scott

Family Travels

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My sister and niece are going on a two week trip to Hong Kong on Tuesday. One of her best friends moved there about two years ago with her family and my sister is going to visit. Her friends twin daughters are also friends of my niece, so she is excited to go visit. While they are away my nephew will spend a week with my mom, since Michael could only be home 1 week, since he had to work the next one. My mom is taking him to Florida for the week to play in the sand, and do what other 18 month olds do.

Recently Zachary has become attached to Elmo. He is the first kid in my family to finally like the red muppet. I am a fan of Elmo, so I have been trying to get all the little cousins in my family to like him, but none have been as attached to him as Zach seems to be. I am trying to find him an appropriately sized Elmo doll for him to take on his trip. The one I ordered seems to have gotten lost in shipping.

And the farthest I am going for my vacation next week is to Manhattan for a hair cut.

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Unobtrusive Technology

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While waiting for the train the other day I got to thinking about some of the technology I use everyday that you don’t think about. Stuff that is just there and works so it is unobtrusive. That type of technology is the best kind, but like I said I don’t really think about it.

The first thing that came to my mind is my Tivo. I have always loved my Tivo or any other DVR I have had, but now a days Tivo is just like a cable box to me since I don’t have a cable box. Tivo just works. It is part of the TV experience for me. It almost never needs to tinkered with. It just blends into the experience, until I go somewhere that doesn’t have Tivo and then I wonder what I used to do before 2001 when I didn’t have a DVR.

My sonic tooth brush is next in my mind. Yes, it is just a tooth brush, but it is a mechanical device. It works so well I don’t know what I did before I had one. I don’t like to travel since I don’t carry it with me when I do. As with the Tivo it just blends into my world that you don’t realize it is there until it isn’t.

The same affect my Tivo has on TV seems to be happening with my new Kindle. It is just like a book with unlimited pages that I leave in my bag and can take out to read whenever I want. It is no longer a piece of technology, but a tool to read that to me is becoming no different than a paper book. That is the difference between a device like the Kindle and lets say my mobile phone. I use my mobile all the time, but it hasn’t turned into a Kindle or Tivo just yet. The new Nokia I have is close, but not yet. Phones, and computers I have or had are great but they require work to keep going. For example I haven’t had to reboot my Kindle because of a problem, but I do that to my smart phones, or even my Mac. As much as both have changed how I live my life, neither a computer, phone or other device has the same effect as the three devices I just mentioned above. There are others, but I think my point is made.

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Flickr Spree

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Over the past two months I have been tasking myself with a digital clean up so to speak. I have been spending some of my free time going through my photo album in iPhoto. I have been uploading everything of value onto Flickr. The uploading isn’t too hard, but I am trying to take the time to tag and organize everything. Back in September when I shut down my hosting account I wanted to put my photo’s somewhere, so I upgraded my Flickr account to Pro. Since I didn’t have a Gallery site anymore I wanted my photos on Flickr.

I now have my recent history in photo’s up online. I think I have most photos back to about 2000 uploaded. There are still allot since 2000 that are not up, but they are the less important photos. Next task is to get to some of my older photos I have taken at camp, either as a councilor in the 90’s or on my teen tour’s as a camper in the late 80’s. After that it will probably be the photo’s I got from my parents of the family. That might take a while, because there is a lot of them. I don’t think of this as a waste of time, because it is like organizing my life in pictures. It is kind of fun. This is going to be a work in progress for some time. The big question is always what photo’s can be made visible to all, and what if any of them should be left more private for friends and family? So far I have been pretty open about what I put up there, but with a young niece and nephew you have to be worried about crazies getting too much information off of some post or picture.

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Dam Cold

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Either I am getting sick again (2nd time in 2 months) or the humidity or something messed me up on my trip to Atlanta this weekend. I am now feeling how I get right before I get a cold. I also get this feeling when I am allergic to something in the air. My gut is saying it is a cold. I need to get to the Cold Ez, or that ZiCam that Michael got me into when I got sick at his place in December. Either way when I get home I am going to take something. I am on the plane now, and it is not very comfortable feeling this way in the air. I have a bad feeling that my ear’s are going to not react well when we land. I used to have horrible problems flying when i was a kid and a teenager. As an adult it has been allot better, but every so often I fly and have issues. Fingers crossed that this landing my ears are ok!

Traveling Again

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This weekend I had a quick trip down to Atlanta. All in all the trip was not eventful. The biggest thing that happened was I forgot the suction device that holds my Dad’s GPS to the windshield in the rental car. i remember taking it off the wind shield, but must have forgotten to put it in my bag because I cannot find it.

As much as I am still pissed at Delta for my trip to nowhere (see previous posts), they were not bad this trip. We actually departed on time both directions. I also cannot complain when I get into the Crown Room Club free (gotta love Amex Platinum Card).

