Finally got contacts

According to my wife, I have finally joined the 21st Century by getting contacts. I've been wearing glasses for at least 20 years now and my prescription is pretty high. I decided to try out contacts to see if the technology had improved any. I attempted to wear contacts before but I found them uncomfortable and I didn't see the need to get them.

The thing that is difficult is actually getting them in. I'm not proficient doing it yet like my wife but I'm slowly getting there. I'm using some trial contacts right now as I wait for my real ones to come in so my vision isn't 20/20 just yet. It's a bit blurry but I can still see just fine. To celebrate this progression in my life, I decided to splurge and get some sweet ass Oakley sunglasses. Too bad its not even sunny in Atlanta so I can use them.

I still have to keep my glasses up to date though but I own the Cadillac of lenses. The are the thinnest lenses available for my prescription, it has anti-glare, polarization, transition, and they're scratch proof. I'm carrying them in my bag and I have another back up pair at home just in case that have the same options. I'm using the insurance for the glasses because lenses are just so expensive these days anyway.

I'm going to have to keep practicing with these contacts so that I can get my time down to under a minute. Yeah I know, kinda cheesy that I'm timing how fast I can put them in but it will really help when I'm in a rush. Oh and I'm totally committed too, I bought a years supply of contacts. HA!!

What happened to the sunshine?

This weekend (yeah I know its Tuesday) my wife and my sister-in-law wanted to spend some time out at the pool. Of course I'm game for it and it was a nice sunny day. It had rained the entire week so it wasn't a wise thing to try and go swimming. There were some crazy people that decided to go in but not me.

Unfortunately, the sun didn't last that long, only about an hour and a half. Then it would tease me by poking its head out and then hiding behind some rain clouds. Since it was close to lunch I got us some Burger King. Amazingly my wife had never had a burger from BK before. After she explained it, it all clicked for me that I never have seen her eat a burger from BK.

I got take out and brought it back to the pool, as we ate there seemed to be a freak storm. I was happily enjoying my fries when a huge gust of wind just blew them all over the pool. I couldn't even recover them which totally sucked! At least I still had my burger which didn't blow away but I was missing the fries. Anyway, that was my Sunday....

Goodbye my old computers

It truly is an end of an era for me. Over the past two weeks I decided to recycle as many of my old computers that I could. I'm a bit of a pack rat especially when it comes to technology. I paid or invested hundreds of dollars into my computer equipment over the years and I have a difficult time letting go. In order to get rid of some of the clutter and because it was finally free, I decided to unload some of my computers that I've collected over the years. The final tally was 2 desktops (one of which I built from scratch) 2 laptops that were super old and had a tough time running even Windows 98 and an LCD monitor that burned out.

I was in IT Asset Management for years and one of the things I learned was never to toss out old computer equipment because of all the harmful chemicals and what not that are contained in old computer parts. I never recycled my equipment because I had to pay people to cart it away which really isn't a good way to get people to recycle. Now that Best Buy is offering free recycling, I'm starting to look around to see what else I can unload. They don't take hard drives which is fine with me because I still have data on them but now at least I know I don't have to cart old equipment around with me.

Middle Seat is so uncomfortable

These past two weeks I've had the unfortunate pleasure of sitting in the middle seat on the plane to Atlanta. This was my own fault for booking late. No matter, Delta gives me some bonus miles for this but still, I would have enjoyed napping just a little bit this morning instead of reading my book. My book is good, don't get me wrong but I like to get a little bit more rest so I can work a bit longer during the day on Monday.

I'm going to keep this short since I'm tired this morning. Maybe I'll do an early morning work out or something. *yawn* or not....

Creepy people want my cat

I don't think I've blogged about this yet but my cats are currently up for adoption on Petfinder. I love the little balls of fur but they make my wife upset so since I have to choose, I'm choosing my wife over them. I do get to have a say in who they get adopted by but this economy isn't very friendly to people who need to have their pets adopted. Not to mention my cats are cats, not kittens by any stretch of the imagination. Thumper is 5 and Nala is 4 but she'll be 5 in another few months.

I was looking around at how to get them adopted and the most logical place is Petfinder. I considered Craigslist but the warning from the ASPCA scared the crap out of me so I decided against it. I think Craigslist is fine for inanimate objects but not for animals that need a home.

So anyway, I got an email earlier this week from some Yahoo email address that was forwarded to me from Petfinder. The email was kind of weird, it just asked for more info on my cat (singluar) and so I wrote the person back and asked them which one they were interested in. They couldn't even name the cat (Thumper or Nala) that they wanted, they just said I wanted the cat that you posted. CREEPY!! Needless to say I deleted that email post haste. The ads for my cats are still up but if someone comes off as creepy again, I might have to rethink my strategy. For now I'm going to continue to take as many pictures as I can of them and load them up on my 1TB hard drive.

What happened to Sonic Team?

There was a time a few years ago when I played anything made by Sonic Team. This was when Sega was actually making game consoles and competing with Nintendo head to head. I've watched their downfall occur over the years as Sega went to a strictly software only type of company. I used to love playing Sonic the Hedgehog games on my Genesis and Dreamcast.

I've looked at some of the reviews of the next few Sonic games that have come out and they've been absolutely dreadful. I think all the wind was taken out of Sonic Team when Sega stopped producing consoles. Thats pretty sad but I guess it can't be helped when you're using someone elses development kit instead of your own. However if other companies can do it, I don't think Sonic Team has an excuse.

I hope they come through with a good Sonic game soon for Xbox 360 or Wii, I would really like to play a sequel that didn't suck. Maybe they should get back to their roots and just do a side scroller like back in the old days. That would be fantastic!

Atlanta Hawks

This week I had the pleasure of going to a Hawks game with some co-workers. They were taking on the Utah Jazz at the Philips Arena in downtown Atlanta. I'm not a big NBA fan or basketball fan in general. Since we were doing this really cheap we opted for the $10 seats. I never knew $10 seats could be so crappy! The dude at the box office must have been a real prick since he gave us the last row in the whole arena. It was hard to see anything at all, I couldn't even read jersey numbers on the players and it was easier to watch the huge screen above the court.

After the first period we moved down to some better seats but it wasn't that much better. The arena is nice though, its attached to the CNN building and has a full food court and even a hotel. The little shows they do during time outs weren't even that good, I had a way better time at the Miami Heat game I went to at the American Airlines arena. That might also be because I had much better seats but the whole game was also more entertaining and had better little side shows.

I don't know if I'm going to hit up another basketball game, at least I can say that I went. I'm more interested in going to a baseball game, maybe then I can get my peanuts and cracker jacks and watch the Yankee's kick some Atlanta Brave ass.

My blog posts look funny

I was looking at my blog posts in blogger and compared it to how they look in Google Reader and something just doesn't seem right. I think the problem is that blogger doesn't reformat my posts to the dimensions of the screen that I'm using. I use a wide screen laptop for work and I use a really wide screen at home. Blogger seems to be stuck in a square format so its making things not look quite right. A lot of my pictures are cut off on the sides and stuff but that doesn't matter too much, not that many people read my blog anyway and I think few even know it exists in the blogosphere since my postings are kind of random.

I've looked high and low for a solution and it seems the only way to do it would be to code it myself or something. I'm not a coder at all, I've given that part of my life up in IT. I guess its ok, it looks good in Google Reader which is what counts.

Spring Forward

Oye, I forgot that the time changed and I lost a whole hour of my day, what crap! It's almost noon though so its time to find some grub. :)

Carlos Mencia at the Palm Beach Improv!!

This past Saturday night Claire and I went to go see Carlos Mencia at the Palm Beach Improv. Man was that an awesome show! I recommend to anyone to go and see his show live. However, if you easily get offended I wouldn't recommend going to his show. He made fun of everyone and he reminds me kind of like Lisa Lampanelli in terms of what he talks about and who he makes fun of. The delivery of his stuff was excellent and I think I'll go and see him again if he's in the area. There was one part of the act (the last part actually) that was totally over the top. I won't say what it is because it might ruin it for someone LOL!

Anyway, really short blog post today. Not in the mood to sit in front of my computer.

Alltel got the Treo Pro, why not Verizon?

This is old news but Alltel is part of Verizon Wireless and Verizon even took something cool from them and named it Friends and Family that lets you call 5 friends for free no matter what network. It only requires a voice plan of at least $59.99. I'll pass on that personally. What really has me puzzled is why the Treo Pro is out on Alltel and not on Verizon? The Alltel brand should be getting retired soon. That gives me hope that it will come to Verizon. It might even convince me to stay with them but I don't know.

I still love the Treo, even in Windows form but Verizon is really starting to make me mad by not offering decent phones (sorry the Storm doesn't count) and actually releasing them on their regional carrier.

Sprint should be coming out with theirs by March, I would have settled for the Treo 800W but Palm doesn't have the best rep when it comes to product launches. They're always late and it eats into the amount of time a device is available. Well here's to hoping that they'll release it on Verizon fairly soon!

More bailout fun

Well well well its been a long time since I've added a new blog post. There's been plenty to blog about but its just laziness on my part and things at work are busy as always. I always get good ideas on what to blog about during my work day but then I lose all urge to write something by the time I leave work. Not to mention there's always something going on in the evenings so that adds to my laziness when I get in.

OK on to what I wanted to talk about. There are more bailouts on the way and this time they seem to be taking a step in the right direction kinda sorta but they're still leaving out the people that are following all the rules. So what am I talking about exactly? Why mortgage bailouts of course! It's new and improved and should only cost 75 billion dollars. Here's the deal as I understand it. If you're using over 38% of your gross income to pay for your mortgage and you're also in distress in any way you're eligible to have your mortgage redone. The mortgage service company can use any number of methods to reduce your payment with the ultimate goal of getting your payment to around 31% of your gross monthly income.

I did some quick calculations and I don't fall into this category. There are a good many families that are probably like me. We pay our debts and our taxes and yet when it comes time to helping the public we're kinda left out in the cold because we are doing the responsible thing but have little to show for it. I checked my house net worth and its almost outright disgusting how much its dropped in just 3 years. So here I am, paying a mortgage on a house that is totally under water, I can't sell it and I don't qualify to refinance for a lower rate because my wife and I have been doing the right things all along. I don't know if they're using the 80/20 rule on this but it doesn't seem like it. There is at least 80% of the country that seems to be doing alright, unemployment is hovering at 7%, while thats bad its still not terrible but most of the stimulus is going to corporations and the 20% in distress but its not helping the rest of us.

I'll still be watching the markets and the news to see if there is anything that will help me and my wife out. I would love to have a lower payment on my house or even get a chance to sell the thing at a decent price but eh, we'll see how it goes.

Going to see the Miami Heat!

This coming Saturday I will be heading to the American Airlines arena to see the Miami Heat play the 76ers. This will be my first NBA game ever. I was never much of a Knicks fan when I lived in CT and there wasn't anything worth seeing in Tampa. The only reason I'm going is because its free. My wife's job provided some tickets so I figure why not, it should be fun!

I won't be buying any Heat gear or anything like that but I'm hoping that the experience will be similar to the excitement of college basketball.

Texas De Brazil!

This past Saturday was Valentines Day and my wife decided that we should try some place new in Miami Beach.  Of course by the logo you can tell where we went.  This is a brief account of our experience there.

OK so first off we had reservations at 7:45PM for dinner.  I raced down I-75 and I-95 to make it there on time and actually got there with about a minute to spare.  There was a huge line just to get in the door and even if you had a reservation you had to wait to get to the front of the line to talk to the people arranging the seating.  My wife called ahead and we knew that we would have to wait a little bit to get seated but not 45 minutes.  Thats just crazy when you have reservations even if it is a holiday.  We were also given the not so good seats at the edge of the restaurant near the front door so we saw all the people coming and going from the place.

Our server was polite and told us we could help ourselves to the salad bar which is one of the big things about Texas De Brazil.  The salad bar didn't disappoint at all and there was quite a selection.  I was all about the salami's and the cheese but I also had some sushi and the lobster bisque.  Now the whole place is about the meats which is from sausages, to steak, lamb, pork, and chicken.  My wife and I saw these people running around with huge sticks of meat but none of them would come to our table.  We also didn't get the side orders that were supposed to come with the meal so we just kinda sat there for a bit until a waiter came over and asked us if we got our meat course yet.  Of course we said "Nope we don't know how this works because no one explained it to us".

Apparently, the thing I was going to use as a coaster was an indicator for the servers to start bringing the meats around for us to try.  An example is the one in this blog post.  Green means yeah bring it baby I want meat!  Red means Nope I've had enough for now maybe later.  The thing with me and my wife is that ours were set to red which is why the servers were ignoring us for the longest time.  Once we flipped those bad boys over it was on!  We each had the steak and lamb (I'm not a big fan of lamb but I figured why not).  I don't think we had the pork or the chicken but I know that I had the sausage links.  The sides they gave us were fried bananas (yum) and some excellent mashed potatoes.  It has been a really long time since I've eaten that much and I was definitely overly stuffed with food.

We ate so much that we had no more room for dessert.  I wanted to try one but I thought better of it and I don't think it would have been a good to make myself even more full than I already was.  There was some entertainment as well during dinner in the form of loud music and some Brazilian dancers.  We couldn't get a good look at them due to our crappy table location.  Although there were some tables that were set up by the kitchen which seemed even worse than where we were because you would see all the food just floating by you along with all the dirty dishes.

All in all, the night wasn't so bad.  The food was excellent but the service needs some attention.  One area I would recommend for the employees is to always explain what the stupid coaster like thing is for so your customer's don't sit there wondering why they're not getting any food at their table.  Well that was V-Day in a nut shell!

All hail the hotel foam pillow!

This week I made a recent change to my preferences for Marriott, instead of the usual feather pillows I opted for foam pillows. And you know what? A magical thing happened to me, I was able to get a full nights sleep without waking up in the middle of the night. I think my previous problem with getting a good nights rest was because I didn't have support for my head while I was sleeping and I was generally uncomfortable.

I don't think I can choose foam pillows for Hilton but for right now its not like I'm going to be staying there any time in the near future. Ahh here's to a good nights rest while on the road....

Just when I thought I could leave Verizon

About a year ago Verizon bought out a regional cell carrier that was pretty popular here in the dirty South called Alltel. Alltel had this promotion where you could call 5 people for free on any network. It's pretty similar to a plan offered by T-Mobile who does the same thing. I think this type of plan is great because both of my parents don't have Verizon and I end up burning minutes when I have to talk them.

There is a catch to this new Friends and Family plan, you have to be on a $900 minute plan which costs about $60. Thats a whole lot of money for a cell plan, at that price I think I would get rid of my land line.

Anyway, now I have to reconsider my options for my cell phone plan. The Treo Pro might come to Verizon in 2010 but thats a really long time away considering it just became 2009. I'm still leaning towards AT&T just to change things up and to get the phone I want sooner. We'll see what happens come May.

Cell Phone Contracts are sooo long!

I went online today to make sure of the date that my contract ends.  It looks like Verizon is offering new every 2 phones way earlier than 22 months.  My contract doesn't end until May but they said I was eligible in January.  Thats around 20 months which isn't bad, but they still don't have any phones that I want to buy.

Maybe by May there might be a phone that will fit my requirements but I highly doubt it.  I still think I'm going to make the switch even though I'll be paying more money for more minutes and roll over.

What stinks even more is that my wife's plan doesn't end until November which is CRAZY!  Too bad she has to wait until then.  If I'm not in a caring mood maybe I'll wait until November so we can get phones together so there isn't this huge gap between her contract and mine.  Only time will tell!

