There were penguins at the event!

A pic from kinda far away from the stage when they brought in the penguins. They zoo guy was very long-winded, and boring. He yammered on for about 45 minutes, when he should have kept it under 10 minutes. The penguins were cool, though. I liked the noises they made, and I liked it when they kept trying to bite him!

A bunch of networking gear

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Some more pics from my phone

Michelle playing the keyboard, Jaidyn being messy with peanut butter, and Vannah, mom, and dad at Northfield Park for her birthday. She loves the horses!

I think they are worth posting!

Location

A map showing our exact location. It can show all the main roads, and state routes. Enough detail for what I use the unit for. Atlanta airport was in the GPSR, so I did a "goto", and knew exactly how far away from it we were. My location is the little triangle in the middle of the screen pointing Southwest.

Altitude

This shows the altitude we were cruising at. We stayed at about 29,000 feet the whole flight. This was a smaller jet, with only about 5'10" of headroom inside, but I don't know its cruising altitude.

It was really cool to be able to know exactly where we were, how fast we were cruising, how high we were flying, and the names of all the rivers/towns/roads we were flying over. Most airlines allow GPS devices on board, but some don't. Michelle's didn't (Air Tran).

Flying to Atlanta with my GPS

Look at the speed. This was fun!

I took my GPS receiver on my flight to Denver. It would only work if I held it right next to the window, so my arm got a little tired from holding it.

Take a look at the speed of the aircraft. It held around 490MPH the whole time we were cruising at altitude. On the decent into Atlanta, we got to about 530MPH at times, and as slow as 370MPH. It was just like I was sitting in the cockpit looking at the gauges.

Amish in Doylestown

I took this pic at the Doylestown yard sales. The Amish always have a big showing there, but normally just have people drive them there in big vans.

This Amish group decided to just drive a pair of horses two hours up the road to the yard sales. It was really cool to hear the hoofs cloping on the road as they walked on by.

Chen's Garden

I've begun buying lunch at this local Chinese place when I forget to bring my lunch from home (or when we're out of food). I found this place because I had my pants dry cleaned in the dry cleaners two doors down from it.

The prices for lunch are absolutely unbeatable. $4.60 for a lunch with rice, soup, and an fortune cookie. I am stuffed when I'm done with it, and it is delicious! Full of vegetables, and meat. Healthy! Fast too. I call from their menu, and hop in my car. By the time I'm there, my lunch is done. Awesome!

They crack me up there. I just called an order of General Tso's Chicken in, and here's how it went:

"Chen Garden"

I place my order

"Fry rice?"

Yes

"Ten Minute"

(I hear shout something in Chinese, which I assume is my order, to the cooks)

*click*

Thats it! No "Thank you", or any other time wasting conversation. Just the facts, nice and simple.

They own most of that plaza with a dry cleaners, a Chinese market, the restaurant, and a nail salon. Two doors the other way is an Indian restaurant (which I will soon be sampling) and an Indian market. Caucasian Falls' own little China town!

Today, I'm attending a Sprint/Nextel

Today, I'm attending a Sprint/Nextel conference. This presentation I'm in now is so horrible, and uninteresting. The slides are unreadable, and b

First mobile post

First mobile post

My Pic

I need to post this to have it in my profile. In iWeb, it would have been automatic, but, sacrifices must be made.

Well, James, why the new Blog site?

A couple of reasons.

1: I have had many people tell me they couldn't view the other one. Numerous people said that it would come up for a second, then disappear. Others said it simply just errored for them, and they never saw anything. If I'm posting a Blog, I want to make sure that people can at least look at the thing!

2: iWeb, that comes with a Mac is a great blogging tool. It makes great looking sites, and imports photos simply. The problem is that I can only post to the Blog from the Mac in the livingroom. No other computer was able to post. We own 6 computers, and there is no guarantee I'll be in front of the Mac in the livingroom when I get the chance to post. I will miss iWeb, but it will allow me to post from any computer with Internet access.

3: There is no guarantee I'll stay with my .Mac service, and if I don't pay my annual dues, by Blog would die. Erased forever. Blogger.com is a free service that integrates nicely with Picasa and Gmail, both services that I use all the time (and both free).

There you go! This Blog also has an RSS feed on it (you should see "RSS" in the address bar of your browser), so you can automatically be updated when I post something new. In a future post, I'll detail how to use your web browser's RSS feed functions. Once you get the hang of it, you'll use it all the time.

Michelle's dream come true.

Today at the Doylestown yard sales, we found something that Michelle has been wanting for years - an original Nintendo NES with 6 games. She wanted Mario Brothers, and it came with Super Mario Broeths 3. Needless to say, she was thrilled, and made sure she called "First game" as soon as we were home with it. The best part is the price: $1. The whole thing and 6 games for a buck. 

