Don't drive in the HOV lane if you're a single

I was doing my regular commute today towards Miami and on my route, I-95 has an High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane. The lane really doesn't serve a purpose from the look of things, its just a restricted lane that cars with two or more people can use to try and get ahead of the rest of us poor souls who drive to work alone. The times that the HOV lane are active aren't that bad, after 6pm on the way home, it opens up to everyone so that means I can hit the gas and zoom on ahead of all the dunder heads that are in the slower lanes.

But anyway............ I was driving down I-95 this morning and there were a ton of cops sitting in the breakdown lane thats just to the left of the HOV lane. Actually there was just 1 cop but by the time I lost sight of him, he pulled over two different people for trying to cheat traffic by driving in the HOV lane. I don't think its worth getting the ticket although I don't know how much it costs but I know it should be more than a tank of gas or something. I'd much rather wait it out and just mosey along in the regular lanes, besides after the Highway 836 junction, everything is fine on I-95 and being patient means no ticket, no spot on my driving record, no higher insurance costs, and no loss of time because I was pulled over. You can cheat sometimes but eventually you will get caught, the state cops down here have quotas to fill haha

My dying iPod

This morning as I was driving to work I was using my iPod to listen to some music because I was getting sick of the same 10 songs that I have been hearing on the various South Florida radio stations. A curioius thing happened as the music was playing, it just stopped in the middle and played another song. For a CD player thats probably normal but not for a hard drive based MP3 player. I thought this was a fluke so I tried another song, something of more recent vintage since I have a lot of songs going back to around 1996 when I first started my vast collection. To my surprise, that song didn't work either so I reset my iPod but that didn't seem to do anything to alleviate the problem.

I think that I might need to get a new MP3 player for Xmas or something or until this one totally gives out. I think it still kinda sorta works but its not at 100%. The big hassle will be buying all the extra little things that I need for an MP3 player to work in my car like the FM broadcaster and a new car charger. If it comes out and gets some really good reviews, maybe I'll get the new Microsoft Zune player which looks pretty sweet and is basically a souped up version of the Toshiba Gigabeat S player that has been getting some pretty good reviews of late. I can't really complain though, my iPod has served me well these past 2-3 years. Maybe I can still use it as an external hard drive if it totally dies as an MP3 player :)

Construction is everywhere!

Working in downtown Miami is certainly interesting. I mean the city hasn't impressed me in any significant way and the traffic getting in and out of here is pretty terrible. One thing that I think is going to add to it in the future is all the construction thats going on right now. If you just look at the sky line of Miami, you're going to see at least 30 cranes at a minimum with high rises coming up everywhere. I certainly hope that they are going add a lot more parking so that rates finally start to come down. Paying the amount of money I am right now for the nasty garage I park in is total crap. To do all this construction many roads are closed in downtown or just all messed up because of all the heavy crap being brought in. There were 3 large parking lots or so I'm told that was right next to the office that have since been converted into construction sites for high rise buildings. Hmm the slight problem with that was that they never replaced the parking spaces that those building sites took so parking right now is at a premium. I give it at least another 5 years until construction in this town is done and by that time it will have gotten even more congested :( BAH, HUMBUG!!

Chaos in Pembroke Pines

This weekend I was in Pembroke Pines picking up a network adapter for my computer and there was a huge thunder storm that rolled through just as I finished my purchase. My wife and I ran out in the rain to my car and proceeded to go home. Here's where all the utter chaos takes place. One of the major intersections had nothing but flashing red lights. Most places there would be some semblance of order with people just taking turns going through the intersection or there might be a cop directing traffic or something. At this intersection it was nothing but pure chaos. Everyone was trying to get through the intersection at once. I was surprised that no one got into an accident trying to get through. I used a bunch of cars next to me as a shield so just in case some fool came running through the intersection they would hit them first and not me. All in all, my fancy New England driving skills got me through that mess relatively quickly. Needless to say, I'm not going to attempt to take that route to work or home any time soon unless I have to.

