I found an iPod Vending machine at my local mall recently:
Yep, that’s right. You can buy any of the current iPods and several accessories right at this machine with your credit card. I was actually amazed it was in a hidden corner of the mall. I figured something like that would be put out right in the middle.
I thought vending machines like that only existed in Japan. I guess we’re finally getting there. Although we have a long way to go before we even get close to the Japanese.
Maggie and I had a kinda odd moviegoing experience this weekend. We left the theater in pretty bad moods. And amazingly, it wasn’t about anyone that was in the theater watching the movie with us. It was all the theater and its staff.
We saw “Happy Feet“, a cute kids comedy about a penguin that can’t sing like he should and instead only dances. When the movie ended, we started watching the credits waiting to see the full cast. We were going through the usual “Assistant Director” and “Animator” listings when suddenly, the projector shut off and the house lights came out. Apparently, we weren’t going to see all the credits.
On our way out, I asked for the manager on duty to let them know that the credits had been cut short. The lady walks over and I tell her. And it was her response that upset Maggie and I most:
“We do that a lot. Most people don’t stay for the credits. And we also don’t want people falling in the dark.”
Not a “I’m sorry you didn’t get to see them”, but something making it sound like it’s something that happens all the time. I’ve seen a lot of movies in my time. And I generally stay for all of the credits. I have never, never had the credits cut short. For a animated kids movie, most people stay to see if there are any “bloopers”, like they had at the end of “Toy Story“. And not to mention none of our audience had left and most were shocked when the credits stopped.
If they are worried about “people falling down”, then brings the house lights up to the level during which they show the previews (oh and don’t get me started on the fact we sat through 30 minutes of previews).
I think what made me mad more than anything was the attitude of the manager, like I had made some crazy unreasonable request. Makes me wonder what has happened to customer service? I also wonder under what contractual obligation the theater might be to show everything, including the credits?
I intend to write a letter to Cinemark’s corporate office, which happens to be located here in the DFW area. I doubt it will make a difference, but it will certainly make me feel better.
Below is a video of Stephen Wiltshire, who has autism, drawing the city of Rome from memory after a 45 minute helicopter flight over the city. Oh, it was his first time to ever see it as well.
All I can say is, I really, really wish we could figure out how to tap more of the human brain. It seems like it’s got unlimited ability.
So I broke the streak yesterday since I didn’t blog. But I’ve definitely gotten the grove back. Today was a great celebration with family and friends. I’m so very thankful for my beautiful wife and son. They show me everything I need to be thankful for. Love you guys!
When Brenden first started sleeping through the night about 3 months ago, he was really good about being put down in his crib and he would go to sleep on his own. For some reason, about a month or so ago, Brenden decided this wasn’t acceptable. As soon as we put him in the crib, he would start crying at full blast. We would pick him up and console him. He quickly learned that crying = get picked up, and we fell for it.
About 3 weeks ago, Maggie was at the pediatrician’s office and asked how we could break this habit now that we’d formed it with him. And the advice we got wasn’t pleasant… “Sit in the room, don’t look at him, and let him cry to sleep…he will eventually learn that he won’t get picked up. It will probably take 3 painful nights.”
Maggie tried the first night, but wore down and sent me in to finish the job. It was painful at first. But eventually, I actually got to where I was drowning out his cries and whimpers. In fact, I almost fell asleep before he did.
We repeated this process for about 5 nights and Maggie even got to where she could outlast him. And I am happy to say that now, Brenden barely makes a fuss, if any at all, when we put him down in his crib for the night. Now to get him working on his nap times, which are still a battle zone.
With my new iMac comes a program called Comic Life which allows you to take your photos and quickly make comic book style pages with them. Here’s my first one which took a couple of minutes:
I know it’s not nearly as good as my friend’scomics, but hey, I can still try and get into the act. Now if I could only think of funny things to say.
