Snow Shelter

Palm Pre Review - Part II - Software

2009-06-14T23:16:00.010-04:00

This post is taking much longer to write than I had expected. It is due, in part, to the fact that there are so many basic apps available. In an attempt to get thi completed I have decided to cover conversion in a 3rd post. I had some interesting challenges which might be helpful to others. Here I will just focus on the software specifically and how it works.

Obviously software from other developers can be added to the pre. The app store for the pre is in Beta but fairly robust. There are a few apps available now and for the first week I had seen one or two new apps appear a day. The rate of app release seems to have slowed down, but the pre existing apps have been updated. I suspect once the developer platform is release this summer there will be a large number of apps the spring up.

The pre doesn't have the developer base that the iphone has but as long as good apps get turned out who really cares if I can donwload a flashlight or iFart. In all honesty the apps the come with the pre make it fully functional. It appears that some time this summer we will see the developer platform released which should lead to an increase in available apps. Also fortunately for the pre the iPhone went through the same phase during its initial release. During that time there were many webkit apps developed that are still out there. Almost all of these apps work on the Pre as well. The one app I needed was a password keeper which is available. Coincidentally it is "the same" app I use on my Treo so I am even happier.

As the 3rd party apps have their own review capability i will dedicate this entry to the base software that comes with the pre. I am breaking these down into sections to make it easier to read parts of.

Generic interface --

I love the wallpaper welcome screen. It probably seems silly, but it is great to have a very clear palmtop in which I can bring up an application launch menu. The background image can be either a default image or something you have added (or snapped with the camera) although I haven't really played with that yet.

I probably should have mentioned this in the hardware section but the screen is split into 2 sections. The main screen is most of the face of the device. Just below the main screen is the gestures section (no snide comments form the peanut gallery :-). The gestures section is where the home button is located. One uses this section of the screen to interface with applications. There are a number of gestures that can be used. The one I use most frequently is the "back" gesture which is just a swipe (from right to left) across the home button. This brings you back to the last screen.

In e-mail, for example, it brings you from the message view to the inbox view, then if you went back again you would go to the folder view. One final swipe would bring you back to the card view where you can switch between applications. If you swipe up across the home button it will also bring you into card view from any screen (a message view for example).

Swiping down form card view will bring you into an application screen. The final gesture I will call the launch menu. In any application if you tap one finger in the gesture area and slide up it will bring the launch menu up and you can open the phone, mail, launcher, etc. This is a very smooth and easy to operate interface even if I am not doing a great job describing it. It really doesn't take long to get the hang of either.

The notification section is a great feature. When you have a new text message, e-mail, missed call, or a number of other alerts. The bottom of the main screen moves up a small amount and displays an icon that shows you what you might want to pay attention to. You can tap on the icon to get more info then tap further to read the mail, sms, etc. You can also slide the notice to the side to dismiss it. This all happens without interfering with what ever application you are currently working on. This notification system seems to be extensible as well. Pandora for example has an icon. You can listen to Pandora while you are composing an e-mail. From the e-mail compose screen you can tap the icon and give a song a thumbs up or thumbs down then go right back to editing the e-mail. I am impressed to see that the notification system seems to have an API which means other apps can use it as well.

Universal Search --

The universal search is a great feature. I find myself starting to type application names rather than paging through to find them. So popping open the keyboard and typing "we" will instantly get me to the "web" browser. It was also, coincidentally, find all my contacts that have some combination of "we" (maybe a "wendy ..." or a "william edwards" for example). The latter example is a carry over form my Treo functionality and it is a near must have feature for quickly dialing someone. I can generally dial, sms or e-mail anyone in my phone book by entering 3 or 4 letters. In addition you can add contacts (and web page book marks) to the launhcer screen. This will allow you to access contacts and web pages even quicker.

If you keep typing and there are no matches on the device itself you get an option to search google, wikipedia or a few other options. One disappointment is the "universal search" isn't so universal. The search function doesn't search in all applications. Specifically I would love to search calendar appointments. I do understand that this might clutter the screen up so even a button that says "search calendar" would be a welcomed addition.

Memos --

The memo application looks a lot better than the memo app from the treo, but I really miss some of the functionality that previously existed. I probably over used the memo app on my treo storing directions, phone numbers, lists of things to get(there is a task app which is great for this), measurements, and a bunch of other stuff. I had all of these notes in different categories and I could usually easily find a memo. The new memo application has 4 categories you can use and they are designated by color only. I suppose the idea is to eventually use some cloud note app. This would be great if they had a synergy version that plugged into google notebook, or some other app program (there is an Evernote app available but you need network access to get the data). I suppose I will have to look into this.

For now I have far to many notes and only 4 categories. Finding a specific note is a challenge. Once they are paired down this will be a great app for quick notes, like a hotel room number or a flight times. I will need to find something else for my longer term note needs.

EDIT - After writing this section I discovered that you can search your memos from the memo application. This functionality is actually even quicker than the category method I used to use (assuming you can remember what it is you are searching for :-) ). So this Memo took a big step up in functionality in my mind. I should point out that it has always been there. Maybe I would have found it earlier if I had red the Manual.

Other Apps --

The other Apps you would expect to be there are in fact there. There is a Camera app which works fine. The camera does have a flash (again I probably should have mentioned that in the hardware). I haven't tried many low light situations but it can't be worse than my treo in low light. The photo application will automatically upload pictures to facebook or flickr right now. I am guessing more services could be added. You have to put in your user info then it is just a matter of selecting the menu item and selecting upload then picking the account you have activated.

There is a calculator app which is fine for quick calculations. I would like a more advanced one, but probably don't need it. I used a scientific calculator on my treo to convert miles to meters and farenhight to celcius. I would like similar functionality. I can get the info on the web assuming I am conneted.

There is a doc and pdf viewer which seem to be okay. The screen size isn't great for pdf reading but it is the same on my ipod touch. I just don't like paging around to read the document. It seems as if the doc viewer is a viewer only. It did allow me to look at files but not edit them.

There is a YouTube interface as well as a google maps interface. It all works as expected. There doesn't appear to be a latitude app yet, but again I would expect one eventually. The location services are a big improvement to my Treo (which had none). You can get directions from google apps, geo tag photos. Other apps can use the location services as well. You get a proper warning for any app that can track your location.

I would like more features in the clock/alarm application. You can set multiple alarms and they can be of varying frequencies (Once, Daily, Weekdays, Weekends). There isn't however a stopwatch or countdown timer similar to the functionality of my iPod. Again while these features are not something I use all the time on my ipod they would come in handy for cooking, and other things.

Web Browser --

Like sports or the weather I have saved the best (or perhaps the most interesting) for last. The brower is based on the same code base (WebKit) as the iPhone, so the browser functionality is almost exactly the same form a rendering standpoint. There is no flash, but many flash sites are probably bandwidth intensive any way. I would prefer that sites move to a more mobile friendly programming model. I do like some features of the iphone browser a bit better. The iPhone gets around not being able to multi-tasking by allowing you to have multiple "tabs" or pages open in the browser application. The pre assumes you will open a new instance for each "tab" you want. Really the only problem is on the pre all of the browsers are then running at once and you can quickly run out of memory. The pre does have an initial "bookmark" or thumbnail view where you can save frequently visited pages. This has similar functionality to leaving a bunch of tabs open on a iPod.

The difference is there isn't a convenient way to get back to this view. You can eventually navigate to the screen using the back gesture to go all the way back to the first page you viewed. There is a separate software based back button to allow page navigation. The only way (it seems) to get that view quickly is to open a new instance of the browser. I would love it if the the back gesture to get me back to the thumbnail view and teh software back buttons were used for page navigation.

The browser is also the only app right now that is orientation aware. It stinks that the standard apps aren't orientation aware yet. I would expect e-mail, memo,contacts, etc. to also be orientation aware. Right now the browser seems to be the only app that will switch into landscape mode. (There does appear to be an EASTER EGG/Hack to allow you to turn orientation awareness for e-mail right now it lasts until you close the program).

One nice thing about the landscape mode is the gestures area become a page up/down area which allows you to scroll without having your fingers in the middle of the browsing area. It make it fairly easy to read and scroll at the same time. All in all the browser is great and works well. There are reports that the browser is a bit faster on the pre than on the iPhone, but I don't know how noticeable this is the the basic user.

e-Mail --

Another great improvement over the email program on my treo. The e-mail app knew about gmail and just set everything up for me. All I needed to supply was my user name and password. I can get gmail to my inbox as it arrives without using any relay server or 3rd party service to get push e-mail. I have also set up a work account which is a generic imap server. The configuration wasn't as automatic as gmail, but it was straight forward. I set this to check manually.

Reading e-mail is great. The treo didn't do great at formatting html messages. The pre is excellent at it. Deleting messages is a breeze. From the mailbox screen you can just swipe an e-mail to the left or right to delete the message. Form a message view there is a trash can. You can get a quick view of your different inboxes form the main mailbox screen. It is easy to see which accounts have new mail. You can select to "star" certain folders to make them appear at the top of the list as well. You can also select to have your inbox automatically starred or not. This would allow you to add a junkmail account that you don't want to check that often.

I have yet to figure out what "check manually" actually means. There does seem to be some automation going on. I will randomly get notifications that my work mail has new messages despite the fact that I haven't asked it to check. I am guessing that when I launch mail it checks all inboxes (or maybe all starred folders)

Calendar --

This is an amazing impementation of a calendar solution. The Synergy view really shines here and in contacts. The basic idea is that eveyone has multiple databases for names and events so why not provid eone consolidated view. So for the calendar application i provide my gmail and facebook username and password and the calendar app goes and gets my events. It keep s a copy on the pre for access while I am not on a network and changes are uploaded every 15 minutes or so. One can for a sync form the options menu. The great thing is it make it very easy to operate multiple calendars.

I now have 3 google calendars that I operate. A work account where I put all my work events, my plan is to eventually share this with colleagues. This calendar I can share so people can only see that I am busy but no details about events. I operate a personal calendar, which isn't getting much use now and I may scrap. Finally I have a family calendar which has most of my out of work events (social gatherings, trips, etc.). The Synergy view make it easy to enter appointments and move them around. I can have something in one calendar and very quickly move it to another.

The facebook integration is similar. You can't change events but it will poll events you have accepted and show them to you in the calendar view as well. From any overview screen you have the ability select which calendars you want to see.

Contacts --

The final application is the contacts database. As this is a phone PDA I would say this is probably one of the most important "applications" for a business user. The synergy funcationality helps you out here also. The address book pulls contacts form the different sources you select (Exchange, Google, Palm Profile, and Facebook are the intial ones). I am using Palm profile, Google and Facebook. The synergy functionality allows contacts to exist in multiple places but have one view. Youc an force records apart, and join others it seems to join by name so this is a good feature to have if you know multiple people with he same name.

I actually keep my main address book in google. I had an interesting time converting form the palm desktop to google which I will cover in another post. However, now that the google address book is set everything is working well. If a person has a profile picture in google or facebook it will actually use that as the pictures for their address entry which is nice. It looks like you can choose the facebook picture, google picture or your own picture (form the camera or uploaded separately)

You can assign certain numbers to character on the keyboard. So holding down "h" from main screen will automatically call my house. You can also put any contact as a launcher so they are quicker to dial. All in all getting a hold of someone is fairly quick. The only major frustration is that to do most of this you need to have the keyboard popped out. I would love to have a quick dialing method without popping out the keyboard.

Palm Pre Review - Part I - Hardware

2009-06-11T15:54:00.009-04:00

So I received my Palm Pre on Monday and I have had about a week to get used to the new device and play around with it. I will say in general I am very pleased. It is a very worthy upgrade form my older Treo 700p. I will split this up into two reviews to make it a bit easier to read. Hardware first as this is an easier topic to cover.

Hardware

Palm got the hardware right this time and it has been a long time in coming! The pre includes bluetooth, Wifi, a real head phone jack (bye bye, silly head phone adapter which I hated). The Wifi quickly discovered my home network and let me log in through the secure connection. I haven't tested a public wifi service yet but it should work fine. A final test would be a hotel/private network, one that requires you to go to a web page and accept their terms and conditions. I also haven't tested the bluetooth connection. I have read that it supports a number of profiles (wireless headset, hands free, etc.) which if it works will be an improvement over the Treo which was very limited.

The first thing I noticed about the pre is that it is small. It is about half as thick as my older Treo the same width and a bit shorter. If I line the pre up with the top of the Treo I can read the last 2 rows of keys on the Treo keyboard. The pre exterior is a glossy plastic which seems to be a fingerprint magnet. The fingerprints don't interfere with the screen view but I have found myself constantly wiping the pre down. Fortunately the suede case it comes with also does a fair job at wiping the pre down. A positive and negative feature of the included case is that it is grippy, which means it won't slip out of your pocket (or off a flat surface like the dash of your car). Of course trying to fish it out of a pocket quickly is a challenge. I think a bluetooth headset would be a plus here.

The shape of the pre is a bit odd. It is fairly symmetrical, except for the speaker at the top and home button bottom center center. I sometimes find that I am holding the pre upside down when I first pick it up. I will probably get use to the look but the speaker and "home" button make it tough to immediately determine the top/bottom.

The home button doesn't appear to turn the device on, which will take some getting use to. It may be that I am used to using the button on my iPod Touch, or just that the home button is the first thing you see when you pick it up. It would be nice if this button activated the device. Since the button is raised above the face of the screen there may be a concern that you could inadvertently turn the pre on with the home button. I have had a few friends ask to see the pre and they have all tried to turn it on with the home button. I find the most common method I use to turn the screen on is sliding the screen up to expose the keyboard.

Alternately to turn the screen on you can press the power button on the top right of the case. I have found that pressing the power button with the keyboard exposed is a bit challenging. Not usually an issue unless the pre shuts it self down due to inactivity. While it is extended the back of the screen is another fingerprint collection point. There is a silence switch right next to the power button similar to the Treo which is great for meetings, movies, etc.

The pre is a bit smaller than my iPod touch but again this isn't necessarily a bad thing. The screen is smaller, this is most noticeable in the web browswer, however, the smaller device makes it muct easier to hold and carry. The pre is very comfortable in one hand. I find one hand operation of my ipod, especially for typing, difficult. Typing on the pre keyboard is fine. Again the keyboard is a bit smaller than the treo but they keys are soft which is a nice touch. my thumbs are big enough that I couldn't use them for the treo keyboard either. I generally used my thumbnails. I found after an e-mail or two my thumbnails would be sore. Not to mention that my nails would slip off the treo keys. I find my thumbs to be useless for my touch keyboard and I hunt and peck with my index finger. The soft keys are easy on the thumb nails and prevent slipping. I can type much faster on the pre than on my ipod. I also find myself making far fewer errors on the pre than on the ipod keyboard.