Networking Trouble

I set up my computer in my room at my sister in laws place but there's just one problem. I have a desktop computer and normally its hooked up to my wireless router using an ethernet cable. Before I left I bought a wireless USB adapter so my desktop would connect from a friend at work but I didn't know how good it was since I bought it my last day in Tampa. I thought that a wireless usb adapter is a wireless usb adapter really, they should all work the same right? WRONG!!

I used it for about a week and the network connection was terrible! During the course of the week I updated my sister in laws network to a 54G wireless network with my router thinking that might help things but it didn't. I was only getting around 1MB per second and I was barely 100 feet away from the router. On top of that my network connection died if the adapter got over heated and then I would have to reboot my PC just to get my network connection back.

I tested the wireless USB adapter that I use with my Tivo and that one worked great! So this weekend I decided to get another one just like it from the store. Luckily it was on sale at the store and it was even an upgraded model. I'm actually using it right now and its been working great and I have an even better connection with this one than with the one hooked up to my Tivo. Time to download Windows Vista RC1 without worrying that my network connection is gonna drop :)

Commuting to Miami

My new daily commute to Miami so far has been pretty eventful of late. I started working at my new company on Monday and had to find a way to get to work. Unfortunately the fastest way to get to work is by taking a toll road. The toll is only about a buck so thats not too bad really. The really bad part is when I meet up with my old friend I-95. Man the traffic there is freakin terrible. It's nothing but stop and go for at least 5 or so miles. I normally have my GPS with me but I've been just winging it lately and I think I've found a good route to work. Any way that I go is going to be bogged down with traffic.

I did make one mistake though, I did go to this one road called 826 one day on my way home and boy oh boy was that a mistake. My co-workers later told me that 826 is just a parking lot no matter what time of day you go or even what day you go one. On the weekends its supposedly just as bad as if it was a week day. Needless to say I'm definately not going that way again.

My way home is pretty straight forward now. I just take good ole I-95 to I-595, to I-75 and thats it. Distance-wise its longer than my commute to work but there are no tolls on it and after you pass the Florida Turnpike entrace, its pretty smooth sailing which is what I like.

Now if only I could get monthly parking somewhere in Miami I'd be all set..........

Finally finished moving to South Florida!

It's Sunday morning and I have completed my move to South Florida. Actually I completed my move on Friday evening by driving to my sister-in-laws place but I finally have my computer up and running and thats when I determine when I'm finally moved in since its normally the last thing that I acutally put together.

My wife and I packed our cars until it could hold no more of our stuff. Luckily we had just enough room for everything that we wanted to take with us. I had the pleasure of driving with my two cats in my car. They howled for about an hour or so but then they calmed down and tried to sleep. I was having flash backs of when I moved to Tampa because that was the last time that my car was ever that full of junk. I put most of the stuff that I brought with me into storage until I move into my new townhouse that is in the process of being built.

My cats seem to be adjusting well to their temporary home. My sister-in-law has two cats of her own so they've been kind of growling and hissing at each other but its all pretty amusing to watch. There haven't been any full blown fights yet but once they get used to each other I'm sure things will eventually calm down. My cats actually sleep in my bedroom with me and they seem to enjoy it. They wake us up early but I have to wake up early anyway for work so it doesn't bother me as much as it would have if I just worked down the street or something.

Monday is definitely going to be interesting since that is when I start my new job. The type of company is very similar and I've done the job before earlier in my career so it'll be like an old shoe, good and comforting and easy to wear/do. I have a few network upgrades to do and I have to set up the Tivo here as well. There will be plenty more to post in the next few days, until then...........

Moving to South Florida, Part 1

Above is the picture of the 14' UHaul truck that my wife and I rented to start our move to South Florida. Ohh, first a little pre-text. I'm moving my butt to South Florida to take a job as a tech and my wife will return to her roots in marketing and we're going to be moving into a new townhouse that we're having built. It's definately an exciting time for us and we're going to be starting our jobs next monday.