Jesse mowing the lawn

 

Jesse is a good lawn mower. 

Our 6-Day Long Camping Trip

Just a quick post for now. We finished our extended camping trip to Mohican this week. It was really a blast. I ended going into work almost every day of the trip, so it wasn’t a vacation for me, but I still really enjoyed spending every evening at the campground, and sleeping in the RV.

I’m sure I’ll post more about it later.

Ugh... Broken Water Pipes

We are just a few days away from our week long RV trip, and I promised I’d get the broken water pipes fixed before we left. This will allow us to use the RV’s toilet, rather than having to walk to the bathrooms. This is especially nice in the middle of the night when the kids have to use the can.

Just in case you’re wondering, the pipes broke because I left water in them over the winter, and the pipes froze, and burst. Oops!

I took apart the bedroom closet, had Michelle run the water, and I found a totally shattered pipe leading up to the shower. That was easy to Dremel out, and fix using stuff I bought at Lowes. I had Michelle run the water again, and listened for running water, hoping I wouldn’t hear any. Well, I did. The toilet was pouring water out of the back all over the floor.

“Shut the water off!”.

I couldn’t see the water leak so I decided to try to remove the toilet’s cover to inspect the plumbing. Sorry, no cover! I have to remove the entire toilet. Great. I started to remove the bolts holding the toilet down, and in order to access one of them, I had to hold down the lever that opens the flapper to the black water holding tank. I was dreading the smell, but was thankful that I didn’t smell much of anything. Good, right? Wrong. As I kept working on the toilet, unknown to me, there was something horrible happening. 

Like horrible monsters crawling out of the lowest pits of the earth, little, nasty, gross fly things were flying out of the toilet’s open drain hole. NOOOOO!!!!! I quickly shut the flap, but about six of these repulsive creatures had made it to the surface.

Disgusting! I smashed them with my bare hands, as they were not too fast (this is probably the first time they had seen light in their gross little lives). I can only surmise about the life cycle of these things, but I figure they live out their entire life cycles in the depths of the black water holding tank. Being born, eating(!), mating, and dying. All in the darkness, and grossness of the black water holding tank. Nasty.

I stuffed wads of paper towels into the drain hole, and finished removing the toilet. A couple more repulsive fly-things flew out, and were promptly crushed to death by my hands. I got the toilet removed, but at that point it was 9:45, and I couldn’t go buy the connectors I need to test the toilet, so I had to call it a night.

Hopefully I can find and fix the rest of the leaks tomorrow. I may come home from work early to make sure I can get the task finished. Even if I can’t “Get-R-Done” tomorrow, I can polish it off on Wednesday, because we aren’t going to be heading down to camp until Thursday.

Quick Post

I have begun working on the 12-minute song. Again, it is an ambient piece, and will sound nothing like the other ones I put out. If you’re curious what ambient music is, use your computer’s music player (iTunes preferably) and find an ambient radio station. www.hbr1.com has a great station for ambient music that you can find by visiting their website.

I am really excited to be experimenting with making music! It has been sich a big part of my life for so long, but until now, I was just on the receiving end of music. Now I get to be on the giving end of music.

Heads up iPod owners!

I was reading a document on the history of ambient music (the genre I’m interested in producing music in), and I found a great article on the subject. The problem is the article is 39 pages long, and there is no way I was going to sit in front of a computer screen reading that many pages. I was also not about to print out 39 pages of text because of the cost, and the hassle factor. I wanted to be able to take the article with me to read in increments when I have a few minutes. What’s a man to do?

Well, I found the answer: my iPod!

The iPod has the ability to import text documents in to it to be read, but the problem is that your standard document format shows really badly on the iPod screen. I searched for the answer on Google, and found a wonderful FREE utility to make the conversion for me.

http://www.ambience.sk/ipod-ebook-creator/ipod-book-notes-text-conversion.php

This utility converts a standard .txt file into a file to be read on the iPod screen. I simply copy/pasted the document into Word, then saved the document as a plain text (.txt) document. I then uploaded the .txt doc to the conversion website, and it automatically converted the file, and gave me a .zip file to download.

I dragged the folder I downloaded into the “Notes” folder on my iPod, ejected the iPod, and voila! The entire 39-page document is on a device that I nearly always have with me, and I can read anywhere (on the toilet, waiting on hold, etc.).

iPod users, enjoy!

Read this.

