We've owned a few Dell laptops over the years. My first laptop was a Dell, and I've always held a high regard for Dell customer service from that first experience with them over a decade ago.
So what happened?
I suspect Dell just got too big and outsourced their customer service.
It was time for me to upgrade and get a new laptop, and I was pleased with the Consumer Reports ratings and with the specs and prices on the Dell website. My wife placed an order for a new laptop for my birthday two weeks before my birthday. It wasn't anything fancy or customized. It was a standard configuration laptop listed for sale on the Dell website. The delivery date was estimated to be September 25th.
Two weeks later, we're a little surprised we haven't seen any email or notification from Dell. No shipping notification. No order status update.
Late on the evening of September 25th, my wife called Dell and asked for a status update. The representative on the phone was a little incredulous and said, "The estimated delivery date is September 25th, that's today." Yes. That's the point. It's way past sunset and there aren't any delivery trucks on the street. Did it even ship yet? The customer service rep on the phone was totally useless. She couldn't even tell us if the laptop had shipped or how soon it was estimated to ship. She just kept insisting that the estimated delivery date was September 25th so we should just be patient and wait and see if it shows up.
Two WEEKS later, the Dell website STILL said the estimated delivery date was September 25th. My wife called Dell customer service again, and my jaw hit the floor when the rep did the same as the previous rep and just read the status off the screen, "the estimated delivery date is September 25th." NO SH&T SHERLOCK! WE CAN READ THAT ON THE WEBSITE! THAT WAS TWO WEEKS AGO!
Am I being unreasonable to think that if the estimated delivery date has come and gone by more than a week that the company should update the orders status and revise the estimated delivery date???
ANOTHER TWO WEEKS go by. On October 25th, the Dell website STILL said the estimated delivery date was September 25th. My wife called Dell customer service again, and the rep proceeded to tell her that one of the components on the computer that I ordered (the Solid State drive) was backordered with no estimated delivery date, and she told us that Dell would have to cancel our order and order something different for us. My wife handed the phone to me. The rep tried to sell me on a couple of other laptop models that were not as capable as the one that I ordered. So I just cancelled the order all together.
After consulting the Consumer Reports ratings again and looking at the customer reviews and prices on a few websites, I placed an order on the Best Buy website for a Toshiba laptop that was very similar to the laptop I had ordered from Dell. It shipped the next day. I had it 3 days later. It works great.
Well done Best Buy. Sadly, Dell has lost my business.
Showing posts with label shopping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shopping. Show all posts
Friday, November 6, 2015
Friday, November 29, 2013
Cold Weather Gear
Happy Black Friday everyone!
Since it's shopping season and since it's 28 degrees outside and there's ice forming on the pond behind our house, I'll tell you about the cold weather gear I used for the past two years driving in and out of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Granted, being on the bridge of a submarine presents a unique set of circumstances - namely being stationary and exposed to the elements for several hours. Someone on the bridge of some other type of surface ship would presumably be able to step inside the pilot house to get shelter from the wind, rain, and snow. Other people who brave the cold for recreational activities like skiing tend to be physically active and generate extra body heat in the process, and they can always take a break and step inside the ski lodge for some coffee or hot cocoa. When you sit or stand in one place on top of the submarine, you aren't doing any exertion to generate body heat, and there's no place to go for shelter.
Before going into the gear I've been using, I should offer a disclaimer on uniform regulations. There are some differing opinions from one boat to the next, or rather from one CO and COB to the next, on what is allowed to be worn by personnel topside when getting the boat underway and returning to port. During my JO tour on USS PROVIDENCE operating out of Groton, Connecticut, we absolutely needed good cold weather gear topside and on the bridge, and the Navy didn't sell uniform components that would adequately protect us. The philosophy on the boat was go buy yourself some good cold weather gear (more specifically - to protect your hands and face) and as long as it's solid black or navy blue, nobody would have a problem with it not being an official part of "the uniform." That philosophy made sense to me and has stuck with me ever since, much to the chagrin of some of my later COBs who were more insistent on not allowing guys topside to wear anything that wasn't 100% in compliance with the uniform regs. (Sorry, COBs, no offense intended!)
Headsok
Soon after I reported aboard USS PROVIDENCE, one of the other JOs told me to go to the mall and find the kiosk where they sell headsokz. It was absolutely essential being on an SSN operating out of Groton. We drove in and out frequently enough that I had many opportunities either as a topside supervisor or as an OOD on the bridge to put it to use. It was money very well spent. Even during my department head tour out of SAN DIEGO, I was very glad I had my headsok and gloves from my JO tour in my locker for port calls in Bangor and Esquimalt and an unexpected surfacing near the Aleutian Islands. As an XO, I used it supervising linehandlers topside getting the ship underway. As a CO, I've used it every underway and return to port in Bangor. Even returning to port in June last year, it was 50 degrees, howling wind and hailing as we drove down the Hood Canal.
Goggles
Initially I used ski goggles, but most ski goggles have some sort of shading like sunglasses to protect from the glare off the snow. It's almost always overcast in the Pacific Northwest and there's no blanket of snow on the water to reflect the ambient light under the overcast. I found that I needed something to shield my eyes from the wind, rain, hail, and snow, but I didn't like the light loss with the ski goggles. I wanted clear lenses. I tried a few models of ski goggles with clear lenses, but I just didn't like any of them.
Then it occurred to me... I said to myself, "Self, you probably need to check a store that sells motorcycle stuff." Sure enough! I stopped at the Harley Davidson shop on my way home one day and found exactly what I was looking for. However, I also suspected they had a pretty high mark-up given the name brand of the store. The goggles I wanted were $26 at the store, so I came home and searched for them on Amazon.
$6! Cha-ching! Cha-ching! SCORE! Now that I go back and look at them again, I see they raised the price, but it's still better than what they wanted at the HD store. These goggles worked GREAT. I wish I had thought of motorcycle riding goggles instead of ski goggles sooner so I could have used them from the outset.
Gloves
There are a ton of different styles of cold weather gloves out there. I ended up making a spreadsheet to compare the thickness of insulation, the type of insulation, the cost, etc. In the end, I bought the Outdoor Research Remote gloves. They were pretty expensive, but I found them to be worth the money. (Aside - the price has come down considerably since I purchased them.) They have the most insulation and are rated for the coldest temperatures, but they use the Primaloft insulation (more insulating for less thickness, but also more expensive). Now, they might be too warm for doing any sort of winter sports or outdoor activities where you're moving around and generating more body heat. However, sitting-still on top of a submarine I found my hands quickly got numb from the cold, and I needed the extra insulation. These gloves did a great job.
If you were shopping around for some good gloves, here are some other features I liked about these gloves that I would recommend looking for:
Idiot Straps. You fasten the "idiot straps" to your wrists so when you take your gloves off your hands, you don't drop or lose the gloves. They will dangle from these strap fastened to your wrists.
Loops. The big nylon-strap loops at the back of the glove make it a lot easier to pull the gloves on in the cold.
Easy-to-operate cinching cords. The Outdoor Research gloves have a pretty clever system that makes it so you can very easily cinch or uncinch the wrists of your gloves. Pull the plastic tab on one side, and it cinches them tight. Pull the plastic tab on the other side, and it uncinches them.
Nose-wipe. It might sound gross, but I was VERY glad to have this. Yes, ideally, you would pull a tissue out of your pocket and blow your nose into a tissue. There are those times when your face is uncovered and your nose starts to run, and you don't have time to dig a tissue out of your pocket before the snot goes rolling down your lip. This soft material on the back of the thumb is perfectly positioned to do a quick swipe under your nose.
Heat Packs
These sure made the long hours on the bridge more bearable. There are a dozen brands and sizes to choose from if you search for them online. The ones I've linked to below aren't particularly noteworthy as being any better than the rest, so shop around and find the best deal. I just included the link below as an example of what I am trying to describe.
These are very handy little pocket warmers though. I found they make some for feet that have a peel-away sticky pad to keep them stuck in one place inside your boots. My toes tended to get really numb after hours in the cold, but I found putting some of these warmers in my boots helped tremendously. I also put one in each palm of my hand inside my gloves, and it made the surface transit much more comfortable.
Now if I could just find what the movers did with my cold weather gear...
Since it's shopping season and since it's 28 degrees outside and there's ice forming on the pond behind our house, I'll tell you about the cold weather gear I used for the past two years driving in and out of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Before going into the gear I've been using, I should offer a disclaimer on uniform regulations. There are some differing opinions from one boat to the next, or rather from one CO and COB to the next, on what is allowed to be worn by personnel topside when getting the boat underway and returning to port. During my JO tour on USS PROVIDENCE operating out of Groton, Connecticut, we absolutely needed good cold weather gear topside and on the bridge, and the Navy didn't sell uniform components that would adequately protect us. The philosophy on the boat was go buy yourself some good cold weather gear (more specifically - to protect your hands and face) and as long as it's solid black or navy blue, nobody would have a problem with it not being an official part of "the uniform." That philosophy made sense to me and has stuck with me ever since, much to the chagrin of some of my later COBs who were more insistent on not allowing guys topside to wear anything that wasn't 100% in compliance with the uniform regs. (Sorry, COBs, no offense intended!)
Headsok
Soon after I reported aboard USS PROVIDENCE, one of the other JOs told me to go to the mall and find the kiosk where they sell headsokz. It was absolutely essential being on an SSN operating out of Groton. We drove in and out frequently enough that I had many opportunities either as a topside supervisor or as an OOD on the bridge to put it to use. It was money very well spent. Even during my department head tour out of SAN DIEGO, I was very glad I had my headsok and gloves from my JO tour in my locker for port calls in Bangor and Esquimalt and an unexpected surfacing near the Aleutian Islands. As an XO, I used it supervising linehandlers topside getting the ship underway. As a CO, I've used it every underway and return to port in Bangor. Even returning to port in June last year, it was 50 degrees, howling wind and hailing as we drove down the Hood Canal.
Goggles
Initially I used ski goggles, but most ski goggles have some sort of shading like sunglasses to protect from the glare off the snow. It's almost always overcast in the Pacific Northwest and there's no blanket of snow on the water to reflect the ambient light under the overcast. I found that I needed something to shield my eyes from the wind, rain, hail, and snow, but I didn't like the light loss with the ski goggles. I wanted clear lenses. I tried a few models of ski goggles with clear lenses, but I just didn't like any of them.