Our saga began a few weeks ago when we both learned basically at the same time that the companies that we have been interviewing with offered us jobs practically on the same day. After we learned that we had new jobs we set out to packing which took us 3 weekends to complete of getting boxes, gathering our crap up, and putting it away. We sold a lot of our furniture as well. We still have odds and ends at home right now but they'll be tossed or donated by the end of the week.

This past labor day we had the movers start putting stuff into the truck that we rented. We decided to use a company called Purple People Movers. What took me and my wife weeks to pack, they were able to move in about an hour. I have to say I was really impressed on how fast they were able to move about 40 or so boxes, my bikes, 42" TV, exercise bike, and assorted other stuff down 3 flights of stairs and pack it all into my moving truck. There were 3 of them and my wife and I just looked on in awe at how fast they were moving stuff out of the apartment. At the end of the hour the truck was all loaded up and we were ready to make our trip.

I personally have never driven something as big as a 14' UHaul truck before. It's basically a modified Ford F-350 Super Duty truck but it handled like a beast! I had to anticipate braking way in advance because there was so much stuff crammed into it the truck took extra long to make any stops. I was also having a problem with the mirrors because I wasn't used to not being able to actually look behind me. I only had the side mirrors to use and that was interesting. They were a little loose so the wind kept pushing them in so I couldn't see what was to the sides of me. That made for some interesting driving since there are so areas in Pinellas County that require one to switch lanes constantly. All in all, I think we made pretty good time. My wife followed me in her SUV with some extra stuff that we couldn't fit and it took a little over 4 hours to make it all the way down.

After we arrived, we decided to crash at my sister in laws place for the night which was really nice considering most of the day was spent packing and driving. We got up super early in the morning to unload the truck at a storage place and that took about two hours. My wife and I had lots of her family help us out and I was glad that it didin't take too long. After unloading the truck, we actually drove BACK to Tampa in her SUV to do a last cleaning of the apartment and to begin packing up the last of our things for our final move this weekend. This next trip should be very interesting considering I'm going to be bringing my two cats with me and they will meet for the first time my sister in laws cats who we will be staying with while our place is completed.

Moving is really hard work, I'm glad I only have to move to my townhouse later on this year and then for the next few years I won't be budging unless mother nature deems Florida needs to be under water for the next few thousand years.

Berns baby!!

Last night I finally went to the famous Berns Steakhouse in Tampa FL.  This is the place where the President of the United States goes to have a meal whenever he is town campaigning or doing whatever it is he does when he's here.  I'll give them this, they make a pretty mean steak and they cooked it to perfection which was really nice.

The menu was quite extensive.  They had every type of steak you could think of and in every kind of thickness and they give you a list of the types of thickness, what ways it can be cooked, what thickness is appropriate for cooking it rare, medium etc.  There was even a glossary of terms and the waiter was very helpful as well in making suggestions.   When you go online and look them up and check out the prices, you're kind of overwhelmed at how much it costs.  But the thing is is that the meal includes so much stuff.  Say you order a steak (like I did) you get an onion soup, a salad, a baked potato, fresh onion rings, and veggies.  Thats pretty much a complete meal right there.  One thing that was pretty interesting was that they prepare your baked potato at the table.  You can't sub stuff but you can get a la carte.  I personally didn't sub anything but the people I was with did and even ordered this awesome tasting mac and cheese, and the crackers with melted cheese on it was totally awesome.

The wine list at Berns is just HUUUUUUGE.  It looked like a really thick text book I once had when going to school.  They had every kind of wine from every region you could think of.  And we're not talking the cheap stuff that you get a the liqueur store either, we're talking some vintage stuff that costs well over $700 a bottle.  I didn't have any wine of course but it was just cool to look through it and see what it was they were offering.

Dessert is yet ANOTHER completely different experience at Berns.  They have little rooms that have privacy doors so you can eat your dessert in complete privacy.  They even have a little box that lets you select different music to listen to.  Oh this is also really cool, they have a guy in a room that plays piano and you have a small phone so you can call him up and have him play a request so you can listen to it in your room.  You can't say that isn't freakin cool right there!  Of course this being Berns and all, it wouldn't be complete without yet another list of different types of spirits for just the desserts that they serve.  This list isn't as extensive as the wine list but its certainly just as expensive.  I had the Macadamia nut ice cream that they are famous for and they make it on site too.  I have to say that it was really good.

The atmosphere of the entrance of the restaurant is very old world European.  It has red velvet on the banister and on the walls, classical style paintings of famous rulers of Europe, and the lighting is quite dim as well.  There is a large bar on the premises as well and numerous different rooms that sport different themes.  I can say that if one lives or visits Tampa and has money to burn, Berns is a must see.  (The key here is that you need to have a lot of money to burn to eat here)

Parking woe's

This one will just be a general complaint. Can people no longer park between the lines? My garage at work has tons of spaces but it seems like almost half of the people park on the lines, crooked, or take up two spaces. I was forced to park on the roof after only leaving my spot for 10 minutes to sell something. Is it really that difficult to park between two little lines???? GAH!!

Feeding the asian stereotype that asians are bad drivers!

This morning there was a huge amount of traffic going into work so I tried an alternate route so I could get to work as close to on time as possible. On my alternate route I got stuck behind this street racer pimp Honda Civic. It had the tricked out muffler, the cool rims, and the tints and I think even a ground effects kit on it. There was only one problem with it, the person driving it was going so SLOW!! I'm in the car with my wife and we're both getting road rage that this idiot is driving like an old granny in a tricked out Civic that looks like its supposed to go fast. After I get to a road and pass him we discovered that it was a little asian man driving it. Being an asian myself I was kinda pissed that he was feeding the stereotype that asians are bad drivers so I promptly stepped on the gas and left him in my dust and proceeded to speed to work to attempt to make it on time. Gah, people like that make me so pissed and also make me late for work!!!

Tivo Trouble

I think recently the firmware on my Tivo was upgraded because its been acting funny for the past few days. When I used to look at the show guide maybe 5 minutes before the next hour it would show the next hours shows and not what I'm currently watching any longer. Now it only shows what you are currenly watching at any given moment which is totally annoying now.

One more thing that seems to be kind of off is that the reactions to the remote commands when I press a button seem ultra slow now. That's totally unacceptable considering when I press a button the menu should pop up instead of giving me a 3 second delay. I hope they fix both of these problems soon. I want my old Tivo funtionality back!!

My kitty sliced my hand!!

Last night was packing night since I'm making my big move to South Florida soon. I was handling Nala (the smaller yet fiestier cat) to put her in the second bedroom of my apartment since she has this thing about climbing whatever is around. As I approached the room, she decided to use my hands as a spring board. Needless to say she gave me a huge cut on the palm of my left hand. I have a huge bandage on my hand right now and used a shit load of Neosporin to kill any infections. I should be able to take the bandage off later today but my hand hurts like crazy!!! GAH!!

Mitchells Fish Market was Awesome!

Today I had lunch with a good friend from work and I suggested that we go to Mitchell's Fish Market here in Tampa.  I must say that the food there is excellent!  They have freshly caught fish every day and the menu changes daily too, not only that its printed daily with a date/time stamp.

The one thing that separates this place from all the other sea food restaraunts that I've been to is that this place actually serves raw clams.  For some reason thats a very hard commodity to get here in Tampa so I was quite excited to have some.  I haven't had raw clams since I lived in the north east and I used to eat them pretty regularly with my father when he bought them from Stew Leaonards on the weekly grocery trip.  They even provided a soup sampler so we could choose what soup we preferred.  I personally had an order of raw clams, the lobster bisque soup, and the grilled salmon with mashed potato's for lunch.  The food there is freakin awesome and I'm definately going to see if they have a location in Miami.

My car is perfect once again

Today I had to take my car to Kauffman Tire in order to finally get some new tires. I bought my car back in 2002 and I never got new tires for it. After dropping it off this morning I received a call mid morning and I was told that I needed new brakes!! Well thats just a ton more money down the drain but I must say that they did an excellent job with my car. Luckily I only needed 4 pads, 4 tires, and 4 cut rotors. On top of all that, I got even better tires than I requested. Originally they said they had Toyo tires that they recommended on the phone in stock but during my call this morning with them about my brakes, I was informed that the tires I asked for are actually not in stock and instead they gave me even better tires but at the same price. How freakin cool is that? I have the awesome warranty with it but its pretty useless unless they open a store in South Florida.

Now when I brake, my car doesn't shake which will definately make my wife happy. I used to make her really car sick because of all the shaking that went on when I hit the brakes. The car rides pretty well too on the new tires although I really can't tell the difference. I just know that I can go faster on these tires than my old ones but who goes 120 mph on the highway in Florida anyway unless you're trying to outrun a state trooper? Tomorrow I'll see if all the money fixing my car was worth it during my rush hour drive to work :)

It's a Google kinda world.......

I was just pondering how much stuff I use now that is Google related. I've used all types of products in my time with IT and in college and I have to say that I have seen my own personal shift towards Google and it surprised me quite a bit on how much I rely on the products of this company.

Lets take email as a prime example. Before GMail came out, I was tied into using my ISP's email service or the venerable Hotmail of which I have been a proud member since 1996. I still use Hotmail from time to time but its mostly for junk or promotions. Once I heard about GMail and its 2 gigs of storage I thought it was freaking awesome and I signed up via one of those invitations you needed to get. The best part was that it had free POP access so I could ditch my ISP's email, I used an email address from my old school and had them reroute everything to GMail, I in turn forwarded all that mail to another GMail account that I created so I can get it on my phone. I have yet a 3rd out there just holding files since some genius came up with the idea of GDrive so I could use it as an internet hard drive. Nowadays I rely on GMail for all my personal correspondence with anyone except for tech support which I still use Hotmail for. If Hotmail still had free POP, I would probably be using them right now but alas they don't so GMail it is.

Another fine Google product that I've started to use is the new Google Calendar. I like how I am able to have multiple calendars to sort my life out. I personally use Outlook at home because it syncs with my Treo and I also have a Plaxo account that synch with Outlook so I'm never without my calendar or contacts. But the collaboration abilities with Google Calendar are awesome. I can see my calendar in pretty colors, add more calendars as I need them, and add calendars of family and friends. Now my only problem with the calendar as it stands is that I can't access it from my Treo, nor can I export the calendar into a format that my Treo will accept. I'm hoping that this will be solved then I might just totally move to Google Calendar. As it is, I'm just testing it and messing around but it seems very useful so far.

Maps is a big part of my life since I always seem to find myself in unfamiliar places when driving around Florida. I've remedied that recently with my TomTom GPS Navigator software and Bluetooth GPS receiver but before all that I relied on internet maps. The grand daddy of them all in my view has always been Mapquest. For as long as I can remember I've always used map quest, that is until Google Earth and Google Maps came around. Not only were the maps better than Mapquest, I could view aerial photo's of where I was going and the directional lines would show up perfectly. There have been lots of custom maps around the net but I haven't used any of them. My wife still relies on them since my GPS is connected to my phone but until I see MS Live maps and Yahoo's Maps Beta best Google, I think I'll be sticking with Google Maps for now.

I subscribe to a lot of Google services but the last ones I'll talk about are the new spreadsheet and word processing apps. I've recently tested these out with some simple documents and I can heartily say that these apps are pretty decent. I haven't tried more complex stuff like calculations or advanced formatting but for simple stuff its still pretty good. The only downside is that you have to be connected but the up side is that it can import documents and you can collaborate with people in real time. That to me is pretty awesome and sure as hell beats emailing docs all around town. There are free apps like OpenOffice.org but those are local to your PC so you can't collaborate or share. Man you gotta love all these new web appliances.