I just want to post here just to keep the thing moving. I’ve been pretty tired this past week, and haven’t been in the mood to post. Last night I could have posted, but I ended up building a song in Garageband with my boys. I posted it in the next Blog post for a listen (the “My first song” post). I intend to refine it, so I will post incremental versions. I am making it using Garageband’s built in loops since I don’t have an instrument hooked up to this computer to use and record with. We have an electronic keyboard, a Yamaha YPT-300, and it says it can be hooked up to a computer, but I don’t know if it will do what I want it to, which is to record directly into Garageband using the keys on the keyboard. The MIDI cables are not too expensive, but I don’t feel like blowing the $$$ right now on them.

I golfed with the Cuyahoga Falls Chamber today. Andrew, Uncle Larry, and Matt Solful were in a foursome. It was best ball, so we shot par golf all day. I pretty much stunk it up for the first half of the game, but I started to come alive during the last nine, but I had to leave early for a big presentation. They said I didn’t really miss anything anyway, so I’m glad I made the choice to leave.

I played Pokemon with the 5th best player in the state today at Bobas. I got destroyed. His deck was light years beyond my fragile little Poke deck. It would have been embarassing, but I told him when he asked me to play him that I have a deck that is not too far beyond a box-stock Wally-World pack. I’ve made some improvements, but nothing even close to the full custom deck that he was playing with. It was pitiful to watch my Rapidash get simply demolished by his leveled-up Pokemon. It was, however, a very good experience on how a great deck would operate, and how much work I had to do to mine to get it to that level. I did come home and proceed to beat up on my kid’s Pokemon decks in three matches. They do have better Pokemon than I do, but their decks need to be refined.

Michelle is out chatting with my mom right now, and I’m gonna post this. CYA.

I rode my bicycle 50 miles yesterday!

I just have a minute before I head up to bed.

I rode the Sweet Corn Challenge yesterday. The 50-mile one. They call it a “Challenge” for a reason, too. They took up through the Hinkley Reservation, through some incrediably challenging hills. I pulled it off though! 
My bicycle’s computer says 50.08 miles, though!! (You can sort-of read it in this pic)

I’m thrilled that I actually did it.

Next ride: The Stop Bicycle Rally.

Camping Trip Post

We just got back from a really nice (with exceptions) camping trip.

Michelle has wanted to do an extended camping trip with the family, and this was kinda the dry run. We stayed three nights, four days in the RV, while I commuted to work in the mornings, and returned in the afternoon.

We left on Sunday afternoon. The normal headache, and stress of packing for a trip set in, but we left on time, and with no big arguments between Michelle and myself (or the kids). Michelle was wise and cooked most of the food before we left, such as sloppy joe, and sausage. When I test drove the RV, I was thrilled to find out that it had 3/4 of a tank of gas in it from last year!!! That represents about $100 in fuel that I wont have to put out this year. The drive down to Mohican was uneventful. The RV drove just fine, and the weather was absolutely ideal, about 80 degrees, and very low humidity. The big concern was the fact that my license plates were expired in 2002(!), and I always sweat getting a ticket when I drive the thing.

The site that Michelle got was just beautiful. An added bonus was the fact that it was right next to the bathrooms, which is a big deal because *somebody* didn’t drain the water out of the lines last year before it froze, and the water lines now have leaks in them. We had everything set up in less than an hour, and we set off to go swimming. We had hot dogs and cheddar brats grilled on the hibachi for dinner, along with chips and dip. The night cooled off to about 55 degrees, and we slept well.

Day two I got to leave at 6AM for work. I had a dentist appointment at 2:30 to get a cavity filled, so I called it a day when the appointment was over. I couldn’t feel half of my face anyway, and I spoke as if I had a speech impediment, not good for business. I got to the site at about 5:30, and immediately changed into my swim trunks and met everybody else at the pool. We swam until dinner. I think that we had chicken caesar salad for eats that night. We had a nice fire, and I ended up staying awake too late (11PM) talking with Jesse and Travis about all kinds of stuff. I ended the night by showing them how to make a flame-thrower out of a can of Off and a match. Cool stuff.

Day three I got the privilege of leaving the camping site at 5:45AM to get to an 8:30 appointment in Stow. I also had a lunch meeting that lasted to 2PM, and I called it a day then and drove to the campground. It was a little muggier this day, but the big problem was how Aaron was not feeling well.

I’ll post more on that later on. It is late, and I need to be getting to bed.

Night!

10 Commandments for Cell Phone Usage

I found this online. I didn’t write it, but I thought it was definitely worth posting here. I routinely break many of them myself. But then again, don’t we all?

Written by Dan Briody, editor at large for InfoWorld.com

1. Thou shalt not subject defenseless others to cell phone conversations. When people cannot escape the banality of your conversation, such as on the bus, in a cab, on a grounded airplane, or at the dinner table, you should spare them. People around you should have the option of not listening. If they don't, you shouldn't be babbling.

