Its another beautiful day in Ann Arbor.

Despite the crazy going on in my head.
At least it looks good outside.

3/31 - Damn it.

Cool Gear : Samsung Galaxy S2

Lets face it almost every day I change my mind on this topic but TODAY my favorite piece of tech envy is the Samsung Galaxy S2.
Set to drop any day this thing looks like a giant ball of sexy-awesome smartphone goodness. 
Its looking more and more like there will be no iPhone 5 announcement this June. This may the the best way to slake my techno itch for foreseeable future.

Sporting Android 2.3 (gingerbread) and a unique samsung skin that you will probably either love or hate, a 8 mp camera and 2mp front camera. See the details *here*.

I just need it to drop like RIGHT NOW before I change my mind again.
I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it....

Shop Time: Shelving units.

I can never get enough done during these short weekends. That being said it nice to see a project that was completed and it out in the wild.

My nephews bookcase/desk combo came together nice and was installed on site in just a few minutes.

Stream meets tree roots...

Stream meets tree roots at the path edge creating a gangely home for
spings minnows. The calendar says it's spring but with temps at or
below freezing there is more than a little nip in the air. At least
the sun was out.

Working on a Saturday...

Sure seems like extra hard labor.

I am tired and its Sunny out making it even harder to be here.

*sigh*

Cool Gear : Tablet issues.

Just when I thought I was in love with the 7 inch Samsung Galaxy Tablet  HTC just dropped a worthy competitor in the HTC Evo tablet that is about to appear in stores any second. Its running Android 2.3 (to be upgraded to Honeycomb) with a Sense skin.

Its small enough to hold in one hand an large enough to be a productive tablet and it feels like productivity on the run to me. Best if all its full of Android goodness. The thing that I like the most is that the interface feels like the future where more and more the iOS feels like yesterdays operating system.

Not sure what I am going to do...I am contract-less right now. I am in need of a phone upgrade and I am in love with these smaller form tablets that are trickling out.

Its going to be an interesting summer.

Redhawk Ann Arbor *update*

Redhawk Ann Arbor.
Always good. Always fun.
Smokehouse sandwich.
Yummmmm.

 *update*
I might have had the smokehouse sandwich but the real reason we we went in the first place is the Girl wanted her Olive burger.  She was actually a little disappointed there were not more olives.
After we took a cold brisk walk back to the car through the Nickels Arcade.
We really needed this fun night out and with no drinking it was cheap!

Lately, I have been a mess.

One of the biggest things right now is my phone dilemma.

I have been putting off getting a new phone for one reason or another. But lately I feel like I need to get on with getting one. The choice really is mind boggling and for a techie guy like me the variety of options out there has never been better. That’s the problem. It’s too much. I am over thinking it. I am causing the problem.

Really there have been a lot of things on my mind. With the realization that the phone is not the problem at all it all came flooding in. That is when I really started to stress.

OK take a breath. 

I am over thinking it. I am causing the problem.

Of Dreams and Dreaming...

I don't know if it is because I have been tired or the lack of drinking or the spicy food but I have had vivid detailed dreams lately. That in itself is not entirely new what is new it that I have no problem remembering them in detail.
The Girl would say that that is not new either because many times I will describe part of my dream to her in detail but usually its only fragments and the rest is lost soon after waking.
This morning I could have recited my entire dream. Not just the entire dream but several dreams I could remember over the course of the night. I did wake a couple of times between the dog coming and going due to the thunder, the thunder itself and sleep came in waves and as a consequence so did the dreams.
I could fill this space with the dreams but I wont go on and on instead I will just give the you the general theme: frustration. Frustration and anger. Hmmmm...
 An elevator like this was prominent in one dream located in the building I was working in and just getting it to go to the floor I wanted was a chore.
Honestly I just need to get to bed earlier.

Kitty and I are both to tired to post anything tonight

Maybe tomorrow,

Sometimes bad news sneaks up on you.

Yesterday my friend called me. This is usually good because he lives far away and we don’t get to talk that often any more.

In the middle of talking about our fishing trip this year he let me know that his family is likely going to sell the cabin in the upper peninsula. This was not really a shock, in fact I kind of expected it with the sudden passing of his step-father last year. Still the news caught me off my guard and the implications have been growing in my mind like a cancer slowing eating away at my good mood.

This might be the last summer that we spend time there.

Nothing lasts forever I suppose but this is truly sad sad news.

Best comment of the day:

"Am I the only one who gets absolutely frustrated that people are still proposing the possibility of time-travel?
This is why I can't party with my theoretical physicist friends anymore."

From a random slash dot thread about the Large Hadron Collider .
found *here*

Happy St Patrick's Day :

The not drinking for lent thing always comes to a head today (no pun intended) the one day that rampant drinking is tolorated to the point it is almost encouraged.

This year maybe more than others a nice pint of Guinness sounds really good.

Oh well. Lent will be over soon.

Happy St Patrick's day everyone.

Time machine:

I guess that title is a little miss-leading. This is really not about time machines.

If you really want to read about time machines click here:

http://io9.com/#!5782005/10-coolest-time-machines-in-the-space+time-continuum

What I am writing about today is why this blog exists. Some days I am not sure. Its kind of like therapy for me. I get to vent, people get to laugh at me and well it’s entertaining for me. Lets face it getting a glimpse into this noggin can be both fun and scary all at the same time.

What I am really talking about is this blog is more of a time capsule. I can look back at March 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007 and see what is going on. What has changed what hasn’t and really its fun, probably only to me, to see what I was thinking a year ago today for example.

So for what its worth I appreciate the readers and those who comment. I invite your perspective and for what its worth I might get 1 comment to every 300 visits to the blog. That’s OK, I understand is hard to jump in sometimes but please do continue to read and comment when you feel like it. Its really not about that for me its fun to slip in and out of time back to what I was thinking in time ( I was so crazy in 2007!)  

OK enough reminiscing (March is always so melancholy for me) back to your regular programming.

Happy Pi day everyone.

Happy Pi day everyone.

As numbers go sure its an important on but its own day?

Who decides all this fringe day stuff anyway?

Sunday rolled in and rolled out again just as fast...

Sunday rolled in and rolled out again just as fast...Maybe faster as we lost an hour to daylight savings time. Daylight savings like a thief in the night stealing our most precious thing: time to sleep in.
I hate the whole spring-forward thing as much as you can really hate something with the word spring in it.
One thing with spring just around the corner the sudden absence of snow can certainly make a mess of things. It can make a simple trip to the park an exercise in mudding, What you see here was only the parking lot.
Still it is hard to stay annoyed with the promise of  things to come hanging in the cool heavy humid air. Even when you have to hose your boots and the dog off. 

Who measures this stuff:

 We are all worried about and our heart goes out to Japan and everyone effected by the recent earthquake/tsunami. On top of the obvious damage, the water damage the potential damage to the nuclear plants now we have to think about ... the earths rotation?

 

(according to yahoo news's story they picked up from the AP *here*) 

 

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer – Fri Mar 11, 4:15 pm ET

WASHINGTON – You won't notice it, but the day just got a tiny bit shorter because of Friday's giant earthquake off the coast of Japan.

NASA geophysicist Richard Gross calculated that Earth's rotation sped up by 1.6 microseconds. That's because of the shift in Earth's mass caused by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake. A microsecond is one-millionth of a second.

That change in rotation speed is slightly more than the one caused by last year's larger Chile earthquake. But 2004's bigger Sumatra earthquake caused a 6.8-microsecond shortening of the day.

The Japan quake is the fifth strongest since 1900.

I was looking forward to the days getting longer.

Best Invention Ever: DVR ( with a sling)

Sure everyone else has had a DVR for a while, but I am telling you that I love that stupid little box.

Add a sling to it and you got a pretty damn cool setup.




Watch what you wants... when you want it.... where you are? How freaking novel.

Wow.... For Once I am at a loss

 

Tsunami Energy

 Oh Japan... 

Why do things have to be so COMPLICATED

Tonight, It was software update night.

New iOS updates for the iPad.

Much needed updates for the wireless card driver (that was preventing me from downloading windows updates) on the Girls laptop.

A flood of windows updates that was waiting for the above.

A few backups here and there and I was updating practically all night.

Just liket that Its Phat Tuesday again,.

I know spring is right around the corner abut I have to say that Lent seems a little too depressing this year to deal with. Probably a good sign that I need it more than ever.

It seems like a long time till Easter.

I can only say that all that will make spring seem that much sweeter.

Still, that does not help me now does it?

Overheard last night on the couch… Star Wars Edition.

(While flipping through channels Star Wars Episode IV was on, the part where they are blasting their way out of the detention level into the trash compactor)

The Girl: “OH! I know that part its just like that Family Guy thing!”

Me: “The Blue Harvest episode on the iPad?”

The Girl: “Yeah… It just like that part… Look Meg’s head is going to stick up… That’s too funny”

Me (laughing): “ Wait… you think its funny that Star Was is Just like Blue Harvest. You realize that was kind of the point right?”

The Girl: “ I guess so, although I think it was funnier when the robot guy was smoking pot.”

Me: “It WAS funnier (laughing so hard now) That was the point. It funny that you don’t know about the real Star Wars but you know that Family Guy episode by heart.”

The Girl: “Hey I watch that when I work out ALL THE TIME. Look that Guy is the Old Man with the limp sword”

Me (now crying): “ To you the movie is the parody of the Family Guy… SO FREAKING FUNNY.”

The Girl: “Hey that is in there too…”

(Story stopped so I could compose myself)

Really Universe?

Can nothing go right today?

I give up, you win. I will attempt nothing of consequence for the rest of the day.

How to service you ATV and other ways to waste your Sunday

I had a plan.

It was a good plan.
Really more like a list of things to do. Things that I was looking forward to getting done. I had the whole day to do them.

First on the list plow the driveway.

Should be simple start the ATV, plow the snow. 15 min Job maybe get the Moms driveway. Either way, done and on to the next one.

What actually happened was far different than I had planned .

When it would not start, I thought it was the battery. So I got a new one. Filled it with acid, charged it. No juice. Tracked down the Manual, tore machine apart. Tracked down the main fuse replace the fuse, blew the fuse, shoveled the driveway by hand, gave up on ATV put ATV back together.

So much for item #1.

Today at the park... *updated*

The morning rain was to much for the river to hold. Here you can see
the path was over run with water. It proved an impasse we had to
backtrack and find another way around.

*update*

Here is how its supposed to look.

Prickley Pear.... Ann Arbor

All I have to say is :

Shrimp and Scallop Quesadilla.

Freaking Awesome.

This morning at 4:30 am ...

This morning at 4:30 am ... the dog decided she wanted to get up. She started poking me in the arm with her nose relentlessly until I obliged her protest by taking her out. Tanner does not often do this so I am thinking maybe she does not feel well and waiting another hour until her Girl gets up for work maybe a bad idea. Usually I find when a dog is trying to tell you something you should listen... at least most of the time.
So outside she went I waited by the door and was struck by the cold radiating off metal shop door.
Overnight the clouds had stayed away and any heat from the day quickly left as well leaving a cold , hard-packed snow surface that glistened in the streetlights. I could not help but think that it was like the cold unforgiving surface of the moon, all pot marked and alien in appearance especially eerie at this god-forsaken hour.

Tanner was back before I could finish my thoughts, something about too bad we don't have the lighter gravity of the moon... and she elected to stay downstairs as I lumbered back to bed half asleep still anyway.

I knew I would get back to sleep but I also knew that the alarm goes off at 5:30 again for the Girl and the trash was not going to take itself out. Those thoughts faded as the warmth of the comforter poured back in to my limbs making me wonder, for a second, if I had ever really been up at all.

Cool Gear: iPad 2

Today, Apple has a bid announcement 1:00 edt.

There have been tons of leaks, and even more speculation but in just a few short hours the world will know and all those iPads you have now will become instantly obsolete.

I
Cant
Wait

Engadgets coverage *here*

I have been starting on the wrong side of pyramid- and other reasons I cant talk to the public.

Conflict resolution.

Wait, really?

Your not supposed to start at the bottom?

Funny Windows Wallpaper

Its funny and I like it.

click to enlarge.