So what does this all mean? Well really right now, the only thing that matters to me is my venerable email and as long as GMail is the king and I can get it via POP I won't be switching anytime soon. As for the other services, they're definitely nice to have in a pinch and pretty fun to play with. And to show how much Google invades my life, my blog where I write all my rantings and ravings is on Blogger which of course is owned by Google :) Now if I could only get my hands on Blogger Beta...........

Yankees sweep the Red Sox in 5!

According to most news sources, the Red Sox haven't been swept in 5 games for almost 50 years!  Now thats quite an achievment if you ask me.  I like the fact that they're calling this the Boston Masacre 2 in the NY Times online.  Now the Yankee's have a pretty good lead in the AL East and the only way the Red Sox are going to be in the playoffs is if

1. The Yankee's royally fuck up in the next few weeks leading into October
2. The Sox all of sudden have a huge surge and win the AL Wild Card Race
3. Insert favorite act of God here...........

Needless to say I have confidence that the Yankees are making the playoffs this year and October is definately going to be a sweeeeeet month!

Woohoo Google Calendar for me!

My wife and I are Gmail users and recently we both signed up for Google Calender.  I've actually had it since the beta started a while ago but I never really used it because no one else was using it.  I use Outlook at home and my Treo of course is with me but I also use Plaxo which syncs all my Outlook calendar stuff and my contacts to the web so I'm never without them no matter where I am.

I actually saw why people like it so much when I went to a conference in Orlando FL.  At the conference there were a bunch of meetings going on with different companies that were giving people information on how to upgrade their software.  When I went to see if there were any openings, I saw that they were all using Google Calendar to manage all the appointments.  I thought that this was a really cool way to use technology and share information with your friends, especially those that don't use MySpacve or Evite a lot.  I'll probably end up roping a lot of my in-laws and other family into using Google Calendar so they know when I'm around and when I'm not.  Now I'm just waiting for a way to sync it with my current Outlook crap so I don't have to do double entries into both my Treo and my Google Calendar.  Come on Google hurry up, I'm dying over here!

Windows Live Writer Beta

I'm trying out the new Windows Live Writer beta which is made for publishing blog posts on numerous different types of blog sites.  It's mainly optimized for MSN Spaces (I have an account there that I don't use) but it said that you can use it for Blogger so I might as well try it out.

There are a lot of enhancements going on in the blogsphere in terms of tools.  I was almost ready to jump ship to MSN spaces but then I heard that Blogger was finally updating their tool set after a really long time.  The thing that I liked about Blogger was its simplicity to post things but the ability to customize was a real pain the ass.  I had to figure out how where to insert snippets of code in an CSS form in order to get different elements to appear or stick it in something like MS FrontPage and edit that way.

With the new version of Blogger its supposed to be way easier but its currently in beta and it hasn't been released to all that many people.  Since I have to wait I figure why not see what MS has to offer in terms of a blogging tool so here I am writing a post in Windows Live Writer.  I have to say that the interface is very simple and the tools that you can access are straight forward and uncluttered.  The only bad thing is that you have to install it but I guess that's also a good thing so I can write my posts off line.  I could also write it up on my phone but it takes way longer and my thumbs get tired after a while.  It's time to publish this so its time to cross my fingers and see if this works!!!

They're more than meets the eye!!

Early this morning while I was driving into work I spied a van with the image to the left on the trunk. The symbol was freaking HUGE! I pointed it out to my wife who I car pool to work with and said, "Look its a Decepticon!!"

I then attempted to whip out my camera phone to take a picture of it so I could post it but alas I was unable to get a picture of it because I moved ahead of him, but thats alright because that has to be one of the funniest things I've seen in a very long time.

And for those of you that don't know what a Decepticon is, you totally need to watch Transformers, and I don't mean the new crap, I'm talking about the stuff that came out in the 1980's, now thats classic TV right there that one and all should watch in their life times.