Today, Maggie’s friend Kelli took our first official family photos, one of which we are going to use to make cutesy Christmas cards with. This will be the first year we’ve done anything like that. I guess it’s really starting to sink in how much we are a family now. Here are a couple of my favorites…we’ll see which one finally makes the cut.
I can’t believe we’ve already been back from New York for a year. It just seems like yesterday we were packing up the apartment and heading out on the road to come back to Texas. Man how times flies.
So here’s the next year back home amongst so many friends and our families. We really miss the friends we made in the New York area though. Can’t wait to seem them during our visit in December (if you can’t tell, I’m pretty excited about that).
It’s been a long time since I’ve actually gotten to play, but I really enjoy the game “World of Warcraft”. Blizzard has done a good job of making a game that appeals to both the Hard Core and Casual players (I definitely fall in the latter category). When I do get time, I can generally logon and have a good time playing for an hour or so. I’m hoping here towards the end of the year I can find a little time to get back into the game and maybe, just maybe gain a couple of levels.
But nothing sums up the hard core type players to me than this Penny-Arcade cartoon:
For those who don’t know, Penny-Arcade is an online comic that covers the gaming industry. And some fair warning if you visit the site…they can have some, shall we say, “colorful” language, as you can tell by this cartoon.
Oh, if you do like World of Warcraft and haven’t seen the World of Warcraft South Park episode titled “Make Love, Not Warcraft”, I highly recommend either buying it from the iTunes Music Store or finding it online.
You need to get up really early and your alarm clock doesn’t go off? That’s what happened to me this morning. I really needed to get up early so I could workout before work. The reason being I had a staff meeting at 11:30, leaving me no time in my day for a workout. Sadly, the alarm didn’t sound and it was a fire drill for me just to get to work on time. So I missed a workout day this week. I think the good thing here is that I’m frustrated I missed it and not just ambivalent.
Hopefully my alarm clock goes off like it should in the morning. Although it’s not a workout day, it will be the end of the week. TGIF.
Since we’ve moved back to Texas, I’ve finally got back into taking the steps (and there are still a lot of them) to finish my degree. In fact, I’ll be changing majors from Computer Science to Business Administration. Quite a drastic change, but to be honest, at this point, I just want a degree. I don’t have the time to commit to Computer Science properly, and I would like to learn more about how businesses operate.
One of the reasons I haven’t officially changed majors at school is due to my less than stellar GPA. I’ve only taken 7 classes at the university I’m attending. Due to some unfortunate circumstances one semester (I forgot the last day to drop), I have two F’s on my transcript. Those really hurt, especially when all you have is 7 classes.
Well, this semester, I’m retaking one of those classes. Making an A means a .6 increase in my GPA. Not to mention it’s a Computer Science class that covers a subject I do professionally. It has been embarrassing to have an F in that class. So I’ve been very focused on making sure I get the A this time.
Quick tangent: Back before I stopped going to college full time, my first semester as a Freshman, I had a 4.0 GPA taking 15 hours. The following semester, I had a 3.8, I got one B amongst my A’s, again taking 15 hours. So this very low GPA I have now is frustrating because I know I’m a much better student than that reflects. Final note, since returning to school, I’ve taken 2 classes and received A’s in both of them. End tangent.
So, I’ve been obsessing over my assignments and tests and what’s been most frustrating is having to keep going back to the TA and tell them they graded my assignments wrong. The professor creates assignments and gives the TA a “key”. The problem is, in this class, there is more than one way to do most everything. I’ve been very picky about having even a single point deducted on a homework, as I want to ensure I get the A. ( Oh, did I mention my school uses the +/- system as well. So 4.0 isn’t 90-100, it’s actually more like 95-100 ). Maggie has been laughing at me fighting for my points. But so far, I’ve saved at least a point, maybe two, on my final grade.