I need to remember this weekend since I will most likely not remember the last time I drove until I remember that I drove this weekend. Before this week, I cannot honestly remember the last time I drove a car. I think it was the week I stayed at my parents place in August but then again I might not have even used one then. That is one of the sad things about living right by public transit (in this case the subway) you don’t need to drive. That is good and bad I guess.

My Big Boy Apartment

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I am 99% done with decorating and furnishing my new apartment. My mom got me some acent pillows and some sort of blanket throw or I don’t know what to call it for my big chair and sofa. My coffee / dining room table arrived two weeks ago. I even received the 3 prints I bought to hang on my walls in the living room. I haven’t hung them yet but they look really cool.

The last few things that I need to make everything complete is a few chairs for the table when I use it as a dining room table. Michael’s dad had dining room chairs that stacked nicely. I want to look for a few like he had, so I can keep them out of the way when I don’t need them but break them out quickly. I think that is better than storing folding chairs. I need something soon since I want to have poker at my place soon now that I have a table.

I am happy with the way everything came out. This is my first apartment that I bought nice real furniture. My first place i had cheap stuff. Then when I moved a few years ago my parents gave me their old stuff. It was basically nice but almost 20 years old and not my own. Now I think I finally have grown up and did my place up on my own. So it is really my big boy apartment!

Now I need to have a few poker parties to (hopefully) help pay for it all:)

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Web Hosting

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Ok, I made a mistake by canceling my web hosting account. I miss the flexibility of having a hosting account even if I don’t really need one all the time. I went back to Site5. They were good, and the only reason I canceled the account was because I didn’t want a provider at all. I am in the middle of configuring the site now.

I am trying to keep my Internet spending down this year so to offset the hosting costs for the year I am getting rid of .Mac. I don’t really use it, so I am going to let the account lapse when it is up for renewal at the end of February.

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Blogging Update

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I am actually writing, but you don’t see the results here just now. I have found it wise to leave most current work related entries on a site secured from the general public. I also write some of my more personal stuff in another secured journal. Unfortunately that hasn’t left much to put up on this site. I hope to change that. I am thinking I am going to continue to write work related entries on the private work blog, and only publish them here when I leave a job. That way I am not under and obligations or restrictions. The other thing is that by the time anything is published it is extremely dated and most likely no longer relevant. Some posts still will never make the light of day just due to what I write, but I not going to totally disregard common sense and publish everything I write.

The Busiest Day of The Year

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Today was the busiest day of the year for me at work. As it turns out this statement is true on several levels. My current company has a bi-annual event that generates the highest volume of web traffic on one of our sites. We literally began planning for today back in June during our last event. Because of the work shifts we ended up doing, and problems creeping up throughout the day today was also probably the hardest work day I have had since I started working at this job last February.

The odd thing is I kind of liked it regardless of the craziness. There is something about being in the thick of issues with the pressure mounting and you having to make split second decisions that has an odd attraction. I guess I am still sometimes an adrenaline junkie from my days volunteering as an EMT in College. The other alluring aspect of today is you see six months of work put to good use (hopefully), and for me all my skills as an engineer and a manager put to the test. The result is exhausting physical and emotionally, but in the end very rewarding. During our last event in June I commented afterward that if you are in an operations group and you don’t secretly enjoy such days you are in the wrong profession or lying to yourself. I still think that to be true.

The day did have its high and low points. In the end I know now that I have to handle a few personnel issues, and our systems performed better than anticipated. All in all a mixed ending for a roller coaster ride of a day.

The Kindle

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Since I traveled full time back in 2000 I have loved the idea of e-books. The idea was great but in practice it had a lot to be desired. I have read a handful of books in the ebook format. Most notibly when I was on the road on using my HP Jornada Pocket PC. It had a big screen but for reading books it wasn’t ideal. At the time it was the only game in town, and since there were times I didn’t want to carry a book with me having a book on my PDA was nice. Ever since I have been on the hunt for the perfect device to read books off of. Eventually I figured e-books would become more common, but so far they haven’t taken off so much.

When Sony came out with there reader I was fascinated by the technology. The size was right, it looked easy to read off of. I was all set to buy one until i read that you could only buy books from Sony for the reader. That on top of the fact that Sony’s selection wasn’t too hot I opted to hold off on my purchase.

That leads us to late November when Amazon announced the Kindle. It was very similar to the Sony reader, and it was backed by the book store at Amazon. I was still a bit hesitant to order one due to the DRM in the Amazon file format, but they offered over four times the books Sony did and they expected to continually add more books. After going back and forth on my decision I ended up placing an order for one in early December.

I was concerned about my choice because I read a few mixed reviews. I felt a bit better when I read Howard Morgan’s review late last month on his blog. I cannot remember a bad technology decision that he has made since I have known him. Well, I don’t count the fact that he wont switch to a Mac!

I found out late last week that my order finally shipped and I should expect to get my reader tomorrow. I already ordered 2 books for it that i was planning on reading. They should auto download to the reader when i turn it on. Hopefully this device lives up to my expectations since I have been waiting 8 years for it.