Then it occurred to me... I said to myself, "Self, you probably need to check a store that sells motorcycle stuff." Sure enough! I stopped at the Harley Davidson shop on my way home one day and found exactly what I was looking for. However, I also suspected they had a pretty high mark-up given the name brand of the store. The goggles I wanted were $26 at the store, so I came home and searched for them on Amazon.
$6! Cha-ching! Cha-ching! SCORE! Now that I go back and look at them again, I see they raised the price, but it's still better than what they wanted at the HD store. These goggles worked GREAT. I wish I had thought of motorcycle riding goggles instead of ski goggles sooner so I could have used them from the outset.
Gloves
There are a ton of different styles of cold weather gloves out there. I ended up making a spreadsheet to compare the thickness of insulation, the type of insulation, the cost, etc. In the end, I bought the Outdoor Research Remote gloves. They were pretty expensive, but I found them to be worth the money. (Aside - the price has come down considerably since I purchased them.) They have the most insulation and are rated for the coldest temperatures, but they use the Primaloft insulation (more insulating for less thickness, but also more expensive). Now, they might be too warm for doing any sort of winter sports or outdoor activities where you're moving around and generating more body heat. However, sitting-still on top of a submarine I found my hands quickly got numb from the cold, and I needed the extra insulation. These gloves did a great job.
If you were shopping around for some good gloves, here are some other features I liked about these gloves that I would recommend looking for:
Idiot Straps. You fasten the "idiot straps" to your wrists so when you take your gloves off your hands, you don't drop or lose the gloves. They will dangle from these strap fastened to your wrists.
Loops. The big nylon-strap loops at the back of the glove make it a lot easier to pull the gloves on in the cold.
Easy-to-operate cinching cords. The Outdoor Research gloves have a pretty clever system that makes it so you can very easily cinch or uncinch the wrists of your gloves. Pull the plastic tab on one side, and it cinches them tight. Pull the plastic tab on the other side, and it uncinches them.
Nose-wipe. It might sound gross, but I was VERY glad to have this. Yes, ideally, you would pull a tissue out of your pocket and blow your nose into a tissue. There are those times when your face is uncovered and your nose starts to run, and you don't have time to dig a tissue out of your pocket before the snot goes rolling down your lip. This soft material on the back of the thumb is perfectly positioned to do a quick swipe under your nose.
Heat Packs
These sure made the long hours on the bridge more bearable. There are a dozen brands and sizes to choose from if you search for them online. The ones I've linked to below aren't particularly noteworthy as being any better than the rest, so shop around and find the best deal. I just included the link below as an example of what I am trying to describe.
These are very handy little pocket warmers though. I found they make some for feet that have a peel-away sticky pad to keep them stuck in one place inside your boots. My toes tended to get really numb after hours in the cold, but I found putting some of these warmers in my boots helped tremendously. I also put one in each palm of my hand inside my gloves, and it made the surface transit much more comfortable.
Now if I could just find what the movers did with my cold weather gear...
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Keurig Shopping
Over the years, my taste in coffee has diverged from my wonderful wife's taste in coffee. I prefer more dark, bold, strong coffee (Starbucks Kenya for example) and espresso, and she prefers more regular brews like Dunkin Donuts.
We decided when we moved here to Washington that we should buy a Keurig coffee maker so we could each make our own preferred kind of coffee. In case you aren't familiar with them, a Keurig uses a small pre-packaged cup of coffee grounds and makes individual cups of coffee instead of a full pot (with the accompanying mess of coffee grounds and filters).
So there I was...
Standing in the aisle at the Navy Exchange examining the different models of Keurig coffee makers.
It was a hard choice. An old shipmate of mine happened by just then, and he and his wife recommended the smaller model (in the left on the picture) that doesn't have a reservoir. You just pour in one cup of water at the top, push start, and it makes the coffee. They warned me the ones with the reservoir have to pre-heat the water before it will make a cup. I regret that I didn't fully understand what they were trying to tell me. I did some quick research of user reviews on my Droid phone, and some people who bought the smaller one wrote that they wished they bought the bigger model with the reservoir, so I bought the second model from the left - the first one with a reservoir.
Now I understand what my friends were trying to tell me about pre-heating the water.
If I had to go back and make the decision again knowing what I know now, then I would have bought either one more model up from what I got or the smallest one that my shipmate recommended.
Here's the problem.
I wake up in the morning. I stumble out to the kitchen wiping the sleep from my eyes. I wince as my bare feet hit the cold kitchen tile. I push the power button on the Keurig, and I quick-step stagger back to the living room carpet so the angry voices in my feet will stop yelling at me, "ow, ow, ow, it's COLD!"
I wait.
Eventually, the light comes on the Keurig, signaling the water is warm and ready to begin brewing. My feet say, "No, no, no, no, nooooooo!" as I step back onto the cold tile and push the start button for it to start brewing my coffee. Then I go get in the shower and get ready for work, and the coffee is ready for me when I am ready to leave for work.
It doesn't take long to brew. It's just frustrating that it takes 2 button presses and there is a wait in between.
I now see the value of having the next model up that actually has a timer in it, so you can set it to start at a given time in the morning - NO button pushing NOR waiting NOR any angry cold feet.
My feet would be much happier if I had bought the next model up.
Okay, okay, so maybe I should wear socks.
We decided when we moved here to Washington that we should buy a Keurig coffee maker so we could each make our own preferred kind of coffee. In case you aren't familiar with them, a Keurig uses a small pre-packaged cup of coffee grounds and makes individual cups of coffee instead of a full pot (with the accompanying mess of coffee grounds and filters).
So there I was...
Standing in the aisle at the Navy Exchange examining the different models of Keurig coffee makers.
Decisions, Decisions...
It was a hard choice. An old shipmate of mine happened by just then, and he and his wife recommended the smaller model (in the left on the picture) that doesn't have a reservoir. You just pour in one cup of water at the top, push start, and it makes the coffee. They warned me the ones with the reservoir have to pre-heat the water before it will make a cup. I regret that I didn't fully understand what they were trying to tell me. I did some quick research of user reviews on my Droid phone, and some people who bought the smaller one wrote that they wished they bought the bigger model with the reservoir, so I bought the second model from the left - the first one with a reservoir.
Now I understand what my friends were trying to tell me about pre-heating the water.
If I had to go back and make the decision again knowing what I know now, then I would have bought either one more model up from what I got or the smallest one that my shipmate recommended.
Here's the problem.
I wake up in the morning. I stumble out to the kitchen wiping the sleep from my eyes. I wince as my bare feet hit the cold kitchen tile. I push the power button on the Keurig, and I quick-step stagger back to the living room carpet so the angry voices in my feet will stop yelling at me, "ow, ow, ow, it's COLD!"
I wait.
Eventually, the light comes on the Keurig, signaling the water is warm and ready to begin brewing. My feet say, "No, no, no, no, nooooooo!" as I step back onto the cold tile and push the start button for it to start brewing my coffee. Then I go get in the shower and get ready for work, and the coffee is ready for me when I am ready to leave for work.
It doesn't take long to brew. It's just frustrating that it takes 2 button presses and there is a wait in between.
I now see the value of having the next model up that actually has a timer in it, so you can set it to start at a given time in the morning - NO button pushing NOR waiting NOR any angry cold feet.
My feet would be much happier if I had bought the next model up.
Okay, okay, so maybe I should wear socks.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Paddle Log #14: Beaver Creek Reservoir
You may recall from our Monocacy River trip a few weeks ago that then-8-year old ES saw another 8-year old paddling his own kayak and decided he would like to have his own, too. I was excited about this prospect, too, because it will allow me a little more leg room in our tandem kayak than with me and both boys.
I did some research and decided on an Ocean Kayak Frenzy for ES. The reasons I chose the Frenzy were:
ES and I were both very excited to get out on the water and let him try his new kayak. At the same time, I was also cautious about going out our first time. Just like the first time we took the Malibu Two out, I wanted to go someplace with calm, flat water just to test it out, so we went back to the Beaver Creek Reservoir over off of Belmont Ridge Road.
It was HOT out, too. It started out about 77F when we arrived at the waterfront about 9 a.m. and had climbed to 90F by the time I got off the water at 1 p.m.
First, the boys and I went for a short paddle across the reservoir and back just to try out ES's new kayak. One of the selling points for ES on the Monocacy River trip was he saw the family that was with us had a tow line. When the 8-year old got tired of paddling they just hitched him up on the tow line and pulled him along. When we bought the Frenzy for ES, we also bought a tow-line, and we tested it out.
My son complained about the Frenzy being difficult to paddle and steer. I thought it was just growing pains of him getting used to paddling on his own instead of me doing most of the work. I found out later I was wrong, but I'll get to that in just a moment.
After we paddled around for a bit, saw lots of fish jumping out of the water, saw two turtles, and generally enjoyed the peace and tweeting birds in the background, we headed back in to the dock. I had my wife pick up the boys to take them home. A friend and his son wanted to try out kayaking, so I had them come down and paddle around for a bit to give it a try. After they were done, I wanted to see what the Frenzy was like.
Oh boy. (Not a good "oh boy" mind you.)
The Frenzy was a big swing-and-a-miss.
I almost immediately realized how frustrated ES must have been when he was trying to paddle. When comparing different models of kayaks, you will hear the term "tracking" used to describe a kayak's ability to stay on course or move in a straight line. Well, the Frenzy had the tracking ability of an inner tube. It required continuous effort to keep the bow pointed in the direction I wanted to go.
Our Malibu Two XL has excellent tracking. I can stop paddling, pick up my camera, take a picture, put the camera back down, pick up my paddle again, resume paddling, and all that time the kayak will have continued to glide along the same direction it was going when I put my paddle down.
Not so with the Frenzy. If I put my paddle down to take a picture, by the time I picked my camera up, the bow would have swung 90 degrees off to one side or the other. With each stroke, the bow swung wildly in the direction of the stroke.
Z. E. R. O. tracking. None. Nada. Zip. Nil.
I feel bad I didn't listen to ES when he was paddling and just chalked it up to his experience level paddling solo. After I got home, I washed off the Frenzy and took it back to EMS. The staff at EMS were very understanding. They had told me if we tried it and didn't like it that we could bring it back. We are researching a better kayak for ES now.
In spite of how difficult it was to keep on course, I did enjoy a paddle down to the southern end of the reservoir and back. I went 2.83 miles in 57 minutes. It was quite a workout though because I had to continuously paddle to keep on course. (Aside: That would also be why I only have one photograph to share from my solo paddling in the Frenzy.) On the way southbound, I was paddling into a light breeze which kept me cool. Coming back though, I was going with the direction of the wind and the air seemed stagnant around me. I was pretty overheated by the time I got back.