I have to keep taking time out of my work/life schedule to correct the TA. So far, I’ve had to get points back on 5 out of 8 assignments and also on the first exam (the second exam was made easier to grade because the professor made it multiple choice). Finally at last night’s class, other students brought this up to the professor, since they also have had poor grading of their assignments. He mentioned that our TA is under a heavy load this semester being the TA for 3 classes. My basic response to that is “tough”. Here’s someone who has control over what my grade in a class will be, and if I didn’t fight for my points, it could cost me a letter, or at least a minus. It almost seems like they haven’t even had this course, although I believe they are a PhD student and certainly must have.
It’s just frustrating and I wanted to vent. Thanks for reading.
On a positive note, I have calculated that I can still recover my GPA and graduate with honors. That’s more like what I’m used to as a student.
The first link starts out with building a “Music Only” smart playlist, then expands on it by building a “New and Unlistened to” list and others to get you to rate your songs, and build out more interesting lists based on those ratings.
The second link is to lists that help you find music or podcasts or videos that are eating up space that you could reclaim if you got into a pinch for disk space.
Tonight I gave my first bath to Brenden. Up until this point, Maggie had always done it. I don’t know, I was just scared of maiming the little guy. She did supervise, and the kiddo made it. We even had a little splashing fun. I’m still scared of the baby oil though. 🙂
And when I say his, I mean it. My aunt Patty runs a monogram shop and made this really cool sweatshirt for Brenden when he was born with his name and the year on it. She made him a ton of things with his name and birth date on them, including a very nice photo album.
Thanks a lot Patty!
And yes, that is his drool all over the front. The joys of teething.
About two weeks ago I ordered a new 20″ iMac Core 2 Duo with 2 GB RAM and an 256MB RAM upgrade to the video card. So I’ve since “switched” from a main Windows desktop to an iMac running OS X. Now, those that know me from back in high school will remember a time when I was a Mac Zealot. But around 1997, I got my first PC running Windows 95 and since then, a PC of some type had been my main machine. Some may remember that last year I bought a Mac Mini and had discussed the fact I figured my PC was about to become my secondary machine. Well, that didn’t happen because quite frankly, my PC was much faster at getting things done than the Mini.
Turn the clock forward a bit and Apple computers now use Intel chips and it has made an amazing difference. This iMac is faster than the Core Duo laptop I have running Windows XP and it just feels more at “home”, especially now that OS X is as responsive as Windows. I don’t know how, but Intel has found some magic wonderland to make context switching just faster than other processors.
Since I setup the Mac, I’ve been having a blast using it. In fact, you may notice a correlation to my sudden return to blogging with the purchase of the iMac. I just feel like getting more done on it. It’s such an elegant design with such a small footprint. I have tons more desk space now, and it runs much quieter and cooler than the PC did.
I have purchased Parallels, which is a VM for OS X for running other Intel bases OSes. And yes, I have installed Windows on it for the odd Windows only thing I have. Funny thing, the iMac runs Windows XP faster on Parallels than my actual PC.
Maggie is also much happier now, as I’m not stealing her 17″ iMac Core 2 Duo. Thanks for letting me try it out babe. It got me sold on knowing an iMac for my next computer was the right choice.
Coming soon, a post about the software I’m using that makes life on the Mac just fun.
For those who followed my blog through the early parts of 2005, you know that I had started a new diet and exercise regimen. Just before we moved back to Texas from New Jersey, I had lost roughly 60 pounds or so. I’m sad and embarrassed to say that after returning back home, I lost my groove and my will power. In the past year I’ve gained it all back, plus a couple of pounds. It started out small, like stopping eating right, but I was still working out. But soon even that fell to the wayside. I’ve been trying to get motivated to get “back on the wagon” as they say, but I was just too tempted by food and laziness.
I think I’ve turned a corner on that though. Last weekend, I saw a photo of me at close to my smallest during our time in Jersey. When I saw that, and what I had looked like, I found new determination to get back to what I was doing and put this weight off and finally stick to it. Even here at home with all my old cravings and distractions.
