Day & Evening With Different Parents

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Last night we got a call from MC’s parents asking if we were free for lunch today. They were visiting two of MC’s nephews and on the way back wanted to see us and check out the finished babies room. We had no plans so we looked forward to the visit.

They arrived around 11 and got to see all the work we have done on the apt. We then showed them the finished Wedding Album and then we walked to a greek place on Austin St for brunch. We had a good meal and then we all came back to the apt and went over the wedding photos in more details so we could put together an album for them.

In the evening my parents came over to drop off an air mattress we need for when guests visit. The one we have wasn’t so great. After that they took us out for dinner at a pizza place they like. After dinner we went to Italian ices and then headed back to our apartment. Since we worked on the photo album for my parents we realized we could add more photos to the album than we originally anticipated. we went through the list of photos again and had them add other shots they really wanted.

To show both sets of parents the photos, I used my MacBook air to send my screen to my Apple TV so they were able to sit on the couch and watch the photo stream while I made edits at their request. It was pretty cool. I just had iPhoto in full-screen mode and it was pretty seamless.

MC and I will work on the layout for both albums for our parents in the next week or so.

Hulu Plus Take 2

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Last September, I tried Hulu plus for about two months. I ended up canceling it because I didn’t use it that much to justify the $7.95 a month charge. My original thoughts were to use it on my iPad and possibly my TiVo. It didn’t really happen.

Flash forward to last week and I signed up for a weeks free trial of Hulu plus again. What’s changed is it is now available on the AppleTV. Last month even having Hulu plus available on the AppleTV wouldn’t really matter to me, but recently I have jailbroken the operating system on my Apple TV so I could install Plex media center. With Plex on my AppleTV I am using that as my main Media Center endpoint on my TV instead of using a Mac Mini plugged directly into the TV. So far it’s actually been working out really well. Adding Hulu plus for streaming of TV shows in addition to the downloaded content I have on Plex both available via the AppleTV has been working out pretty well. It’s also less buggy than using the Plex UI on my Mac Mini directly plugged into my television.

For now I just started paying for the first month of service. Will I keep it forever? Who knows, but were enjoying it while we have it.

Friday August 24th

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Today has been a long day at work. I got the office around 8 a.m. I treated myself to an omelette from the cafeteria and then started my calls from 9 a.m. Schedule call to up all morning and early afternoon, and then working out some issues with an ongoing project of the rest of the day. By 4:30 I was exhausted figured hey its Friday in the summer I was cutting out about 30 minutes early.

No major plans for the evening at home. M said she was leaving in a bit from work so she least won’t be home late. Hopefully we can just relax for the evening.

Jaybird Bluetooth Headphones

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For at least 2 years or more I have owned a pair of Jaybird Sportsband 2 headphones.  When I first bought them I thought they were very cool but never really started wearing them as a replacement to wired headphones.  I had a few issues with skipping or other sound issues with the headphones and my iPhone 4.  I also had some freak issue were the iPhone crashed and needed to be restored from a backup.  It happened when I was using my Jaybird

It wasn’t until I wanted to control volume and skip, play & pause on my Android phone did I look to the Jaybird headphones again.  I don’t have a wired headphone that will do that with the Android phone so after I moved to Woodside and now spend much more time on the train I started trying them with my Android phone.  The setup worked really well.  I am not sure when it happened but instead of using them with my Android phone I started using them with my iPhone 4S.

Now after wearing them for a year I am finding wearing wireless headphones especially on the way to and from work and doing laundry to be great.  I don’t know why I didn’t really get into them for almost a year of owning them.

The headphones feel a bit uncomfortable after a long period of time so i may shop around for more comfortable ones.

Visiting MC’s Friend

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Today MC and I traveled out to Long Island to visit her friend Liz and her family. MC has been wanting to visit all summer, but with the baby on the way and other commitments we have not yet been able to make the trip. We were glad to be able to go now before it came really close to the baby’s due date and we wouldn’t be able to go.

It was only about a 30 minute train trip on the Long Island Railroad, so that was pretty easy especially for nine month pregnant lady. Overall it was a good visit. We hung out, had barbecue, and MC was able to catch up with her old friend.

Liz’s husband cooked barbecue, it was really good. We brought cupcakes from Martha’s bakery. I generally like Martha’s a lot, but the cupcakes were just okay. I will still go back to crumbs for my cupcake fix!

Date Night

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Today MC and I had originally planned to go to Jason and Gretchens house. It would’ve been the last chance we had before the baby came. Unfortunately last minute issues came up last night that I thought it was best not to go. Jason and Gretchen understood, so that was cool. The downside was we didn’t get to see them, and now we had no plans for today. MC and I decided to do some work around the house and generally try to relax most of the day. We did want to go to the movies, so we decided to head out for dinner and then catch a movie.

We didn’t realize how little time we had before the movie, so we ended up at Johnny Rockets. We like that place, it just wasn’t where we were planning on going for a date night. We were originally going to go see the campaign, but when we went to buy the tickets at the theater on Austin Street the ticket lady did not think we should see it. She saw the MC was pregnant and said the air conditioner wasn’t working the way it normally should. We agreed with her assessment and decided to try a different theater.

The other movie theater in the neighborhood on Queens Boulevard is actually a lot nicer, but he did not have the campaign playing. Luckily we did want to see the Bourne Legacy, and it was playing at the same time we were going to see the campaign at the different theater. I walked ahead and got tickets and we were able to find seats without any problem. The movie was pretty good, it kind of intertwined itself with the last Bourne movie in the trilogy. We both liked it.

Baby Furniture Delivered

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MC stayed home today to receive the baby furniture we ordered from Bellini. I came home and it was pretty nicely setup. Very exciting. all we need now is a baby. of course we need to finish putting together the room.

Next Gen MacBook Air

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After much pondering I broke down and put an order in for a new MacBook air 13 inch. I bought a 2011 model last August and I’ve been very happy with it, except for a few drawbacks. The new model seems to correct all the drawbacks I’ve experienced. The only thing I had to do to get it was spent a lot more money for it. I think it’ll be worth it in the long run. I have been generally upgrading laptops every year so, and in the near future I don’t think that’s going to happen with a baby on the way so I want to get the upgrade out-of-the-way and be happy with additional capacity now.

This new MacBook air is sporting eight gigs of RAM and a 512 gig SSD drive. The old model didn’t have enough memory for what I was using it for, especially running a virtual machine. I also maxed out the 256 gigs on the old one SSD, so going for the 512 gig SSD was a must. But that upgrade broke the bank. I contemplated going for a MacBook Pro 13 inch with the regular hard drive but the cost difference and the performance difference really didn’t make it worthwhile for me. I’ve been spoiled with the SSDs in the Air’s for the past two years so going back to a 5400 RPM hard drive wasn’t really something I wanted to do. Other notable improvements is the USB three, but I really don’t have any use for it at this moment. Also the Core i7 dual core processor is slightly faster than what I’ve been used to all my old air.

It doesn’t come with Mountain Lion, but I get a free upgrade when it comes out in a few weeks.  I will probably buy the upgrade anyway since I have other computers I want to upgrade anyway, and the free upgrade is only for this laptop.

So far I’ve been extremely pleased with the upgrade. Now all I have to do is eBay my old laptop.

Beach Day

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Went to moms beach club with MC, mom, Carrie, Zach an Lexi.  Morgan was at camp.  The entire stein clan was also there.  MC and I got to lounge around in the pool a bit.  After that we relaxed in the sun, well out in the son under some shade.  Then we went to the ocean and hung with my mom and Lexi then back to the chairs to relax.  Generally restful day.

After the beach we went to dinner at mother Kelly’s afterward.  Zach wasn’t feeling well but good dinner otherwise.  Mom picked us up and took us home!

Oddly I starts coughing afterward.  I am not sure if it was an allergy or not.

Brunch with Ed-O

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Went to brunch near the meatpacking district. Walked around a bit then had coffee at the same place we went for coffee with Aileen.

MC and I each got zipcar credit from a booth at the gay pride day parade. I will take a free $45 for being a customer already any day.