2. Thou shalt not set thy ringer to play La Cucaracha every time thy phone rings. Or Beethoven's Fifth, or the Bee Gees, or any other annoying melody. Is it not enough that phones go off every other second? Now we have to listen to synthesized nonsense?

3. Thou shalt turn thy cell phone off during public performances. I'm not even sure this one needs to be said, but given the repeated violations of this heretofore unwritten law, I felt compelled to include it.

4. Thou shalt not wear more than two wireless devices on thy belt. This hasn't become a big problem yet. But with plenty of techno-jockeys sporting pagers and phones, Batman-esque utility belts are sure to follow. Let's nip this one in the bud.

5. Thou shalt not dial while driving. In all seriousness, this madness has to stop. There are enough people in the world who have problems mastering vehicles and phones individually. Put them together and we have a serious health hazard on our hands.

6. Thou shalt not wear thy earpiece when thou art not on thy phone. This is not unlike being on the phone and carrying on another conversation with someone who is physically in your presence. No one knows if you are here or there. Very disturbing.

7. Thou shalt not speak louder on thy cell phone than thou would on any other phone. These things have incredibly sensitive microphones, and it's gotten to the point where I can tell if someone is calling me from a cell because of the way they are talking, not how it sounds. If your signal cuts out, speaking louder won't help, unless the person is actually within earshot.

8. Thou shalt not grow too attached to thy cell phone. For obvious reasons, a dependency on constant communication is not healthy. At work, go nuts. At home, give it a rest.

9. Thou shalt not attempt to impress with thy cell phone. Not only is using a cell phone no longer impressive in any way (unless it's one of those really cool new phones with the space age design), when it is used for that reason, said user can be immediately identified as a neophyte and a poseur.

10. Thou shalt not slam thy cell phone down on a restaurant table just in case it rings. This is not the Old West, and you are not a gunslinger sitting down to a game of poker in the saloon. Could you please be a little less conspicuous? If it rings, you'll hear it just as well if it's in your coat pocket or clipped on your belt.

Parades, cycling, and fishes, oh my!

Again, a short post.

I drove in parades all yesterday, so I didn’t really get to enjoy the 4th of July with my family. That stunk. Yesterday was really hot and humid, and it rained a lot, but during the parades, it didn’t rain, at least. A really nice cold front blew in during the night, and today was absolutely incredible! In the upper 60’s to low 70’s and low humidity. Beautiful! Unfortunately I spent most of the day inside behind the computer emailing and calling current clients to keep in touch, and working on some graphic design. I really wish I was able to ride my motorcycle for work! I really miss it a lot!

Jaidyn is crying upstairs. She does not want to go to sleep, but its 10:14PM, time for little stinkers to go to sleep.

I am training for the Sweet Corn Challenge right now. I will be doing the 25 mile course through RIchfield. Today I rode 6 miles to Chris’ house to look at the aquarium that he is donating to me (thanks Chris!!). More about that below. I have a Cat Eye cycling computer on my Raleigh to record my cycling adventures. It was about a 6 mile trip to Chris’ house. I forgot to stop the timer, so I don’t know how long it took to get there, but I know it took less time to get back, it is all down hill coming home. I am able to get going fast enough to break the speed limit on my bike! I hit 35 mph in a 25 mph zone going down a hill. Thats cool!

OK, about the aquarium. It is a beautiful 38 gallon hexagonal tank with all the fish and equipment included. It will be in the living room, and I will be posting a lot of news and pictures about it in the future, you can bank on that. When I was a teenager, I had 3 aquariums running at the same time in my room. I have always missed having fish around, but I didn’t want to spend the $$$ to buy a decent setup (like the one Chris is giving away). He is hoping to upgrade to an in-wall saltwater tank when he builds his new house.

Time for bed. Michelle is waiting for me upstairs....

A short one

We’re tired tonight. Its 9:30, and we’re ready for bed. Michelle is giving Aaron his last dose of medicine, and I am writing this short post, then we’re heading upstairs for the night.

We took a walk this evening, and I got to ride my skateboard with Jesse and Travis. That was fun. I really wish I could spend the summer learning how to ride it better.

I did some cold calls today, but I was just having a horrible time thinking on my feet. I just wasn’t thinking quickly enough, but at least I got out there.

Time for bed...

Blog about today

I worked until about 6:30 today. Non-stop, no breaks for lunch, or otherwise. Ten solid hours. I had to be creative with a design for a direct mail piece, and work on tax matters (mind-draining). I listened to my iPod in the car when I was traveling around today, and listened to internet radio when at my desk. In my car, I listen to podcasts for the most part, because I can stop/start them, and they feed my information addiction. I listen to all kinds of podcasts, but I’m not going to go into that right now. Its a big enough subject for a large blog post on its own (I should do one about that). I could produce podcasts with the software bundled with this Mac, but the time required to do a decent job of planning the podcast, and editing it would not be available. I think it’d be fun, but I’m not interested in such a commitment.