Stats for the paddle log:
I did some research and decided on an Ocean Kayak Frenzy for ES. The reasons I chose the Frenzy were:
- We are very pleased with our Ocean Kayak Malibu Two XL, and we also enjoyed paddling an Ocean Kayak Peekaboo while we were on vacation on the Big Island.
- The sit-on-top Ocean Kayaks are VERY stable. Even when I TRIED to flip it over, it was very hard for me to do. After I had intentionally flipped it over, it was VERY easy to flip it back upright again.
- After flipping it back upright, it was easy to climb back in and there was no bailing necessary. There are scupper holes that allow the water to drain.
- It has positive reviews on various websites like ACK and REI.
- It's a nice balance of cost and quality. It's toward the bottom end of the price range compared to other more fancy kayaks with all sorts of fishing gear and rudders and hatches and cup holders. At the other end of the spectrum, I noted negative comments in user reviews for other less expensive kayaks about poor construction and stuff breaking.
ES and I were both very excited to get out on the water and let him try his new kayak. At the same time, I was also cautious about going out our first time. Just like the first time we took the Malibu Two out, I wanted to go someplace with calm, flat water just to test it out, so we went back to the Beaver Creek Reservoir over off of Belmont Ridge Road.
It was HOT out, too. It started out about 77F when we arrived at the waterfront about 9 a.m. and had climbed to 90F by the time I got off the water at 1 p.m.
First, the boys and I went for a short paddle across the reservoir and back just to try out ES's new kayak. One of the selling points for ES on the Monocacy River trip was he saw the family that was with us had a tow line. When the 8-year old got tired of paddling they just hitched him up on the tow line and pulled him along. When we bought the Frenzy for ES, we also bought a tow-line, and we tested it out.
Testing the Tow Line
My son complained about the Frenzy being difficult to paddle and steer. I thought it was just growing pains of him getting used to paddling on his own instead of me doing most of the work. I found out later I was wrong, but I'll get to that in just a moment.
New must-have for future kayaking trips with the boys: Waterproof notepad for drawing pictures. As we enjoyed the peace and scenery along the other side of the reservoir, 6-year old YB drew pictures of what he saw. It was a great way to keep him occupied and involved today.
A VERY fitting picture for the first page of this notepad.
Turtle and a pair of dragonflies.
Happy Daddy and a tally of things YB saw today.
After we paddled around for a bit, saw lots of fish jumping out of the water, saw two turtles, and generally enjoyed the peace and tweeting birds in the background, we headed back in to the dock. I had my wife pick up the boys to take them home. A friend and his son wanted to try out kayaking, so I had them come down and paddle around for a bit to give it a try. After they were done, I wanted to see what the Frenzy was like.
Paddling in the Frenzy
Oh boy. (Not a good "oh boy" mind you.)
The Frenzy was a big swing-and-a-miss.
I almost immediately realized how frustrated ES must have been when he was trying to paddle. When comparing different models of kayaks, you will hear the term "tracking" used to describe a kayak's ability to stay on course or move in a straight line. Well, the Frenzy had the tracking ability of an inner tube. It required continuous effort to keep the bow pointed in the direction I wanted to go.
Our Malibu Two XL has excellent tracking. I can stop paddling, pick up my camera, take a picture, put the camera back down, pick up my paddle again, resume paddling, and all that time the kayak will have continued to glide along the same direction it was going when I put my paddle down.
Not so with the Frenzy. If I put my paddle down to take a picture, by the time I picked my camera up, the bow would have swung 90 degrees off to one side or the other. With each stroke, the bow swung wildly in the direction of the stroke.
Z. E. R. O. tracking. None. Nada. Zip. Nil.
I feel bad I didn't listen to ES when he was paddling and just chalked it up to his experience level paddling solo. After I got home, I washed off the Frenzy and took it back to EMS. The staff at EMS were very understanding. They had told me if we tried it and didn't like it that we could bring it back. We are researching a better kayak for ES now.
In spite of how difficult it was to keep on course, I did enjoy a paddle down to the southern end of the reservoir and back. I went 2.83 miles in 57 minutes. It was quite a workout though because I had to continuously paddle to keep on course. (Aside: That would also be why I only have one photograph to share from my solo paddling in the Frenzy.) On the way southbound, I was paddling into a light breeze which kept me cool. Coming back though, I was going with the direction of the wind and the air seemed stagnant around me. I was pretty overheated by the time I got back.
Stats for the paddle log:
Stats at the end of paddling with the boys.
- Date: 31 May 2010
- Time In with the boys: 9:30 a.m. (approx)
- Time Out with the boys: 10:30 a.m. (approx)
- Elapsed: ~58 minutes
- Moving Time (GPS): 51 minutes
Stopped Time (GPS): 17 minutes - Mileage: 1.3 miles by GPS
- Avg Speed (GPS): 1.5 mph
- Max Speed by (GPS): 3.6 mph
Stats at the end of paddling solo.
- Time In solo: noon (approx)
- Time Out solo: 1:00 p.m. (approx)
- Elapsed: 58 minutes
- Moving Time (GPS): 56 minutes
Stopped Time (GPS): 2 minutes - Mileage: 2.8 miles by GPS
- Avg Speed (GPS): 3.1 mph
- Max Speed by (GPS): 4.3 mph
- Sea State: 0
- Winds: 0-5 kts S
- Air Temp: 77F at 0900 climbing to 90F at 1300. It was fairly humid, too.
- Water Temp: 75-80F
Call me a geek, but I tried out two methods of measuring the water temperature today. The conductive thermometer said it was 80F. The infra-red thermometer I use for checking the temperature of my car engine said it was 75F. Either way, the water was pretty nice today.
- Current: none
- Gauge Height: N/A
- Rapids? None.
- Hazards? None.
- Kit: Our Ocean Kayak Malibu Two XL and paddles. Flop hat & sunglasses. NRS paddling gloves. Long sleeve shirt, swim trunks, Keen sandals.
- Configuration: I sat in the back seat, YB in the front.
- Route: With the boys, we went directly west across the reservoir and back. During my solo paddle, I went down to the southern tip of the reservoir and back again. This is the second time my Garmin Forerunner has messed up and combined different data sets. When I started the first paddle with the boys, I had most definitely reset the Forerunner and started with a trip counter of 0.0. Yet, viewing it on Garmin Connect, it combined that trip with the previous bike ride I did with YB, so the map is all screwy. I reset the Forerunner again before I started my solo paddle, and that turned out okay on Garmin Connect.
- Other comments (such as wildlife spotted):Turtles, fish jumping out of the water, dragonflies. Heard a lot of birds, but didn't see any.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Land of a Thousand Hills
Hat-tip to a friend of mine from church who introduced me to Land of a Thousand Hills coffee. The story behind the coffee is worth reading. This guy was in genocide-ravaged Rwanda and decided to help them learn to work together peacefully and productively in growing coffee.
So they've got the good cause going for them, but is the coffee any good?
Apparently the soil in Rwanda is similar to the soil in Ethiopia, so looking at other companies websites, you will see Rwanda coffee grouped in with Ethiopia and Kenya. I ordered a pound of Rwanda Blend and a pound of Rwanda Medium. I've been drinking the Rwanda Medium in the mornings all week, and it's really good. I like it a lot.
For a while there, I had regressed into a bad habit of laziness and was spending $2 every morning for coffee on my way to work. Now, I'm getting back into the good habit of setting up the coffee maker before I go to bed at night. My wonderful wife got me an awesome new thermos that conveniently fits in my backpack, so I have been using it to take my coffee in to work with me in the mornings.The price for Land of a Thousand Hills coffee is comparable to several Starbucks varieties and it's cheaper than Caribou or Kona coffee. I did a quick inventory of the price for 1 pound of whole bean coffee on the internet and found:
Kona coffee on Amazon.com - $29.99
Caribou Kenya - $16.95
Caribou Columia -$13.99
Green Mountain Ethiopian Fair Trade - $13.58
Starbucks Rwanda - $12.95
Starbucks Kenya - $11.95
Starbucks Ethiopia - $11.95
Green Mountain Our Blend - $11.32
Land of a Thousand Hills - $10.95*
Starbucks Verona - $10.95
Dunkin Donuts - $7.99
Caribou Kenya - $16.95
Caribou Columia -$13.99
Green Mountain Ethiopian Fair Trade - $13.58
Starbucks Rwanda - $12.95
Starbucks Kenya - $11.95
Starbucks Ethiopia - $11.95
Green Mountain Our Blend - $11.32
Land of a Thousand Hills - $10.95*
Starbucks Verona - $10.95
Dunkin Donuts - $7.99
Okay, yes, it's more expensive than the Dunkin Donuts coffee we normally get, but it supports a good cause and the coffee tastes good, right?
* Note: You can bring this price down to $9 per pound if you buy either a 3 or 5 pound bag.
So hey, if you would like to try some good flavorful coffee and support a good cause, you might want to give Land of a Thousand Hills a try.
Disclaimer: As always, these are MY own opinions. NOBODY PAID ME to write this.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
New Printer
Can you believe how much computer printers have advanced over the years?
It blows my mind thinking back to 1993. My wonderful and generous grandpa had bought me a new super-whamodyne 486 computer (oooooooooh, aaaaaaaaah). That fall, I passed my interview with Admiral DeMars (a.k.a. Director of Naval Reactors) and was accepted in the Nuclear Propulsion training program. When you pass your interview with Naval Reactors, you get an accession bonus. I went out and spent $2,000 of my accession bonus on an Epson ActionLaser 1500 laser printer to go with my top-o-the-line 486.
That was one of the best purchases I've ever made. I certainly got my money's worth. I still have that Epson printer and it still works like a champ. It has become harder and harder to find ink refills for it over the years, but Epson earned a great reputation with me by virtue of the 16 year old printer that's still my old-reliable printer.
A few years ago, we picked up an HP All-in-One printer that was a COLOR printer, fax machine, and scanner. It was a nice capability to have, but it had its limitations. I have my Epson connected to a print server so that any of the computers in our home network can print on the Epson. I could do that with the HP, but it would not work as a fax or scanner over the LAN. In order to use those non-printer functions, I had to actually plug the printer's USB cable into a computer.
