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!

Sold A Mini

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Kai bought one of my Mac Mini’s last week. He was eyeing the Mac for a while, and I think me selling Chris my old powerbook sent him over the edge. I got a decent resale price, and Kai got a deal off of what he would have paid in the store. Win Win! From what he says he is already a fan, and doesn’t know why more people don’t use OS X. I agree with him.

He wont admit it, but his mini is now his primary home computer. Next up is converting Jayson. Converting Danny may be a lost cause!

Another Traveler

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My friend John has decided to come along to Cancun for 3 days. I was surprised that he is going since he never said he wanted to travel when I asked all my friends constantly over the past year who wants to go some where, and secondly he wasn’t invited!

Our group of friends are very open about stuff. No one really invites anyone. The word is just passed around and it is implied that anyone is invited. If you don’t find out about a gathering it is your fault for not communicating to someone and finding out what is going on. We are weird like that.

After hearing of our travel plans, John found time to travel. I think the free hotel may have been a motivating factor for him! Not wanting to pass up another drinking buddy we (I, since jay didn’t make the reservations) made sure John is not sleeping on the floor of the hotel! he will meet us later in the day friday at the hotel. By the time he gets there jay and I plan on being tan at the ocean.

Beach Friday & Surprise Party

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Last Friday I took the day off from work to goto the beach with my family. My parents have been going to the same beach club for over 20 years. When I was younger I would go with them every summer. Now a days they are lucky if I go once a summer. Last week was a special case. My sister had setup a surpise party for my Mom’s 60th birthday (it was that sunday). She had a bunch of family friend visit that day at the beach (my mom knew about that part). What she didn’t realize was that about 50 other people would show up in the early evening while my mom took my niece to the pool. She was totally surprised. The party was fun. There were a bunch of people I didn’t know (no mom, meeting someone once a decade and expecting me to remember who they are does not constitute knowing someone), a whole bunch of friends I knew and some family I haven’t seen in a while.

It was a good night. the day at the beach was rough. it was very hot, there were 5 kids there under 3, and I was getting a head ache. I was able to take a nap, so I felt better for the party! I was amazed at the stuff my sister cooked for this thing.

Beer Garden Sunday

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Went to the beer garden again today. I got permission to not goto the beach for my mom’s actual birthday (by her) so I went to the garden when Jay and John called. We had a good time again. We ate sausage, drank (one drink for me since I was not recovered from friday), played cards and hung out. I decided you have a gambling problem when you play poker with rocks when you have no money to play with.

After poker we all played Spades. I haven’t played in years. John showed Jay and Gretchen how to play. We now have a cool hang out and drink card game for no money. I mean if we want to bet we will play holdum. Not sure how exactly to spell it.

I was late for dinner with my family, but so were they. We had a decent meal at a japanese restaurant near my sisters house.

the only other thing to note about today was that I may have destroyed a brand new shirt by getting stuck between the doors on an E train. I had black marks up and down my arm and the sleeve. It was nasty, but I made the train. It was worth it:)