Since Monday I’ve been back on my strict 1800 calorie per day diet and I went to the gym Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday like I used to do. Now I just need to make it through the weekend and workout Saturday and Sunday and I will have put together my first full week of staying on my plan since being back home. I remember back that the first week was the hardest, and if I can do it again, I know I can get back to how I was before where I’m not even thinking about it. It will just come naturally to eat healthy and exercise.
I want to thank my wife for a) not getting too naggy about me putting all the weight back on and b) giving me encouragement this week. I’d also like to thank my co-workers for trying in the past not to tempt me with eating lunch out. I brought myself along and should have been stronger. I’d also like to thank Kevin Flemmer for trying to get me to the gym on a regular basis by being my work out buddy.
So here I go, again. This time I’m determined to make this stick for the lifetime change it needs to be.
This is a post a long time coming, like over a year ago long. For those that know me, they know I’m a huge Stephen King fan. ( I know, cue the crazy lady from Misery ) I’ve read just about every word the man has published. And that’s a lot of words.
Sometime in August of 2005, Maggie and I were checking out books at the Barnes and Noble in Union Square. She sees a poster/catalog like thing for “The New Yorker Festival“. We take it home and start flipping through it and then I notice “Oh my God! Stephen King is going to be doing things at this thing!”
So here’s my chance to get to see my favorite author do a reading and participate in a panel discussion. I jump online to get tickets. Much to my dismay, I can only get tickets to the panel discussion. I buy them and then start trying to figure out how I’m going to get into the other event, which is a reading with another author, Michael Chabon ( He wrote “Wonder Boys” ).
I start keeping my eye on Craigslist. And I get lucky, a pair of tickets comes available for face price. I’m all set. Maggie agrees to come along even though she’s had a rough day at work and I’m probably annoying her more because I’m giddy with excitement. We get to the reading and find out seats, which are at the end of the row.
While we are waiting for the event to begin, Stephen King comes walking in and stops at the end of our row to talk to someone in the aisle. He’s within reaching distance. But I stay my hand and just sit back and take in that I’m a couple of feet away from him.
Mr. Chabon goes first and reads the first chapter of his soon to be published book, “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union: A Novel“. It was quite entertaining and I’ve been looking forward to the release of that book. It was supposed to be last April, but it got pushed back a year.
Mr. King comes on stage and reads a chapter much deeper into a novel he’s just completed the rough draft of called “Lisey’s Story“, which you may notice is the book I’m currently reading. The chapter was very good and spooky, making me really want to read that book as well. And to think I wouldn’t be able to read it until this fall.
After they were both finished, a short Q&A session was conducted and I stood up and asked them who were their major influences. Funny thing, Mr. Chabon immediately said “Stephen King”.
The next day was the morning panel which included several authors who created their own worlds for their books to take place in. This was a very good panel hosted by the Fiction Editor for The New Yorker. I think the most amazing thing I learned during this was that shortly after 9/11/2001, Stephen King wrote a short story about a guy who played hooky that day from his office at the World Trade Center and afterwards the things of people he worked with started showing up in his apartment. I thought it was a brilliant story idea but amazingly, he was turned down by The New Yorker. It floored me that a writer as established as Mr. King could still get rejected.
There was a chance to get Stephen King to sign my The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower, Book 7), but the time they had scheduled to hand out the wristbands for that free event was the same time as the panel. I was bummed, but I did get to see my favorite author twice! Here’s a very shaky shot I got during the panel. I was taking this shot incognito:
His T-Shirt says “I Make Stuff Up”.
One final note as a “full disclosure”: All the book links in this post and on the right hand side where I have current and previous read include my Amazon Associate ID, which means if you buy the book using those links, I get a small cut.
During our first visit to The Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children, they let us know about a support group for families of children with Hand Differences called Hands Down. They provide learning materials, meetings, a summer picnic and 3 camps for the kids. We are just getting involved, but so far we’ve been very excited about meeting other families and seeing how others have dealt with some of the problems we will be facing.