The only small annoyance is a few keys have changed. The changes all seem to be for the better, however, after 4+ years of the treo key placement I have to get use to the new "@" location. Oh and shift is no longer required for "@" or "," (but 0 requires the number key). Once I get used to the new layout I will like it.

Another hardware win from viewpoint is the inclusion of an industry standard connection. The pre had a micro USB port for connecting to the computer and charging. I really can't stand any device that has it's own proprietary connection. Standards based interfaces are the only way to go.

It did take me a but to discover where the micro USB port was located. I find that the port cover, while nice, is difficult to get off (at first I though I was going to break something). I have to slide the phone open to get my thumbnail under it enough to flick it out. The cover has gotten easier to get off over time. I have a touchstone charger on order (maybe another review) which should allow me to eliminate the need to access the USB port on a daily basis.

I have mentioned the screen sliding to expose the keyboard. This operation is smooth and quick. It isn't so quick that I feel the device will jump out of my hand. but you know when it is open and when it is closed. There are also external volume buttons that allow you to turn the ringer volume up and down. Or the speaker (call, or music) volume when you are on a call.

Finally I have only used the camera twice and the pictures seem to be good. Time will tell how the camera responds to different situations, low light, landscapes etc. But it is a camera on the back of my phone so I don't plan on taking portraits with it. I generally use the camera to update facebook, or this blog with silly snapshots. I have to believe it will be as good or better than my treo camera.

The Software segment should follow in a few days.

EDIT - 06/18/2009 I forgot to include a section on battery life. I guess forgetting to include it should be a good sign. It seems like I will get about a day out of my pre under moderate use. That probably doesn't sounds good, but in honesty I think that is a fair expectation. I am not using the pre in a battery friendly mode. I have Gmail set to get e-mail "as it arrives" so this could be a large factor in battery power. I have location services on, again more battery, I stay logged into google chat, which keeps a connection to the chat servers going all the time. I do have bluetooth turned off, so I probably get some time back there. You name it I am probably using it to drain my battery... so in the long run i don't think a full day is so bad. I am sure if I needed to save battery I could turn off location, chat, e-mail, and more.. but where would the fun in that be :-)

Wii Web - So close yet so Far

2008-09-13T19:38:00.001-04:00

So I downloaded the web browser for the Wii. I was honestly pretty
excited. I have always wanted to have a PC attached to my tv and sound
system but it never seemed worth it to go out and buy a whole computer to
do this. Not to mention the negative of having a new 300 watt space heater
in my living room.

There are only really a few things I want to be able to do with this
system. Almost all of them revolve around surfing the web:

1. A quick view of imdb for times when the person on TV or in the movie
looks really familiar.

2. A lot ofTV shows are on line now so being able to watch a show that I
forgot to DVR or something that I'm just not that interested in is very
interesting to me.

3. Being able to play my MP3 collection through my tuner without a bunch
of hardware would be awesome!

4. Being able to view or listen to other media that requires a browser.
For example: we are members or Red Sox Nation which gets us acess to mlb
gameday audio. There are times when we would love to be able to listen to
the game.

So when I saw that there was a browser for the Wii I thought it would be
able to provide a sloution to a number of my desires.

However, I quickly discovered that really this browser isn't an optimal
platform. Most of the sites I wanted to use required plugins that weren't
available for the Wii. Imdb was really the only site that worked well.
Everything else just got me blank pages with plugin not available. So if
Nintendo and the plug-in community is listening... Develop some plugins
there are probably millions of people out there running into the same
issues I am and I am sure they would use the browser more if multi-media
was an option.

So what now? Well I am formulating an idea that may work. Sun has just
released XVM server so I am thinking I can stand up a Solaris 10 guest on
my home computer and use SunRay software to get my desktop to a sunray
(using RDP) at my TV. This should meet my needs well and all I need to
pick up is a SunRay. I might even be able to find a cheap used on Ebay.
Not that thay are expensive to begin with. And since they are low wattage
and have no fans I don't have to worry about the pwer and fan noise!

Now all I need is free time to set this all up :-)

The Bottom of Waimoku Falls

2008-08-17T19:01:00.003-04:00

On our recent trip to Maui I was able to convince Mary to go on another hike with me. Fortunately for me she is always willing to go (at least she hasn't said no yet). I love getting to places that require a little bit of work. Partially because I feel rewarded once I have gotten somewhere. Additionally, going to places that require a bit of work usually weeds out the casual tourist.

I am happy to report that this hike (even though it wasn't nearly has arduous as our Pu'u O'o hike 2 years ago) was very rewarding. At the end of the Pipiwai Trail is a wonderful waterfall. We visited during the dry season so there was only a little water in the pool below. This made the falls and the pool approachable. There were a few people swimming and enjoying the massage from the plummeting water.

This is a great place to visit if you are in Hana for more than a day trip. We stayed at the Hana Kai Maui which was a great place. The hotel is right on the water and it totally has a remote tropic feel. There is a more upscale hotel in town too.

Lava Ocean Entry

2008-07-27T22:30:00.003-04:00

This is one of my best/favorite pictures from our night at the lava ocean entry near the end of Route 130 (Kalapana). The light show was amazing. Aside from the lava which you see here we were treated to a couple of lightning flashes in the steam as well.

We were much closer to the lava this time than we were on our Honeymoon in 2004.

Hawaii.... Again!

2008-07-20T21:26:00.003-04:00

We just got back from another visit to our favorite place. I have quite a few pictures but they are probably going to take a while to convert to jpg (I took a lot of RAW images) and a few have to be messed with.

Above is a early morning view of the Haleakala "Crater". There were some amazing colors to view here. We were joined by a few friends for the second week. It was a fun to show them around our favorite island and have some new experiences too. The ocean entry from the TEB vent was very active just outside Volcanoes National Park. We were treated to an amazing evening fireworks show. It looks like a few of my pictures turned out decent despite the lack of a tripod. I totally wish Troy was there with his high powered Digital SLR...... Maybe next time.

I will post more photos as they are ready....

Corn Hole Video Game

2008-05-22T17:25:00.000-04:00

That's right a corn hole video game at a bar here in Houston, TX. Golden
Tee watch out. People will be dropping golf and darts like hot potatos in
order to play a round or corn hole. You heard it here first. The
nightlife scene is changing for the better.

Traveling Tribute to Victums of Terrorism

2008-04-28T13:07:00.006-04:00

A week or so ago I was on my way over Plymouth Meeting and I drove past this very impressive display of American flags. I figured it was a tribute to troops who had lost their lives over seas. But it seemed a bit early for a Memorial Day type display (not to say that we shouldn't remember and honor our troops every day). In any event I made a mental note to try and return before the display was dismantled. I figured with the spring trees blooming and the few nice days forcasted it was be a good opportunity to take some pictures.

Fortunately Mary and I had to make a couple trips to the tile place so we ended up driving by with a plan to stop and take a look at the display. As it turns out the monument is a tribute to victims of terrorism since the 1983 US Embassy Bombing in Beirut. There are a huge number of flags in the display. It was impossible to get a vantage point to see all of the flags.

I think I like the black and white version of the picture I have above, but the original reason I stopped was because the colors were so impressive. So here is a color image as well. I think I have to adjust the colors a bit to make the sky bluer.

I haven't been by in over a week so I don't know if the display is still there. If it is still there or if you happen to read about it in your local paper it is definitely worth stopping and taking a few minutes to remember those who have lost their lives to terrorism.

counter tops

2008-04-01T19:33:00.002-04:00

Our little kicthen project is comming along. We had the counter tops installed today and the kitchen is looking much more finished. Should have the plumbing tomorrow. Then all we have to do is pick out tile... oh and the floor. The kitchen looks one thousand time better than it did when we started. I will have to post before and after pictures when it is all done.

In a semi-related vein.... I can't believe that i took these pictures from my Treo. I mean sure they are something I would print out and frame. However, the pictures are much better than I would imagine a camera phone would take.

Following the president

2008-03-11T19:11:00.002-04:00

So I followed the President around the country today. This morning Mary
and I went on a tour of the White House with some people Mary works with
and a family from Germany. The tour was fun. There was quite a lot
involved with getting into the white house. Including not having any bags
or cameras. And there was a surprisingly few number of rooms available to
see. But the self guided tour was interesting and definitely worth the
short amount of time that it took.

So as we were exiting the Whitehouse we watched Marine 1 take off. A few
of the people in our group saw GW actually boarding the chopper. Sort of
interesting to see but really nothing too exciting.

until of course I land in Nashville and find out that just before I touched
down the airspace had been closed due to the President landing.....

I sure hope he isn't headed to Philly tomorrow night because then I'm sure
my name would make it to the top of all kinds of watch lists :-)

Curling at the Dykes

2008-02-15T13:19:00.006-05:00

So this past weekend I gathered a couple of guys frm the club together (well really Eric did the gathering) and went up to the Francis Dykes Men's 5 & Under Bonspiel. We didn't go up with high expectations. Our plan was simple:

1. Have Fun!
2. Try and stay close in every game
3. Get some experience under our belts
4. Win a game if we could

I have to say we were fairly successful in all of our endeavors. Of course we had fun. Of the 3 Philly teams in attendance we were the least experienced so we had the least to loose. Also for many on the team it was teh first away event so we were just looking to meet people and have a good time. Item number one... done.

I felt like we held our own in every game we palyed. The first team we played was very good, and ended up running away with the game, but we really didn't give up very big ends and while the score was high by the end of the game we all curled well. The game would have been much different if I could have made a few keys shots. But I just couldn't execute, which was a shame, but we didn't want to compete in the first event anyhow :-)

The second game was a game we could have won. The other team was good, but I made the mistake of underestimating the team's ability based on their front end. That lead us to not put up some guards early on. Our opponents vice was very good a take outs and seemed to hit every stone near exactly where he needed to. That combined with my continued inability to make a few key shots saw us off to an early deficit. Towards the middle of the match we were down 5-1 and our opponents were sitting 4. Ends like this (especially at our level are tough to come back from. We can generally take a point or two, but getting 3 or 4 especially late in the game is difficult. To make things even more interesting the front was well guarded. There was only really one shot for me to make. I just had to wing a stone down and hopefully knock one or two out and maybe out count a few more.

So I slid down to the hack and lined up for the shot. I let the stone go and just hopped I didn't get caught up on one of the front guards. Amazingly I cleared all of the guards and hit everything in just the right order (fortunately we had the hammer). Suddenly I instead of being down 9-1 we were only down 5-2 and with a few ends left we had time to mount a comeback. We stole one in the next end and suddenly we were only down by 2. The details of the rest of the game are a bit fuzzy. But we kept it close. We ended up eking out a defeat, but were all very happy with our performance.

Finally we arrive at Saturday morning. Thins seemed like they were falling into place. We had curled well the night before (especially in the last half of the game) we were curling in Albany, which our club is modeled after, which makes it feel like home. So we started out really well. We kept winning end after end. We had a very good lead built up going into the 5th end. Then I got a little off the game plan and fouled some things up. That combined with another missed shot by yours truly left out opponents sitting 5. In this end the gaurded up the front well and had some points counting. I just needed to draw and cut them down to maybe 2 points, if I was lucky (or good, but lets face it I'm not good yet) I could have out drew them and maybe even come away with a point. But instead I was wide and ended up one of their guards. Unfortunately my weight was perfect and I ended up knocking another of their stones into the rings. So now instead of being up by 7 we were only up by 2. It was a very bad feeling. But I had to make sure that we didn't let it get to us. We still had a game to pull out.

It came down to the last end and we were up by 2 or 3 points. We had a nice house set up. The middle was open and we had 2 guarded stones on either side of the 4 foot about the T-Line depth. It would be very hard for our opponents to come away with enough points for a victory. The opposing vice managed to sneak a stone onto the button and I was ready to call a guard to conceded the end in favor of winning the game. Then our vice reminded me that if I successfully removed this stone the other team would not have enough stones to win. The down side didn't seem to bad either. At worst I would hang up on a guard of ours and block the whole maybe tap some stuff around. But it would still be hard for the other team to get 3. Again things fell into place and I managed to take the stone out leaving us sitting 3 and making it near impossible for the opponent to win. The skip conceded the game and we had walked away with our first victory (and my first victory outside Philadelphia).

I would love to be able to report that we won our next four games (which we would have had to 2 to win the 3rd event. But alas out winning streak stopped at one.

In the end it is safe to say we all had a great time and we accomplished all of our goals. I hope the team wants to get back together next year. We should have an even better time.

Reconnecting

2008-02-05T02:00:00.001-05:00

A few months a go some dear friends of mine set of on an amazing adventure. Rachel and Sudhir planned to visit Nepal (Sudhir's home) so Rachel could spend some real time with her new family. During their trip they kept an amazing blog which you should really check out. If you don't have the time or patients to read about the trip at least look at the pictures. However I suggest you read the stories as well. R&S had an amazing trip and the blog is very well written.

Upon returning to the US R&S settled on the left coast, a pretty major change from Somerville, near Cambridge, where they met. Of course since I no longer love in Boston I really shouldn't have much to complain about it isn't like I get to see these guys all that often any how. But Boston is just so much closer. When Neeraj was living in San Diego it was alwasy difficult to communicate. Of course e-mail works great, but phone calls are tough. The 3 hour time difference is really just enough off that schedules are strange. Usually when I am thinking of friends it is to early to give them a call because they would be at work. And by the time I am ready for bed they are probably eating dinner.

Anyhow, R&S got to San Francisco on the 4th or so of January and have since been looking for a place to live and employment and all the things you need to do when you move to a new place. How delighted was I when I found out I would be in the Bay area for a few days in earl February! I sent Rachel an e-mail to let her know of my plans hoping that our schedules would match up and fortunately they did. I was able to arrive early enough the day before my meetings to meet up and catch up on life.

I made my way to their new apartment which is in a very nice part of the city. They live sort of towards the top of a hill in a larger apartment building. The street they are on dead ends at their building and someone in the area has done an amazing landscaping job at the end of the street. Walking through the garden to the building is enjoyable and sets this place apart from mot other locations.

of course Rachel and Sudhir's apartment was still awaiting furniture, but they have a great place. It is very open and inviting floor plan and they have a balcony that looks out over to garden/entrance. I am sure they will make it an even better place to visit once it is furnished.

