scott

Why I Don’t Watch The News

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There I was on vacation. No computer, no mobile phone, etc and I need to do something sometimes. So of course I turned to TV. With half the channels in spanish, and the other half crap I had slim pickings. I did what I never like to do, watch the news. So I have to ask myself why multiple cable news channels have to devote hours of the day on non news topics? When I mean non news topics I mean a subject that should have gotten 2 minutes of coverage and the they move on? For example the missing teenager in Aruba. According the news she has been missing over 2 months. Why then is the news playing footage of some kid in a dance re-sidle 60 days after she went missing? I gotta say there is more important news to talk about. Maybe the 2 countries we currently have military forces fighting and dying in for starters?

Can anyone really tell me that if this girl was an african american from the Bronx that the news networks would be covering this so much? Come on?

Not to pick on one over exposed story, you could have the hours of news coverage discussing the contradictory statements by some old juror on the Jackson trial. She is changing her statements saying she has doubts or something like that about the trial. You were there, you voted, now shut up and go back to your life. I and most of the normal world didn’t want to hear about the trial when it went on, so now I really don’t want to hear about it.

I don’t want this blog to become political, but I had to express my frustration at the state of TV news today. When I was a kid my mom always said I used to sit in front of the TV and watch the news for hours. That was when news was actual news. Now I almost never turn on the news, and get my current events from blogs or the AP and Reuters news feeds. They remain the last (partially) unbiased news sources out there. One part of the vacation I am looking forward to leaving is bad cable. Returning home to my DVR and the ability to filter out all the crap shows and news out there is a wonderful thing. I want to know what is going on in the world, but what most think is newsworthy I think is more nonsense than anything else I guess. Something can be important for 2 minutes, and be nonsense when discussed for 60 days.

Early Flight

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With a noon check out, and a 7PM flight Jay and I had no idea what we were going to do. We both were tired of the pool, so we decided to call Continental and see if we could fly standby on an earlier flight. Our luck held out and there was a noon flight and a 1:30 flight. We got to the airport with plenty of time for the early flight and there were plenty of seats. I am now sitting in an exit row seat (with the row all to myself). We left almost on time, and I should be home by like 6-7PM. Much better than the after midnight on the original flight.

I needed vacation, but when you are ready to go, there is no need to wait around for 6 extra hours. Now I can get a few hours of unwinding at home before I goto bed and then work on Thursday.

Continental gets some points (not many) for not charging for standby. Some airlines do that now. They lose points for the tight seats. I am not fat nor tall, and I and not comfortable in the seats. Even the exit row doesn’t even give you more legroom. You used to have huge amounts of legroom on the exit row. Minor complaints I know. I am just thankful for a direct flight.

Off The Grid Vacation

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I actually made it the entire vacation without doing any work! I only used my computer twice. Once when we got to the hotel (and I was waiting for our room to be ready) and once to pull up flight information. No DVD’s, no email, no work. I am almost addicted to email but it does feel nice to go “off the grid” for a while.

I did exactly what I said I would do, nothing. Except for the scuba on Saturday I sat around the hotel, the pool, ocean, etc and did nothing productive. It was almost boring, but I enjoyed every minute of it. My mobile phone didn’t work due to some fluke registration problem. I could see the local wireless network but my phone wouldn’t register with it. It wasn’t worth it for me to call the carrier and T-Mobile (for a fee most likely) and figure out the issue. So I got an unexpected reprieve from stupid people calling my mobile. For $20 a day for wireless internet I decided that my vacation needed less internet and more sun tan lotion. I actually needed more lotion than I used, since I got a bit burned in some places.

Jay and John (mostly John) thought I was lazy or a party popper when I didn’t want to go anywhere, but I gave everyone fare warning what I planned on getting out of this vacation, and I got it. When Jay took his 2 1/2 hour (each way) van ride to the Mayan ruins I slept in, had a massage and relaxed with a book. I felt great. I wanted to see the ruins but not in 100 degree heat and 5 hours of travel. To me the massage was a better use of my money.

We went out of the hotel for dinner twice. once to a decent seafood restaurant within walking distance of the hotel. I had a massive crab cake, and not much else since I wasn’t hungry. We saw a crocodile while we sat eating dinner out on the deck. it was awesome. We also saw the sunset on the Cancun lagoon. that was also very cool. The other night out we went to Jimmy Buffet’s Margeritaville. It was cool. I didn’t realize they actually have good food.

