Happy Birthday to us
Yesterday was my birthday, tomorrow is Jen’s. Today some friends threw us a party where Jen opened her box from me, consisting of four items, three of which were related: ginger ale, ginger snaps, and more ginger snaps. If you consider the medicinal purposes of ginger, you’ll have another clue as the nature of “the question” alluded to on the 27th of Oct.
The fourth item was a printed itinerary for our Christmas vacation plans. We’ll be off to Costa Rica to visit with Jason & Mishael, our friends from Atlanta who now live there. Jen was rather surprised to see an itinerary to arrive in San Jose. After realizing that the San Jose we’re arriving at isn’t in California, the picture came into sharp focus.
Halloween
Each year at Halloween our church hosts a “Pumpkin Patch” party. To get a mental picture, imagine a large building with 2-600 little kids all dressed up in their costumes playing various carnival type games, door prizes, balloons, and other exciting stuff for kids. Jen and I are in a group and our group volunteered to serve at the event and were assigned to assorted positions.
I was one of 11 people assigned to security detail. It is Halloween so a costume would be necessary. I had aspirations of being a Roman Centurion but a $15 plastic helmet and sword doesn’t do it justice and a “good” costume with real metal helmet and sword was a bit much at $800.
I didn’t give the costume much more thought until last night when Jen brought up the matter. Since we were now in the 11th hour, we were limited to clothing options in the closet. Jen came up with a great idea, an Agent from The Matrix. I already had the black suit and black square sunglasses. The white iPod headphones made a perfect earpiece, so only a few accessories were needed. A trip to Wal*Mart to acquire a black tie, tie clip, and hair gel and I was in business for a whopping $21.
The real work was done last night, reviewing the movie again to get the lines down: “Hello Mr. Anderson”, and other classics like, “I’m going to enjoy watching you die Mr. Anderson” expressed in monotone eloquence. I’m quite pleased to report that it was a smashing success. The most common comment was “You look so professional”, followed closely by “You look like an agent”. Everyone got the “government agent” part. Members of demographic profiles that would likely have seen the movie got it immediately, and everyone else guessed Men In Black, or CIA agent.
Defining moments were intimidating 15 year olds with nothing more than an expressionless stare and issuing an appropriate agent greeting to a miniature Neo. The little Neo was quite taken by the experience as well. We enjoyed ourselves very much this evening and hope that you too did something enjoyable and memorable on this holiday.
iMac 17″ for sale
Do you know someone looking for an iMac but can’t afford a new one? I have a 17″ iMac G4 (800MHz) for sale. I am the original purchasor, as this was Jen’s iMac. It was top of the line with the just released 17″ LCD display, 80GB hard drive, SuperDrive, 56k modem, Ethernet, and speakers. I bumped the RAM up to 768MB and added an Airport (WiFi) card. I did a price search on eBay and this system currently sells between $1,000 and $1,200. This system would lean towards the higher end of that range due to the SuperDrive, extra RAM, and Airport options. It’s a great little computer but it’s being replaced because a faster system is needed.
To buy it’s replacement (17″ iMac G5 1.8GHz, 512MB, SuperDrive) costs $1,700 direct from Apple. Despite this systems ability to fetch over $1k on eBay, I’d sell it for a little less to someone I know.
The answer is yes, but what, pray tell, is the question?
Some people don’t get the iPod
It’s no secret that in psychological terms, humans have a tendancy to project their world view onto others. Because of this, they often have have quite distorted views of reality. I found this iPod user review to be a classic example. It seems iPod users have been giving each other “the nod”. His assumption is that because he bought his to “be cool”, that so too have all other iPod users. How absurd.
Continue reading “Some people don’t get the iPod”
Cellular And IP Telephony Update
I’m now a Sprint PCS customer for the next 12 months. Despite not having quite the plan I wanted, and despite a very limited selection of phones (which do not support bluetooth), they do have a decent nation-wide plan, as well as adequate local service in northern Michigan. Almost as important, it saved a friend a $150 contract termination fee by taking over her contract.
For my purposes, data access is as important as the cell coverage. Sprint PCS has what they call “Vision”. Vision encompasses many things such as web surfing on your phone, picture exchange, etc. The short version is simply that for $15/mo I get internet access at ISDN speeds, anywhere Sprint has vision coverage (most everywhere). This is quite cool.
Today I purchased a $23 cable at Radio Shack. I plugged the cable into the phone and the USB port on my powerbook. Right now, Jen is driving 85mph down US-131 on our way to a Third Day concert in Ypsilanti. At the same time, my cell phone is charging (via my laptops USB port) and I’m typing this blog entry on my Powerbook, connected to the internet through my Sanyo 8100 cell phone. Slick.
Oh, and one more question just got answered. I can also receive calls from telemarketers on the cell phone while connected to the Intenet.
On a related note, my Packet 8 IP phone has a useful “forwarding” feature. Instead of doing a “normal” forward like your traditional (POTS) line, it forwards the call to a number and rings in on the IP phone at the same time. Whichever phone picks up the call first gets it. Now, should you call my home phone, after I fail to answer in two rings, it rings my cell phone. Very slick. 🙂
I am fairly pleased with Packet 8 but their call quality leaves a bit to be desired. As soon as VoicePulse provides service in my area, I’ll be jumping ship. Their service costs $5 more for unlimited national calling but offers a many more useful features in addition to better call quality. If I lived in an area where I could get my number transferred to VoicePulse, I’d do it poste haste.
Oh Canada!
Hasta la vista Michigan. We’re off to Canada for a long weekend of backpacking along a couple stretches of the Lake Superior Coastal Trail. We hope you too are doing something enjoyable this weekend.
Noah arrives!
Congratulations to Jen & Eric on the safe arrival of Noah.
Noah is a healthy 8 lbs, 4.5 oz. Both Noah and Jen are doing well. Visiting hours today are 8-8 and they’ll be home tomorrow.
NicTool announcement
NicTool is a project I’ve been slightly involved with for a few years. I happened upon it while searching for a DNS management application while working for HostPro in Bellevue, back in 2001. We liked it more than the commercial DNS management suites and purchased a license for it, essentially funding development of some features we needed. After that, the founders went their seperate ways and development ceased.
I approached them earlier this year, petitioning them to allow me to Open Source the code and give away NicTool under GPL terms. They agreed so I built the new NicTool web site, made some minor enhancements to the code, and have spent a fair bit of time writing documentation for it. The initial effort is complete. The code is available, documentation exists, and NicTool now has a future.