We decided to head to dinner and we choose a BBQ place Memphis Minnie's. The web site looked interesting and the food sounded great. After a bit of an adventure getting there. The bus had to let us off a few blocks away because the street was closed due to a movie being filmed. We discovered that the place had apparently sold out of BBQ and closed early. We were so disappointed and since none of us really knew the area finding a second place was a bit of a challenge. If I make it back to the area, I think we will have to try this place again, the interior looks similar to a few other BBQ places I have been and all of these places were amazing.

After a bit of walking and peering at menues and in windows we ended up at the Asqew Grill which had an interesting manue and concept. It is basically a meat (chicken, fish, or vegtable) on a stick establishment. You order your "main course" and choose a starch to server with it. They have a number different choices. We decided to each order something different and then we could share. The food was all very good. Very flavorful and well prepared. The atmosphere was very casual and laid back. It was great to spend some time catching up. Even though I didn't get a chance to see them often when they were in Boston California is just so far away, I hope I have some more opportunities to visit.

After dinner we meandered back to Rachel and Sudhir's apartment, with a bit of a bus fiasco do to the movie again, where I hopped in the car and headed home. It was sad to have to leave, but I had been up since 4 AM EST (it was now like 1 AM EST) and R&S had to work. So back to my hotel I went hoping I could make it back to the Bay area soon.

So if you guys are reading this, thanks for a great night. The East coast misses you! But I hope you are having a great time getting settled into your new place.

Wnning our first event

2008-01-30T14:35:00.000-05:00

Well it was bound to happen some time!!! Mary and I won our first in Curling. The Bonspiel was our club in-house annual "Mushroom" event. We started off witha fairly goos team. Myself and Mary bot 2 year Curlers. Our Vice was Eric who has curled for 6 years and our Skip was Ken who has also been curling for 2 years but has picked up the sport rapidly. Unfortunately due to circumstances within reach of our skip he was not about to make the first game so we had a different Ken sub for us as Vice. We created a pretty simple strategy and executed well. We ended up winning our first game, and event in and of its self since Mary and I hadn't won a Bonspeil game yet. Our egos slightly boosted we headed into Saturday evening's game with high hopes.

Those hopes were dashed late in the game, but we didn't give up game 2 without a fight. We ended up making a few execution errors in the 6th and 7th end that we just weren't able to recover from. But it was great to know a team of relativly novice player could hold their own again some of the more experienced curlers of the club. We had a feeling we would give the next team a good game had we won, but we would certainly get blown out in the first event finals had we made it that far. Losing this game dropped us into the 3rd event, which we were happy to play in.

Finally Finals Sunday had arrived. We only had to play one game (they used a points scheme to determine the winner of the 3rd event). However we were playing the Fishers and their experienced front end. The game was shapping up well. We managed to score points in the first 2 ends. The 3rd end we made some near fatal mistakes. Starting with a guard of mine going to deep which lead to an open double that Christa made easily. With not many guards and teh back unds up the takeout game began and at the end of it we had given up 4!... The game was close again and there were only a few ends left in the is abbreviated game. However we were able to regain our composure and take the rest of the ends as well.

Mary and I were particularly on for this game almost every time Mary needed to throw a guard it ended up in the right spot. All of my draws were exactly in the right spot I managed to throw a couple of stones that froze to Troy's stone which had stopped just behind the button. From here we could guard our point and take the end. As I mentioned the only time this didn't work we gave up 4 points.

We ended the game with a points total of 23 which would be hard to beat. Fortunately for us the team on the next sheet had the exact score, but their opponent had managed to take one more end leaving them with 21 points. All we could do now was watch the second set of games and hope that there were no blow outs. The curling god were smiling upon us that day as one game ended close and the other ended in a tie. 23 points became the magic number and we walked away with the 3rd event.

The big problem with winning is now we feel like we have to keep it up. I have the Dykes (5 and under Men's tournament) coming up next week. Lets see if I can keep a winning streak alive. The team we have assemebled is all 1 and 2 year curlers, we aren't expecting to compete but who knows. Perhaps we can get a victory or two under our belt.

Finally, following our stellar performance at the Cracked Bell (yes that was sarcastic). Actually we did fairly okay. We didn't win anything, but we seemed to "loose" less. And there were points in most games when we could have taken ends had we executed better. So CPK will hopefully be looking to attend a bonspeil at the end of the season to see if perhaps we can win a game or two.

I'm a Boston Sports Fan (If you didn't already know)

2007-12-10T11:22:00.000-05:00

So anyone who reads this blog probably know that Mary and I are not native to Philly. We are originally from Boston (well technically Mary is from upstate NY, but she is a Boston girl at heart). Any how, we are also Boston sports fans. I will admit that I wasn't always the biggest sports fan in general. When I was younger I really enjoyed playing sports and going to games but I couldn't really watch them on TV and I was never fanatical enough to know stats and all of that junk. A game was sort of like a movie, watching one was entertaining, but I watched with out regard for, or the context of, the entire season.

Ice Hockey was the spot I played growing up. I wasn't ever great, but I was good enough. And really I have never had a super competitive attitude so sports were always just fun for me. As I have gotten older it is much easier, and sometime less painful (at least physically), to watch sports than it is to actually participate. Obviously curling is an exception here, but you can't really watch curling on TV in the US. I watched the "fist" super bowl in '97 at a college rush party. I still hadn't really caught onto football yet. It seemed sort of exciting. But I really didn't understand the game. It didn't really matter anyway we lost, and I was still getting used to this whole college thing.

I was really introduced to football during the 2001 superbowl championship season. I didn't watch much of the reular season, but I watched all of the championship games and began to understand the excitement of football. Of course it helped that the Pats won and exhilarating game an played in such crazy weather.

I remember the first time I attended other Boston sporting events. I remember my first Baseball Game at Fenway and my first Hockey Game at the old Garden (a birthday present from my parents). I even remember my first Celtics game which occurred much later in life (I was in my mid 20s). My dad and I went with company tickets. Even tough neither of us understood basketball it was really a blast. The one thing I remember, and maybe this is just because of my lack of interest in sports when I was younger, is that we never seemed to get too down on ourselves for not winning. And we never gave up on our teams. I will admit, however, that over the past few years it has been much easier to be a Boston sports fan.

The one sporting event in Boston I have yet to attend is a Patriots game. When I was in scouts we used to head to the stadium for the tailgate parties (it isn't what you think). We would roam around and collect cans an bottles form all of the parties and recycle them. In MA you get $0.05 a can so this was generally a pretty good fund raising opportunity. Of course I was a young'n so this was at the old Foxboro/Sullivan stadium. Mary and I did get a chance to watch a game in the new stadium, we actually attended the MLS Cup championship game in Gillette Stadium in October 2002, right before we moved to PA.

So why all of this silly background info? Well I came across this video today and it made me chuckle. I felt the need to share it with friends.

Of course it digs at the Bruins, which I do feel bad about. But it is just too true for a Boston fan not to at least find the humor here. Especially since hockey was my sport and the Bruins were my team. If you were to tell me when I was in High School (the early 90's). That the Patriots and the Red Sox would be dominate teams and each would have won (even one) a championship before the Bruins would win a Stanley Cup I would have sneered at you and laughed you out of the state.

I'm not shamed to admit it. I am greedy and I think what Boston needs is 2 more championship teams. I am rooting for the Celtics this winter (as much as I can since Basketball is very enigmatic to me). But really what we need for the Bruins to don their bloody soxs (get it :-) )and pull out some victories. I will accept nothing less than the Stanley Cup.

This one's for Eric

2007-11-14T10:04:00.000-05:00

So the curling season has begun. We actually stated in October with ice making and a kick off party. Then Curling officially began. The club had a push to involve new members in the ice making this year and I took the chance to participate. The entire process was very interesting. The process is sort of what I expected with one major difference.

Our club consists of a large rectangular concrete pad with the curling surface painted on it. Under the concrete are a number of pipes. We run our chilled water through these pipes. The chiller and pumps are turned on a day or two before hand to get the concrete cold then we begin putting water down. Here is where the major deviation from my expectation comes in. I figured we turned on a faucet and fill up the rink with water, much like a swimming pool, and wait for the water to freeze. In fact we actually lay down a small layer of water starting at one end and working towards another. We apparently repeat this a number of times over a couple of days. This process serves 2 purposes. First it freezes quicker and more consistently/even (this seems obvious). Second, and less obvious, the layering of the water creates strength sort of like plywood.

After a week or so of preparation the ice is ready to go. I unfortunately went out of town the week the ice was ready so I wasn't able to get on the ice before my first game. Following the ice making we had out Put-in-the plug party (this is a figurative name there is no "plug" ). And now we come to the reasoning for the title of this entry. During this event I was talking to a club member who informed me that I don't write nearly enough. Especially when you compare my entries to Troy. Initially I was shocked that there was someone actually reading this... well I knew Troy checked it out ever once in a while. But I figured that was about it. Then I had to defend my lack of writing.

So what is my excuse... I don't have a good one. Only to say that I have been spending my "free" time toying around with other technology. Specifically I was destroyed by the efficiency and quality of Troy's blogging on our Germany trip. i figured the best way for me to contribute was to get my photos up and inserted into a map so people could see where we visited. I already had the images loaded into Picasa (Cheep Plug) they are here

Germany March/April 2007

and here

Prague March/April 2007

My next step was to get them in a map and post that somewhere. The great news is picasa has a way to drop you pictures onto a map. And you can link to that map. Google Maps also provides you the ability to save maps (Troy has used this in his blog). And one of the options in the map making screen is to show images from picasa. So this should be a super easy task. I have to ways of getting the map I want posted in my blog. But neither of the ways work how I would expect them.

So Lets look at Picasa... Yes you can drop your images in the map and link to the map page but you can't set a view on the map and save it. So I first had to split my albums in two with the Prague pictures in one and the Berlin pictures in another. Even then it doesn't work great because I have a few pictures out side Berlin. These pictures force the map link to zoom far out so you are presented with a view of almost all of Germany. A similar problem can be seen in my Hawaii album as well. I really want to create a view of just the Big Island. However, I don't want to split this into 2 albums.

Refusing to be beaten I figure I will approach this dilemma from a different angle.... I will go to google maps and create a map view. This is also impossible from google maps. Or at least I can't figure it out. So I go to google maps and create a view of Berlin (or teh Big Island) and I invoke the picasa search filter. I search on a number of things (I start with my user name which returns nothing!!!) then I figure I should search on album name. pictures start populating. I am very excited. Everything fills in and it seems to be only my pictures! Great!!! I save the view and send a link to myself. When I click on the image the map view loads... but no pictures! I only get the map view and a search field. I have to type in the album name myself. This doesn't seem very useful!

So the method that does work, which is much more labor intensive, is to put a sticky at each location and link it to one of my pictures. I'm not going to use this method. It will take much too long. I was exploring other options when the curling season (and sadly TV) picked up. So for now I will have to see if anyone stumbles across this post and provides a better suggestion.

Quiet summer?

2007-09-22T23:13:00.001-04:00

It seems I haven't written much this summer. That shouldn't be confused with a boring summer at all. We didn't get to Hawaii this summer but we plan to remedy that next year. And there weren't any other "big" vacations (I already wrote about Vegas). But we really had a great summer.

We went up to Boston for the 4th of July. We caught up with friends. Paul bought a house. Rachel and Sudhir are in Nepal for few months and will be moving to San Francisco when they return. Kevin and Amanda are having a baby!! So a lot is happening at "Home".

We watched the fireworks with my family and the parade the next day. I hadn't seen the parade in a few years and Needham did a great job as usual. I also started riding again which is great. I have been doing about an hour ride 2-3 times a week. The exercise has been great and I am sure my bike has enjoyed the use. Finally we worked on a summer show which was great. The show was Chess which is one of our favorite shows. The summer part was a mixed blessing. It ensured that we were home for much of the summer but of course there always seems like something more fun than rehearsal. The show came of well and it was really a great time.

We "ended" the summer with a weekend in Baltimore to watch the Red Sox play the O's. The tickets for Baltimore are very reasonably priced and it is the easiest way to watch the Sox play. Not to mention the Baltimore seems to turn into a mini Boston for Sox games. There were tons of Sox fans mulling around. The weekend went well. While the Sox blew the game Saturday they won Sunday and we left happy.

The fall should be just as fun as the summer. Hopefully I will finish the Berlin posts and provide more regular updates.

Berlin Day 3 - or - how I got someone else to do my dirty work

2007-09-20T09:57:00.001-04:00

Okay so the title is misleading -sort of - I may have to give up on the rest of Germany and Prague. Not because the trip wasn't amazing or because I have forgotten. But really because Troy has already finished and has done a really nice job with maps and everything.

It was actually initially my intent to fit all of Germany into one post. Then my first post ended up being pretty much about day one and I realized I have a good amount of material. Then as you can read elsewhere I got side tracked in trying to get my pictures onto a map. So I will leave you with a link to Troy's Berlin posts: Troy's Blog - Berlin

I have also included below the notes I was using for the rest of my posts. They are not complete but enough to spark my memory. So perhaps I will use these to fill out the rest of the trip. But I wouldn't want to keep my reader (I left it singular on purpose :-) on the edge of his/her seat. So Enjoy the stories. and I will try and keep this site more up to date.

Sun - Some mall thingy, Anne Frank museum, museum island (Berliner Dom, Pergamom), Closed restraunt. Mon - Olympic Stadium, Split up (Zoo), destroyed church, New Wall monument, Jewish museum, Dinner at Storch Tue - Train to Prague, Prague Tour, drinks at Uprince Wed - Train home, dinner kinipa - beginning of sickfest Germany Thursday - recovering from sickfest Germany Friday - Fly Home

Happy 10th Anniversary!!!

2007-07-25T13:10:00.000-04:00

The Original title of this post was going to be "Vegas Baby!" But after a week there that specific phrase seems over used. Mary and I went to Las Vegas to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Mary's Cousin Bob and his wife. Coincidentally Mary and I met the same summer that Bob and Sandy were married so it also happens to the the 10 year anniversary of Mary and I meeting!

So 1. I can't believe Mary and I have known each other for 10 years!! Wow!!! and 2. do you really need an excuse to visit the entertainment capital of the world?