The other nights we hung out by the hotel. Spent some time in the lounge / bar. We drank, played cards, smoked cigars, and had an all around good time.

I had only like 2 1/2 days of sun. That was plenty for me. I got burned on parts of my legs, feet, and scalp. How do you put lotion on your head if you have hair? The worst is mainly over, so I am not too upset, except for the slight burn line I have right near my hairline. It is starting to peel so it will go away soon. This is why I don’t sun so much. you always miss a spot with the lotion, and when you do it hurts. The lying in the pool was cool though. they had parts of the pool that were only a few inches deep so you can lie in them and cover allot of your body with water and sun. you stayed cool, and still got a tan. it was great. The ocean water and the pool water was so warm it was almost like a bath. You could stay in it almost all day. Pruning was the only factor that limited your stay in the pool. The pool-side bar allowed you to drink while hanging out. Always a favorite of mine.

So to sum it up, my first true vacation in 2+ years was a success. I didn’t think of work, or do anything technical all week. A win for me! Now I need to plan on the next vacation. And to respond to everyone who asks (jay and john for 2) why I travel to other countries and don’t go very far from the hotel, I have one statement to make. Anyone in NY can goto the Jersey shore, or Maine, or any other easter state. Even if I don’t do very much on a tropical island, I am somewhere I have never been, and away from many of the annoying people in NY. By just going to Mexico you get people with a different attitude. Everyone outside of big cities in the US are so much more laid back. For vacation I need that, even if I don’t travel and see the local sites. And lets face it, all the local sites in the hotel zone in Cancun are American chain restaurants. There was McDonalds, Outback, Chillis, Pat Obrian’s, etc. It was like I was at a US strip mall. I didn’t mind, but to get true local culture you had to travel like Jay did, and I wasn’t going to do that. So I enjoyed my perfectly tranquil sheltered vacation.

Scuba Test Out

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I scheduled my 4 test out dives for Saturday and Sunday this week while I am on vacation. This whole scuba thing is costing allot of money. Hopefully it is worth it. I am excited as well as nervous about the dives. For one thing I am still worried about my ears. Getting up to altitude on the plane caused some pain, and I had issues in the pool with equalizing my pressure at 10 feet. I know from the last time I dove that I had to give it some time on the first dive until I got used to it. So hopefully I will be ok.

My other concerns are the tasks I need to perform on these dives. Most of them aren’t bad, but a few are hard and I don’t like doing them. I hope to get as many of them out of the way on the first few dives as I can so the last few are relaxing.

The place for diving is a block away from the hotel so I can just walk there. The other good news is the dives don’t begin until 12:30PM each day. That means I can sleep in. It is like this place said how can we cater our schedule for Scott? I can sleep in and get some breakfast without having to rush to the dive boat.

I will update the blog with impressions from the dive later.

Flying Again

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I am off to Cancun for 5+ days of vacation. I am happy the trip has finally arrived. I am traveling heavy this trip. I had to check 2 bags since I am bringing my scuba stuff with me. I don’t have that much scuba gear yet, but it is enough to warrant a bag all to itself already. I also have my normal carry on bag, and my clothing bag. For my clothes I went out and bought a new carry on roller bag. I checked the bag this trip but I was lacking that luggage type. I used to borrow my parents one all the time, but I figured I would just get myself one.

Yesterday I went to Macy’s to get my luggage. And while I was there I looked for (and bought) some more bathing suits, shorts, and a tee shirt. Allot of the stuff was on sale since the summer clothing season is over and they are working on fall stuff. I for one cannot stand that I can’t get a good selection on tee shirts and shorts in the first week of August. It is hot and I realized I don’t have enough stuff. I don’t want to think about fall coats until it gets cold. That is a shopping trend that I will never understand.

After shopping I went home and packed. Then Jayson came over. He stayed over by me since it was easier to goto Newark from my place in the morning. We went to this diner by my house. The food was ok, but the service wasn’t, so I don’t know if I will go back.

The trip to the airport was uneventful. We got from my apartment on the upper east side to the Holland tunnel in like 20 minutes. There was no traffic. It was weird, but that is what I get for leaving at 5:30 AM. We checked in with plenty of time to spare, and had a nasty food court breakfast. Jay had these hash browns that looked inedible. We will never know if they were since he didn’t eat them.