With the advent of wonderful new capabilities like depositing checks at home using a scanner, each time we get a bunch of checks for the boys' birthdays or Christmas, I would gather up all the checks, set up a chair by the HP printer, plug my computer into the HP and sit there scanning checks to deposit.
Likewise, anytime I have scanned a piece of the boys' artwork, I carry my laptop over to the HP and plug it in so I can scan the picture.
To tell the honest truth, we didn't use the HP very often unless we really needed something printed in color. I used it more for the scanner function. Segue into a big frustration of mine with the HP: When one of the ink cartridges runs out and it displays the error message telling you to load ink, it ceases to function as a scanner or fax machine. Of course, this happened at the most inopportune moment when I really needed to scan something like an important realty document to email back to our realtor, but the HP wouldn't let me scan it because it was out of ink.
Fast forward to present day Ashburn, Virginia.
The catalyst that drove us to search for a new printer was that my wife's new computer with Vista would not recognize the old print server and old Epson printer connected to it, so she couldn't print anything.
I had heard there were printers available now that would connect wirelessly to your LAN. I hadn't really looked into it because our setup was functional and my old reliable Epson was still chugging away in the basement.
Then one day, my wife and I were in the Buy More**, and we saw the price tags on the printers. Oh my! They had some really nice looking wireless printers for about $200! The printer the salesman at the store had recommended was an Epson WorkForce 600. It's a color printer, scanner, fax machine, has a memory card reader for printing out pictures, and it's wireless!
Not one to make big purchases like that without doing some research first, I came home and checked user reviews and prices on epinions and pricegrabber. I saw positive user reviews on the web and comparable prices to what they were offering at the store, so a couple of weeks later I went back to pick one up.
When I went into the store the next time, the printer was marked down on clearance AND they gave me the military discount, so I ended up walking out of the store with my new printer for $120!!! Cha-ching! Cha-ching!
So far, I LOVE the new Epson. It was very easy to setup on each of our computers to link wirelessly and print. It's awesome to sit here in the comfort of my chair in the family room and scan and work with an image of something I just tossed in the scanner as I walked by. No more lugging my laptop over and holding it there while I plug it in to let the scanner run. My only complaint so far is that it's pretty loud when it prints. It remains to be seen if it will continue to function as a scanner if the ink runs out. We shall see. So far though, I like it.
** Speaking of the Buy More - can you believe we have to wait until MARCH for the new season of Chuck to start??? That's just cruel making us wait that long.
It blows my mind thinking back to 1993. My wonderful and generous grandpa had bought me a new super-whamodyne 486 computer (oooooooooh, aaaaaaaaah). That fall, I passed my interview with Admiral DeMars (a.k.a. Director of Naval Reactors) and was accepted in the Nuclear Propulsion training program. When you pass your interview with Naval Reactors, you get an accession bonus. I went out and spent $2,000 of my accession bonus on an Epson ActionLaser 1500 laser printer to go with my top-o-the-line 486.
That was one of the best purchases I've ever made. I certainly got my money's worth. I still have that Epson printer and it still works like a champ. It has become harder and harder to find ink refills for it over the years, but Epson earned a great reputation with me by virtue of the 16 year old printer that's still my old-reliable printer.
A few years ago, we picked up an HP All-in-One printer that was a COLOR printer, fax machine, and scanner. It was a nice capability to have, but it had its limitations. I have my Epson connected to a print server so that any of the computers in our home network can print on the Epson. I could do that with the HP, but it would not work as a fax or scanner over the LAN. In order to use those non-printer functions, I had to actually plug the printer's USB cable into a computer.
With the advent of wonderful new capabilities like depositing checks at home using a scanner, each time we get a bunch of checks for the boys' birthdays or Christmas, I would gather up all the checks, set up a chair by the HP printer, plug my computer into the HP and sit there scanning checks to deposit.
Likewise, anytime I have scanned a piece of the boys' artwork, I carry my laptop over to the HP and plug it in so I can scan the picture.
To tell the honest truth, we didn't use the HP very often unless we really needed something printed in color. I used it more for the scanner function. Segue into a big frustration of mine with the HP: When one of the ink cartridges runs out and it displays the error message telling you to load ink, it ceases to function as a scanner or fax machine. Of course, this happened at the most inopportune moment when I really needed to scan something like an important realty document to email back to our realtor, but the HP wouldn't let me scan it because it was out of ink.
Fast forward to present day Ashburn, Virginia.
The catalyst that drove us to search for a new printer was that my wife's new computer with Vista would not recognize the old print server and old Epson printer connected to it, so she couldn't print anything.
I had heard there were printers available now that would connect wirelessly to your LAN. I hadn't really looked into it because our setup was functional and my old reliable Epson was still chugging away in the basement.Then one day, my wife and I were in the Buy More**, and we saw the price tags on the printers. Oh my! They had some really nice looking wireless printers for about $200! The printer the salesman at the store had recommended was an Epson WorkForce 600. It's a color printer, scanner, fax machine, has a memory card reader for printing out pictures, and it's wireless!
Not one to make big purchases like that without doing some research first, I came home and checked user reviews and prices on epinions and pricegrabber. I saw positive user reviews on the web and comparable prices to what they were offering at the store, so a couple of weeks later I went back to pick one up.
When I went into the store the next time, the printer was marked down on clearance AND they gave me the military discount, so I ended up walking out of the store with my new printer for $120!!! Cha-ching! Cha-ching!
So far, I LOVE the new Epson. It was very easy to setup on each of our computers to link wirelessly and print. It's awesome to sit here in the comfort of my chair in the family room and scan and work with an image of something I just tossed in the scanner as I walked by. No more lugging my laptop over and holding it there while I plug it in to let the scanner run. My only complaint so far is that it's pretty loud when it prints. It remains to be seen if it will continue to function as a scanner if the ink runs out. We shall see. So far though, I like it.
** Speaking of the Buy More - can you believe we have to wait until MARCH for the new season of Chuck to start??? That's just cruel making us wait that long.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
God Bless America... and Borders
It was a busy week for us with school and extra-curricular activities all starting up again. Wednesday night was our first Cub Scout den meeting of the school year.
Taking advantage of the nice weather while it lasts, we did most of the outdoor requirements for the Bear Badge (requirement #16) - stretching, calesthenics, relay races, pushups, and two-man wrestling-type games. I was very proud of ES for not only participating in each of the activities, but also doing more than what was required. He consistently came in last in the relay races, which is to be expected from his gene pool, but he gave each of the exercises 110% and did more than what was required.
After the outdoor activities, we went inside to work on one of the other Bear Badge requirements (#3 I think):
Each boy was given a piece of paper to draw a picture of what they like most about America. ES had a hard time figuring out what to do. I tried to help him out and rattled off a whole list of ideas about what he might like most about America, and his den leader told him it could be a PLACE. Nowhere in my list of suggestions did this come up, but this is what ES drew...
Yep, that's my book-worm. It's become a lot easier to shop with him lately because he just sits in the cart and reads.
Taking advantage of the nice weather while it lasts, we did most of the outdoor requirements for the Bear Badge (requirement #16) - stretching, calesthenics, relay races, pushups, and two-man wrestling-type games. I was very proud of ES for not only participating in each of the activities, but also doing more than what was required. He consistently came in last in the relay races, which is to be expected from his gene pool, but he gave each of the exercises 110% and did more than what was required.
After the outdoor activities, we went inside to work on one of the other Bear Badge requirements (#3 I think):
What do you like most about America?
Each boy was given a piece of paper to draw a picture of what they like most about America. ES had a hard time figuring out what to do. I tried to help him out and rattled off a whole list of ideas about what he might like most about America, and his den leader told him it could be a PLACE. Nowhere in my list of suggestions did this come up, but this is what ES drew...
Yep, that's my book-worm. It's become a lot easier to shop with him lately because he just sits in the cart and reads.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Ode to my GPS Receiver
If you've been reading my blog for any period of time, then you already know this. Before we even start, for the benefit of any new readers, let me just state this right up front:
In response to a recent post of mine, David from Pearl Harbor asked how I like my GPS receiver. Short answer:
I am an electronic gadget nerd.
In response to a recent post of mine, David from Pearl Harbor asked how I like my GPS receiver. Short answer:
I LOVE MY GARMIN GPSMAP 60CSx!
I use it almost anytime I leave the house for any activity.
Driving Across Arizona
- In the car, I use it for car navigation. I bought the Garmin North America database. It does route calculations and guides you to your destination. It doesn't talk like a lot of other fancy GPS receivers do that are specifically designed for car navigation, but that's okay. It gives me a warning beep when I'm coming up on a turn, and it gives me a "turn now" beep when I am at the turn. The North America database comes with business listings, so I can search for nearby restaurants or gas stations or whatever else, and then have the GPS guide me there.
Hiking Diamond Head
- On the trail, I use it to keep track of the mileage and altitude profile of our hike, and sometimes to help me find my way back to the car. Note the "S" in 60CSx means that it has a built in barometric altimeter and magnetic compass. The altimeter gives me nice altitude profiles of our hikes like this one:
Geocaching around Beaver Creek Dam Reservoir
- Geocaching, the compass helps guide us to geocaches when we're close to the hiding spot. Without that "S" in the model number, the GPS would just tell you bearing and range to the geocache, and you would need a separate compass to figure out which way to the geocache.
Plus, this GPS receiver was built with geocaching in mind. If you download all the geocaches within a certain radius of your home or along a route you plan to drive, they will show up as little treasure chest icons on the geographic display. After you have found the geocache, you click "FOUND" and it changes the symbol from a closed treasure chest to an open treasure chest. Looking at my GPS map, I can easily tell which geocaches I have found and which I have not. Alternatively, I can delete waypoints of a certain type. So if I don't care about the geocaches I've already found and want to clean up the screen, I can delete all found geocaches and all the open treasure chest symbols will go away.
- On my bike, it easily clicks into place on my handle-bar mount. It helps me keep track of where I am, how far I've gone, and what my average and max speeds were.
- On the water, I use it both out boating and kayaking for navigation, keeping track of where I am, where I've been, and statistics like mileage, elapsed time, and average speed. When we take the boat out to our favorite cove on Lake Winnipesaukee to go swimming, there is an unmarked rock in the middle of the cove. I swam over to it with my GPS and marked it as a waypoint with a stay-clear warning radius around it, so it will beep at me if we get too close to it. Likewise, after we set the anchor, I set another radius circle warning to tell us if we're dragging the anchor.
