Monthly Archives: June 2007

Having a blast at Universal

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babyswap.jpgJust finished our second day down at Universal in Orlando, Fl. Kids are holding up really, really well. Almost too well! They’re not tiring out before us. Yesterday we opened Universal Studios and closed it – 9am-9pm. Today we did Islands of Adventure. We only missed a couple things yesterday – Revenge of the Mummy and Jaws. Couldn’t convince Bailey to try those ones, but we did do everything else except for anything Barney related.

Today we did just about everything more than once. I think we missed Doctor Doom’s Fearfall, The Incredible Hulk Coaster, and Dueling Dragons. We hit everything else. The kids were not happy with me at all for making them walk through Poseidon’s Fury. I thought it was some mellow walking tour and it ended up being a little too intense for the kids and they ended up leaving with Val. I put on my big boy pants and finished the ride.

They must be really forward thinking down here in Orlando, check out the picture of the sign that is all over the place. I guess if you don’t like the baby you have, you can just trade it for another. What an idea!

Awesome Father’s Day

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I never saw this one coming.  I woke up on Father’s Day to heart shaped pancakes with sliced bananas and strawberries, syrup, and a glass of milk – all in bed.  Does it get much better than that?  Then we went to church, lunch, hung out with some friends, miniature golf, dinner, and then drove around looking at cars.As good as the day was, I still could not find any car that would convince me to give up my 2003 Passat.  I like the new Passat and still love the Mini Cooper, but I did drop the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord off of my short list.  Just a little too bland for me.  I was really surprised by how much the Camry went for once you added leather.  I did like a used BMW we saw for 26k, but it was a 2003 and I paid 26k for my 2003 Passat when it was new, so paying the same money 4+ years later for a used car of the same age made no sense to me.I was surprised how much I liked the Ford Fusion.  Really surprised.  I’ll need to look in to this one a little more as I was not impressed by many of the American cars at all.  Funny what a nice set of wheels and tires will do to a car.We still need to see if we fit in the Mini Cooper as a family.  It will come down to this – if I have to have the driver’s seat all the way back, that will only leave about 3 inches of leg room for the rear passenger, so that will put the Mini Cooper desire to rest.  I would really like to bring it in as a 3rd car, but I don’t have a 3rd garage or room in my driveway for a 3rd vehicle.I’m basically no further along than I was when I started. 

Leaving Infoworld and its feeds

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Infoworld wins.  I have read Infoworld for what seems like forever.  They were one of the first RSS feeds I subscribed to that embedded advertisements in the feed, which someone probably got promoted for, but it drove me crazy.  Always really disliked that.  Ranks right up there with only providing just a few lines of the article so I have to click on the link to visit the damn website and see even more ads.Even the Infoworld newsletters break up the email with ads and a link to read the rest of the article online.  Today I decided I had enough and unsubscribed from all of their newsletters and RSS feeds.  I just can’t take all the ads anymore. They win.  I quit.  I just won’t read their content any longer and will catch it from others that do not pound on me with so much advertising.I’m taking back my Inbox and feed reader. 

Safari for Windows – make sense to you?

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I still find web sites that are not 100% compatible with Safari – this blog’s editor being one of them.  I find that Firefox gives me the most chance for success while browsing the Internet, with Camino coming in a close second.  Don’t get me wrong, Safari is a nice browser and I test the WebKit nightlies often, but why introduce site compatibility issues to the Windows crowd?  Put the effort in to the Mozilla browsers and put Safari out to pasture.  Do we really need another one?  Sure, more choice is almost always a good thing, but until site developers actually write according to standards…

I’m sure it makes sense to someone at Apple but so far it is not making enough sense to me to try to displace FireFox on Windows.  I’ll keep reading until I find the answer.  Until then, flame on.

Free medical invention idea for Strep Throat

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Daycare.  Pre-School.  Elementary School.  All of them are just giant petri dishes of sickness.  Colds, chicken pox, strep throat, etc.  I don’t know about your kids, but mine really dislike getting a throat culture done to test for Strep, plus it takes too long for the result.  I know they now have a rapid test, but in our case our HMO won’t pay for it because it is only 80% accurate or some other number that I could easily make up.

So here’s the invention idea – come up with a light that changes color when you shine it on someone’s throat.  White is clear, any other color (we’ll say red) means they have Strep.  Take it a step further and give us the option of purchasing one at our local Pharmacy.  Our own immediate, personal Strep Throat detector.

Seem impossible?  That’s probably what people thought when someone came up with the idea to take your temperature in 2 seconds through your ear.  Remember what that used to be like, sitting there with that thermometer in your mouth for 1 minute? Remember back before thermometers were oral?  Yikes!

My youngest daughter would rather lie about her throat hurting than deal with the swab to the back of the throat method that is used today, plus we need more immediate results.  My oldest was tested on a Friday.  Doctors seem to go by the policy that if they don’t call you everything is fine.  So we didn’t hear anything Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, so she went to school Monday.  Late in the day Monday the doctor called to tell us the results were positive, so we had to go get her out of class because Strep is contagious. Situations like that could have been avoided.

So please take this idea, steal it, patent it, become filthy rich off of it, but we need a better solution.

Verizon Fios – 3 months later

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It was 3 months ago that I switched from Comcast high speed Internet to Verizon Fios.  Comcast wasn’t terrible, but I wanted more upstream bandwidth than the tiny 384k they provided standard.  I switched to the Verizon Fios 15/2 package, which gives me 15Mb downstream and 2Mb upstream.  I knew going in that 2Mb upstream really meant 1.8Mb but it was such a huge difference over what I had before that it really didn’t matter.

So far I can report that Fios has worked out really, really well.  Verizon was excellent to deal with every step of the way and the installation went smoothly.  The work done in my yard was barely noticeable in March, even though it was Winter.  A month ago they came back out and reseeded any areas that needed it without me making a single phone call.

Here is the result of the speed test I just took:

Download Speed: 15446 kbps (1930.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 1800 kbps (225 KB/sec transfer rate)

As you can see, Verizon is still delivering on the bandwidth rates they advertised.  Is it noticeable?  Yes.  For regular web browsing web pages load a little quicker.  Nothing huge, but a little quicker.  Downloads are a different story.  I buy a lot of music at iTunes so when I would buy a song before it would download in 30 seconds or so.  Not bad at all.  Those same songs now download in approximately 3-4 seconds.  Albums are downloading in 5 minutes or less.  I watch a bunch of video podcasts and they download in minutes.  Full screen streaming of Lost from the ABC web site (ABC is really kicking everyone’s behind when it comes to providing content) is flawless.  Even my Skype and Vonage calls (now that Vonage seems to have their stuff together again) are a little better.

For me it was the right decision and I’d make it again.  I was never a big fan of Verizon and their customer service, but my experience with Fios so far is definitely changing my opinion.