We had a very good time. Vegas is deffinatly a wonderful place for a group vacation. All in all there were about 20 people who made it out for the trip. We arrived on a Wednesday, spent afternoon cleaning up from traveling, unpacking and doing the normal new hotel stuff. We grabbed lunch and met the Wednesday group for "free" craps lessons at the Imperial Palace Casino. Now I say "free" because nothing in Vegas is free., but at the same time everythign is free. Obviously ofering free lessons is a benefot to the casion because it luers people over to a game people are unfamiliar with and will contribute to the guest spendsing lots of money.

Craps also happens to be a pretty fun game, and is a lot less mindless then sitting at a slot machine punching a button like a mindless slug :-) So we learned the game and then headed next door to Casino Royal to try our luck at the $3 craps table. We didn't do to bad. This started a fairly good craps streak that lasted us almost our entire visit (yeah almost, I will explain the almost part later). We would spend a few hours at a table and generally leave with a bit more money than we entered the game with. Then of course in true Vegas style we would spend all of our winnings on beer, or slot machines, proving that the Casino's really have a wonderful business model, there is no way in hell you are leaving a casino with more than you entered. Well they let a few people out with more, but really this is just an advertising scheme so that more people will come in.

Some people had booked shows Wednesday night so we all split up with plans to meet at 10 when all the shows and dinner were done. Being that we were all on east coast time. none of us made it to the 10 PM meeting. We all gathered again at Casino Royal for some more craps! again we had a fairly profitable morning. Then we went to O'Shey's for beer pong. What a great concept for a bar. They basically had a number of custom beer pong tables and all you needed to buy were 2 pitchers of beer. The cups, ball and tables were free. We grabbed a table and spend a few hours throwing ping pong balls into beer cups. Since the group had grown to 8 we had enough to alternate between playing and just hanging out. When we got to the tables the bar was pretty empty. By the time we left for dinner business had picked up. every table was full and there were some people waiting to get on. We all went back to the Excalibur (our hotel) for a late dinner.

After dinner Mary, myself, and Rob and Becky (Bob & Sandy's friends) walked up to the Bellagio to watch the fountain show. We then waled over to Paris to look around the casino, we tried out luck at the "wheel of death" as we called it. This is a straight odds wheel usually divided into 40 or so sections. Each section is labeled. Usually 1 section with the highest pay out(number of sections to 1). Then lessening payouts down to even money. You win if the number you picked get selected on the next spin. You have a pretty good chance at winning a dollar at a time if you keep playing the even money payout. But how upset would you be if you were at the wheel when the 40-1 payout was spun and you didn't play it? This is what the casino hopes too, so you almost have to play a higher payout and will almost never get paid on the odds. We walked back to the hotel and called it a night.

Friday there was obviously more gambling, but the big even was the Anniversary party. So we all met at he Monte Carlo Brew pub around 9PM to celebrate the anniversary. The Brew Pub here is known for selling bear by the yard, basically a tall 3' or 5' test tube of beer with a gravity fed tap. The 3' looked daunting, until we poured a few glasses, then all of a sudden we started ordering the 5 footers. We spent the evening ordering beer by the foot and catching up with cousins from all over the country.

Saturday Mary and I caught up with some of Mary's co-workers who happened to be in Vegas for the weekend to celebrate a birthday. We met at the bar out side the Crazy Horse theater in the MGM. We moseyed onto the bar in the center of the MGM and ended at NYU NY for Pizza.

The rest of the weekend consisted of more of the same. Our craps luck continued, Mary and I even ended up at a $10 table for a little while. We hadn't initially intended on approaching a 10$ table, we just didn't look at the sign close enough and didn't realize it until after we had already bought in. We actually did well. We played for a few ours and both ended up walking away up (Mary was up $100 and I was up about $80). The casino was just baiting us for the end of our trip. We would meet up with cousins and walk around in between gambling sessions touring teh different casinos and seeing the sights. People started leaving Saturday and by Sunday night it was Mary and I and Bob and Sandy. We decided to round out our tour of the seedy casinos of visiting the Slots A Fun casino next to Circus Circus. This end of the strip is much older and probably a poster child for the dank rundown image that anti gambling people have. We all tried our hand at the $2 craps table a really enjoyed our selves. The dealers weren't the best. There were a few times they paid us incorrectly, or had to discuss the correct payout. There was even one time when the pit boss fought with the whole table about who the shooter was.

There was this one poor guy at the table who contently betting against the shooters and he just seemed to be a very negative person. Wasn't really doing well and kept buying in for more chips. Finally Mary ended up with the dice and rolled a couple of 5 during her turn. The guy kept putting his money on no 5 and kept loosing. Well finally he put all his money (about $200, remember we were at the $2 table) on no 5... and the very next number Mary rolled was a 5. Well Mr. Negative left in a hurry and didn't seem to happy. The rest of the night was uneventful. By the end of the night we all left up just a bit. We returned to the hotel after a long bus ride and headed to bed.

Monday Mary and I had the day to ourselves. We had tried to get into a craps game Sunday night, but the tables were packed. we walked around to all of the casinos in out area looking for a $5 table butt he Excalibur had the only one (and it was packed) we called it quits and decided to try out luck in the AM....

And so goes the casino luck spirits.... We started the day off with a good feeling. We had done well in craps all week. we almost always walked away with more than we started and the few times we walked away with less we hand and by the end of Monday we had pretty much returned to the casinos everything we had taken earlier. We capped off the day by making the 3-4 mile trek up to Treasure Island. Mary and I hadn't seen the Volcano at the Mirage or the Siren's of TI at TI. We watched the Volcano which was really interesting, but we just missed the TI show. Unfortunately it began to sprinkle around 10:45 or so. The 11:30 TI show was canceled. I guess we will have to make a trip back later to see the show.

So Mary and I had a great week in Las Vegas. We got to catch up with family and spend some time touring around The Strip. We didn't end up winning lots (or any really) of money. But we didn't spend a whole lot of money either. I think if you can keep everything in perspective and go with the intention of being entertained you can really enjoy your self.

Berlin Part 1.5

2007-06-12T21:57:00.001-04:00

So I have the Berlin part II post almost done. It has taken a bit longer that I was expecting. Stay tuned faithful reader :-)

I'm Sailing

2007-05-30T14:23:00.000-04:00

Mary and I were invited on a sailing adventure Memorial Day weekend with a good friend of mine for the early Sun days. I have been on a number of different boats in my life. Even a number of small sail boats. But I have never spent the night on a boat. I was a little nervous about motion sickness. I have only gotten motion sickness once on a boat. Mary and I were taking the ferry from Bridgeport, CT to Port Jefferson, NY and a strong storm blew in while we were under way. There was lots of rocking and rolling and it really hit me hard. I didn't get sick, but I really didn't feel right all weekend after that trip. I was a little nervous that I would feel the effects more in a smaller boat.

Mary and I got up early Saturday and headed to Baltimore to meet Kevin, Jessie and the rest of the sailing party for the weekend. We got to the sailing club around 10AM went shopping for provisions and hit the water. The boat was beautiful. We were on the Miss Ann a Beneteau 343 35' Sail boat. She is a wonderful boat.

The trip plan was to head south to Rock Hall for the evening and head to Waterman's Crab House for dinner. Watremans has the "amazing" crab dip which was Jessie's favorite place to go. I will admit the food was very good. I haven't had seafood that good in a while. I ordered some steamed clams for an appetizer and the Baked Crab Imperial for dinner. Both were amazing and very fresh. The steamers were so good even Mary had one or two of them.

We spent the night at a marina in Rock Hall. The people around us were very friendly. Many of them were older, probably retired. I was sort of prepared for the cold shoulder based on the fact that we were so young. However, he reaction seemed to be quite the opposite. Everyone around us was very friendly and seemed to be excited that "younger" people interested in sailing. Everyone was quick to introduce them selves and chat for a while.

The next morning we got up and cooed breakfast. Eggs and bacon mostly, but we had picked up some other stuff as well. The plan was to head to the western bay to anchor for the night and try our hand at crabbing. The wind wasn't as favorable so we didn't get much speed but we had 7 hours to make a 3 hour trip so we were not in a super rush. Around 4 PM the wind died and we decided to drop sails and motor the rest of the way to our destination.

We got to the Magathe river around 5ish and had an interesting time getting our anchor down. Once we were anchored we decided it would be a good time to try crabbing. We got our turkey necks (chicken necks weren't available) out tied them to some string and chucked them overboard. We had been taking bets on how long it would take us to catch a crab. The first time window of 30 minutes came and passed fairly quickly. We were quickly approaching the hour mark when a storm started to blow in. We left our turkey necks in the water and went below for the storm.

The wind picked up quickly and, while we were watching out the back, we noticed that our anchor had broken free and we were drifting toward a sail boat anchored near by. The men rushed into action Kevin started the engine and got us away from the boat we were approaching. Brian and I grabbed our danforth and sunk a second anchor. We were again solidly anchored in the cove. We went back below slightly moistened by the rain to wait out the storm.

Once the storm had ended we decided to cook dinner and check on our crabbing bounty. Needless to say we had caught nothing. The general consensus was that it was way to early in the season and we were a bit up the river so the water may have been a bit too fresh. The rest of the evening went with out incident. We stayed below deck because it was sprinkling out. Played cards and drank beer. A few of us still hoping to catch something left our necks in the water overnight to see if we would catch anything.

We had breakfast, cast away our turkey necks pulled up our anchors and headed home. Unfortunately the wind was not cooperating with us on Monday. We saw a few other sail boats out in the bay but sails up and they were going no where. We decided to just motor back to the marina.

So our first sailing adventure was great! Mary and I really enjoyed ourselves. The weather was great, even with a brief thunderstorm. It really was a great weekend and we hopefully will be able to make a few more sailing trips in the future. We are also considering making Kevin's international New Years trip next year. Lets hope they pick somewhere exciting.

Berlin Day 2

2007-05-02T13:47:00.000-04:00

The remainder of our trip was just as exciting as the first day. Our plan was to see as much as possible in as short a time a possible. A few of the books we had read suggested that we visit sections of the city in a day. Berlin is quite large (remember it used to be 2 cities) and traveling from one spot to another could be very time consuming.

We woke up Saturday and cooked breakfast (one of the benefits of renting an apartment). Our plan was to meet Colin and Maria in the morning at a flea market/farmers market then visit Mitte which is the central borough of Berlin. We read that the line to the Reichstag grows quite long in the afternoon so our plan was to start there and continue on.

We took the U-Bahn to Colin and Maria's apartment met them and walked to the market. This was a very interesting place. Apparently this is a weekly event and there are all sorts of vendors set up in this square. From florists and fresh produce to jewelry and crafts and prepared food. I assume that many of the apartments in Berlin are about the same size as ours and kitchen space is pretty limited. This means that appliances, like refrigerators, are small. It seems that people rely on fresh produce picked up a couple times a week rather than our habit of trying to make it to the store once a week or so to get food for a while.

The market was filled with people and each stand had something interesting to look at. We all decided to try a local sausage which was a foot long thin sausage served on a very small bun that was essentially a handle. I tried some fresh OJ which was very good. Kate, in an attempt to reconnect with her roots, tried an Alsatian flat bread with cheese on top. It is similar to a pizza. We were getting ready to leave when a jewelry vendor caught Mary's eye. We stopped there for a few minutes and ended up with a very nice necklace with a black pendant. It was a great beginning to day 2 and it was still early!

Colin walked us to over to the Zoo and we hopped on the 100 Bus which is a great way to see the city. This bus route stops at a lot of the major attractions and really gives you a great feel of the city. Unlike riding a subway you get an idea of where things are in relation to each other. We hopped off at the Reichstag and got in line. The line wasn't too long, but there was a wait. Fortunately we had lots of entertainment while we waited. First a group of mime/puppeteers performed for us. There were about 6 of them and they were moving this stick figure human character thing. They would make the character dance and interact with the line. It was interesting to watch. At some point they moved on to another location.

As we got closer to the steps we saw something pretty interesting. A group of people stormed the steps and posted a whole bunch of banners on the pillars of the Reichstag. Of course they were speaking in German and their fliers were in German so we really had no idea what was going on. But it was pretty moving to see an act of democratic free speech in a different country. The "disruption" was over pretty quickly and everything returned to normal. The short wait in line was worth the view from the top.

There is a glass dome one top with a spiral ramp that goes to the top of the dome. The entire structure is beautiful and fun to be inside. There are great views of the city both as you circle up the dome and from the roof deck of the Reistag. You can really see from this vantage point the Berlin is a growing city as there were a lot of construction sites visible.

We left the Reichstag and continued onto the Brandenburg Gate which was originally built as an entrance to the city but now pretty much sits right in the middle of the Berlin. The gate became an icon during the years of the Berlin wall because it was right in the middle on "no mans land". Not much exists of the wall, but in parts of Berlin there is a brick path that traces out the old footprint of the wall. It is easiest to find on the street between the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate.

From the Brandenburg Gate our plan was to walk along Unter der Linden and over to Bebelplatz which was the site of the book burning. On our way to Unter der Linden we passed the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The memorial was pretty amazing and it is fairly large. The site takes up a city block and it is an arrangement of stone pillars which look like a cemetery. The pillars are not all level or true so it give the appearance of an older cemetery. At the edge of the monument the pillars are rather short, towards the middle the pillars get taller and you are completely surrounded. It is a very interesting place. Beneath the monument is a museum which is dedicated to telling the stories of different Jewish families who were deported during WW II. In the last room in the museum the names of the Jews who perished are projected on the wall and read allowed. It is a very moving exhibit.

We left the museum and it was getting late. We decided to grab lunch (although he sun was setting) and continue on our way. We walked along Unter Der Linden for a while stopping at a few trinket shops and just taking in the street. We finally came across Bebelplatz and we hit it about the right time. The monument here is a room below street level. The room is a "library" with empty book shelves that are painted white. The entire room is lit brightly. You look down into the library from street level through a window in the square. We continued on to Check Point Charlie and out last stop for the evening.

Checkpoint Charlie was an interesting place. As with many location where the wall once was there is an interesting mixture of construction, ultra modern building and older buildings. The checkpoint itself is completely gone. A replica of the American shed is in the middle of the street at the checkpoint location. There are a lot of trinket shops nearby. There is also a Checkpoint Charlie museum which I had mixed feeling about. I think the idea of the museum is great and the collection of items that were there were interesting. However it seems as if this museum was created without much thought to the layout or perhaps the "curator" never received any formal training. There seemed to be a number of repetitive exhibits throughout the museum and the layout and flow was rather confusing. At one point I had gotten totally lost and couldn't figure out if I had been in this room before. I then went to Find the rest of the group and I found myself in a completely different part of the museum which I may have missed if I were by myself. Maybe over time this museum will be refined or redesigned. The exhibits are worth while as they are it just doesn't have a coherent flow.

Well it was getting late and we needed to have dinner. The Sony Center is located in east Berlin neighborhood of Potzdammer Platz. It is a very new area which contains an outdoor mall/entertainment center. We decided to head over there for dinner. We ended up at the Hofbräuhaus which was an excellent choice. We tried some "authentic" authentic German chain restaurant food and had 1 liter beers. We even got a pin for ordering the "medium" size. Of course I immediately regretted not ordering the large, only because I wondered what bauble I missed out on. Alas after a liter of beer I was not ready to have any more. So after a very long day we headed back to the apartment. For another viewpoint to this days activites check out Troy's Blog.

Berlin Part 1

2007-04-19T16:15:00.000-04:00

I created this image from one of my Berlin Pictures. What is amazing is the guy on the bench isn't even visible in the original jpeg. I really liked the way this turned out.

Now onto the Adventure.... We loaded up the family wagon and headed to Newark Airport to get our cheap flights to Berlin. The trip had been a few months in the making. Troy and Christa had heard through the grapevine that cheap tickets were available to fly directly from Newark to Berlin and it just so happened that Christa's cousin was going to be in Berlin too so it seemed like a really good idea to go. We started by looking into places to stay in Berlin.

Shortly after Kate was added to the attendee list and the total traveling group would be 5. I quickly realized that we would need at least 2 hotel rooms and that the cost of such an endeavor would we rather high. I, at some point, stumbled on a business week article regarding renting vacation apartments. I realized that if the cost was right then this would probably be cheaper than 2 rooms for a week. A bonus is that we would have we would have more room and a kitchen to cook if we wanted. So we settled on a site and an apartment we were all set of our trip.

Back to traveling day.... Which was pretty uneventful we made it to the airport with time to spare. I had never been to Newark before and quickly realized why the flights out of there were so cheap. You have to drive half of the way to your final destination just to get to the long term parking lot! Well obviously not really but you get off the highway south of the airport and have to drive around the entire airport to get to long term parking. When you finally get to long term parking lot you are almost right next to the exit ramp. So we check-in eat and board the plane. Land in Berlin after a fairly long flight.

Upon exiting the airport our adventure begins. Problem 1.... none of us speak German. Problem 2.... it is really hard to fit 5 people in a regular cab (4 would fit without luggage). So we wander over to the taxi island and stand around like silly Americans not really knowing what the correct way to hale a cab, and not really seeing a cab that could accommodate our party. After a few minutes a van drops some people off and we manage to flag him down. The good news for the cab driver is that he got to circumvent the taxi line which was full of smaller cars. We get in and get to the apartment very quickly.

Now I will admit that this was my first experience renting an apartment and I was a little stressed about being the one responsible for booking the apartment. We also had to pay cash when we got there. I have visions of us walking into a dirty dingy apartment that looked nothing like the pictures on-line and finding the landlord to be some smarmy guy who was going to demand the full rent plus a few fees for things like running water. But all of my fears were assuaged when we arrived at the apartment. First off it was right on the Spree and the neighborhood was wonderful. Full of residential flats with restaurants and shops at street level.

We rung the bell and the owner answered right away. Then came my first surprise. I had assumed that there would be no elevator and I knew we were on a high floor. I was prepared to make a few trips up and down with the luggage. But right in the lobby was a small elevator which let us get to the top without effort.

We got the the apartment and the place was amazing.

A breif commericial intruption.... if you are looking for an apartment in Berlin check out this place. I'm not getting any money for this ad. But the apartment is great and the owner is very nice.

It was 2 bedrooms with a living room/bedroom a dining room and a kitchen. Plus the view from the balcony was just as advertised! It was truly an amazing place. The owner was very friendly and lived right upstairs so we would be close should we need anything. We quickly got settled in and started to plan our first day out. We knew from advise and experience that taking a nap now (even though it was like 4 or 5 AM back home) would be a bad idea. We we headed out. Our first stop was shopping for breakfast food. Upon our return we decided to take the bus to the Hard Rock Cafe to ease into the German cuisine and get our required souvenirs The bus rid was a great way to see the city. The one down side to traveling by subway is that you get no relation to where this are. The buss allowed us to get a good introduction to the city and allowed is to view some places that interested us.

We made it the the HRC for lunch and some shopping. Then walked around a bit. We had plans to meet Christa's cousin for dinner so we wanted to make sure we got back and dropped our stuff off at the apartment and cleaned up. We had been up for almost 24 hours now and we were deffinalty feeling it. We left the apartment for a 3rd time to locate Christa's cousin at their apartment. It was actually fairly easy to find them. We were already getting fairly good at navigating the public transit system. We hung out with Maria and Colin for a while then headed to this African restaurant Masai. I wouldn't call myself and adventurous eater, but I am willing to at least go to strange restaurants and try and find something. I was not disappointed here. I think I ordered chicken (they did have Ostrich and some other beasties that sounded tempting, but I chickened out (pun intended).

We then walked around the neighborhood (near Viktoria-Luise Platz) for a while. and learned a great deal from Colin and Maria who had been living in Berlin for a few month already. While walking around we toured a neighborhood project that probably isn't listed in any tour book. This neighborhood has posted on street lights a number of signs. The signs contain different laws that were passed by the Nazi party that restricted the rights of the Jewish people in the community. It was interesting and moving to stroll around the neighborhood and read some of the laws that were enacted.

We ended our evening in the Nollendorf Platz which Mary and I had a small connection to since we are theater people and the musical Cabaret takes place at least partially in this neighborhood. We sat out side on a perfectly marvelous evening and ate Ice Cream. It was getting late and we were all fading fast we made it back to our apartment and all fell quickly asleep. We planned to meet Colin and maria the next morning at a farmers market to walk around and see what there was to see.

Well it seems that I have only made it through the first day here and were in Berlin for an entire week! I guess I will have a lot for writing to do and you fellow reader will have a lot of reading :-) Fortunately while the next few days were exciting to us, they consisted of mainly touristy things so I won't need to provide much detail.

European Adventure

2007-04-10T12:38:00.000-04:00

A bunch of us went to Europe last week of a little vacation. I will provide more details in some later posts. I was not the official people picture photographer so I will leave you with a taste of one of the places we visited.

The rest of my pictures can be found on my picasa site

PCC Stone Substitution

2007-03-10T15:55:00.000-05:00

I played in another Bonspiel this weekend. We sorta. I Subbed for a Philly team that went to the PCC (Plainfield Curling Club) Stone Men's Bonspiel. We were a bit out matched in our first draw. We happened to play a team who's skip has the highest attendance number (25 years I think). But honestly we kind of held out own. We ended up getting 3 points over 2 ends and all in all I felt that we were curling quite well.

The second draw was much more exciting. We gave up 3 points in the first end managed to steal a point in the second and gave up 3 more in the 3rd. It was looking rather bad for us at the beginning of the 4th end. We were facing a pretty large point gap and the other team seemed to be getting a ton of breaks. There were a number of times in the first 3 ends where we just barely missed a shot which then allowed the other team a chance at a double take out (which they made).

But things started looking up during the second half of the game. We took the 4th, 5th, and 6th ends and going into the 7th we were tied. Not only were we curling well but our skip was playing a winning strategy that was beginning to get into the head of our opponents. on 2 occasions we kept putting up targets for the other team to take out all along planning on using out last stone to knock a point in from the other side of the house. Both time this worked the other team never attempted to guard this shot. Of course this type of strategy requires the skip to also make the shot but fortunately we were able to make the shot as well.

We ended up giving up a point in the 7th, but this wasn't to bad because this also left us with the hammer in the 8th which gave us a much better chance to end up with 2 points. The 8th end was going pretty well until finally our opponents got a break and ended up with a stone close to the button and guarded well. By the time the skips stones game we had only one opportunity to come away with a point and force an extra end. We had to make a double raise (the shooting stone hits once stone which in turn hits another) and drop our stone in on the button. It seemed as if it were going to be out night. Our skip made the shot and we were able to sweep the stone an inch or two closer to the button leaving us shot. The opposing skip who had missed a number takeouts and raises earlier was forced to raise one of their stones into ours and not knock theirs out as well. He ended up making the shot taking our stone out of play but he also moved their stone as well. We had once last chance to draw to the out side curling around a number of guards to land in th eighth foot for a point. Apparently victory wasn't in the cards for us last night as we came up about 4 feet short and the stone came to rest just out side the 12'.

All in all it was a great match and I had a very good time. As always the teams we played were great to hang out with after the game and we had some great food to boot.

Of course it is near 50 degrees today.... the curling season is quickly coming to and close.

Philly Curling Club Brings the MACA Trophy home!

2007-03-06T15:00:00.000-05:00

It couldn't have been a better day. Well the day could have started a bit later. Mary and I arose before the crack of dawn to pick up Troy and head to the Potomac Curling Club for the last Mid-Atlantic Curling Association (MACA) event of the season. Unfortunately Christa was ill and would not be joining us for what would be CPK's biggest win yet.

So I was a bit nervous about getting to the event on time. I wasn't sure how this ran. I didn't know if we should plan go getting there an hour before hand (for registration, and what not) or 15 minutes. I decided to play it safe. Well things ended up going smoother than we imagined. I had built in about an hour of lag time so we could all move slowly in the AM, hit some traffic and still be a bit early. As it turns out we were all ready to go and ended up at the club by 8:30!! Thanks in Part to Nuvi not getting us lost at all!

So we decided to see what Nuvi had listed in the area. In searching for nearby shopping we came upon Costa-Rica Laptops. And figured why not check it out, they probably weren't open at this hour, but it might be interesting to window shop. Well window shopping for this company would be more like being a peeping Tom. Apparently Costa-Rica Laptops (I could not find a web page for this company) is a home business, or was a home business. Nuvi led us to an apartment complex and got us as far as a building. We decided to end our shopping trip with out window shopping.

By the time we got back to the Club it was near 9 Am and we figured we would go in and see what was going on. The club is attached to a hockey rink so in the worst case we could watch a few minutes of hockey practice or something. It turns out that there were people there setting up. We offered to help, but they had pretty much finished up. Se we registered and just hung out for a bit. People started arriving shortly so we figured we should get changed. Troy needed to "Get his curling pants on.", as did I.

The MACA events are designed to be ultra social events between a small group of "close" clubs. The idea is different from a normal bonspieal where you enter a team of 4 to compete against other teams. This is a random format where each club send 8 curlers (or is supposed to) for a total of 32 curlers or 8 teams. The teams are made up by a random draw. So team are comprised of curlers of all levels and from different clubs. This is a great way to meet a number of people form different clubs and learn alot as well. Aside from the random draw each player switches positions after 2 ends, so you get to curl at every position.

So I ended up on a team with one person from Philly and 2 from other clubs. And we did pretty well. We ended up winning both of our games. Game one was 9 - 6, and we all had some very good shots. Game two was against Mary's team and the score was fairly lop sided. I think the final was 17 - 1. The score came down mostly to personalities on the opposing team.

Ultimately Mary's team had a member who played a different game than we had been working on. In our short time at curling one of the pieces of advise that have been given to us over and over again was to not try and throw heavy take outs. Ultimately we aren't accurate enough to make them and since we miss we just end up sending potential points out of play leaving the competition with a change to guard their points. Well this teammate was a new curlier who liked to throw heavy takeouts, and call for them when it was his turn to skip. So we were able to take advantage of a few missed shots and stack some points up in the house.

Fortunately, Mary played an excellent game she made all the shots that she was called to make and at then end of the day we all had a very fun time. The only unfortunate thing is that the warm weather in Potomac signaled the fast approaching end of the curling season.
br> The scoring of the event is complex and took the event coordinator about a half an hour to work out. Basically the scoring favors attendance. Fortunately for us the team we were in second place to at the start of this MACA had an event at their club and didn't send any one down. It made finishing second place almost impossible. So of course we ended up taking 1st place in the event this year and returning the trophy to Philly for the first time since 1994!

The trip home was rather interesting. We all recognized the need for dinner and Mary was Jones'n for some BBQ ( a pulled pork sandwich to be exact). So we figured we would hit a local BBQ joint. apparently the 'burbs of Philly is not the place to get BBQ. and as expected M$ data was insanely wrong. So troy brought up the internet on his phone and searched M$ live for BBQ places near KOP. He found a Smoky Bones restaurant sorta near the curling club (according to M$). So we called some friends had told them to meet us there. We get a call a little while later.... "um there isn't a Smokey Bones in Frazer, PA" so we look again and look at a map... "sure there is, it is right by the intersection of PA 29 and PA 30". So we give Kate the phone number (strange Area code that we don't recognize) and she calls them. a few minutes later we get a call back from Kate, this Smokey Bones is in Frazer County out near Pittsburgh (about 6 hours from us!) So we again look for BBQ places and every one we call is out of business. We ended up at the Sly Fox, which is a brew pub that has a great pulled pork sandwich. So if you are in the KOP area and looking for BBQ check out the Sly Fox.

No HDTV? No Problem

2007-02-08T09:42:00.000-05:00

So I have been considering purchasing an HDTV and because I am easily influenced by advertising I figured I should get one "Before 'The Big Game'!" as all of the commercials have been telling me to do. Well things came up, mainly some new TVs announced which may be better and if not may drop the price of the existing models. In addition to the new TVs I realized that I am probably going to spend more money than I really want to on this item.

See my parents bought a new TV for somewhere around $1500. and I was thinking to myself cool I can swing that. Well then I start doing the research and I find out that really I want a $4-$5K TV... so I decided to wait until after "The Big Game".

This was compounded by the fact that I really wasn't interested in the game this year. Mainly because I had a deep feeling that the ~~Colts~~ "Horsey Team From Indianapolis" would win, but really didn't want them to. So I watched the game, and I have to say I am very glad I didn't purchase a TV just for this event. Now of course I would be able to use the TV the rest of the year as well and it really wouldn't have been a waste. However, I would have been pretty upset if I went through all the trouble to upgrade my TV just to be able to see the High Definition rain drops on the camera lens. Or the High Definition fog on the wide shots.

I was surprised that the cameras weren't more protected. We noticed from the beginning that the cameras had lots of moisture on the lenses but we figured this was because they were field cameras and hard to protect. It seems that even the fix position cameras had lots of moisture on them. This seemed to be compounded by the fact that it looks like a few camera operators used a dirty rag to wipe the lenses off. The result was a great many shots with huge rain drops on the screen or shots where everything was out of focus.

In short I am still in the market for a new TV. But I am glad I waited. Watching "The Big Game" in HD would have been a real disappointment.

2/13/07
Edited based on Troy's comment

For those unaware of the reference. The ~~NFL~~"Company that operates professional American football in the United States" sent a letter to a church somewhere informing them they were not allowed to advertise for or hold a ~~Super Bowl~~"Big Game" party. The church was only requesting that people chip in some money for the snacks provided.

CPK win streak stops a 2

2007-02-05T10:24:00.000-05:00

So CPK as officially entered another slump. Well, slump is probably not the right term. We managed to pull off another win during our novice league game just over a week ago (You can read Troy's Blog for the gory details). But the 2 wins in the novice league were just enough to get out confidence up for the Schenectady 100th anniversary Bonspiel we attended list past weekend.

The Bonspiel was great. The team had a good time, we got to visit with family (M's) and see a bit of snow. We even got to curl. The only unfortunate thing about the weekend was the condensed draw times. Since this was the 100 year event they had a very nice party at a near by country club. In order to ensure that every one could attend the last game was at 3:15 on Saturday. This meant that our first game would be at 10 PM Thursday night and if we didn't win any games we would be done curling by 5ish on Friday (less than 24 hours after we had arrived!) Of course that is about how the weekend played out. We lost Thursday night to a very good team from Canada. We played well, but they just played better. Then we dropped our second game to a mixed team from Canada/Schenectady. I will have to say that while I don't think we would have actually won that game either I feel we played well. We lost or final game to an Albany team which also was close (aside from a few bad ends).

The curling weekend also almost ended in tragedy for CPK. During the last end of the last game we almost gave up all 8 points. A feet that I could most closely associate to getting a hole in one in golf or shooting the moon in the card game Hearts. Although I get the feeling that an 8-ender occurs less than either of these 2 events. Fortunately 2 things happened to prevent this. One, the other team missed a double takeout which left us with one stone in the house. All we (and by we I mean Troy) had to do was to draw down to the 4 foot to cut them from 6 or 7 points to 3 or 4. We had already lost the game so giving up the points didn't really matter, but we needed to make this shot so the people viewing the gallery didn't get too rowdy. Our only real danger was being wide off the broom and heavy (something I did 2 stones earlier to promote one of their stones into the house). Fortunately Troy made his shot and we recovered rather well from what could have been a pretty bad end.

More important than whether we won or lost games was the number of people we met and acquaintances we made. Curlers in general are very friendly and welcoming, one of the best things about the sport(at least the non-competitive leagues) is that it is very social. We meet a girl from Colorado who gets to curl a few times a year (she came dressed to the decade party very similarly to M and Christa {80's}). We also had a great time with the teams we did play against.

So this was slated to be our last Bonspiel for the season, but it is possible that we will make an attempt at one or possibly even two more before the ice melts away. We do feel as if we are getting better with each game and it would be ashame to loose forget everything during the summer.

Lets hope we can win a few novice games before the end of the season!

Since we were done curling by Friday afternoon we got a chance to spend some time Saturday with M's family. Troy and Christa got to meet all of M's Uncles as well has her grandparents. I gave Troy and Christa the cold weather (15th street) tour of RPI. And we got to take it easy a bit. The one downside to actually winning games is you have to play more. Not that this wouldn't be fun, because that is what we were in town to do. But, we are getting trough our 3 and out Bonspiels. We will have to work up our stamina to play the 5 to 8 games required to win the 1st event.

CPK Wins but someone else doesn't

2007-01-21T23:22:00.000-05:00

So I'm not claiming that we stole the Patriots thunder or anything. But I find it odd that the Patriots end up loosing on the same night we win our first curling match. Well okay I guess I can't really pretend that the two are related.

First the Curling match: We had a great game. We were evenly matched which I think was a mixture of us all getting better and playing a team that was short a person. There were a few ends where some amazing shots were made. Including a point where the other team had 2 stones sitting right over the button (the center of the target at end of the ice) and the front of the house was well guarded. Troy and I cam up with this wild plan to tap one of our guards back into the house and at least knock an opposing stone out. Well Troy made his shot perfectly and we actually ended up sitting one point with a stone directly over the button!

Unfortunately the other team had the hammer and they managed to curl down directly to our stone and knock it out. I would not have expected to see 2 shots like that in a novice league game.

Later in the game we had snuck a stone into the house. We had 2 options with our last rock. One, guard the other teams rock. It was sitting just in front of the house and could have easily been tapped back for a point. Or draw around the outside and hope they missed the tape up. Well since we were in a good position and (for the first time) were in the lead we decided to put up a guard and play conservatively. Troy mad his shot and put up a real nice guard so the tap up was now impossible. The other teams only option was to curl from the outside. Well they ended up making their shot and got a nice roll, which took out our shot rock out and left them barely sitting 2!

I don't want to get over confident, because I am sure we will meet still competition in Schenectady, But I am feeling really good about how our team is coming along.

So on to the Patriots game..... not much to say here. I actually missed most of it. But I did hear that the Pats gave up a pretty good lead and just couldn't hold it together for the last 2 minutes of the game. They had a good season, I just really wish they hadn't lost to the Colts, and really mainly to Manning. There is too much press about how he is the best QB in the NFL and all of that crap. And he is so annoying on TV (it seems like every 10 seconds there is another Manning commercial), like he needs more money. I am all for sports figures making some extra money on the side, but really with his commercial filming schedule I'm surprised he has time to practice.

Well enough about that. I guess we will have to wait until next year. For the Pats any way, I curl tomorrow!

The Cracked Bell (Our Inaugural Bonspiel)

2007-01-08T21:39:00.000-05:00

M, Troy, Christa and I participated in our first Bonspiel this weekend. The event was held at the Philadelphia Curling Club which is our home club. We were pretty much destroyed this weekend. But since we have about 3 months of total curling experience I think we did pretty well.

Our first event was Friday night. At first we were all a little bit excited because we realized that the team we were playing was a family consisting of a 12 year old, 2 college age girls and a father. Being new to the club we figured that this was a family out to have fun and we would at least be able to hold our own......

It turns out that the Father is the coach of the Club Juniors teams and his daughters have all been to or are starting to go to Nationals. Needless to say we got our stones handed to us. The final score was 17 to 2. But as a team we choose to look on the bright side of this. 1. We scored 2 points against a very good team who throughout the rest of the weekend made a number of very good shots and ended up finishing 3rd in the event. 2. We actually got out on the ice and made a great effort to learn the sport knowing we probably wouldn't do that well.

Each match we learned a bit more, scoring a few more points and allowing other teams to score less. We played 2 more games that weekend (each team entering is guaranteed 3 matches). And curled against 2 other clubs which was great because it also let us see the other side to club curling, which is the social side. We kept asking for advice and taking that advice to heart.

By the end of the weekend we had a chance to finally combine our lessons learned in our first Novice league game as a team. Again we scored more points and allowed our competition to score less. Still loosing, due in part to the fact that we were all pretty tired from having curled all weekend.

So we are off to Schenectady in a few weeks and that will be in interesting event. I am sure the out come will be similar. One of the best things about or team is the attitude we take with us. We would all love to win and eventually we will probably take a game or two. But until then we need to learn as much as possible and get as much practice as possible. Oh, and have more fun than anyone else there!

Nuvi Saves the Day

2007-01-04T09:38:00.000-05:00

So we were in Boston for New Years, which I have stated already. Of course the one bad thing about going to Boston (or any where for that matter) for a holiday is that you have to come home (with everyone else in the world who went where you did). Usually we can time things so that we don't get stuck in too much traffic, but there is almost always some traffic.

I have to say that the Nuvi performed wonderfully again for this trip. We hit a little bit of traffic at the I-90/I-84 Interchange where there is usually traffic on heavy holiday travels. This is due mainly to the number of people without EZ-Pass or Fast Lane. On a side note it amazes me that people still don't have EZ-Pass or Fast Lane or what ever. No I can understand people who live in places out side the system, but if you have MA, NY, NJ, or PA Plates and no EZ-Pass you should be forced to drive backwards to your destination on secondary roads. It really doesn't matter how infrequently you use it, it just makes everything easier. As this traffic wasn't too bad and I can blow by almost everyone because I DO have EZ-Pass there was really no need to explore an alternate option.

The rest of it was pretty smooth sailing until the dreaded merge. For those of you unfamiliar with the merge just think of two 3-4 lane highways coming together into one 3 lane road. This almost always spells disaster whenever there is heavy volume. This is compounded a bit by the fact that maybe a mile after the merge there is a rest area so people try to get from the far left to the right to exit for the rest area.

At the first rest stop on the Garden State Parkway I decided to finally enter in my traffic subscription. I had the number but entering the code is laborious task, perfect for taking up time at a full service station in NJ. Am I glad I entered the number. I will admit that Nuvi didn't tell me anything I couldn't already have guessed, but it was good to know to expect it.

As we approached the NJ Turnpike Nuvi told us that the car lane (Nuvi usually recommends that we take the car lane) was backed up and I could avoid this. Now from experience I know that usually the car lane backs up a lot more than the Truck lane. I think this has to do with the fact that the Truck lane drops to 2 lanes before it enters the merge and then only one of those 2 lase actually merge. This allows trucks to sort of glide through the merge without having to actually merge. It also tends to keep the truck lane moving a bit.

We as almost always choose the truck lane no matter what the traffic situation is. Nuvi some times picks up on this (this time it did) and after a little bit Nuvi tells us that the truck lane has building volume as well. We have also discovered from experience that usually once traffic gets bunched at the merger it take a few miles for it to recover as well. so usually just about the time we are ready to get off at the PA turnpike traffic is moving well again. So we asked Nuvi to avoid the traffic.

Ass we approach the first wall of traffic Nuvi has us get off at the next exit (about 1/4 mile ahead. We take a NJ State highway (speed limit was 45-50 most of the way) with a few traffic lights but the stops weren't worse than what we probably would have experienced on the Turnpike. We end up on 195 headed to Trenton then, after a brief user error, ended up on route 1 South towards the PA turnpike. We were seated for dinner near our house by about 8 PM. Great Job Nuvi!

Of course I can't say this way was faster or slower but it felt faster, which is important. And I was not contributing to the traffic jam buy getting off the highway. I can't wait until we have smart vehicles that know where we are going and can correlate our destination with the destinations of the other cars on the road to pick the best route (heck I would even let it drive me there).

Sam Adams Brewery Tour

2007-01-02T12:44:00.001-05:00

M, Troy, Christa and I decided to extend the 2nd annual New Years visit to Boston this year and take part in some of the winter activities. Noting says winter like staying in side and drinking beer. We journeyed out to the Samuel Adams Brewer to learn how the Best Beer in America is made.
Mary and Christa enjoying FREE BEER at the Samuel Adams Brewery

Troy contemplating the importance of Free Beer and what effect it has on our society. Or maybe he is just wondering if he likes the Cherry Wheat.

I would recommend the earliest tour possible. At 11 AM on a Saturday there weren't many people there. By the time we left out tour at 12:15 or so the lobby was packed with waiting tour goers. After the Brewery tour we went to the Cactus Club for lunch, which was surprisingly not crowded, but the food there is excellent. Then on the the Mary Baker Eddy Museum to see the Mapparium. This is a very interesting picture/map of the world around 1935. It is amazing to see what has and hasn't changed.

Having grown up in Boston it was amazing to me that I had never heard of this place. I had been to the Christian Scientist campus a number of times, but didn't know that this room existed. A truly amazing place to spend a few minutes of your day.

Happy New Year!!!!

2007-01-02T12:38:00.000-05:00

-Edit 01/04/2007-
I should mention that the picture above is provided courtsy of Troy's Blog. Thanks Troy!
-End Edit-

We went up to Boston for New Years again. That offically makes this the second annual Boston New Years Trip. We didn't get snow this year, but the weather was good. Cold enough to remind us that it was winter, but warm enough that walking around wasn't a problem. This year despite our best efforts we caught the fireworks at midnight. They were interesting. As you can see for the picture Christa had her drinking hat (and glasses, and noise maker, and new years beads) on.

Aside from M and I, Troy and Christa, we were again joined by cousins Sara and Roy, with new additions of cousins Chrissy and Doug and My High School Friend Rachel and her husband Sudir (Last year they were off getting engaged, Happy Engageaversary). After last year we decided there was entirely too much walking so we headed straight to the Red Hat for the evening. On the way we made a pit stop at Hong Kong (the bar not the city) for some chicken on a stick and Scorpion Bowls (I refrained because I over indulged the night before).

This year the Red Hat hired a DJ, who in our opionion ran hot and cold. When we got there he was playing some great 80's music, he played a request or two from the group. But he quickly changed his format to hip hop, which bad but wasn't what we were in the mood for. He made up for it by closing the night (at least our night) with a splash back to the 80's for some AC/Dc, Def Lepord and Van Halen.

So Happy New Year to all! Maybe we will see you in Boston next year!

Broadway Birthday

2007-01-02T11:27:00.000-05:00

So I was surprised for my birthday with tickets to see Monty Python's Spamalot. What a wonderful show. On a different level than Evil Dead but in many ways the same. Of course the story was hilarious, and in true Monty Python fashion the show takes many diversions from anything resembling the true story.

All of the famous mini scenes are there, the one notable sections being Sir Bedevere, who's part has changed dramatically from the movie. They have removed the entire witch burning sketch from the musical. I guess they just couldn't come up with a good song featuring a witch (although a good place to maybe make fun of Wicked). They have added the lady of the lake as a character, because (to steal an idea) you won't succeed on Broadway if you don't have a leading lady.

This is a very visual show. I also received the soundtrack for my birthday and while some of the songs were amusing the picture isn't complete until you see they choreography on stage. They whole show just works together.

After the matinee showing we went to dinner at Virgil's and decided while we were in the City we should stop by a few other places and see if we could get tickets. We walked over to The Producers and were in luck they had some center Orchestra seats available. We figured why not, another trip back into the city would just tack on another $100 + bucks to the day so were were in effect saving money by seeing 2 shows in one day. besides we were very energized after seeing Spamalot.