The 60CSx is waterproof and has gaskets around the battery compartment and external cable connections. I don't think I would ever intentionally submerge it, but I have had it out in some pretty torrential downpours hiking in Hawaii, and it's gotten plenty wet out kayaking lately with no problems.
Other features: This is the Xtreme version that came out in January 2006. When they added that little "x" to the model number, they added a couple of very important features: the SiRF III chip and expandable memory.
SiRF III: The SiRF III chip is a super-sensitive receiver that enables the 60CSx to pick up very weak GPS signals bouncing off of tall city buildings or trees. The result is that I can sit here inside my house in my comfy family room chair and get a GPS fix. Or, I can get a fix under a heavy tree canopy in the summertime. Or, I can get a fix in a busy downtown city environment surrounded by tall buildings.
Expandable Memory: The x version of the 60CSx also has a microSD card slot. I put a 2GB microSD card in there, and I was able to load ALL the road maps for everything from Norfolk, VA up to Lake Winnipesaukee, NH (along with the accompanying business database for restaurants, gas stations, etc). During our drive across country last summer, I loaded it with all the maps for the west coast from Oregon down to San Diego, then most of the maps for the drive across country. (I think the microSD card was full at about Ohio or so, and I had to empty the maps and reload it with the maps for the rest of the trip.)
In summary, the Garmin 60CSx is a rugged and reliable workhorse of a GPS receiver, and I use it for just about everything I do outside the house. I would highly recommend it for anyone who likes doing outdoor activities - whether it's running, hiking, biking, geocaching, kayaking, boating, or driving your car around town.
Aside about running: I did, in fact, use this GPS for running, too. It's a little bulky and I carried it in my hand as I ran. I mainly used it for running unknown paths like the first time I ran the trails in Eleanor Lawrence Park over in Chantilly, VA. Once I was familiar with the route and the mileage, then I wouldn't continue carrying it around with me.
Click here to visit the Garmin web page for the 60 CSx specifications.
Note: Garmin didn't pay me a dime to write this blog post. These are all my own opinions from owning and using my Garmin 60CSx.
I use it almost anytime I leave the house for any activity.
Driving Across Arizona- In the car, I use it for car navigation. I bought the Garmin North America database. It does route calculations and guides you to your destination. It doesn't talk like a lot of other fancy GPS receivers do that are specifically designed for car navigation, but that's okay. It gives me a warning beep when I'm coming up on a turn, and it gives me a "turn now" beep when I am at the turn. The North America database comes with business listings, so I can search for nearby restaurants or gas stations or whatever else, and then have the GPS guide me there.
Hiking Diamond Head- On the trail, I use it to keep track of the mileage and altitude profile of our hike, and sometimes to help me find my way back to the car. Note the "S" in 60CSx means that it has a built in barometric altimeter and magnetic compass. The altimeter gives me nice altitude profiles of our hikes like this one:
Geocaching around Beaver Creek Dam Reservoir
Plus, this GPS receiver was built with geocaching in mind. If you download all the geocaches within a certain radius of your home or along a route you plan to drive, they will show up as little treasure chest icons on the geographic display. After you have found the geocache, you click "FOUND" and it changes the symbol from a closed treasure chest to an open treasure chest. Looking at my GPS map, I can easily tell which geocaches I have found and which I have not. Alternatively, I can delete waypoints of a certain type. So if I don't care about the geocaches I've already found and want to clean up the screen, I can delete all found geocaches and all the open treasure chest symbols will go away.
- On my bike, it easily clicks into place on my handle-bar mount. It helps me keep track of where I am, how far I've gone, and what my average and max speeds were.
- On the water, I use it both out boating and kayaking for navigation, keeping track of where I am, where I've been, and statistics like mileage, elapsed time, and average speed. When we take the boat out to our favorite cove on Lake Winnipesaukee to go swimming, there is an unmarked rock in the middle of the cove. I swam over to it with my GPS and marked it as a waypoint with a stay-clear warning radius around it, so it will beep at me if we get too close to it. Likewise, after we set the anchor, I set another radius circle warning to tell us if we're dragging the anchor.
The 60CSx is waterproof and has gaskets around the battery compartment and external cable connections. I don't think I would ever intentionally submerge it, but I have had it out in some pretty torrential downpours hiking in Hawaii, and it's gotten plenty wet out kayaking lately with no problems.
Other features: This is the Xtreme version that came out in January 2006. When they added that little "x" to the model number, they added a couple of very important features: the SiRF III chip and expandable memory.
SiRF III: The SiRF III chip is a super-sensitive receiver that enables the 60CSx to pick up very weak GPS signals bouncing off of tall city buildings or trees. The result is that I can sit here inside my house in my comfy family room chair and get a GPS fix. Or, I can get a fix under a heavy tree canopy in the summertime. Or, I can get a fix in a busy downtown city environment surrounded by tall buildings.
Expandable Memory: The x version of the 60CSx also has a microSD card slot. I put a 2GB microSD card in there, and I was able to load ALL the road maps for everything from Norfolk, VA up to Lake Winnipesaukee, NH (along with the accompanying business database for restaurants, gas stations, etc). During our drive across country last summer, I loaded it with all the maps for the west coast from Oregon down to San Diego, then most of the maps for the drive across country. (I think the microSD card was full at about Ohio or so, and I had to empty the maps and reload it with the maps for the rest of the trip.)
In summary, the Garmin 60CSx is a rugged and reliable workhorse of a GPS receiver, and I use it for just about everything I do outside the house. I would highly recommend it for anyone who likes doing outdoor activities - whether it's running, hiking, biking, geocaching, kayaking, boating, or driving your car around town.
Aside about running: I did, in fact, use this GPS for running, too. It's a little bulky and I carried it in my hand as I ran. I mainly used it for running unknown paths like the first time I ran the trails in Eleanor Lawrence Park over in Chantilly, VA. Once I was familiar with the route and the mileage, then I wouldn't continue carrying it around with me.
Click here to visit the Garmin web page for the 60 CSx specifications.
Note: Garmin didn't pay me a dime to write this blog post. These are all my own opinions from owning and using my Garmin 60CSx.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Happy Mother's Day
This was the day my wonderful wife became a Mom.Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula (CHOMP)
May 2001
(Can you believe ES was ever so small???)
May 2001
(Can you believe ES was ever so small???)
I hope all of the mothers in both my real llife and those who just read my blog had a wonderful Mother's Day.
My wife said for Mother's Day she wanted to make a road trip to IKEA, so yesterday we made the 45 minute drive down to Woodbridge, VA.
We got lost in IKEA. It was one of those, "Wait, didn't we already walk past those storage bins once before?" moments when I realized we had gone in a circle and never actually happened upon the exit. Luckily, just then we ran into our friends W & L. Actually, W ran into me - very literally, with his shopping cart to get my attention. :-) Thank goodness they found us. They guided us out of the wilderness light fixtures section to the cash registers and then to Fuddrucker's for lunch.
Last night my wife and I watched the movie Fireproof on DVD, and it was really good. In case you haven't heard of it: Fireproof is a Christian movie about a fireman in a struggling marriage and a 40-day love dare his dad puts him on to save his marriage. In comparison to other Hollywood type movies, okay, it wasn't a mega-blockbuster. However, for a movie put together by a church organization, I thought it was really quite good. Plus, my wife stayed awake for the entire movie! (That doesn't happen often.)Mother's Day Recap
Our boys have a tendency to come into our room at night when they have a bad dream or need a drink of water or they want their music turned back on or they can't find their stuffed animal du jour or they're too hot or they're too cold or they feel sick or they're not sleepy or they're too sleepy or there was a weird noise outside or there was a weird noise inside or they want to know if we set the DVR to record iCarly or the economy is tanking or property values are down or the pirates are being a general nuisance off the coast of Somalia or...
Anyway, rarely does a night go by that at least one if not both of them get up in the middle of the night. Sometimes it's more than once in a night.
Unfortunately for my wonderful wife, you could set a tactial nuclear weapon off in our bedroom and I wouldn't wake up, so the boys always go to my wife's side of the bed and wake her up.
Last night before bedtime, I begged the boys to PLEASE not wake my wife up in the middle of the night. Granted, I would prefer they didn't get up AT ALL in the middle of the night, but if they did, I told them to PLEASE wake me up instead of Mommy. They said ok.
Okay, so all that was a long lead-in way to tell you about our Mother's Day here at the Blunoz household.
First off, the boys kept their promise and didn't wake anybody up in the middle of the night, so my wife and I BOTH got a good night's sleep last night.
I got up with the boys and tried to convince them to come with me to Dunkin Donuts. They were more interested in playing video games, so I told them to remain quiet. I ran out and got my wife's favorite French Vanilla coffee and donuts from DD along with some roses.
The boys were super helpful and cooperative today. When I told ES it was time to get dressed for church, he said, "Okay," and saved his game and went upstairs to get dressed. I was floored.
After church, we went to one of our usual lunch spots, the Spicy Pickle, then got haircuts and went to the Leesburg outlet mall. Again, the boys were AWESOME and cooperative and didn't whine or moan or groan about shopping.
It was a gorgeous day out... 72 degrees, sunny, and early enough in the season that the bugs aren't out yet. We grilled a steak on the barbecue grill and had a very nice dinner out on the back deck. This was the first time we have eaten out on the deck since we moved into this house.
Dinner on the Deck
The "You Are Special" red plate was a tradition of my friends Chris & Cathleen that we sort of adopted, although we don't use the special plate nearly as often as we could.Again, the boys were AWESOME and didn't whine about eating their dinner or taking a bath or getting ready for bed. After I got the boys bathed and in bed, I made a run over to Maggie Moo's and got some Happy Mother's Day ice cream for my wonderful wife.
While I was there, I got some for me, too, of course. :-9
So overall, I think it was a pretty darn good day and I'm overjoyed at how good and cooperative the boys were.
I hope you had a Happy Mother's Day, Sweetie!
Saturday, March 28, 2009
BlackBerry Storm
Okay, for my fellow electronic gadget addicts out there (Eoin... Mark...). I've had my new BlackBerry Storm for two weeks now, so I figured it was time to post something about it.
I had been having problems with my BlackBerry 8830 crashing and had to do multiple wipe-the-Blackberry-clean and "restore factory defaults" resets, so we went to the Verizon store to have a look at the newer models.
Walking into the Verizon store was like taking a bath in fish guts and jumping into a pool full of great white sharks. The salesmen smelled us approaching before we even laid a smelly-fish hand on the door. I mean, seriously folks, if you're a college student taking any classes in social psychology and/or marketing and sales, then you should seriously write a term paper on the high-pressure sales tactics currently on exhibition at the Verizon Wireless store in Sterling.
One salesman immediately welcomed us and asked us to sign in. We said we were there to see about upgrading our phones, and he said he would go check our account status to determine if we were eligible for upgrades. No sooner did salesman #1 walk away then salesmen #2 swooped in for the kill welcomed us and asked if he could help us. Gee, think they work on commission?
Salesman #1 came back and was visibly annoyed that Salesman #2 was talking to us. Salesman #1 informed us that (a) I was eligible for an upgrade, (b) there was a buy-one-BlackBerry-get-one-free deal going on, and (c) my wife was eligible for an "early upgrade."* Ooooooh, tempting... LW wanted a BlackBerry, too.
It turns out Salesman #2 was actually trying to sell us on the new Verizon FiOS phone, tv, and internet service. All-in-all, it ended up being a very confusing and frustrating shopping experience because every time the Verizon Wireless salesman #1 stepped away to get an answer for us, the Verizon FiOS salesman #2 swooped into continue his pitch about how AWESOME FiOS is and what a GREAT deal he could offer us. I felt like a yo-yo...
Blackberry - FiOS - Blackberry - FiOS - Blackberry - FiOS - Blackberry - FiOS...
We eventually gave up because we were starving and couldn't make a decision on either front because neither salesman would withdraw from the battlefield and let one guy follow-through to completion of a sale. We went next door and had some dinner at Pei Wei.
At dinner we came up with a plan of attack. We decided to go back to the Verizon store and divide and conquer. My wife sacrificed herself as the chum for the FiOS salesman and kept him distracted while I looked at the Blackberry display and worked with Salesman #3 - because Salesman #1 left while we were eating dinner, so we had to start from scratch, have him look at our eligibility for upgrades, etc.
Even so, I decided to be daring and go with the Storm. It came with the SIM card that meant it was ready for international use (not that I'm planning any international travel in the immediate future, but you never know). It came with an 8GB micro-SD card. I liked the way I could view full web pages on it and turn the screen sideways to make the text wider.
Here are some of the good and bad things I've observed in my first week with the Storm:
Music.
It appears I've solved my whole Zen / iPod dilemma. I've been using my BB Storm to listen to music while I've been at the gym. It works like a champ. It loaded up all the songs I had on my hard drive, but stopped to ask me if I wanted to load the songs from Yahoo that had expired licenses. I clicked "no" and got rid of those. I created a new playlist for running on the treadmill at the gym. I'm very pleased with that so far.
Ring Tones.
You can take any song you've uploaded to the Storm and select it as your Ring Tone. Pretty cool. I'm using Peter Murphy's "Indigo Eyes" right now, not because it has any particular personal meaning for me, just because the intro riff makes a good ring-tone.
Battery life.
Battery life seems reasonable. I took it through a "test discharge" last Tuesday and totally drained it until the phone was dead as a doornail. (Aside: A "test discharge" being where you test the health of your battery by seeing just how much you can take out of it.) I took it off the charger Tuesday morning and went to the gym. Listened to music on it and read blogs on Google Reader while I was on the treadmill and elliptical machine for an hour. Used it at lunch for email. Left it "on" all day in a metal cubby-hole lock-box outside my office. That night I never put it on the charger because I crashed at Nate's place, and I used my cell phone A LOT that night for several phone calls to my wife and back and forth to the office and to my boss through the night. I think it was about half way through Wednesday when the battery finally gave up the ghost and the Storm died.
Reliability.
Four times so far this week (that I am aware of), the Storm has spontaneously crashed and commenced a rebooting process that takes about 5 minutes to get you back online again. It's particularly frustrating when you've been tapping out an email to someone or when you're trying to chat with your 7-year old son before he goes to bed because you're stuck at work. No doubt, someday I will need this as a PHONE in an EMERGENCY, then it's gonna wig-out and I'm gonna have to wait 5 minutes for it to reboot.
Vibrate mode.
For a while there, I was getting REALLY annoyed. It seemed like whenever I put the phone in the holster that it automatically shifted to vibrate mode. I don't WANT it in vibrate mode! I want it in THIS mode or THAT mode or WHATEVER mode I put it in, so STOP SHIFTING TO VIBRATE MODE!!!
I finally figured it out though. On top of the phone is a mute button (speaker icon with a slash through it). If, while the phone is in the holster, you happen to BUMP, brush, nudge, nick, push, flick, pick, knock, swipe, beat, tap, bang, or bash the phone in any manner whatsoever, then you're gonna hit that mute button. When you hit the mute button and it's in the holster, then it shifts to vibrate mode. I haven't figured out how to disable this feature yet. I HAVE missed a few phone calls this week because I had the BB Storm in the holster and it shifted to vibrate mode.
Holding the touch screen next to your face.
I keep having this odd experience. I would be talking to someone on the phone, and all of a sudden the Storm would start making weird noises in my ear like I left the phone off the hook beep-beep-beep-beep, but I could still hear the person in the background with whom I was already talking. I think I've figured this one out. While you're IN a phone call with someone, it puts up four big buttons on the screen for you to hit at random with your cheek bone while you're talking. The one I most commonly hit with my cheekbone is the "add another person to the conversation" button which I think opens up another phone line to dial somebody else, but then when I don't actually dial anybody else's phone number, it starts giving me the off-hook beep-beep-beep-beep-beep signal. ANNOYING!
I witnessed my wife have trouble with this tonight. She was talking to someone on her phone and all of a sudden heard her say, "Yes, I'm here, can you hear me?... Yes, I'm still here, can you hear me?... What the heck?!?!" Turns out another one of those buttons on the screen of the Storm is the "mute" button. While holding her phone up to her face, my wife bumped the "mute" button on the screen so that the person she was talking to could no longer hear her, and then she couldn't figure out how to UNmute it (at least not before the other person hung up).
Again, this may be growing pains. I'm learning not to hold my phone up to my face or try to hold it up to my ear with my shoulder. That doesn't work so well. Maybe my problem is that I didn't give in and buy the super whamodyne blue-tooth headset the guy was trying to sell me.
Keyboards.
This might just be that I haven't used it enough to get used to it yet, but I can't type nearly as fast on the Storm as I used to type on the 8830.
When you hold the Storm sideways, then it brings up a full QWERTY keyboard with one letter per button. One thing I like about it is that if you lightly touch your finger to the screen, it lights up a glow around the button it thinks you're about to push. In that sense, if you type slowly, you can do it accurately because you can tell whether it's sensing the right letter before you push it.
However, the buttons are small and I can NOT type accurately using this keyboard with any kind of speed. Also, it's clear that they divided the keyboard in half and biased the keys assuming whether you would be pushing them with your right versus your left thumb.
On the 8830 I used to jam out messages fast and it didn't matter what side of the keyboard a letter was on. I developed a rhythm with my thumbs alternating back and forth like you were playing some 1980's era track-and-field game. For example, if a word was predominantly on one side of the keyboard like "FACE," then I would probably hit the F and the C with my right thumb and the A and the E with my left thumb.
Yyyyyyeah, can't do that with the Storm. It assumes the keys on the left will be hit with your left thumb. Because of the angle your left thumb comes in at, it assumes if you make an error and don't hit a key square-on, then chances are you hit a little to the left of what you intended, so it biases a little bit to the right of where your thumb made contact. So, for example, if I try my old method of typing "FACE," it would show up on the screen as "GAVE" because the angle of my RIGHT thumb hitting the F and the C combined with the left-thumb bias result in it choosing one key to the right.
To make a long story short, I have to lecture my thumbs on staying on each of their OWN side of the keyboard and not hitting the other side. Also, I can't type one-handed anymore using this QWERTY keyboard.
But wait, all is NOT lost!
When you hold the Storm in the vertical position, it has a pretty cool new kind of QWERTY keyboard. It has two letters per key - (QW) - (ER) - (TY) - (UI) - (OP) being the top five keys. The buttons are a lot bigger since they have two letters per button. As you type on this keyboard, it figures out what word you want based on the combination of buttons you push. So using the same example as above, if I want to type "FACE," I type (DF) - (AS) - (CV) - (ER), and it figures out that FACE is the most likely word (only word?) that can be made from those four key strokes. In the cases where there IS more than one possible word from the keys you've pushed, then it will show both of them on the screen and let you tap on the one you wanted.
Because the keys are bigger in this vertical keyboard arrangement, it's actually designed pretty nicely to hold in your hand and do one-handed (one-thumbed) typing. I actually type faster with this keyboard than I do with the horizontal QWERTY keyboard.
Gloves.
I USED to be able to stand at the bus stop and read emails, read news, read blogs, etc on my BlackBerry 8830 while wearing gloves. I wasn't typing messages, but I could move the cursor around with the trackball and click enter to "surf" my way around things.
Not with the BB Storm. It apparently needs your actual finger to touch it. Instead of the track ball, you just slide your finger back and forth or up and down on the screen to scroll the image around... but it doesn't work with gloves on. This may be a minor thing if you're somewhere warm like San Diego or Hawaii, but if it's 27 degrees and windy out (like it was this morning here), don't plan on doing any reading on your BB while waiting for the bus unless you want to take your gloves off.
Shock Test.
Single data point. I dropped the Storm for the first time the other day. The battery cover popped off and slid across the floor, but unlike my 8830, the Storm didn't lose any of its "guts" (battery, SIM card, microSD card) and remained powered up the whole time. The few times I dropped the 8830, the battery usually popped out, then I had to wait five minutes or so while it powered up and logged into the network again.
Well, I figure this post is plenty long enough for now. I'll let you know if I have any other keen observations on the Storm as I gain experience using it.
I had been having problems with my BlackBerry 8830 crashing and had to do multiple wipe-the-Blackberry-clean and "restore factory defaults" resets, so we went to the Verizon store to have a look at the newer models.
Walking into the Verizon store was like taking a bath in fish guts and jumping into a pool full of great white sharks. The salesmen smelled us approaching before we even laid a smelly-fish hand on the door. I mean, seriously folks, if you're a college student taking any classes in social psychology and/or marketing and sales, then you should seriously write a term paper on the high-pressure sales tactics currently on exhibition at the Verizon Wireless store in Sterling.