Well, on the way home, I rolled down the windows, because I was sick of being in A/C all day. The air was cooling down by the time I hit the road, and I tried to think of what would be appropriate music for the road home. I decided on The Smashing Pumpkins greatest hits album, Rotten Apples. Normally, this would be a good decision, but after about two songs, I just wanted to hear the road noise, it reminds me of riding my motorcycle, and it felt nice to speed. I got in behind a Mitsubishi Galant, and we had a fun little time getting up to about 95 mph, but he got off his exit pretty quickly. Then it started to rain, so I had to roll the windows up. I then decided that I wanted to listen to Space Music (another podcast), and it was perfect-windows up, A/C blowing cold, thunderstorm raging, and Space Music playing loud and clear. I enjoyed the drive home.

Poor little Jaidyn developed an inner ear infection today, so she was feeling kinda clingy this evening. I ended up carrying her around most of the time. We went to see Bubo, but that quickly turned into a “bounce” request, and she jumped on the trampoline for a while. We went out and played on the deck for a while after we hung out in the living room with Mom and Aaron. She was tired at that point, and Michelle put her to sleep. The other kids were playing with Brandon and Leah the whole evening up until about 9:45, when they were making paper airplanes with the construction paper Michelle bought. The living room looks like a disaster area now, but they had fun with the paper, and they will clean it up tomorrow.

We just put the kids to bed, and want to spend a little time together for the first time today. Its 10:20PM.

Bike ramp in the front yard

Well, Sunday morning, the kids were inside the house. Brandon was over, and they were doing creative things, but it was such a nice day I figured the kids should be in the Great Outdoors doing kid stuff, and getting a lot of exercise. As soon as I suggested building a ramp, the boys unanimously agreed to do it. They wanted to build it on the road to where they could ride their bikes down the hill and get a lot of speed before the jump. Well, being the victim of many a nasty bike crash, I told them that they had to build it in the grass first.

Their first ramp was built without an adult’s assistance, and consisted of two 4x6’s stacked on top of each other with two ramps of 3/4” plywood laminate on each end. While strong, it was far too steep, and had way to much drop on the other side for the speed in which they were hitting it (when they went over the jump, they almost endo’d every time). Using my superior ramp building skills, I moved the placement of the ramp to where they could build speed around the back yard, for more air. I also removed one of the 4x6’s, and replaced it with a piece of the 3/4” laminate. This lowered the ramp, and made it less steep.

Travis and Brandon had trouble building up speed from the back yard, and were not getting very impressive air. The endo problem was solved, but the jump had yet to give a good jump. I suggested to Jesse that he begin at the barn, then carry his speed around the corner of the house, and then hit the ramp. He did so, and was able to jump with both wheels in the air. Travis was not quite able to get the same performance, but was better than before.

After that, we had a bike maintainance session, with tires being inflated, seats being raised, and wheels being adjusted. I tuned my bike up, too, and would have jumped it, but we had to stop because Michelle wanted to go to the store.

Things like building a bike ramp, and spending all day riding bikes and skateboards are what I remember with fondness from childhood. I am trying to make sure that my children at least get the chance to experience it once, and decide if they like it, or not.

H2O Golf

Andrew Nichols, Aaron Barnhart, and I have been planning a game of golf for a while now, and today was the day. Throughout the afternoon, rain showers have been popping up here-and-there, but the three of us are tough, right? We can handle a little rain, huh? Yeah, we’re men! So we decided to give ‘er a go!
 
Well, we were playing at a course that I had never heard of, but I thought I knew where it was. I left the office with 30 minutes to drive to a course that I thought was ten minutes away. Three golf courses, and forty five minutes later, I was pulling into the correct course. I was embarrassed, but they are cool, and didn’t seem to really care. There was not a big line waiting to tee off, anyway because of the ever blackening skies.
 
I was first to tee off. I hit it good and long, but the ball went right, but in playable territory. Andrew and Aaron both hit it on the fairway (GRRRRR!!), and we went to hit our second shots. I had a really nice second shot, and so did they; we were within about twenty feet of each other. Again, all three of us had nice chips onto the green, but Aaron’s shot tried to roll a bit, but stopped really fast because of how saturated the green was (it rained a lot the past couple of days). I took this into consideration, and put some “oomph” into my putt, and got within two feet of the cup. Andrew put some “oomph” into it too, and hit it right off the green!. Aaron, and I both sunk the putt, while Andrew ended up four putting. Ouch! Bogey on a par four, I’ll take that every time!
 