Tonight, we had a fundraiser set with Baja Fresh. We passed out fliers to everyone we know and asked them to come by a Baja Fresh and order a meal and show the flier. For everyone that did that, Baja Fresh would donate 15% of the purchase to Hands Down. The Hands Down group had this going on at every Texas location. Our turn out wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t small either. I think the kids will be getting a decent sized donation from the Forest Lane store in Dallas. Maggie just got an email from the President of Hands Down who was at the Round Rock location and she said it was packed. That’s awesome!
I wanted to take a second and thank everyone who came out. The support is certainly appreciated. It will allow the group to continue to provide support, information and materials for all of us.
Here are a couple of shots from the night:
This is Olivia and Tyler. Both very sweet. Tyler was very excited to be there.
And this is Brenden and our friend Kelli. Brenden had a great time and was held by many people. In fact, at times I thought I wasn’t going to get my son back.
“What happened in there?” (With apologies to ABC’s The Nine)
Well, I’ll tell you what happened. I was on my way to the gym, which is located on the top floor ( the 10th ) of a parking structure in Downtown Dallas. Ironically, the only way to get there is via elevator. Very slow and sometimes not running elevators.
Since they run so slow, there a lot of people waiting to go up. An elevator finally comes and we all pile on. All 11 of us. Including the guy who has just finished his several mile run around downtown and another guy with his pizza lunch to go. On the way up, we stop at the 4th floor and let someone off. Then the doors close and we don’t move. Door Open doesn’t work. Pushing all the floor buttons doesn’t work. Yep, stuck in an elevator with 10 people. Did I mention these elevators are outdoor and don’t have any sort of temperature regulation?
We hit the emergency phone and the guy has us try a few things we’ve already tried. Then he says “I’m calling the elevator technicians, they’ll be here soon.”. There is general dismay at this in the elevator. One of the women grabs her cell phone and dials 911. They dispatch Dallas Fire and Rescue.
In the meantime, the elevator is starting to warm up. Like, fogging up any glass surface warming up. Luckily, everyone had a decent sense of humor about the situation.
Fire and Rescue arrive, but they have a hard time locating the elevator because we weren’t able to give them the address of our building. Instead, we had to give them the address of the building across the street we could see through the elevator windows.
Finally, they get up to us and pry the doors open with a crowbar. We all rush off and into air that is easily 15 degrees cooler. As I step off, the other elevator opens and is going up. I actually jump on and continue on my way to my workout. Albiet 30 minutes later. One guy asked me, “Are you sure you want to get on another elevator?” and I was like “Well, I gotta get my workout in.”
The conclusion of this story is that I ran into the elevator techs after my workout standing in front of the elevators in the gym. I asked them if they had shutdown the problem elevator and they said “yes” and I said “Good, I got stuck on it.” Then they proceeded to ask me a few questions about how it happened and then they told me the reason the elevator stuck. “A Jolly Rancher was wedged in the track. Doors wouldn’t shut, so the elevator wouldn’t release.” Good to know our sleek elevators can be brought to their knees because of some candy.
Maggie, Brenden and I will be making a visit up to the New York City area in December. We’re hoping to see a lot of friends and I of course will be making my way to the Street Meat!
We’re going to be staying in a hotel near our old neighborhood. One I walked past everyday on my way to work. That way we can easily reach our friends in both NYC and New Jersey.
Should be a lot of fun, if a bit chilly. Not to mention our first flight with the wee one. Yikes! (But I’m sure we’ll be fine)
) I’ve read just about every word the man has published. And that’s a lot of words.
” ). 
“. It was quite entertaining and I’ve been looking forward to the release of that book. It was supposed to be last April, but it got pushed back a year. 
“, which you may notice is the book I’m currently reading. The chapter was very good and spooky, making me really want to read that book as well. And to think I wouldn’t be able to read it until this fall. 
, but the time they had scheduled to hand out the wristbands for that free event was the same time as the panel. I was bummed, but I did get to see my favorite author twice! Here’s a very shaky shot I got during the panel. I was taking this shot incognito:
