Enjoy!

I wasn’t happy with the job, nor enjoyed the 45 minute trek to the site, nor the night shift I was scheduled. So, I interviewed with a company called The Fund (http://www.thefund.com), they hired me and I gave my two weeks notice to IBM. There are a lot more reasons for quitting IBM but I won’t bore you.

My first day at The Fund starts next week so hopefully everything will work out for me there. One of the best things about this companies location is that it is only 5 miles away from where I live and no tolls. I was spending close to $10 a week on tolls alone traveling to the Disney site.

Pray and wish me luck that I will be as happy as I was at The Ginn Company.

I stated in previous post that I would post a video of the unboxing of the product. I did record it but it was unuseable footage that I couldn’t post. However, I do have a video that can be posted that shows, briefly, the netbook and the Ubuntu user interface of the new flavor called Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

I even found a video online that has a good video substitute of the unboxing of the Dell Mini 9, if you really wanted to see it.

I am typing this post on the Mini 9 now and so far I have to say that I really like it. The keyboard is a little something to get used to since I seem to keep bumping the very sensitive trackpad with my thumbs so the cursor keeps orienting itself someplace else as I type. And the position of some of the keys are a little different from your standard keyboard so I will need to relearn some things as I type, but those are no big deals, it just means a change of habits.

Update (10/13/08 20:20): Something interesting I noticed that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense on Dell’s behalf. I ordered the 16GB SSD drive to go with the machine. They, for some reason, created a 8GB partition to install everything on which gave me a little bit over 1GB of available space and left an unalocated 11GB partition just sitting there doing nothing. I ended up installing Gparted, created a 11GB partition and mounted the drive. Now I have 12GB available.
Eventually, I just may blow the thing away and start over and partition it correctly.
There’s some crazy stuff going on over there at Dell.

If you are not familiar with OpenDNS, then go here:

http://www.opendns.com/

To put it simple, it’s an alternate DNS server you can input into your home router’s (and I pray that all of you reading this that have broadband have a home network router) DNS settings instead of your ISP’s DNS. If you go to the above site and select Home Network at the bottom, it will explain easily how to configure your home router to use OpenDNS.

Once you configure your router to start using OpenDNS, create a free account with them, download the OpenDNS utility and install. Then go back to your account settings on the site and start setting up your network. I’m not exactly sure if the utility is really necessary as its only function is to notify OpenDNS when your external IP address has changed.

I really do encourage you, dear reader, to use this, especially if you are a parent. It enforces safe browsing without you having to be conscious of it all the time. For those of you that are a little more tech savvy, it basically has some proxy filter enabled when you set OpenDNS as your DNS server and create an account but all the proxy filtering is done on all their DNS servers.

I don’t have it included in the photos below but you can even create a custom message that will be displayed when a page has been blocked and a way for your network clients to email you the site they are trying to visit so that you can mark the site safe in your OpenDNS settings, if you so desire. Just like an anti-virus being needed on a Windows machine, this is just as important, if not more so.

If any of you have any questions about this, feel free to email me.

Below are a few photos of some of my basic account settings to show you what can be set and how powerful it can be.

I think the main reason why I am so excited is because I have had to wait over a month to receive the darn thing. My patience has been tried. If you don’t know me well, then you should know that I have absolutely no patience. So, it’s been agonizing to wait for such a cool product. Also, I really can’t wait to do this: Dell Mini 9 OS 10.5 Hack

October 14th will be like Christmas. I may even take the day off from work, decorate the Halloween tree and put out the witch’s stockings.

Screw Christmas. Halloween is my favorite holiday and the most wonderful time of the year.

• Inspiron 910 Intel Atom processor N270, 1.6GHz, 533Mhz512K L2 Cache
• Obsidian Black Color with Gloss Finish
• 1GB,DDR2,533MHZ,1 DIMM
• 8.9 inch Wide Screen WSVGA TL
• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950
• 16GB Solid State Drive (mini-card Module/PATA)
• Mini OS powered by Ubuntu 8.04
• Wireless 802.11g Mini Card
• Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam
• 32WHr 4-cell Battery

Price: $475
I know what you are thinking. What do I need this for? Well for…stuff. I like the idea of mini-computing. I’ve been a fan of it for quite some time. One of the items I had previously that allowed mini-computing, to a certain extent, was my HP iPaq Pocket PC. I sold that about three years ago and have missed it immensely. I’ve had a couple of substitutions since from a Samsung Blackjack and now my iPhone but there are limitations to what these gadgets have to offer compared to a sub-notebook. With this I can carry it around everywhere very easily and have access to all standard computing applications, like email (which I can do with my iPhone),internet browsing (which I can sort of do with my iPhone), word processing (which I can’t easily do with my iPhone), and so much more without having to lug around my standard notebook all the time.
Like I stated, I ordered it yesterday. What sucks is that it will not be delivered until October 13th. I just found out today that the Linux version, the one I ordered, doesn’t begin shipping out country wide until October 9th. So what I ordered was more like a pre-order. The Windows XP version begins shipping country wide September 18th. Why does Windows get all the privileges?
I’ll post once I have received and used it for a while to give you my hands on opinion.

I have plans to upgrade the hard drive in my Macbook to a 250GB drive since I found 100GB wasn’t enough; the drive doesn’t arrive until tomorrow. Since I was upgrading the drive I thought it would be the perfect time to upgrade to Leopard since I would be rebuilding my Macbook after all. Well, I couldn’t wait. I bought Leopard this evening with every intention to wait to install the OS when I installed the hard drive tomorrow evening but my impatience got the better of me and I just finished upgrading.

So far as I can tell it’s just pretty. Yes, there are some minor improvements to some of the integrated applications that come with OS 10 like Mail, the Address Book, and iCal but what I am most interested in trying out, and should be using the most of, is Spaces. Spaces is the utility that allows you to have multiple desktops giving you the power to have multiple applications open in separate desktops. Example: I can have two desktops setup. One would have my web browser and iTunes open and the other would have a word processing application and a dictionary application open. It gives you the ability to work in several applications without cluttering up one desktop.

I still plan to install it again. Once I get the new hard drive in the mail I will be completing a fresh install of Leopard on my Macbook instead of an upgrade.

I love technology!

Today was nothing exciting as it was, mostly, orientation day. I spent most of the day in a conference room going over the details of working for IBM and The Walt Disney Company.

Tomorrow is a continuation, if Tropical Storm Fay lets us work. I may not start getting my hands dirty on servers until later this week.

I’m excited.

The visit to Serendipity 3 was the highlight of the entire trip. It was Oz for our merry band of travelers. It was a destination that I never stopped hearing the end of even before we left for New York. I was hearing about Serendipity 3 so much before our trip that I was already growing tired of hearing about it by the time we arrived. If you don’t know what Serendipity 3 is, it’s a restaurant that has been the center of attention for many, many years. They’ve focused on it in movies, like Serendipity, and in television, like Rachel Ray’s cooking shows and Samantha Brown’s travel shows. Serendipity 3 is the home of the famous Frozen Hot Chocolate. After having tasted it, it is easy to see why it is famous. If you are ever in New York, I highly recommend visiting, not for the meal but for the deserts alone. During our 45 minute wait to get in, we decided to have a quick dinner at a oven cooked pizza place across the street. Our original intention was to visit Serendipity 3 just for the deserts so having a meal during the wait was perfect, unplanned, timing.
The only unfortunate event during this time was that it started raining and did not stop for the rest of the night. But, we were able to use this to our advantage by visiting Dylan’s Candy Bar candy store and cafe right next to Serendipity 3. It was a pretty neat candy store filled with all types of candies and chocolates. Thereafter, during a brief pause in the rain, we walked to FAO Schwarz and the Apple Store to wait out the rain, and to waste a little more time, before we retired for the evening.

On Friday, we sort of took our time since we had planned to visit Central Park Zoo and it didn’t open until 10am. We arrived there at a decent time and spent most of the midday enjoying the zoo and Central Park until we had to get to the airport for our flight out at 5pm. The rest of the trip, after this, was a disaster.

We got to the airport on time. The only issue was that the plane was delayed 30 minutes later than the original planned 5:05pm schedule. However, due to the surrounding storms, it was delayed again until close to 6pm. While we were waiting in line to get on the plane I had overheard someone else state that there was even a tornado warning in the Manhattan area. Once we got on the plane, the fun didn’t end. We finally taxied out toward the runway pausing halfway for over an hour to wait in a queue with 40 planes in front of us. At the time, there was an estimate that we would not be taking off for another two to three hours. The only problem for us, along with many others on the plane, was that we had a layover in Chicago’s O’Hare airport for a transfer flight to Orlando at 8:00pm. Needless to say, we did not make that flight. We arrived in Chicago close to 9:30 CST, an hour and a half after our plane left out for Orlando. So, we waited in queue at United customer service for another hour waiting to see when our next flight would be taking off. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until 12:55 the next day.

So, United gave us a discounted hotel voucher and put us on the wait list for any planes Saturday morning from 6:50am until time of our scheduled flight out at 1pm. Luckily, we found a really nice Hyatt ten minutes from the airport for less than $75 and stayed the night there. I am typing this from the United gate now having missed out on the first flight out at 6:50am. We are now waiting for the next standby at 10:45am but I doubt we will be on that plane also. More than likely, we will be flying out at 1:00pm.

Update: I am typing this now after having finally arrived home in the early evening. It happened as predicted; we didn’t fly out until 1:00pm.

The trip was pretty decent up until that storm hit NY on Friday. I would be so happy to be home now, if I wasn’t so exhausted.

After, we decided to go back to the Empire State Building to see if the line had gotten shorter, it had not. By the time we discovered this it was dinner time, so we ate and headed to Time Square. We didn’t spend a whole of time there as we were pretty exhausted being that we had been up since 4:00 this morning. So, we turned in for the night and made plans for a long day tomorrow.

I’m still up now only because it’s a little more difficult for me to settle in before 10:00 p.m; Chelby and her nephew were already asleep by 9:30. However, my eyes are growing heavy now; it’s time for Slumberland.

However, this time, we are taking her nephew. She felt it would be neat to take him on a trip before he starts school next week. What better trip could there be to tell your schoolmates about than a trip to New York to see the Statue of Liberty, amongst other things. He should have plenty of stories to tell them on his first day back to school.

One was the thought of the month of August. First of all, how it was already here. It’s really true what they say about getting older, how time disappears. It seems just like yesterday I was celebrating Christmas with my family. It’s hard to believe that fall and college football is just around the corner (Thank God!). Second thought - and this is the strange one - was how worthless the month of August is. Really. I was thinking, for me, there is absolutely nothing special about August. No holidays, no birthdays of friends or family, no good summer movies since most of them are released between April and the end of July, and it’s always hotter than hell. I wish there was a way to get rid of August and make the summer shorter so that the cooler months (and college football) could get here sooner. I’m sure as a child I would have a different sentiment since that would mean school would arrive sooner but as an adult who hates summers in Florida, and has more to look forward to in the fall, I absolutely hate August.

What’s your opinion? Don’t you agree that August is the worst month of the twelve? Which month do you hate, if not, and why?

Maybe if that majority saw this version, they would have had more enjoyment.

We parked in the Ronald Reagan building and immediately walked to The Washington Monument a couple blocks down the road. From there, we did the whole, what I call, American circle, that involved The Lincoln Memorial, The White House and then The Capital Building, with a couple of stops along the way.

Our last stop at the end of “the circle” was The Holocaust Memorial Museum. What an unbelievable memorial. If you are ever in the D.C. area, I highly recommend this exhibit. It is truly awesome.

See, my cousin, 1st Sergeant Scott, is in the Marines and has served our country for over 15 years having been in the first Gulf War and made two tours in the second Gulf War; I’m very proud of him and grateful to him for his service. In between he has been bouncing around the east coast at different military bases and been in other countries, so he hasn’t had the luxury of being able to make Christmas visits to Grandma’s house too often for me to see him. But, now that he is back for good, for now, and settled in Virginia, I thought it would be neat to take the time to visit him and hang out while I’m still unemployed.

He’s an avid golfer so hopefully we will be playing quite a bit of golf while I am there. I’m not sure what else there is to do in that area since I can’t see it as a tourist destination, which is actually a relief being that I live in a tourist town. Whatever is planned, I am sure it will be a good time hanging with my cuz.

A brief summary of the play, as best as I can: A young witch, sister of The Dry-Eyed Widow, has been admitted into The Ginger House, a prison for witches ruled by the Wardlock - a warden type character with powers of a warlock who loves imported coffee. A private investigor, Sam Fleming, and his secretary, Diana Huntress, were hired by The Dryed-Eyed Widow, Dame Rebecca Eveningstar, to investigate The Ginger House and her sister’s occupancy at the witch prison.

That is a very brief summary of the play, there is so much more to it than that. I just wanted to give that much information so that you will get the gist of the following clips.

Act 1 Scene 5 - This scene takes place at City Hall where Sam and Diana are trying to talk Fergus and Cillian, two police detectives, into helping them get into The Ginger House.

Act 3 Scene 7 - Takes place in a cemetary where two witches, Violet and Tabitha, have escaped from The Ginger House and are hiding out. Fergus and Cillian are showing Diana a good time on their date at the cemetary where they discover something peculiar is going on, besides the aftertaste of bat wax.

Act 3 Scene 9 - The Dry-Eyed Widow, Dame Rebecca Eveningstar, has cast a spell of confusion on Sam (”that old black magic…”) in which Sam finds she is simply irresistible by all. Enter Fergus, Cillian and Diana flabbergasted at what their eyes can’t seem to believe.

Enjoy!

iPhone 2.0 upgrade, iTunes App Store and a useless iPhone application.

If you click on the link to the video you can see some other cool digital animated movies from the University of Hertfordshire.

Update: Replaced You Tube video with a better version posted on Vimeo.

Yesterday was the last day of the show, a 2:00 p.m showing. It was, yet again, a smooth show and full of fun. I made one minor flub but was able to easily recover without skipping a beat. After the show we had the cast party at the theatre, and what a grand party it was. There was no doubt, by the evidence of the smiles on everyone’s faces, that it was time to celebrate a successful, and exhausting, five day run. Simon and I, plus a few other nice people willing to help, closed out the day by spending a few hours cleaning up the theatre before retiring to Slumberland. The theatre was trashed so it really did take a few hours before it was cleaned. I think we overdid it. We left it cleaner than it was when we first entered the theatre last Monday.

After we woke up from sleeping in a little, we met our new friends from Rhode Island for lunch at Fanelli’s Cafe near SOHO (apparently, one of the oldest restaurants in NY). It was a really cool cafe with some really good food. We ate, said our goodbyes and returned to Simon’s place so that I could grab my items and leave for the airport.

Reflecting back on all my previous trips to New York, I would say that this was probably the best time I have ever had and it will be extremely difficult to top in the possible future visits to “the city that never sleeps”. I’ll probably have pictures and videos posted within the next couple of days, after I have had time to decompress.

One of the cast members hosted a Independence Day party in Brooklyn in her gorgeous three story apartment(?) where the top two floors had a terrace with a grand view of Manhattan and the area where the NYC fireworks would take place. It was a great time of meeting new people (a few that were actually from Florida) and enjoying the wonderful fireworks.

A half an hour or so after the fireworks, Simon and I left for another party taking place at The Lafayette House hotel in Manhattan. The host and hostess were friends of Simon in town from Rhode Island just to see the play so they invited us over to hang out for a while. When we got there we were greeted by the wonderful hosts and more unmet friends from Orlando. Surprisingly, after I met everyone there, I found out that the host and hostess and two other super nice people at the party were originally from Orlando also so we ended up all being instant friends. It was really a good time thanks to the generous hospitality of all these new friends.

Tonight the play starts a little later than usual (8:00 p.m.) so it gives us all time to rest after a long night of celebrating Independence Day.

It was another good night. This time I didn’t drop any lines. In fact, I don’t think anyone dropped any lines tonight and everything went smooth.

It was another fun night.

Hopefully, we will have another successful night tonight. I just hope I can get to sleep sooner and have a successful nights sleep.

What an exciting adventure I am a part of in my life right now. It’s really difficult to explain in words how happy I feel right now.

Pretty impressive and exciting.

http://www.vimeo.com/1262196

You can get full details from their web site here. The device is very straight forward and simple to use. There is a small LCD panel on the back to view what your recording, along with buttons for recording, playing and deleting videos. Best of all, it’s easy to carry around in your shirt or pants pocket; it’s about the size of a iPhone. These pictures show the size comparison to my iPod Video.

You may be shocked and appalled at the face viewed in the following example but here is a small test clip I recorded on the Mino and posted to Vimeo.

One other thing to state about this cool little gadget is the software used for editing your videos. Since the device can connect to your Mac or PC using a standard USB connection, it already has preloaded software that becomes available once you connect. For PC, you can install using the .exe installation. For Mac, the application can actually be launched from the device to edit your videos stored on the Flip’s embedded storage. Your edited results are then saved to your local hard drive. Since the Flip records to a .avi file, I normally just copy the .avi file to my Mac for viewing and uploading. The only issue I ran into during this process is that I did not have the proper codec on my Mac to view the .avi using Quicktime at first, however, Flip also provided the codec in its storage for me to install. There are utilities in the included software that allow you to easily upload your video to MySpace and You Tube, but I haven’t used those features yet since I’ve recently become a Vimeo convert.

The main reason I bought this device was for my upcoming trip to NY, so that I can create video blogs during my off-Broadway adventures. We’ll just have to see how often I actually use it.

Old Business Card

As some of you know, back in March I was informed by management that my job (Systems Engineer in the IT department), along with one other in my department and all of Help Desk, was going to be outsourced. I was given the date of June 27th as my last day of being a Ginn employee.

Well, I went into work today at my normal time, my boss followed an hour later and told me, as he passed my desk, that there really was no need to stay the rest of today or come back tomorrow, he was granting me the rest of the time off. He continued by offering his gratitude for my professionalism, hard work and dedication and finished with goodbyes. I then made my goodbye rounds to the rest of the office, seeing a few wet eyes along the way, and exited the building.

Even though tomorrow was supposed to be the beginnings of unemployment, I get an early start today to prepare. However, preparation is not on my agenda at this time. Monday morning I fly out to New York for my acting adventure (see previous post) and return on the 7th of July. It will then be on the 8th that I start sending out my resume and browsing the job sites for openings.

Thanks to Ginn, I have a severance that will hold me over for a few weeks until I can get back on my feet in the corporate world.

Wish me luck!

Here is just a short video demonstration of the Delicious Library application for OS 10.

*Note, though, the current Delicious Library 2 is only compatible with Leopard, currently OS 10.5.

You can get all the details from their web site:

http://www.delicious-monster.com/

A lot of time, money and hard work was put into this amateur mod so I’m feeling a little bit of sadness now. I’m sure I will get over it.

I found there was no need to have it sitting around any longer since I had a powerful Dell XPS gaming machine sitting right next to it rarely being used. So, now that the mod is no longer in use, the Dell machine will be me my main desktop machine. It frees up the needed space and saves electricity. I’m sure I could have upgraded all the parts in the modded PC to be just as powerful as the Dell XPS, but there really is no point.

Here is an old web site I keep around showing the created process of the PC mod.

http://www.edwardcrosby.com/personal/Mod/

Next step, selling my 250 CD collection as it is also just sitting around collecting dust. All my music is on three different hard drives in MP3 format. I haven’t touched a single CD in my collection in over two years.

From http://yourmonkeycalled.com

From http://silhouettemasterpiecetheatre.com/

From http://adelgadorey.tumblr.com

From http://www.kungfugrippe.com/

If you can’t tell what it is, it’s a vulture. A very large vulture. Along with the (previously mentioned) peacocks, otters, hawks, and raccoons, there is an abundance of vultures in my area. So much it has become a huge eyesore. Everyday it is not uncommon to see a flock of 15 or more of these large Turkey vultures congregated on the side of the road or up in the trees. I often wonder if it is because of the new housing and business developments that has been ongoing since I moved to this area four years ago. I would think because of this it drives all the animals out of their habitat into the streets and under the wheels of heavy traffic. It’s a constant buffet for the vultures.

Sadly, this vulture was eying a baby raccoon that met its demise in the road.

How are you today and i hope you read this message ASAP. Please, I don’t want you to take this as a JOKE or see it as a kind of SPAM mail. I want you to read this carefully because it is very urgent and important. So kindly try your possible best to help me out of this trouble.

I am presently abroad on a personal business trip to Lagos. Unfortunately, I lost both my wallet & my ATM cards. Right now, I’m totally stranded and have no Funds on me, I have notified my bank about the missing cards and also requires them to transfer me some money from my account if possible but unfortunately my bank couldn´t do any wire transfer to me since I’m out of states. I’ve also visited the US Embassy to report the issue of my lost items and to seek for a loan to pay the hotel bills but unfortunately there’s nothing they too could do to assist me financially, I’m totally confused about that, as I don’t know what to do next. So i decided to take this step by reaching out to you by email.

Can you please do me a favor? I need a loan worth of $1250 so that I could pay the hotel bills and plan on coming back home immediately. Would you be able to loan me this amount and how soon can you send it to me, because I’ll need it as soon as possible. I don’t want you to be worried on when you will be getting your money back, I promise to pay you as soon as I return. Please know that I need this money to pay the hotel bills so that I could be allowed to pack my luggage and leave to board a flight home without any delay, thank God i already have a return ticket.

I didn’t travel with my phone since my trip was not within the states, I would have prefer discussing this on phone, and since I have no access to phone I think contacting you by email is the best and the only means I could use to send you this urgent mail. The hotel management here are not taking it likely with me, just because I couldn’t paid up my bills. I have been restricted from using the hotel phone to make or receive calls, just imagine that.

Write back to me as soon as you receive this message and let me know how you could possibly assist me with the loan, then I could give you further details on how to send the money to me via western union money transfer.

Please keep this confidentially, as I wouldn’t want this to be spread around since no one knows about the trip because all my plans was that its going to be a successful one and I will be back with no difficulties.

Thanks.

The email actually looked authentic since it came directly from his Gmail account. Well, at the same time that I received that email from him, I noticed he was also online on Gmail Chat (Google Talk). So, I decided to IM him in a joking matter asking him how the weather was in Lagos, knowing that somehow I got spam from him and knowing that he would not know what I was talking about since I knew he would not send it intentionally. Well, “he” responded back asking if I could really help “him”. I decided to go right along with “him” thinking “he” was joking and asked “him” if “he” could make change for a $5000 bill. “He” replied back stating that it was not a joke.
I then decided to call him. I got him on the phone and found that he was not actually chatting with me, and, shockingly, he could not log into his Gmail account to change his password, he had been locked out.
I let him go so he could fix this problem.
I state this story to you so that you will know that anyone is vulnerable. In this case, somehow, someone had logged into my friends email account and was sending out an email scam.
Change your passwords, and often.

I took this picture of a lightning flash over my house with my little Canon SD450 point-and-shoot this evening. I was actually amazed that I could catch a flash without having a professional camera.

Of course, it took me, like, over 100 snaps before I could get a few good shots. I have a couple more over at my Flickr page.

It truly is an awesome thing to see.

Check out this cool video I just found:

Good job, Mike Benson and gang.

Tip: Turn on HD and watch it on Vimeo’s site.

I grew up in the country on the outskirts of Tallahassee, I was right smack in the middle of the wild there. To this day, though, I don’t recall ever hearing frogs get this loud and in such quantity. To hear it in person is, actually, quite chilling. Every time I hear this song I can’t help but think about the Stephen King short, Rainy Season.

Of course, I am excited. I’ve never been in a play before, unless you want to count the parts I had in kindergarten. The most exciting thing about this first experience is that it will be - should I call it - an off-Broadway play right in the theatre district of Manhattan. BRILLIANT!

I need to thank Simon for having faith in me. I’ve acted before, if you call working as a gangster on the Great Movie Ride in Disney’s Hollywood Studios acting. But trusting me with this task, even if it is a small part, is something powerful.

The only difficult thing about this is that I will not be up there for all of the rehearsals. I did, however, change my plane reservation so that I would be up there until the 7th instead of leaving on the 5th. Getting there on the 30th will allow me a couple of rehearsals before the play starts on the 2nd. Crunch time!

His play runs from July 2nd through the 6th (details in that web link above) and I will be there June 30 through July 5th. I’m actually expected to help out with the production (lighting, stage help, or whatever and whenever I am needed) while I am there, which makes the trip that much more exciting. I can’t wait.

One other really cool thing about the trip is that I will be there for Independence Day. The play has an early showing that day so that it will be done in time for the night’s fireworks that, I am sure, will be occurring all around the island that is Manhattan, where the play will be taking place.

I’m pumped! I’ll be sure to post pictures and, possibly, video when I get back from the trip.

Enjoy.

Well, I came home today to find two peacocks in my front lawn.

So far, at my current residence, I have seen deer in my back yard, otters in the retention pond behind my house, a frequenting owl, the very occasional hawk, and the usual raccoon. Now I can add a real strange one to my list, peacocks.

I don’t know how often I will have them running but they are there and will have me live in my home office. Boring, I know.

Thought I would share.

It’s kind of neat.

It’s blue when the water is cold.

And red when the water is hot.

I think she got a kick out of it.

I know I did. I may, eventually, buy one for myself to put in my bathroom.

If you’re not familiar with ThinkGeek.com, check it out. They have some really cool stuff there. Plenty of unique gifts for friends and family to choose from.

I went to the kitchen, drank some water and chugged some Mylanta, hoping this would help. An hour went by and the pain did not go away and I started feeling nauseous with feelings of vomiting. This was new. In the past, I had some numbness in my hands and face along with a very severe acid reflux pain in my esophagus. I had the pain this time but no numbness.

I immediately started researching on the internet the fish I had for dinner, pollock. There were several sites, along with WebMD.com, that mentioned that pollock can affect some people.

Okay. That’s it. No more fish for me ever. Which sucks. I guess I should have researched it before I ate it.

After discovering this problem, I immediately woke up Chelby and told her to take me to the emergency room, thinking I was on my way toward anaphylactic shock. We got there just before 3:00 a.m. and waited to see the doctor, after checking in, for almost an hour and a half. Ridiculous. I failed to mention that on the way to the hospital that I was starting to feel loss of breath. By this time in the waiting room, it was getting worse and the nausea never left. I had mentioned this to the lady at the counter but it didn’t seem to rush things.

I finally saw the doctor. They put me on a EKG again, just in case there were heart issues being that I have those issues coming from my Mom’s side of the family. After they monitored this for a while, and my blood pressure, they eventual pumped me, via a needle in the arm, with Protonix, steroids and anti-histamine. The anti-histamine was enough to knock me out, which was perfect since they wanted to continue to monitor me.

They eventually released me around 7:30 a.m. and sent me home with prescriptions for my acid reflux, more steriods and more anti-histamine (Benadryl).

I stayed home from work today to recuperate. I’m feeling better now and so much more the wiser.

After much thought on if I really should buy an iPhone, I finally decided to drive to the AT&T store last evening and buy the 8GB version. The purchase was a breeze and the activation in iTunes on my Macbook, once I got it home, was smooth. It wasn’t until later in the night when I was in bed reading my emails using the Wi-Fi function on the phone that my nightmare began. Ironically enough, it was when I was watching a Quicktime video on Apple’s site from the Welcome email that Apple sent me that the phone started crashing. What Apple did was email me a Welcome email with a guided tour video of the iPhone that redirects you to this Quicktime video. I was about 15 minutes into the video when the phone suddenly rebooted. Once it came back up into the OS (the iPhone is actually running a full version of Mac OS X) it froze again. I tried powering it off but it remained frozen in the OS. I then performed what they term as a hard reset using the iPhone combination of button presses (the Home button and the Sleep/Awake button) to reboot the device. It rebooted but remain frozen once it booted into the OS, all the time displaying a “Searching…” in the upper left for the AT&T network. I plugged the phone into the wall, since I knew the battery would discharge overnight being that it would not power down (and you can’t remove the battery since Apple has no means of doing this, like an iPod), and went to bed completely annoyed.
I woke up this morning with nothing but the AT&T store on mind knowing that, deep down, I was going to have an adventure. And an adventure I ended up having.
After I drank my coffee, ate my breakfast, watching an episode of Carnivale in the process, I left for the AT&T store with the boxed iPhone in one hand and my Macbook in the other thinking that I may have to activate the new one while I am away from home. When I got there a young lady greeted me with a smile but then her face changed to shock when I told her that my iPhone crashed and did not recover. She and her manager then told me that they could do nothing for me, even though I had purchased it from them the night before, and that I had to take it to the Apple Store. It was my face that then turned to an expression of shock. I was flabbergasted. Reluctantly, I left the store and drove down the street to the Apple Store. Looking at this on the bright side, it was a good thing I was not far from the Apple Store; I probably should have just bought it from them in the first place. The only thing is the Apple Store is in the mall. I hate the mall.
When I got to the Apple Store, another young lady greeted me with a smile but then her face also turned to shock when I stated I needed to exchange my iPhone because it had crashed. She directed me to one of her co-workers that worked in the correct department which I then explained to this person the situation. Another surprised individual who could not understand that there could be any problems with an iPhone, until I pulled out evidence Exhibit A to show her the crime. She took the device and tried to reset the device, as I did, but had no luck either. She then took the device over to the “Genius Bar” where a technician looked over the device and attempted, yet again, the same exact steps while I waited at the front counter. She finally walked back over to me with the device in her hand when low and behold the device reboot successfully into the OS without freezing while she was handing it to me. We were both amazed, however I explained to her that this clearly was an intermittent issue and that I would like to swap it anyway for a new one since I was having the issue. She complied and proceeded to make an appointment for me to see a “Genius”…what!? Make an appointment to simply swap the device!? Yes. Apparently, that is Apple’s procedure and there was nothing I could do to sway the young lady. What made it even worse was that the next soonest appointment they had was two hours from that time. That meant I needed to go back home to wait. To my own amazement, I kept my cool and anger and gave in. Yes, I was a teeny, tad annoyed but I gave in. What was something else that was interesting during our conversation was t