Next hole, I had honors (I’m not used to that). I ended up topping it, but at least it made it to the fairway. At this point the sky was really dark, rain was beginning to spit, and the wind was blowing really hard right in our faces, so I’m sure that was messing with our mad golf skillz. Aaron hit a shot almost identical to mine, and we were within five feet of each other. Andrew is left-handed, and when he slices, it goes to the left, and let me tell you, he can slice it! That ball probably went as far to the side as it went forward (hey, I remember being able to do that too!). I duffed two shots on the fairway before finally connecting and putting it about thirty feet from the green, but at that point the rain was coming down, and everybody was scrambling for the clubhouse, so we left our balls where they were, and decided to go to shelter, too.
 
After about then minutes, the rain was just a drizzle, and we decided, “Hey, this is nothing. Lets go play some more golf!”. Well, we were the only ones that got back into our carts. Humph, what a bunch of sissies! Well.... by the time we made it back to our balls, the rain was a full-on downpour. Thunder rolling, we decided to “just do it”. Aaron was not really into it, but Andrew and I are immature enough to get a kick out of playing golf in this kind of insanity, so we grabbed our wedges, and headed back out onto the fairway. I hit a nice chip with my Miracle Wedge, and landed about ten feet from the cup. By the time I retrieved my putter, and made it onto the green, it looked like a swimming pool! There was about 3/4 of an inch of

water standing on the green, and the cup was totally submerged. It was awesome! Let me tell you, putting through standing water is not an easy task. It took three putts to get ten feet to the hole, and when I sank the ball, it just disappeared underwater with a rush of mud from the bottom of the cup.
 
A few pictures, and some “Oh Yeah”s later, and we were back into the carts heading for the clubhouse. Well, these carts don’t have the most aggressive tires on them, and they get very poor traction on a flooded golf course. I ended up driving me and Andrew along a ridge back to the clubhouse, and spun a 360, and slid backwards down a steep hill to the flooded fairway of another hole! There was no way that I was going to make it up that hill, so I proceeded to blaze across the standing water filled fairway to a cart path on the far side, spraying muddy water from the tires the whole time (so cool). The parking lot was totally flooded by now with about five inches of water too, so it was a splashing good time dropping the clubs off to the cars. You should have seen the water spraying from the cart! We went to the desk, got a rain check for the course again, said bye, and went out through the flood to our cars.
 
My Treo got a thorough soaking, and stopped working for about an hour. I think it is fine now, though. My bag, shoes, and clubs are all drying off now, and I never got cold, so I’m not worried about getting sick. We had a great time, and made a terrific memory together. What a blast!
 

-Hack- Verizon Treo Bluetooth Modem

I did something really cool with my Verizon Treo 650 the other day. I got it to work as a Bluetooth modem for my PowerBook. I already pay the $40/mo. for unlimited data service through Verizon’s 1x network, but up to now I have only been able to use it for browsing the web on my Treo, and access to email (which is why I bought the package in the first place). Now, I can access the internet on my laptop anywhere that I have cell service! It is a feature that Verizon has locked out of the Treo, but thanks to a really cool site, I was able to hack it, turn the service on, and configure the PowerBook to use it. It is not really fast, about as speedy as a 56k modem, but it is enough for internet browsing, email, and IM. The best part is that I am doing something that Verizon does not want me to do, and am un-crippling a really great feature in this phone. The other feature that I would like to have, but again Verizon crippled, is to be able to use a wifi card in it. The phone has the slot, but it can’t use it, and thus far nobody has been able to get it to work. And another nice feature that is locked out it the ability to browse the phone, and transfer files to and from the phone to the laptop. I hate it when I know the ability is there, but somebody decided to not let me use it.

Opinion: Television

We do not have boring TV-addicted children around. We got rid of the cable about four months ago, and have not missed it for a minute. Well, maybe for a minute, or two, but not anywhere close to missing it enough to consider getting cable again. We mostly miss it when we are tired, and would just like to veg out in front of the tube, and let it entertain, and occupy our children, however, this is exactly why we ditched it.


With five children at the time, if I wanted to make sure that I spend the quality time with every singe one of them that I want/need to, I can’t have the stupid boob tube get in the way. The commercials are one of the worst parts of TV, especially for the kidos. Every once in a while, the kids will want to watch it, but I don’t think that they even remember it existed for the most part. They are generally content to play with their friends, and with each other. I really like that, and think that they will have a much happier childhood because of the decision we made. Not to mention the $50/month we are saving in cable bills (we had the premium tier with the DVR).

