought our laptop along. Partly wanting to copy pictures back home (in case the laptop got stolen/damaged) and partly wanting to have Internet access in general, I decided to borrow one of the Verizon EVDO cards from work. It worked out quite well even though signal was quite variable even when in port.
Unfortunately, the last night of the cruise was in Victoria, B.C. Signal was strong so I was able to sync up our photo album and do a little surfing. Yesterday, I was asked by our admin if I used the card in Canada. Having just recently paid our AT&T cell bill, I had learned that data also has roaming charges just like voice so I asked “how bad is it?” Try $736.38. At $.02/k it adds up quick, don’t it?
She’s going to talk to our account rep and see if they would be willing to reduce the charge any. We’ll see. Worst case, it’s another glorious “live & learn” moment.
I ran to the store this past weekend with the kids for a few items and saw this sitting on a light post in the parking lot. It just truly seems like a joke product. Bud Light & Clamato?!
There’s spanish below the title that says “With salt-and-lemon the perfect combination”. Perhaps, but I don’t think so.
Over the last few weeks, the MacBook Pro at home had been having some issues where it would go off to la la land for a bit before resuming whatever you were trying to do at the time. After some evaluation, I decided to reinstall the OS (which isn’t very troublesome as it leaves existing apps and copies over your user directories) which didn’t improve things.
Thinking it was the hard drive which was failing, I decided to purchase a new one but wanted to get a good backup of the original drive before replacing it. Of course, I already had numerous current copies of the user directories but the “up-to-the-moment” copies were on the drive itself. I spent the better part of the weekend trying to get a complete copy of the data off the drive which became quite tedious as the drive would pause and/or hang as it warmed up. My geek side just wasn’t satisfied with a day old backup.
In the end it all worked out. I got a refurb Seagate 120G (from the original 80G), have a clean OS install and restored the user directories just fine. Now I just can’t bring myself to throw the old (largely useless) drive away. I think there’s a drawer in the den I can put it…
Since I’ve spent all my saved pennies on my most recent “toy” I’ll have to refrain from getting this at least for now. This would be a great addition to my desk at work and I’m sure there are many who would visit just for a quick solo. There are also plenty of opportunities for a well-placed rim-shot, too.
Click on the image to the right to go to ThinkGeek. They even have a movie showing it in use.
Update:When I was young, I visited my grandparents house and discovered a drum set in the garage that used to be my uncle’s. In the process of making a play for them, my uncle got a renewed interest in the hobby and decided to dust them off for himself. I remember being disappointed but I can’t hold it against him. My parents saw this post and decided to order the Finger Drums for me which showed up last Friday. They’re in my office at work. Not the same as a full set, but the do take up a lot less space. Thanks Mom & Dad!
Since I’ve been essentially “off-net” for the last 10 days, I haven’t been following all of the iPhone hype leading up to it’s launch two days ago. I’ve been trying to get caught-up on feeds and, so far, I haven’t seen anything that I would classify as a “fatal flaw” with it which was my main reason for not buying one from the start. Well, that and the fact I was going to be in Canada at the time.
The one thing that I think is unfortunate, is that it doesn’t support video out from the headphone jack like the current generation of iPod with Video. My biggest concern now, which I haven’t yet determined, is whether it works with my iPod integration in my car. I wouldn’t have thought it would be a problem as they kept saying “it’s an iPod”, but it’s being reported that not all iPod accessories work properly with the iPhone.
Fortunately, my friend was going to purchase one at launch and if he has (I haven’t talked to him yet), it will take only 30 seconds to find out. Perhaps, the next you hear from me, it’ll be about my new toy.
My family and I just got back today from a 3-day vacation to Seattle, WA and a 7-day cruise on the Sun Princess to Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway Alaska as well as Victoria, B.C. It was a blast and we all enjoyed practically every moment. I took just shy of 1,000 pictures and I hope you forgive me for not trying to equal them in this post. To attempt to do the trip justice, I’ll upload them over the next few days to my gallery. Fortunately, my work gives us not only the 4th but the 5th off this week and since working Friday after two days off would be just plain silly, I’m taking Friday off as well.
Update: I was finally able to get some of the highlights up in the gallery.
My son is in 1st grade and has developed quite a crush on his teacher. One of the more recent notes he gave to her said:
“I can’t get you out of my brain. I don’t want to get you out of my brain.”
He’s got it bad.