I would like to be able to give the Producers as glowing a review as Spamalot, but I can't. The show was excellent and the actors were very good. But the first act seemed a bit slow. The second act picked up and was much more entertaining. M and I very much enjoyed the show and we are glad we saw it. I'm just not sure we would go see it again. We both commented the for Both Evil dead and Spamalot we would totally be willing to go again Even if we purchased the cheapest seats in the house it would be entertaining to watch both shows again. The Producers while very entertaining didn't strike us as something we would go to again.

The theater was fairly empty, we were surprised when we got there that we were able to get such good seats, but after the show started and the entire row in front of us was empty were were no longer surprised with our "good fortune". During intermission a few people moved around to get better seats so a few chairs in front of us filled in, fortunately no basketball players relocated to directly in front of us.

All in all it was a great second Birthday! Mary and I also took some time in between shows to walk up to see the Christmas tree, and while interesting it seemed as if everyone in NY had teh same idea we did. It was totally packed and that may have hindered our enjoyment.

The good thing is after this trip we both realized thatw e need to get into NY more often to see shows. It is almost too convenient to get there.

Evil Dead: The Musical

2006-11-20T17:49:00.000-05:00

I went to see Evil Dead: The Musical this weekend. What a wonderful show. The music was upbeat and catching. The actors were great and all looked like they were having fun. Evil Dead is playing at the New world Stage which is an under ground (literally) theater. They seem to have about 5 shows running at once, and the theaters are small which makes the show relatively intimate.

This is one of the better shows I have seen in NYC. The idea is to basically take the first 2 Evil Dead movies and cram them into an musical. Those unfamiliar with Evil Dead may remember Army of Darkness, which was the 3rd installment of the trilogy. Needless to say Evil Dead 1 & 2 while amusing to watch have become popular because of how bad they were not for how good they were. Well Evil Dead: The Musical takes all of that badness and creates something that is amazingly entertaining.

The entertainment value isn't hurt by the ticket price. It is amazing how expensive theater in New York has gotten over the years. With a Play Bill promotion the tickets were only $35. We elected not to sit in the splatter zone(tickets were a bit cheaper).

"Splatter Zone" is a bit of an understatement. At intermission trash bags and ponchos are handed out to audience members who weren't expecting to get moistened. Many of the people in attendance knew exactly what they were getting in to. During act II the blood flowed freely and the first 2 rows got a pretty good dowsing. There were a few people who left the theater completely covered in stage blood. It seemed like everyone there was having a great time. There were some older people in front of us who didn't stay for the second act, I guess the were surprised by the content. Although I have to say it seems like you shouldn't buy tickets for any show without doing at least a little research. But I and the rest of the audience enjoyed the production a great deal.

If you are in New York, before this show closes and this is your type of thing I highly recommend you check it out.

Curling at the mall

2006-11-03T00:56:00.000-05:00

Ice skating and curling in the mall!

Below is a closer shot of 2 of the 4 Sheets

Malls in PA, at least around Philly, don't designate this much internal space for non-commercial use. Now I am sure that the rink gets rented out for lessons and events, but I can't imagine that this rink makes as much money as say a Super GAP, or a Cartier.

iPod Vending Machine

2006-10-31T10:28:00.000-05:00

An iPod vending machine!

I was on my way back to my hotel from dinner last night and I had to cut through Macy*s to get out of the mall and what do i see at the bottom of the escalator? An iPod Vending machine. At first I thought this was just a fancy case used to prevent theft, you know go get the clerk to unlock the case and walk this to the nearest register for you. But the machine takes care of it all. There is a handy credit card/keypad to the right of the display case. Unfortunately I didn't have occasion to use the machine, but other people walking through the mall seemed to be equally amazed.

Mount Hood At Sun Rise

2006-10-31T10:23:00.000-05:00

I was greeted this morning by an awesome site. The sun rising just to the south of Mount Hood in Portland. I was very glad to be on a east coast schedule or I may never have seen this amazing view. Too bad my phone only takes so so pictures. But for anyone who has seen the sun rise, use your imagination to fill in the detail.

As and update this was one of the only sunny mornings I encountered while in Portland so this was truly a rare event for me. The rest of the week was overcast and the clouds blocked the view of the entire mountain let alone the sun rise.

Curling season has begun!

2006-10-30T18:37:00.001-05:00

Well curling season officially began last week. Troy, Christa, M, and I wet to the put-in-the-plug party (I wonder what kind of search hits that last phrase will get me). We had a really good time. The people at the club were very welcoming to new members. It seemed like there was always a new face comming over to introduce themselves to us.

It was interesting, after the PITP party we went to a gathering of theater people and they were much more closed. We knew quite a few people at the party and deffinatly got to catch up with some theater friends from the area, but many of the peopl were off in their own circles having what looked like closed conversations.

Of course this thater event was at a bar with live music which was pretty loud so that may have contributed to the smaller conversations.

Anyhow, I guess I got a little off topic. I was intending to report on my first game, sort of. I was up in Albany on business so I missed the game but M went and reported back that she had a really good time. Our team should be fun. The only unfortunate thing is M and I won't play together for another week. M will be out of town this weekend so I will have to hold down the fort.

Now all we need is for our gear to arrive so we can step it up a notch!

Off To Portland

2006-10-30T18:37:00.000-05:00

I am currently on my way to Portland, OR. This will be another new city for me, if not a new state. Product training is what brings me to the lovely city. I will have to admit I am looking forward to the trip.

Portland has always been on my short list of places to visit. I have read a great deal about the city and surrounding area. I am looking forward to experiencing the city for my self.

Of couurse this is a work trip. So sight seeing will be limited. Since I will be in training most of the day I may get a chance to experience some of the night life, but not really much else.

I will deffinatly try and post some pictures of the area.

Standing at the bottom of a waterfall

2006-10-03T11:21:00.000-04:00

So I got distracted by my new toy and never got to write the last vacation article I had meant to. Before we went to the Volcano we decided that the Waipi'o Valley would be interesting place to check out. When we were at the Big Island for our Honeymoon we had flown through the valley in a Helicopter. The view from above was amazing. The place looked like something from Jurassic park, or any other jungle themed remote location.

M and I decided that we would drive over and check it out. The guide books all say driving to the bottom is a bad idea. We did have a 4x4 Jeep Wrangler and I am certain that the jeep would have made it down and up again. But we decided that the hike would be more worth while. I mean we are on vacation and didn't have anything else to do. So why not attempt to slow things down for a bit.

We get to the top of the Valley and the view from above is amazing! Around 900 feet below us is the incredible black sand beach that looks completely unpopulated. There are a number of small houses visible throughout the valley, but in general it is very unpopulated. The cliff walls are so steep it is almost as is if we have the same view from here as we did from our helicopter 2 years ago. At the top there is a small viewing area where people can just stop and take in the amazing view. It seems that there are a lot of locals driving down and a few ill advised tourists. Then there are the gawkers at the top who have no intention of going to the bottom.

We gather our gear and head down. The first thing we notice is that the guide books are right. We don't think we have ever seen a steeper road. We are used to steep roads along the Hudson Valley but these don't come close to the rode we are walking down. The road follows the edge of the cliff "straight" to the bottom of the valley. It is a 900 foot drop in about a mile. At the bottom you enter a very lush, dense Forrest. The setting is very peaceful, every once in a while you get passed by a 4x4, usually local, some times tourists. From the bottom of the road it is a short hike to the actual beach. Before you get to the beach you can see this amazing waterfall off to the right.

M and I decided to head over to the water fall before we went to the beach. the water coming off the cliff falls almost directly into the ocean. It is really an amazing place to be. You can see the falls behind in this picture.

After checking out the falls M and I decided lunch was in order. We headed over to the beach and grabbed a rock. Amazingly the beach was much larger than we expected. from above it looks like a rather small strip of sand, but being down there the beach is probably a mile to a mile and a half in length. And there were more people than we expected. From above you don't actually see the area where most people use the beach. There were families surfing and playing in the water and a few who had driven down just to sit in their cars.

Mary and I ate then spent a few minutes wading in the water and exploring the beach. After sitting for a few more minutes we decided to head back to the top. While we were enjoying the valley we had discussed how we were glad we hiked down to the bottom. It was much more fulfilling to be standing under the waterfall and waling along a beach that we had hiked down to. We would soon discover that we may have been wrong.

The hike out is, in a word, steep. I have done lots of hiking, much of it in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and I have come across some steep trails. This has to be one of the steepest. Not to mention since it is a rode on the side of a cliff it is very exposed to the Sun. The first hundred feet wasn't too bad because we were still excited about the wonderful valley we had just been in. The last 800 feet were a challenge. We passed a few people walking down with in flip-flops, with out water. We had to wonder how they planned on making it out. M and I had packed water and saved a quart for the hike out. But we quickly finished that and wished we had brought another. It seemed amazing that people were planning on spending time in the valley and getting out with out any hydration.

After about 300 feet or so we were offered a ride to the top from a nice local. We decided that we would be able to make it out no problem, we just needed to take it slow. We thanks the man and up he went. I guess that is how most people get out of the valley.

We finally arrived back at the car a little tired and without water. It turned out that the hike out wasn't as bad as I had imagined. It was steep and exposed, but at one point I told some people that they were almost at the bottom, believing we had made it about half way up. Only to have turned a corner and realized we were very close to the top. (Sorry guys)

When we finished we stopped at the top to look back on the valley one more time. We talked with a few people who were considering going to the bottom. Headed back to the car and downed the remaining quart of water we had saved for the ride home.

My New Toy a Nuvi 660

2006-09-22T10:28:00.000-04:00

My new toy arrived yesterday. So far I am impressed with the Nuvi 660. I have yet to use it for navigation, but I was pleasantly surprised with how quickly and easily it paired with my Treo. When I started looking for a GPS device I quickly learned that there are tons out there. Each with pros and cons. There good thing is there seem to be a ton of very good devices on the market.

I had narrowed my choice down before vacation to the Nuvi 360 and the C550 from Garmin and the TomTom 510 or 910. Aside from the navigation features I really wanted something that would work with the Bluetooth on my phone. I have a Bluetooth headset, but I hate driving with it in my ear. It is comfortable enough, I just don't like having on my head the entire time. I was marginally attracted to the mp3 capabilities of the devices.

Fast forward to my return from vacation. I find out that while I was away Garmin had announced a new Nuvi. While away I spent many hours agonizing over which device to get. I finally made my wife to convince me to get the Nuvi. The other devices had similar feature sets, but the nuvi had a better form factor. The nuvi was more portable and I do travel a lot.

I do some more price checking to see if the prices on the 360's have dropped and low and behold, both TomTom and Garmin have announced new devices. TomTom released the ONE, which was interesting, but didn't have the phone capability I was looking for. Garmin had released the Nuvi 660 it had all of the features of the 360, but it included an integrated FM traffic receiver to get live traffic info. This was actually the feature the made it a tough call between the C550 and the Nuvi 360. I had chosen form-factor over traffic. But here was my chance to have my cake and eat it too.

So lets hope my new toy doesn't lead me astray. Now that I have a navigation device telling me how to get places I wonder if I will directions will be come like phone numbers. I can't for the life of me remember the phone numbers of my closest friends. I can barely get out my home and cell phone number when asked. I wonder how long it will be before we all just hop in the card and tell it where we want to go with out any real idea of where we are actually going?

Crazy Shark Water Sports - Inflatable Iceberg

2006-09-13T10:40:00.000-04:00

Crazy Shark Water Sports Online Shop - Inflatable Iceberg Wow an inflatable Iceberg.... Titanic watch out. If only I owned a pool or even better a lake. The only downside I can see to this item is being the one stuck blowing it up. That would probably put you out of commission for a week or two.

Standing on top of a Volcano

2006-09-05T13:58:00.000-04:00

Mary and I just got back from vacation we had a great time. I will try and update all of the things we did here, but I will start with the most awe inspiring event first. We actually hiked to the back of an erupting volcano!

The above picture is a panoramic view of the Pu'u O'o Vent of The Kiluea Volcano on the Island of Hawaii. It was a truly amazing place to be. The hike is a 4.2 mile stroll through a sort of interesting rain forest. The trail is relatively flat and very wet. It isn't much different than a hike through a wet New Englad forest. While the vegetation is slightly different the ground cover is mostly dense fern type plants.

The thing I found most interesting about the hike was the lava we were walking over. Rather than the hard granite I am used to it was neat to see the relatively new lava flows beneath my feet. There were a few places where the lava looked like tree roots and I had to double take when I stepped on it.

The Back of the Vent was amazing. We didn't dare get much closer then the edge of the forest, which was maybe a mile away from the actual vent. From a distance the 500 foot vent looks rather small, but it was amazing to know that on the other side of a small rock wall was an active volcano.

Mary and I made to the edge of the forest for lunch and spent about an hour just watching the vent steam. We saw a few helicopter tours come by and at least one fixed wing aircraft fly by. We probably could have spent all day watching the vent just pour out clouds of gas.

We have, in the past, watched the lava flow into the ocean which is also an experience not to be missed. But being at the top of the volcano will hold a special place in my memory.

Mango Margaritas on the West side of Oahu

2006-08-24T14:32:00.000-04:00

West Virginia Adventure

2006-08-16T11:00:00.000-04:00

We went rafting in West Virginia 2 weekends ago. The trip was awesome. A whole bunch of Players from RPI got together and decided to do something fun. At some point it was decided that white water rafting was the right activity for this. Then a little later it was decided that West Virginia was a place most of us haven'[t been and was "close" to everyone.

We all arrived Friday evening hung out had a fire and caught up for a few hours. Saturday we went hiking, which ended up being a swimming adventure in the river. Then Sunday was the big event. I had been rafting a number of times before and this was on par with my other trips. We had a really great time! It is amazing how well the guides can read a group. Of the 3 boast we filled up we were the most energetic group. Our guide, Charlie, picked up on that made sure we had a blast all day. He started by tricking us into flipping the raft after all of 2 minutes on the river. I have a sneaking suspicion that in every rapid he directed us towards an obstacle trying to get one or 2 of us into the water. That didn't end up happening, but he sure did try. It was a great day.

The other rafts were fairly quiet. We tried pulling a few of them into the water in the flat spots, but they were not having any of that. One of the rafts got a pretty good education on the local area/history from their guide, which they enjoyed.