Opinion: My Large Family

I’ve been away from my family for three days now, but I have talked about them so much, and shown their pictures to so many people, that it really does not feel like I’ve away from them longer than one day. Of course this weekend, I got plenty of “You’re crazy” comments when Affiliates found out how many children I have. All of them are all career people, and have one or two children. I just couldn’t imaging only having that few kids running around the house, it would be just plain boring. I’m so happy that Michelle, and I made the decision to let The Lord decide how many children to have. They are so fun (and frustrating at times) to have around.

What else in this world is there that can deliver the pure joy that children bring into your life? Seriously. What else is there? When you are 70 years old, and have less than twenty years to realisticly count on living, there is not one thing that a person could possibly look back on and would not give up more than children. They are truly a blessing, and they make life worth living. When I am fifty years old, I can expect to always have golfing, and motorcycling partners. I can always expect that I will have loving daughters that still love their daddy.

I know that children grow up really quick. It is already happening to me. I am just realizing that Jesse is halfway to the age of moving out. Wow..... thats sobering. I’m so glad that I will have lots of each stage of children’s growth stages to look forward to. One, or two cute little babies is just not enough for me.

The Conference

I had a great time hanging out with the other Affiliates, and talking with them all. The crowd was about half of what it was last year. There are a lot of disgruntled Affiliates out there. Not even half of the Affiliates showed up. Leslie Ann said that Jared and Brian from Colorado Springs, Co. were the first ones to sign up for the conference, and they won a prize for that. Well, they told me that they delayed signing up for the conference until noon on the last day of registration. In other words, nobody had signed up for the conference until the very last day! I bet Bob and Leslie Ann were freaking when they didn’t have anybody even signed up until the last minute.

Bob was his normal, condescending self to people. It is amazing to us that we could not see through that garbage until after we had signed the Affiliate agreement. He is truly a master os spin. He lost a lawsuit to a competitor, but spun it off in a light that made anyone that does not know what REALLY happened think that he won. It was settled in litigation, but we don’t think that it was in Bob’s favor. He said, “ Were happy to report that this lawsuit is behind us now, and we can move forward” in a way, and with a smile on his face as to make anybody think that he won. What a deception artist.

His wife was soooo annoying. She would just but in at any time, and answer questions for Bob, and she just sat in the corner of the room and made snooty, sly comments to people’s comments. I just wanted to turn around and say, “SHUT UP!”, but I think that I would lose my license agreement with Bob, and I don’t want that at this point. I have worked too hard to brand my company in my market, and I don’t want to give that up.

I mostly hung out with Jared, Brian, and Ron. We TXT messaged each other the entire weekend, especially during the presentations. Some of the speeches were so horrible!. John got up there and gave a 45 minute talk about subjects that the entire room know more than him about. Ugh, so boring.

Overall, the conference was definitely worth going to, but I didn’t learn anything that I didn’t already know. I always have a good time hanging out with my pals, we don’t get to do it but once a year.

Stuck at DFW

OK, here is sit at Dallas-Ft. Worth airport. Since I bought the tickets at the last moment, I didn’t really have much choice over what times my flights came/left. I had to get to the airport at 1:30 to wait for a 6:30 flight because everybody was leaving the hotel, and I wanted to bum a ride off of one of them rather than put out the $35 for a taxi. Yeah, I know, a five hour layover is nobody’s idea of a good time, but what was I going to do in Ft. Worth on a Saturday afternoon by myself? If I had remembered my GPS receiver, I probably have gone geocaching in downtown, but I forgot to take it out of my car at the airport.

I met a really interesting person here, though while eating lunch at the Texas BBQ eatery inside of the terminal. I was looking for a seat, but all of the tables had people at them, so I decided to sit at the bar and eat. When I went to put my stuff on the bar, a lady told me that I could sit with her at a 4-person table if I didn’t want to sit on the stools. She was probably in her upper 40’s, and was sitting alone at a 4-person table. I happily accepted the offer, because then I could sit in a chair, rather than a stool, and I would have somebody to talk to for a little while. We struck up a conversation about traveling for business, and she informed that she works for an eating disorder foundation, and travels a lot. I told her that I really don’t travel too much, and asked her how many children she has. Well, much to my surprise, she told me she has 6. Wow! Another person with that many children. The more I talked to her, the more I figured that our families are probably very much alike. Sure enough, she home-schools, and home-birthed. She had to stop at six children because of a physical problem with her uterus. She almost lost her sixth child in the womb, so they decided to get fixed. I can’t really blame her at all. If we were in that situation, we’d probably do the same. They really wanted seven children, but if I knew that we had a very high probability of losing the next child to a miscarriage, we’d probably do the same thing.

We talked to each other about two hours, then she decided to make her way to her gate. It was very cool thing to meet somebody with the same opinions as us on so many family issues.