Finally making the switch

After ten years I think I'm finally going to take the plunge and go with AT&T Wireless. I've been a loyal customer of Verizon before they were even Verizon (I think I have my old phone somewhere at my mom's house). I'm due for a new phone already using the New Every Two program but the phone selection for Verizon over the past few years has been pretty terrible. I haven't used a regular phone for at least 4 years and although I enjoy using the Palm platform its time to change things up a bit.

I've done some price comparisons and I will end up paying a little bit more for twice the minutes. I'm also getting the freedom to get whatever GSM phone I want which is totally sweet. With Verizon I was pretty much trapped with whatever selection Verizon offered me because they were using CDMA. I think I've taken a while to switch simply because of laziness and because before they allowed you to take your phone number with you I was reluctant to switch because I didn't want to change my number. I've said bad things about AT&T in the past but I figure I might as well try them and see for myself. I plan on getting the Treo Pro unlocked GSM phone once my contract is up. I will pay an arm and a leg for the phone but I can use it wherever I want just by switching out the SIM card. I could also get the iPhone if I really wanted to buy I already have an iPod Touch so why bother? Besides I'm still not sold on the whole touch screen keyboard anyway.

My wife is also going to be switching but she has to wait a bit longer to get a new phone but she has picked out the BlackBerry Bold as her next phone. Only time will tell if she'll do it but I think she will because its just so purty. LOL!

Well its getting late so its time to finish up and get to bed for another rousing day of work!

New Asics: GT 2140

This is a picture of the sneakers I ordered from Zappos on Friday. I originally ordered the Asics Gel Kayano 14's but they were too small (which was surprising considering I always order a size 8). The GT 2140 is the upgrade to a shoe I got before that I thought hurt my feet but it was really because it was laced up too tight, the GT 2130.

So I decided to order the 2140's in a size 8.5 to see if they would fit better. I'm still not sure if these are going to be my home sneakers or my travel sneakers. Normally I don't have that many pairs of sneakers but I've gotten a bit tired of always packing and unpacking my sneakers from my suitcase so I can work out at the gym or just go for long walks with my wife.

I'll have to buy some orthotics for these sneakers as well but thats not a big deal really. The cool thing is that I will get the sneakers on Monday, the bad thing is is that I'll already be in Atlanta when they arrive. If I'm up to it I'll add a post after I've tried these bad boys at the gym.

My sanctuary at 35,000 Feet

As you can see in the picture, this is what I take to work each week when I'm going to Atlanta. Pretty spiffy isn't it? Believe it or not, this is one of my sanctuaries these days from the turmoil that surrounds me at work. Another one of those being my car or being at home for the weekend but anyway, thats the not the point of this post.

I've been reading some stuff on my favorite news sites that airlines are starting to bring the joy of wifi onto airplanes. This technology isn't new or anything and a few airlines have been doing it for a bit but the advent of wifi intruding on my commute to work may very well eliminate one of my sanctuaries from work. There is a fear that the ability to connect wireless while at 35,000 feet will make companies expect people to work on the plane. Granted, your typical flight to a client is a bit longer than a drive to the office but they certainly don't expect people to work while driving (some people probably take conference calls or something while on the road and I don't think thats a good idea when you're driving).

I know a good many people that do use the time in the air to accomplish some work but for me this is a place to NOT work or even think of doing work. At most, I pull out my Treo and make notes in it for personal reasons like music I want to get for my iPod, shopping lists, and maybe some To Do items that I have to accomplish. Other than that, I don't even pull out my laptop at the airport unless I know I'm going to be delayed for a good long time and I certainly don't get it out for my flights.

I'm glad for the airlines that need to prop up their revenue streams and what not but I'm hoping that companies will not put an expectation on American workers to start logging in at 35,000 feet, we as a country already work a lot and don't get enough PTO or time with our families... for those of us that use it as a sanctuary let us keep it and not let work intrude in yet another area of our lives.