One salesman immediately welcomed us and asked us to sign in. We said we were there to see about upgrading our phones, and he said he would go check our account status to determine if we were eligible for upgrades. No sooner did salesman #1 walk away then salesmen #2 swooped in for the kill welcomed us and asked if he could help us. Gee, think they work on commission?
Salesman #1 came back and was visibly annoyed that Salesman #2 was talking to us. Salesman #1 informed us that (a) I was eligible for an upgrade, (b) there was a buy-one-BlackBerry-get-one-free deal going on, and (c) my wife was eligible for an "early upgrade."* Ooooooh, tempting... LW wanted a BlackBerry, too.
It turns out Salesman #2 was actually trying to sell us on the new Verizon FiOS phone, tv, and internet service. All-in-all, it ended up being a very confusing and frustrating shopping experience because every time the Verizon Wireless salesman #1 stepped away to get an answer for us, the Verizon FiOS salesman #2 swooped into continue his pitch about how AWESOME FiOS is and what a GREAT deal he could offer us. I felt like a yo-yo...
Blackberry - FiOS - Blackberry - FiOS - Blackberry - FiOS - Blackberry - FiOS...
We eventually gave up because we were starving and couldn't make a decision on either front because neither salesman would withdraw from the battlefield and let one guy follow-through to completion of a sale. We went next door and had some dinner at Pei Wei.
At dinner we came up with a plan of attack. We decided to go back to the Verizon store and divide and conquer. My wife sacrificed herself as the chum for the FiOS salesman and kept him distracted while I looked at the Blackberry display and worked with Salesman #3 - because Salesman #1 left while we were eating dinner, so we had to start from scratch, have him look at our eligibility for upgrades, etc.
Curve vs. Storm
I was really torn between the BlackBerry Curve and the BlackBerry Storm. Either one would be an improvement from the 8830. The Storm sure looked like the cutting edge of technology, but I had a little fear-of-the-unknown. It was SO different from the 8830, I was pretty sure I would find some nuances that I wouldn't like about it, but I couldn't predict what they would be before buying the phone and using it for a week.Even so, I decided to be daring and go with the Storm. It came with the SIM card that meant it was ready for international use (not that I'm planning any international travel in the immediate future, but you never know). It came with an 8GB micro-SD card. I liked the way I could view full web pages on it and turn the screen sideways to make the text wider.
Here are some of the good and bad things I've observed in my first week with the Storm:
Music.
It appears I've solved my whole Zen / iPod dilemma. I've been using my BB Storm to listen to music while I've been at the gym. It works like a champ. It loaded up all the songs I had on my hard drive, but stopped to ask me if I wanted to load the songs from Yahoo that had expired licenses. I clicked "no" and got rid of those. I created a new playlist for running on the treadmill at the gym. I'm very pleased with that so far.
Ring Tones.
You can take any song you've uploaded to the Storm and select it as your Ring Tone. Pretty cool. I'm using Peter Murphy's "Indigo Eyes" right now, not because it has any particular personal meaning for me, just because the intro riff makes a good ring-tone.
Battery life.
Battery life seems reasonable. I took it through a "test discharge" last Tuesday and totally drained it until the phone was dead as a doornail. (Aside: A "test discharge" being where you test the health of your battery by seeing just how much you can take out of it.) I took it off the charger Tuesday morning and went to the gym. Listened to music on it and read blogs on Google Reader while I was on the treadmill and elliptical machine for an hour. Used it at lunch for email. Left it "on" all day in a metal cubby-hole lock-box outside my office. That night I never put it on the charger because I crashed at Nate's place, and I used my cell phone A LOT that night for several phone calls to my wife and back and forth to the office and to my boss through the night. I think it was about half way through Wednesday when the battery finally gave up the ghost and the Storm died.
Reliability.
Four times so far this week (that I am aware of), the Storm has spontaneously crashed and commenced a rebooting process that takes about 5 minutes to get you back online again. It's particularly frustrating when you've been tapping out an email to someone or when you're trying to chat with your 7-year old son before he goes to bed because you're stuck at work. No doubt, someday I will need this as a PHONE in an EMERGENCY, then it's gonna wig-out and I'm gonna have to wait 5 minutes for it to reboot.
Vibrate mode.
For a while there, I was getting REALLY annoyed. It seemed like whenever I put the phone in the holster that it automatically shifted to vibrate mode. I don't WANT it in vibrate mode! I want it in THIS mode or THAT mode or WHATEVER mode I put it in, so STOP SHIFTING TO VIBRATE MODE!!!
I finally figured it out though. On top of the phone is a mute button (speaker icon with a slash through it). If, while the phone is in the holster, you happen to BUMP, brush, nudge, nick, push, flick, pick, knock, swipe, beat, tap, bang, or bash the phone in any manner whatsoever, then you're gonna hit that mute button. When you hit the mute button and it's in the holster, then it shifts to vibrate mode. I haven't figured out how to disable this feature yet. I HAVE missed a few phone calls this week because I had the BB Storm in the holster and it shifted to vibrate mode.
Holding the touch screen next to your face.
I keep having this odd experience. I would be talking to someone on the phone, and all of a sudden the Storm would start making weird noises in my ear like I left the phone off the hook beep-beep-beep-beep, but I could still hear the person in the background with whom I was already talking. I think I've figured this one out. While you're IN a phone call with someone, it puts up four big buttons on the screen for you to hit at random with your cheek bone while you're talking. The one I most commonly hit with my cheekbone is the "add another person to the conversation" button which I think opens up another phone line to dial somebody else, but then when I don't actually dial anybody else's phone number, it starts giving me the off-hook beep-beep-beep-beep-beep signal. ANNOYING!
I witnessed my wife have trouble with this tonight. She was talking to someone on her phone and all of a sudden heard her say, "Yes, I'm here, can you hear me?... Yes, I'm still here, can you hear me?... What the heck?!?!" Turns out another one of those buttons on the screen of the Storm is the "mute" button. While holding her phone up to her face, my wife bumped the "mute" button on the screen so that the person she was talking to could no longer hear her, and then she couldn't figure out how to UNmute it (at least not before the other person hung up).
Again, this may be growing pains. I'm learning not to hold my phone up to my face or try to hold it up to my ear with my shoulder. That doesn't work so well. Maybe my problem is that I didn't give in and buy the super whamodyne blue-tooth headset the guy was trying to sell me.
Keyboards.
This might just be that I haven't used it enough to get used to it yet, but I can't type nearly as fast on the Storm as I used to type on the 8830.
When you hold the Storm sideways, then it brings up a full QWERTY keyboard with one letter per button. One thing I like about it is that if you lightly touch your finger to the screen, it lights up a glow around the button it thinks you're about to push. In that sense, if you type slowly, you can do it accurately because you can tell whether it's sensing the right letter before you push it.
However, the buttons are small and I can NOT type accurately using this keyboard with any kind of speed. Also, it's clear that they divided the keyboard in half and biased the keys assuming whether you would be pushing them with your right versus your left thumb.
On the 8830 I used to jam out messages fast and it didn't matter what side of the keyboard a letter was on. I developed a rhythm with my thumbs alternating back and forth like you were playing some 1980's era track-and-field game. For example, if a word was predominantly on one side of the keyboard like "FACE," then I would probably hit the F and the C with my right thumb and the A and the E with my left thumb.
Yyyyyyeah, can't do that with the Storm. It assumes the keys on the left will be hit with your left thumb. Because of the angle your left thumb comes in at, it assumes if you make an error and don't hit a key square-on, then chances are you hit a little to the left of what you intended, so it biases a little bit to the right of where your thumb made contact. So, for example, if I try my old method of typing "FACE," it would show up on the screen as "GAVE" because the angle of my RIGHT thumb hitting the F and the C combined with the left-thumb bias result in it choosing one key to the right.
To make a long story short, I have to lecture my thumbs on staying on each of their OWN side of the keyboard and not hitting the other side. Also, I can't type one-handed anymore using this QWERTY keyboard.
But wait, all is NOT lost!
When you hold the Storm in the vertical position, it has a pretty cool new kind of QWERTY keyboard. It has two letters per key - (QW) - (ER) - (TY) - (UI) - (OP) being the top five keys. The buttons are a lot bigger since they have two letters per button. As you type on this keyboard, it figures out what word you want based on the combination of buttons you push. So using the same example as above, if I want to type "FACE," I type (DF) - (AS) - (CV) - (ER), and it figures out that FACE is the most likely word (only word?) that can be made from those four key strokes. In the cases where there IS more than one possible word from the keys you've pushed, then it will show both of them on the screen and let you tap on the one you wanted.
Because the keys are bigger in this vertical keyboard arrangement, it's actually designed pretty nicely to hold in your hand and do one-handed (one-thumbed) typing. I actually type faster with this keyboard than I do with the horizontal QWERTY keyboard.
Gloves.
I USED to be able to stand at the bus stop and read emails, read news, read blogs, etc on my BlackBerry 8830 while wearing gloves. I wasn't typing messages, but I could move the cursor around with the trackball and click enter to "surf" my way around things.
Not with the BB Storm. It apparently needs your actual finger to touch it. Instead of the track ball, you just slide your finger back and forth or up and down on the screen to scroll the image around... but it doesn't work with gloves on. This may be a minor thing if you're somewhere warm like San Diego or Hawaii, but if it's 27 degrees and windy out (like it was this morning here), don't plan on doing any reading on your BB while waiting for the bus unless you want to take your gloves off.
Shock Test.
Single data point. I dropped the Storm for the first time the other day. The battery cover popped off and slid across the floor, but unlike my 8830, the Storm didn't lose any of its "guts" (battery, SIM card, microSD card) and remained powered up the whole time. The few times I dropped the 8830, the battery usually popped out, then I had to wait five minutes or so while it powered up and logged into the network again.
Well, I figure this post is plenty long enough for now. I'll let you know if I have any other keen observations on the Storm as I gain experience using it.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Rant: MP3 Players
Lesson Learned for those of you junior officers in the training pipeline getting ready to go out on your first boats:
Quick Tangent.
One time on my last boat, I was standing in the Control Room and tried to be funny by quoting something from Johnny Carson. All the guys in control just stared at me blankly and had no clue what I was talking about. Man I felt old.
End of Tangent.
On my first two boats, we had these crazy old things called CD players. For music, guys just brought along their own little books of CDs to listen to in the wardroom or in their stateroom.
So when I flew overseas to meet my third boat on deployment, I took my book of CDs with me.
Man, I felt like a dinosaur.