I have about four hours to spend in the air, and I might want to run my computer while on the plane. I have no way to plug my PowerBook in on the flight, so I had to search for an outlet to plug my computer into at the airport. It took me abut five minutes of searching to find an out let to charge the battery for me, while I hammer out this blog. You’d think that an outlet would be a piece of cake to find in an international airport, but it was not easy. I eventually came across a guy working on a laptop in a deserted gate, and figured that he was probably using a nearby outlet to run his machine. Yup, sure enough, he was using one of the two outlets on the wall. Thankfully, the PowerBook has a nice long cord, and I was able to sit across from him and use the outlet.

32,000 Feet

Well, I got to the airport in the perfect amount of time. I got there about 45 minutes before my flight, and since I checked in online I just went to security (I also only have carryon luggage, no bags checked). The lady manning the metal detector did a woeful job of security. She asked for my boarding pass, and I gave it to her as I walked through the device, she then proceeded to look down at the pass as I walked through the detector, and didn’t even glance up to look at the display to see how much metal I had on me. She wasn’t paying attention to the noises being played by the detector, because it beeped as I walked through, but she was too busy unfolding the paper, and turning it over to care that I made the thing beep. Homeland Insecurity!

Oh well, I’m on the plane right now at 30,000 feet, and waiting for my drink to come around. It is not even 9AM, but they are serving beers on this flight! Wow, you must be in pretty bad shape to need a drink this early in the day. They now have XM Satellite radio on the planes now, and it really kills any conversation with people that ordinarily would occur. That was always one of the cool things about flying was the people you got to meet on the flight. I have had some really good conversations on planes before, but now everybody just puts on the headphones on, and ignores everybody else.

I always ride coach. I figure airline travel is a luxury enough, and I should be happy to be able to afford a ticket, and the extra five inches is just a waste of $50. It would be a little nicer for the sake of this laptop, because I don’t have a lot of room to fit this thing on the little tray in front of me.

I got a TXT message from Takeshi in Japan when I landed in Atlanta. I have been so bad about writing him back this year, but he continues to write me. That is really cool of him, and I want to keep in touch with him. He, and his wife Mie, are really cool, and they always send up Christmas cards, but we never remember to send them one. I feel really bad about that. I am planning to send him a postcard from Dallas with something on it that has the Old West on it. From what I understand, cowboys are really cool in Japan (but I could be dead wrong about that).

I really should be getting the Akron U proposal together on this flight. I have stuff written down at the office, and I intended to bring it along with me to put into a nice proposal letter, but I must have forgotten it on my desk, because I can’t find it anywhere in my stuff. I am going to have to redo it by memory. I will be able to work at the Dallas office, and have internet access there, as well as have access to printers and stuff.


Wow, this battery does not last too long! In the time it took me to write this post, my battery life is down to 57%! I did a few other things, but nothing that took me longer than 5 minutes. I think that I need a new battery, and thankfully, Apple has a recall on this one, so I think that I’ll take them up on the offer. This battery used to last about 2.5 hours, but now it is like 1.5.

Oh well, time to work on the Akron U proposal...

Decision made. Airport, here I come. Grrr...

I bought my plane tickets yesterday. I don’t feel great about it either. They cost $550, and I have to be at the airport at 4:45AM Thursday to leave, and will be come back at 12:30AM Saturday. Anything BUT relaxing, or enjoyable.

If I had decided to ride there, I would be on my bike right now, and feeling the freedom, and fun of a long motorcycle trip. I saw plenty of bikes on the road this morning, a couple of them being touring motorcycles. It hurt me as I sat in my climate-controlled blue Honda Accord listening to Leo Laporte’s KFI podcast. I am feeling very “un masculine” right about now. Nothing that I do is very manly anymore. The past couple of weeks I have really been thinking about trading the Accord in for a Jeep Wrangler. They are so cool, and masculine. I saw a dude in one this morning with the doors removed, and it made me really want one. They are expensive, though, and I am really in no position to be buying another vehicle just to satisfy an irrational craving.

I did ride my skateboard a little yesterday. I took it down Front St. to the overlook bridge, and hung out there a little bit. I think I’ll plant a geocache there sometime. It felt really good to ride my board. I saw a couple of teenagers riding yesterday, and I wished I had a summer vacation to just go riding my skateboard around, and enjoying whatever I wanted to. Summer before last I rode my board a lot at the Akron skate park. I still suck, but it was a lot of fun, and it made me feel young. The kids there thought it was cool for an old school dude to be out there riding an old school board. I wish I’d stuck with it a little more as a kid. I’d like to know how to ollie, but I’m not willing to break my wrist learning how, but as a kid you don’t think about those things too hard, you just do it.

Oh well, time for work. I have a lot to do today.