Once we got back to camp the people from our boat decided the water fun wasn't over so we went swimming in the lake a few miles away. The rest of the group hung out at camp.

I bet you are wondering what this picture has to do with rafting.... well one of the cars stopped for gas on the way down and ended up across the street form a strip club with this sign in front. They couldn't resist the urge to take the picture and I couldn't resist the urge to post it. The person who created this sign is either a fool or an advertising genius. I will let you decide.

Gas station show down

2006-07-31T15:32:00.000-04:00

So let me start off by apologizing to the lady who I apparently cut off getting gas yesterday. I am afraid we are going to have to agree to disagree on the specifics of who was wrong, but I am sure we both seemed like a$$holes to each other.

The problem centers around a poor design to the gas stations along the mass pike. M, I and the Fishers spent a wonderful weekend in Boston doing touristy things. On the way home we stopped in Sturbridge to get gas before entering the never ending state of Connecticut. After discharging some personal liquids and restocking for the next 4 hours, we stopped to get some gas and encountered the design flaw. In order to get the maximum number of pumps into the already existing space the designers decided to create a long 2 pump deep gas station that runs parallel to the highway. It sort of looks like a starting gate at a horse race. At the end (entrance) they have a sign pointing all travelers to the left. Of course the problem is each pump has 2 sides and most cars (at least most American cars) have the gas tank opening on the left. So there are huge lines for all of the lefties waiting for gas.

Now the design of the station clearly displays to me that the designers intended people to enter at one end (the Front) and exit at the rear. It doesn't seem as if the designers thought about the gas opening bias and they didn't make the hoses long enough to reach around to the other side of the car. So there are vacancies (or at least no lines) at all of the righty pumps. Impatient lefties see no line for the other pump and start doing crazy things like backing into spaces and going against the flow of traffic. This just messes everything up. All of a sudden you have people facing each other at the pumps and backing up into traffic (some of which is trying to bypass fuel altogether) and general confiscate as to who was where and when.

So I travel past all of these middle pumps and spy an opening at the end I pull up and it turns out that the first pump is out of order. The second pump has someone at it but she is clearly almost done. And I happen to be right behind her. After waiting a few minutes I notice someone sitting out to my left on the phone, and she seems to be waiting for something (her location makes it a bit hard to tell if she is waiting for gas or just for one to exit the plaza so she could lead/follow. Besides her gas opening is on the wrong side to be using this pump (at least facing the right direction).

The person in front of me finishes and I start to pull up and at the same time the other lady starts to pull around as well. It is now obvious that she was waiting to get gas and was trying to use "my" pump in the reverse direction. Now I am pretty much at the pump before she tries to move and there is a car behind me so it would be hard to back up as well.

So she gets out as has some words with me. They were fairly civil (she didn't ever take her phone away from her ear), and she ended by calling me rude. I may admit to secretly knowing that she was waiting for gas and that she was there before me, but I can't feel too bad about it because I still believe this could all be avoided by simply putting in longer gas hoses.

I experience this same problem in NJ on the turnpike, except that their gas hoses are long enough to reach both sides of the car. They have to put signs up letting people know it is okay to use both sides. I'm not quite sure why Sunocco can get longer hoses and Exxon can't. Especially since they are making so much money these days. It couldn't cost more than a few hundred thousand dollars to put longer hoses in. And we would all be much better off for it.

No Power since tuesday

2006-07-22T15:37:00.000-04:00

So I think I mentioned Tuesday that I didn't have any power.... Well here it is Saturday and we still don't have power.

Now I know the human race survived a pretty long time with out electricity, so it isn't like a few days with out electricity is going to kill me or anything. But it is interesting how much we rely on electricity.

fortunatly T&C have been great friends this week (not to imply there are weeks when they aren't) and they have fed us and hung out with us, keeping us entertained..... It is great to have friends close by to help out.

Of course we have been sleeping here which hasn't been too bad but man do I miss fans an A/C!

Well the PECO truck is doing another lap around the neighborhood. Hopefully we will have power in and hour or so.... It will be interesting to have electric lights lighting up the living room again.

After Dinner Entertainment

2006-07-18T23:27:00.000-04:00

And people say TV causes volence... See what happens when after dinner you have no TV to watch.....

Great Grandmother's House

2006-07-18T23:20:00.000-04:00

This is my great grandmother's house! It has been vacant for a number of years now, but it is still in surprisingly good condition for being over 100 years old!

Blackout

2006-07-18T23:12:00.000-04:00

Well we had a large storm tonight and lost power. It is amazing how much we rely on electricity for entertainment... And also amazing how less important power right now is.

A great example is this message.... Since I am blogging from my Treo I can compose and send this even in a blackout. Pretty cool!

So I have attached a picture to see if blogger will include it. If not it is the painted buffalo (Bison) which I sent a few seconds ago via picture mail.

The bison are pretty cool. They follow the same idea of the cows in NY. Artists psint them in all sorts of different ways they get displayed in the city amd then they are bid on to raise money for charity. A pretty cool idea and it is fun to look at these different bison in a number of different locations throughout the city.

Well it is late (I think M and I are still on mountain time). Besides since there is no power there is nothing else to do :-)

Great Falls. MT

2006-07-17T16:04:00.000-04:00

I should be posting pictures soon. But Mary and I spent the weekend in Great Falls, MT. This is where my mom grew up and where I spent many of my summers as a young child. We had a great time, but it was obviously too short.

The reason for the trip was my grandfathers 80th birthday party. My mom, dad, M and I surprised hime by comming out. It was the the first time we had been out to MT in about 18 years.

It was great to get reaquainted with a few of my cousins, and extended family. This was also the first time M had been to MT and was the first time she had met most of my family. I am sure she was surprised.

On Sunday we just toured aorund. We went to Great Falls giant spring, and the Lewis & Clark interperative center. Both places were very interesting. It is hard to believe that the Great Falls area was "discovered" only 200 years ago!

On our way to dinner we stopped by my great grandmothers old house. It is the place my grandfather was raised and where my family had farmed for years when the first arrived to Great Falls.

The place has been abandoned for a few years now, but it was great to see it. Especially since I'm not sure when we will get out there again.

For dinner we went to one of my mom's cousins place. We ate ribs, corn, and water mellon on the banks of the Sun River. After dinner we went up to the Pishkun (I probably spelled that wrong) Buffalo Jump. Aside from the historical interest it has an amazing view of the misouri and Sun river valleys. We walked around the clifs and ended up catching the sun set. It was an amazing evening.

I'm glad M and I could make it out. It was great to re meet my family, and it was great to introduce them to M.

Finishing up the House.... Sort of.

2006-07-10T17:36:00.000-04:00

So I got the front 2 windows in. Not too bad it only took me 1 day per window. Now I could have done it faster, but I have found that working slow and methodical is much better, I tend to loose focus and make mistakes if I start working too fast. Now don't get me wrong, I still have lots of interior work to finish, but I spent my "vacation" finishing the porch, and finishing up the last little bit of siding that needed to be completed. So think are moving along. Mary also repainted the kitchen cabinets, I know paint and cabinets?. But this is what the previous owner left us with and a fresh coat of paint on poorly painted cabinets is better than poorly painted cabinets...... We may do the bathroom too... it could really use a coat of paint and there isn't much to paint. We will see if it gets accomplished soon.

4th of July weekend

2006-07-03T23:25:00.000-04:00

Well we have had a whirl wind 4th of July weekend. It started with very quick drive from Philly to Boston.... Door to door was on 5 hours, but that included a 30 minute snack and gas stop. So 4.5 hours of driving for what normally take 5.5 to 6 hours. We were very lucky not to hit any 4th of July traffic.

We spent the night in Needham and got up early the next morning to pick up Paul and Megan and drop the ladies off at Rachel's pre wedding brunch.

The boys had to fend for themselves. It was great to have a few hours to our selves..... This makes 2 weekend in as many months, which is more than we have seen each each other in 10 years.

After picking up the ladies we went our separate ways to get ready for the wedding.

Of course the wedding its self was amazing. Rachel was beautiful and Sudir glowing. It was a perfect day for an outdoor wedding! The reception afterward was great and we all had a great time.

Mary and I headed back to the hotel for the evening and got up early for wedding #2. Slightly different setting. Kevin's wedding was more of a celebration since they were actually married in March. It was great to see some old friends from RPI and meet some of Kevin & Amanda's work friends.

After another wonderful day Mary & I headed back to the Parents house where we have been since. Obviously based on the pictures you can see we caught the Needham fire works... Which was a great show!

We head home early tomorrow morning. Let's hope the traffic god are with us.

Mary & Mom at the 4th of July Fireworks

2006-07-03T22:25:00.000-04:00

Mom and Mary @ Needham 4th of July Fireworks

Ohhhh... ahhhhhh... ooooooo

2006-07-03T22:23:00.000-04:00

The Fireworks were actuallky pretty good despite my treo's lack of a real camera......

Party!

2006-06-18T00:30:00.000-04:00

Well it is unofficially summer! And we have spent the last few weekends at some sort of party or another.

2 weekends ago I was at Paul's Bachelor party. We had an awesome time. It was a great excuse to catch up with old friends. I got to see Neeraj for the first time since my wedding. And a few high school friends I haven't seen since I moved from Boston.

It is great to go "home" and catch up with old friends. The great thisng about this summer is since 2 of my HS friends are getting married we will get a chance to see each othe quite frequently.

Technology is great. I know I wouldn't write lettes (my spelling is bad, and my hand writing is worse!) it amazes me we have all been able to keep in relativly close contact over the past 10 years even though we have been spread out across the country (and at times across the world).

We also had a mango margarita party with some of our philly friends. And finally we just finished up a 3 person family graduation party on Long Island. So the summer parties have begun!

Siding Project

2006-05-31T07:35:00.000-04:00

So my wife and I decided to do the siding and windows on our house. The project went along very smoothly.

we started in october and I finsished the major work before thanksgiving. I finished almost all of the siding before christmas. Fortunatly for me PA had a warm early winter.

I had to stop after christmas because it just got too cold to work with the vinyl.

Of course just as it got warm I was working on the sound of music and didn't have time to finish the project. But I made some real good progress this weekend. I only haave one small area of siding to finish then some incedental fnish work. Fortunalty I will have the 4th of july week off so what I don't get finished by then should get completed that week.

Let's hope I get the project done before my "vacation".

You have new Picture Mail!

2006-05-31T07:24:00.001-04:00

Finished another phase of the siding

BC Graduation

2006-05-24T00:07:00.000-04:00

8:30 AM From the picture I posted yesterday you can see that my little sister graduated from Boston College. She has done an amazing job finishing her degree in 6 years while working a full time job.

I can't say this would be the easiest or most fun way to finish school. But I am amazed she was able to do. I know I wouldn't have been able to keep a job and attend classes as well.

So there has been a lot of press about the graduation speaker (Condolezza Rice). I will have to say she gave one of the best graduation speeches I have listened to. She spoke well, which could be expected, and she did a very good job of challenging the graduates as "educated people".

The controversy came, it seems, mostly from the faculty who were upset with BC bestowing an honorary degree on her. Apparently a few faculty members were so opposed to the degree they resigned from their tenured positions. I can respect those faculty members. Obviously their feelings were strong enough that they felt they couldn't support BC any longer.

11:45 PM I don't agree with the faculty who "protested" by making and handing out signs. Then attending the ceremony and standing with their backs toward the stage. If they felt so strongly about this topic I believe they should have chose not to attend rather than disrupt the ceremony. Now of course they weren't loud or anything, it just didn't seems like the right venue for a political statement. The morning is supposed to be about the students, not politics.

I suppose the only good thing about them attending is perhaps they listened to the speech and learned something. Condoleza gave a very good graduation speech. One of the best I have heard.

You have new Picture Mail!

2006-05-22T10:36:00.000-04:00

My little sister is graduating from BC today!

The Show Must Go On?

2006-05-12T09:01:00.000-04:00

Well we lost power last night and learned a few things. First the auditorium that we put our show up in has no emergency lighting, which seem like a bad idea and is probably illegal. Second, not matter how many updates you give to people, and not matter how little control you have over events, as the person in charge people assume you know what is going on and people want you to fix it (fortunately I'm not in charge). And Finally, of course the old theater line "The Show Must Go On!" well it doesn't apply when the owners of the building deem it unsafe and kick you out. But rather than put on a show, or go home and sulk, or watch Survivor, a few of us decided a good alternative would be to go out and have a few adult beverages and lament over our troubles. It is always therapeutic to get together as a group and forget about your troubles. Well it is a lovely day today so far. Lets hope is stays that way and lets hope we have power for tonight's performance. We are on our way to setting an attendance record for the show and we don't' want to blow it.

Update Virginia

2006-05-08T21:36:00.000-04:00

Well I just got to VA. I have a presentation tomorrow. After the meeting I have to head back to Philly for rehearsal. We have to practice pushing the house around for a few hours. It would be a bad thing to forget what we are doing Thursday night.

So I have posted a few pictures of the set we built, but perhaps I should describe it.

We ended up building an 8'x18' 2 story rolling set. The front half acts as the Von Trapp living room and the rear acts as maria's bed room. The living room looks rather impressive when it is all together. In addition to the 2 story piece we have dubbed "The Monster" (unoriginal I know) there is a rotating 8'x12' platform that acts as the living room and the outside terrace.

Finally there are 2 door platforms that bring the set from one side of the 40' stage to the other. What amazes me is we can get the whole living room set up in under 2 minutes and there is no mechanical assistance being used.

I think I would be blown away if I had shown up at this show without knowing the set design. In college I had a reputation for building large complex stationary sets this is definitely the largest mobile set I have worked on.

Sound of Music Picture

2006-05-06T21:04:00.000-04:00

Pictures from tonights performance. Best seats in a theater.

The hills are alive

2006-05-06T14:32:00.000-04:00

Well the sound of music opened last night. We had about 170 people in the audience which is great for an opening night.

there were a few mishaps (the set ran over my foot) but all in all the show went well.

We have 2 shows today, which will really test everyone stamina.

Blogging from a Treo

2006-05-06T11:15:00.000-04:00

Well I am going to try and do this from my Treo. I think these text messages have to be pretty short though.

Lets give this a try

2006-05-05T12:34:00.000-04:00

Well, I will see how this goes. I'm not sure I have enough discipline to actually keep this up for a while. I am hoping that I get used to posting here. Of course you are reading about a guy who would forget to put his watch on in the morning if it isn't right next to his car keys. So lets see how it goes.