NOBODY listens to CDs anymore. At least, nobody did on the boat.
EVERYBODY had an iPod.
I didn't want to be a conformist and resisted the urge to get an iPod. After we returned from deployment, I bought a Zen V-plus mp3 player with 8GB of memory to use on subsequent underways.
It worked out great for a little while. I was using Yahoo Music Jukebox, downloading lots of songs I had never picked up on CD. I paid like $150 for an annual membership and then purchased a lot of 79 cent music downloads.
Then we left Norfolk headed for Panama, a port call in San Diego, and our eventual new homeport in Hawaii. I vowed I was going to jog at least 3 miles per day on the treadmill for the duration of the trip from Norfolk to Pearl Harbor (aside: I did it every day EXCEPT for the day we went through the Panama Canal - I was pretty happy with that).
About two weeks into the trip, I was jogging on the treadmill when all of a sudden my tunes stopped playing. I couldn't figure out why it stopped. I picked it up and looked at dark screen. It had shut itself down due to inactivity, so I pushed the power button again and waited for it to go through its boot-up sequence. I pushed play, and it flashed an error message on the screen:
Do NOT buy a Zen MP3 player.
Quick Tangent.
One time on my last boat, I was standing in the Control Room and tried to be funny by quoting something from Johnny Carson. All the guys in control just stared at me blankly and had no clue what I was talking about. Man I felt old.
End of Tangent.
On my first two boats, we had these crazy old things called CD players. For music, guys just brought along their own little books of CDs to listen to in the wardroom or in their stateroom.
So when I flew overseas to meet my third boat on deployment, I took my book of CDs with me.
Man, I felt like a dinosaur.
NOBODY listens to CDs anymore. At least, nobody did on the boat.
EVERYBODY had an iPod.
I didn't want to be a conformist and resisted the urge to get an iPod. After we returned from deployment, I bought a Zen V-plus mp3 player with 8GB of memory to use on subsequent underways.
It worked out great for a little while. I was using Yahoo Music Jukebox, downloading lots of songs I had never picked up on CD. I paid like $150 for an annual membership and then purchased a lot of 79 cent music downloads.
Then we left Norfolk headed for Panama, a port call in San Diego, and our eventual new homeport in Hawaii. I vowed I was going to jog at least 3 miles per day on the treadmill for the duration of the trip from Norfolk to Pearl Harbor (aside: I did it every day EXCEPT for the day we went through the Panama Canal - I was pretty happy with that).
About two weeks into the trip, I was jogging on the treadmill when all of a sudden my tunes stopped playing. I couldn't figure out why it stopped. I picked it up and looked at dark screen. It had shut itself down due to inactivity, so I pushed the power button again and waited for it to go through its boot-up sequence. I pushed play, and it flashed an error message on the screen:
"No license to play. Sync license from PC."
I stood there staring at the screen in confused disbelief. Then the screen went black again when it shut down due to inactivity.
Um... dude... I'm several hundred feet beneath the surface of the ocean and several hundreds of miles from shore. How the HECK am I supposed to sync this MP3 player up to verify I have a license to play it??? I'm no expert on intellectual property rights and music licensing, but what the heck did I pay 79 cents for if not for the license to play the stupid song on my MP3 player???
Plus, okay, fine, moving beyond the fact that I can't sync my MP3 player when I'm at sea, why the HECK does the thing just STOP and SHUT DOWN when it encounters this obstacle? Hello?!?! PLAY THE NEXT STUPID SONG ON THE PLAYLIST FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!! Don't just STOP and SHUT DOWN! I'm JOGGING HERE MAN!!!
So I didn't use the playlists I had created for the rest of the trip. I just stuck to playing albums that I knew I owned on CD and had burned to the MP3 player from the CD.
I made a few attempts to complain to Yahoo about it and demanded my money back, but my complaints fell on deaf ears. They never responded to any of my complaints, so I cancelled my membership there.
Fast forward to the present.
Here I am on shore duty.
Plenty of easy access to my computer and to the internet.
Syncing the Zen with the laptop was doing nothing to update the licenses. So I thought I'd start from scratch. I wiped the Zen clean and started reloading from scratch. As it loaded the Zen with the music off my hard drive, it kept popping up a message saying it was not transferring this song and that song due to no license. I said, fine, no problem, get rid of it.
So I went to the gym thinking I was all set with JUST songs that I had licenses for and would stay on my MP3 player. I made NEW playlists with just the songs that I now had loaded on the MP3 player.
It worked for about two weeks.
I was jogging on the treadmill at the PAC Annex and all of a sudden I noticed the music stopped. I picked up the Zen... dark screen. I pushed the power button again and pushed play again.
You've GOT to be kidding me.
I brought it home and synced it with the PC. Tried playing my playlist again.
I'm done.
I wanna take this Zen player out in a field like the guys in Office Space did with the printer / fax machine.
(Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox)
Now I'm wondering if I should be a lemming and buy an iPod. Like I said, EVERYBODY on the boat had an iPod, and I never heard ANYBODY complain about their licenses expiring or needing to sync their iPod with their computer during months out at sea.
If I'm wrong, please tell me. Do iPods have to call home to verify your membership is up to date and check the license data on your music???
Um... dude... I'm several hundred feet beneath the surface of the ocean and several hundreds of miles from shore. How the HECK am I supposed to sync this MP3 player up to verify I have a license to play it??? I'm no expert on intellectual property rights and music licensing, but what the heck did I pay 79 cents for if not for the license to play the stupid song on my MP3 player???
Plus, okay, fine, moving beyond the fact that I can't sync my MP3 player when I'm at sea, why the HECK does the thing just STOP and SHUT DOWN when it encounters this obstacle? Hello?!?! PLAY THE NEXT STUPID SONG ON THE PLAYLIST FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!! Don't just STOP and SHUT DOWN! I'm JOGGING HERE MAN!!!
So I didn't use the playlists I had created for the rest of the trip. I just stuck to playing albums that I knew I owned on CD and had burned to the MP3 player from the CD.
I made a few attempts to complain to Yahoo about it and demanded my money back, but my complaints fell on deaf ears. They never responded to any of my complaints, so I cancelled my membership there.
Fast forward to the present.
Here I am on shore duty.
Plenty of easy access to my computer and to the internet.
Syncing the Zen with the laptop was doing nothing to update the licenses. So I thought I'd start from scratch. I wiped the Zen clean and started reloading from scratch. As it loaded the Zen with the music off my hard drive, it kept popping up a message saying it was not transferring this song and that song due to no license. I said, fine, no problem, get rid of it.
So I went to the gym thinking I was all set with JUST songs that I had licenses for and would stay on my MP3 player. I made NEW playlists with just the songs that I now had loaded on the MP3 player.
It worked for about two weeks.
I was jogging on the treadmill at the PAC Annex and all of a sudden I noticed the music stopped. I picked up the Zen... dark screen. I pushed the power button again and pushed play again.
"No license to play. Sync license from PC."
You've GOT to be kidding me.
I brought it home and synced it with the PC. Tried playing my playlist again.
"No license to play. Sync license from PC."
I'm done.
I wanna take this Zen player out in a field like the guys in Office Space did with the printer / fax machine.
(Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox)Now I'm wondering if I should be a lemming and buy an iPod. Like I said, EVERYBODY on the boat had an iPod, and I never heard ANYBODY complain about their licenses expiring or needing to sync their iPod with their computer during months out at sea.
If I'm wrong, please tell me. Do iPods have to call home to verify your membership is up to date and check the license data on your music???
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Chuck in 3D
Flash Traffic!
I'm posting this out of my usual 7:08 reporting time in order to give you time to run to the store this weekend. I just found out that
Here's the trailer for the show:
It turns out, they're leveraging off the fact that 3D glasses are being distributed everywhere in preparation for the Super Bowl special 3D movie trailer during half-time.
So get thee to your nearest grocery store and pick up your 3D glasses for Chuck on Monday!
Monday, January 12, 2009
Follow-Up on Comfy Shoes
One reader wrote to me to ask if I would wear the Deer Stag shoes with my SDB's (Service Dress Blues) and expressed concern over the difference in appearance because of the stitching on the sides.
Answer: Yes, I totally would (and do) wear the Deer Stags with my SDBs. I don't even hesitate to wear them into important meetings with people wearing multiple stars on their collars.
Why?
First and most importatnly, it's totally allowed by the Navy uniform regulations.
Second, even if you ran into someone who didn't know the uniform regs allowed it, it's not like they would be able to tell the difference anyway. I mean, I'd have to stand up on top of the conference table and lift my pant legs for people to realize they AREN'T Bates shoes. Here, let's see if you can tell the difference. Which of these pairs of shoes are the Bates and which are the Deer Stags? (Answer at the bottom of the page)
Shoe A
Shoe B
Third, they are sooooooo comfortable. It brings me joy and puts a smile on my face to go for a walk because they feel THAT good. I've even had to run a couple of blocks in them to catch the bus once or twice.
(Answer to the recce quiz up above: Shoe A is the Deer Stags, Shoe B is the Bates)
Answer: Yes, I totally would (and do) wear the Deer Stags with my SDBs. I don't even hesitate to wear them into important meetings with people wearing multiple stars on their collars.
Why?
First and most importatnly, it's totally allowed by the Navy uniform regulations.
Article 3501.54Let's see...
Description.
a. Males. Plain toed, oxford style black, brown, or white, low quarter, lace shoe, made of smooth leather or synthetic leather. The heel shall be an outside heel 3/4 inch - 7/8 inch high with a flat sole.
- Plain toed? Check!
- Oxford style? Check!
- Black? Check!
- Low Quarter? Check!
- Laces? Check!
- Smooth leather or synthetic leather? Check!
- Outside heel 3/4 to 7/8 inch high? Check!
- Flat sole? Check!
Second, even if you ran into someone who didn't know the uniform regs allowed it, it's not like they would be able to tell the difference anyway. I mean, I'd have to stand up on top of the conference table and lift my pant legs for people to realize they AREN'T Bates shoes. Here, let's see if you can tell the difference. Which of these pairs of shoes are the Bates and which are the Deer Stags? (Answer at the bottom of the page)
Shoe A
Shoe B
Third, they are sooooooo comfortable. It brings me joy and puts a smile on my face to go for a walk because they feel THAT good. I've even had to run a couple of blocks in them to catch the bus once or twice.
(Answer to the recce quiz up above: Shoe A is the Deer Stags, Shoe B is the Bates)
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