We are in the back of the plane since we booked our travel relatively late. Only 4 rows to the back. I normally hate that, but I am dealing. On our return trip we don’t even know our seats yet so we may get screwed with middle seats in the back of the plane. We will find out then.

Our flight is not that full. We were sitting in a full row of 3 people (jay in the middle) and the lady in front of us was sitting by herself. So of course I moved up for the extra room of not having someone in the middle seat. Jay also got to spread out since I moved. I also wanted to move since a bunch of trashy college age guys were sitting behind us.

My friend John is flying out a bit later than us, so we will meet him at the hotel this afternoon. We have no set plans for today except it involves sun and sand.

Online Food Delivery

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Someone at work gave me a link to a website that takes a bunch of restaurants and lets you order from then for home delivery. This is not new. I do it all the item with some places, and have looked at others. What is new, is that this site has almost 100 restaurants that will deliver to my apartment. This is a vast improvement from my previous options.

The downside is the first order we tried for lunch on thursday gave a credit card error the 4 times I tried to place the order. Because I like the concept I will give them time to work out all the kinks. then I will complain. For now I am cautiously optimistic about this cool new site.

Poker At My Place

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Tonight we had another poker night at my house. We had a nice turn out of like 9 people. I had a good time. I ended up for the night, but not by much. I won the next to last hand with a big win for me. But I lost most of the winnings on the last hand to John. We were both going for the straight, he had Jacks and three’s. I had Kings & Queens. We both shared a pair of tens. He went all in on the turn so we flipped our cards up. The only way he could win the hand would have been if he got a 3 on the river. Well he got it. Dam lucky hand. If I won that hand I would have been a big winner for the night, but I ended up barely breaking even, but at least I broke even. Well if you count the cost of hosting I was down for the night, but the ability to goto bed after everyone leaves and not travel home was worth the cost difference.

Jon is going back to school this weekend so I don’t know when Dan will schedule another game. Now that I have my own set of chips I can always call one though. Maybe the week after I get back from vacation?

Replacing Outlook Update

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I have not been 100% successful at getting rid of my Microsoft PIM. I am still using Entourage for Calendar and Tasks. Thankfully I am not using outlook for anything anymore. The apple PIM (address, iCal, etc) do not sync categories with my Treo, and all other (non MSFT) alternatives have one draw back or another. So instead of buying another package that will work but still be lacking in one or two key areas I decided to stick with Entourage (i already bought it) and live with its drawbacks for now. I sync address book contacts from entourage and address book via a sync conduit. That lets me keep my Treo updated, and have Mail, Bluephone Elite, and iCal have the latest contact information also.

So far this setup has been working out for the most part. I am also doing 99% of my day to day “office” work on my Mac now. I still use my Thinpad and desktop computers for specific tasks, but my Powerbook is now truly my main computer, and I wouldn’t have it any other way (right now).

Still Findable On The Web

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My cousin Synde said that she googled her family and up came my blog. I think that is pretty cool. But that poses a problem. I don’t use first and last names. I may have used their first names in one past and last name in another one. if that isn’t it I don’t know how they would come up on my blog. I try not to be that conspicuous on the site. She was surprised that I had a blog. I could swear that I told her about it. Her husband knew about it, but I told him about it a long time ago.

I found the reference on the site that she found. I did use the last name once. I have since removed it. I am not a fan of posting last names on the site. Anonymity is nice for a bit. That being said I am making other changes to the site. I am slowly making the Powerpedia domain the only one for this blog. Why you ask? It’s whois information is hidden. Why is that important? I don’t want crazies knowing who I am. It is probably paranoid behavior, but I think it is worth the few bucks the anonymous registration cost.

I also changed the theme of the site back to my old theme. The new one was nice, but I didn’t like the fact that the center column with all my posts was not flexibly in size when you resized your browser. The posts were squished into a small space. My old (current) theme adjusts the posts based on the size of the browser window. Much nicer!

Powerpedia, The Missing Weeks

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I have been horrible at writing this July. It is not because I had nothing to write about. I also probably had time to write. I just didn’t feel compelled to sit down and put anything on paper/digital file. Things have been busy both personally and professionally this month. Some huge projects at work all have major milestones coming up very soon. I am trying to get ready for vacation this friday, and about a half a dozen other things have happened.

I have added a few posts for the past week and a half. I back dated some of them so each post was dated near when stuff actually happened. I know it is cheating, but it is easier that way!