As promised....

Here is a link to my photostream where all the photos are.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cycoivan/3594426771/in/set-72157619158276159/

What in the hell happened to spring?

I've been lazy and haven't blogged for 2 weeks :( There's also just been a shitload of stuff going on. To start, Pam and I had quite the active Memorial Day weekend. Between her and I we got some of the outside trim painted, the garden planted, and a bunch of other little chores done that we've been sitting on for a while now. It's also been insanely busy at work (where I usually blog from). We have a large computer upgrade project right now and guess who get to deal with the computers that come back? That's right, it's me!

The other big part is that Pam and I went to Indianapolis this weekend for the NIN/JA tour show there. That was quite the adventure. I decided to go through Chicago, but I severely underestimated the traffic there. It took almost 2 hours to get from where Hwy 41 merges into I-94 to where I-94 meets I-65 in Indiana. On top of that, there was construction on I-65 so we were delayed by another half hour in addition to the hour lost to the Eastern Time Zone. Essentially we left at 11am CST and didn't get to the hotel until 8:30 PM EST. That meant our original plan of catching a dinner and movie was scrapped and we just got dinner instead. It was a very nice dinner though.

We went to Joe's Crab Shack and I liked it very much. We ordered 2 of their steampots which had quite a bit of food for the price. Pam got 2 bunches of crab legs, a pound of clams, sausage, corn, and potatoes. I got the Bean Town Bake which is 2 whole lobsters, 1 pound of clams, with shrimp sausage, corn, and potatoes. All of that ran about $55 which isn't bad considering the amount of food you get. For two lobsters (which were about 1 to 1 1/2 pounds) you would pay 35-50 dollars alone. Also the atmosphere was very nice and I do have a picture of me in my Joe's bib

Our hotel was a sweet deal through Hotwire. It was a single room, king size bed, with fridge, decent TV, free breakfast, etc. for about $40 a night. The breakfast was relatively decent, however the only hot food was biscuits and gravy and you could make your own waffles. Something about the food didn't really sit well with either of us (I think it was the gravy) Other than that, I can't complain.

I took Pam to go see Star Trek which was just fucking awesome. The best thing is that you don't really have to be a Star Trek nerd to enjoy it because it's a reintroduction to the cast and story (although you do have to kind of like sci fi a little bit). Even Pam had to begrudingly admit that it was pretty good. It's also kind of funny to take her to anything Star Trek because our first date some 14 years ago was to go see Star Trek: Generations. It's a wonder there was a 2nd date, let alone a marraige and kids.

After Star Trek went to the venue after that. It's really weird, there's nothing out there but the venue, some businesses and a upscale outdoor mall, which we killed some time at. As an aside, I got 3 new games from Gamestop (more on that later). The Verizon Music Center is a larger Indoor/outdoor ampitheater a la Alpine Valley so obviously there was quite a line when we got there. Even though we had preordered and got to go in before the rest of the general public, we still stood around for quite a while because they were late with sound check. It took about 30 minutes to get inside the outside gate and then we still had to stand in line for another 30 minutes to get inside the seating area, and another 45 minutes still to showtime. It amazes me how much these places fuck you in the ass for food and drinks. $9 for a 16 Oz glass of Busch? Gross. We did end up buying a little merchandise and actually the one thing they had at a decent price was a full size messenger bag which I needed anyways. It's canvas with plenty of pockets and it feels pretty sturdy for only $55 bucks. That's a lot of money you say? Well it's a steal when baseball hats and t-shirts are going for $30-40, $55 isn't all that bad. Anyways, here's what it looks like.

Our tickets were for the pit, and of course the "pit" is only 1000 square feet that they're trying to cram 500 (according to staff, I think there were more) people into. Pam and I have learned our lesson from before about getting too close to the stage so we sat by the back railing all night Still I was no more that 75 feet from the stage at all times so that was cool.

The show was pretty sweet but kind of disappointing at the same time. Street Sweeper Social Club was the opener. The band is a collaboration between Boots Riley of The Coup and Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine and they tore it up on stage. It's probably more funkier than Rage but still politically minded. They also did an awesome cover of Paper plates by MIA and I wish they would put that out somewhere but as of yet, I haven't found it.

Nine Inch Nails played next, which I thought was kind of bullshit considering this is a farewell tour (of sorts) for Trent Reznor, they should be closing. Maybe we've gotten spoiled from the Lights in the Sky tour but they didn't really do anything with stage effects. Yeah there was lights and stuff, but no video screen, no projections or anything of that sort. They also had a very mixed bag of music for the setlist, playing no more than 2 or 3 songs off of all their major released, and also doing their cover of "Metal" by Gary Numan. I like the song but I don't think it fit into their set.

Jane's Addiction closed and I'm not the biggest fan of them, but they put on a pretty decent show. It was mostly songs from Nothing's Shocking and Riual de lo Habitual but not too bad. The acoustic rendition of 'Jane Says' they played for an encore was pretty sweet.

Sunday we went on the most boring drive ever to get home. I-65 to Bloomington, IL then I 39/I90 to Madison and then US 151 home. Despite it being boring we still got home in only 7 hours (accounting for the time difference). I definitely am going to go that route if I ever need to go South of I-90 again. Well, it's either that or leave at 4 in the morning and then we don't have to worry about traffic.

We had a great time but it just makes me sad the with baby #3 on the way that vacations are going to be even fewer and farther in between because of the logistics of getting people to watch all 3 kids. Oh well, that's the price of admission for the parent ride. Besides it won't be too long before we'll be taking the kids on large scale vacations and if I keep them glued to a TV set in the car, it'll almost be like not having them there :)

The iPhone came in quite handy on our trip, helping us find all the places we needed without having to drive all over the place. We were able to stay connected fairly well. However, one thing that pisses me off is the coverage by AT&T. I had 3G outside the gates at the music venue, but when I went in it was Edge only and not good coverage at that. Spots on the Interstate were completely dead and it's still dead in Juneau where Pam works. Strangely enough when you are 1 mile east of there it's a perfect signal. I swear if the iPhone was on a different provider I'd be all over that. In the meantime I just hope that they continue to improve their infrastructure.

On the gaming front, I've been going pretty nuts with games. A week and a half ago I got Buzz for $20 at Walmart (buzzers and game) I'm almost to the Platinum trophy there (1 more to go). The games I bought at Gamestop were Bad Company, Burnout Paradise, and Alone in the Dark. It was a buy 2 get 1 free sale and all were 18.99. With my Gamestop card, I got all three games for $35 bucks, so that's pretty sweet. I had a day off Monday and managed to get my trophies for the Endless setlist on Rock Band 2 on Expert. That finally made me able to reformat my PS3 hard drive (I couldn't copy the RB2 save game). Now I can actually put more than one game's data on the hard drive :) Soooo, I'll be pretty busy for the next few months.

Well, I'm all typed out. I'll be posting photos of the concert later when I get home, but for now use your imagination :)

Getting back on the diet that threw ya

One of my resolutions for this year was to lose some weight and get down to 275 pounds. Being me, unfortunately, I had been slacking off hardcore and have actually started gaining weight again. So, I have started working on the weightloss again. Let me tell ya, it sucks ass trying to get back into a workout routine. I had been comfortable with it until I broke my leg last year and now just walking a few miles kills my legs and feet. Also there is no bike seat in the world that can really support 340 lbs. so my ass is killing me too. I'm just trying to lose enough weight so I can get on the Wii Fit so I can see if it's worth the money :)

In other news my daughter Genna is 'graduating' from Pre-Kindergarten this month. I think it's pretty cool, especially because I think she's really looking forward to both the graduation and to going to the "big school". On the other hand, I kind of freak out about it because I don't know where all the fucking time is going. Seems like yesterday that I myself was graduating from high school. Now, there's a wife, a house, 1 kid going to kindergarten, 1 going to pre-k, and another on the way. It's like Ferris Bueller says, "Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. " Truer words were never spoken.

I've been getting busy in Singstar. It is fucking hard trying to get all the trophies. First of all, it's impossible to get 9000 points on hard on 95% of the songs, which require you to buy more to get the right ones. Also if you don't have a camera, it's impossible to get people to view your stuff unless you beg them or do something really stupid, like dance around in a dress. I don't know if I'm really going to be able to get them all. I'll probably give it a few more weeks and then give up if it doesn't happen and move to some other games.

I've also been playing around with the iPhone more and venturing into the paid Apps section. I've found several to be useful in my Fitness work. The Daily Plate is a website where you can get healthy advice through Livestrong (Lance Armstrong's foundation) and also track stuff like what are you eating, how much you can eat in a day calorie-wise, how many calories you are burning by exercising, etc. The website itself is free, but the iPhone app is $2.99. I really don't know why they just didn't make a free ad-supported one. It seems to be the case for a lot of apps (I suppose because selling ads doesn't really pay for shit.) The other app is Trails. Trails is kind of sweet because you can take GPS readings of your runs, cycling, hiking, etc. then you can upload it to a website or e-mail it to someone else where they can download it and follow your trail. It's mostly for hiking and geocaching, but I'm using it to get accurate times and distances for my walking and cycling runs.

One last thing. How bout dem Brewers, eh? I thought it was going to be a shitty year after losing Sabathia and Sheets, but they've won 8 of their last 10 games and sit in a 3 way tie atop the NL Central. As I write this they are up 3-1 over the Marlins which, if it holds, will put them in 1st....at least until the Reds and Cardinals play their games. I know we're barely through a fifth of the season, but there is cause for some hope that not all is lost. I'd like to see another big aquisition by the trading deadline to help put us over the hump and back into the playoffs again. If the cards fall right maybe I'll find a way to see them play in the postseason. If not, I'm sure I'll make it to a game this year. Nothing beats the experience of actually being at the ballpark.

*ring* *ring* Hello, Josh...this is reality calling. You need to go to a meeting now so stop blogging *click*

Well, I can't deny reality, so I will take my leave now. :)

Jaaaaaaaaaaail-break

It's been a busy past few days. Spring is now upon us so I spent most of my weekend doing yard and garden work. I expanded the garden and we're actually planning it this year instead of just throwing whatever in it. I'm hoping for better results. Last year we got way too many cucumbers and no peppers. We got one bunch of peas and no tomatoes, etc. I'm not really an outdoorsy guy but I really don't mind gardening...at least not when it's 70 degrees out.

I've also been busy dicking around with AT&T this time. Pam's data use got shut down because they were saying that her number used 115 MB's of data in a week. The problem with that is that on her phone, you'd have to be on the Internet 24/7 to get that kind of data use. I looked at the usage and found that during the day they had our phone numbers switched that they assigned all my data use to her number. What the fuck? Can't they tell which model of phone is making the request? Especially because 80% of my use in those 2 days we to Apple's app store which obviously her Samsung can't reach. On top of that, she didn't use her phone for the first day because of problems with porting her number. Anyways, AT&T is going to fix the billing problem, but they can't until we actually get a bill....which doesn't make sense, but I suppose that they don't want to credit us the $1200, then we quit their service and they owe us that money....even though if we quit right now it would still have us at 115 MB of usage that are unpaid.

Essentially, it boils down to change sucks. When doing major changes like this there's going to be fuckups, but once you take care of those then usually theres's never another problem.

Soooo, the whole point of this post was to say that I jailbroke my iPhone. It's as freaking easy as advertised. Essentially you download either Pwnagetool or Quickpwn, and make sure you're getting the one for your OS Version (2.2.1 for me). Install it on your computer and follow the instructions. It's just that easy.

Once it's done, you'll have a program called Cydia on the phone. Think of that as an app store for non-approved apps. The main reason I wanted it was for the ability to put groups of icons into folders so I don't have to swipe 5-6 times to get the app I want. I got that functionality from the Categories app. There's also apps to turn your 4 column layout for apps into 5, giving you up to 20 apps on a page. There's "Poof!" which you can use to remove the links to useless apps such as Stocks, Weather, and iTunes. Winterboard is used to apply themes to your display, such as changing the lock screen and keyboard color etc. I was also able to change the unlock action from having to slide your finger across the iPhone to just hitting a button.

What's stupid is that all these features are not necessarily illegal. You could technically put your phone on another cell network or put a bittorrent client on the iPhone, but all I'm doing is changing the way it looks. I just don't get why Apple didn't include any options for different themes or colors for the display. Isn't Apple the "Think different" company? Well how can I think different when my phone LOOKS LIKE EVERYONE ELSE'S! Not to mention, I paid out all this money to use the damn thing, I should get to decide what's on it, not Apple.

Rant aside, I really do dig the new look and I'm glad that someone made it so easy that even an Apple user could do it (sick burn!)

Anyways, since I'm apparently the only one here taking calls (grrrr) I gotta get back to work

I'm king of the nerds!!!!!

So I've actually gotten to play with my iphone for a day now and I'm really impressed. I'm not really a fan of all things Apple and I'm sure there are certain things that work a little better on other phone (the virtual keyboard and camera come to mind). However it's the abundace of apps that makes the iphone experience so great. Ive listed 10 of my faves at time:

1. Twittedfon- a lightweight Twitter client that integrates Twitpic, GPS tagging, profile viewing, etc.
2. Facebook - this ones obvious. The only things that seem to be missing is chatting and viewing notes (I haven't been able to view mine at least)
3. Remember the Milk - I've been using RTM as an effective tool for Getting Things Done and maintaining lists of future stuff to do and get. The iPhone frontend works really well. My only gripe so far is that you can't ADD locations, you have to do that from a computer. RTM also requires a premium account to use the iPhone service which is $25/yr.
4. Evernote - Evernote saves pictures, notes, and other things and syncs it between your mobile device, PC, or can be accessed from the website. I'm going to TRY to use it to take pictures of the receipts I incur instead of wadding them up in my pocket. The sweet thing about evernote is that it recognizes text inside pictures so you can search by that as well.
5. Mint - This is a front end for Mint.com so you can see how much money you have in the bank at a given time. This is a good tool if you are with a bank that isn't big enough to have it's own iPhone frontend, but is supported by Mint.com
6. eBay - Another obvious one. A frontend for ebay that you can search auctions, place bid, and watch what you're selling
7. Yelp / AroundMe - These two do almost the same thing. Find restaurants, gas stations, etc. realative to your current location. Yelp brings up less results but has user reviews. Aroundme just brings you the names and addresses.
8 Pandora.fm - Pandora is really sweet. You put in the name of a band that you like and it creates a radio station that plays that artist and other similar bands. Best of all it streams perfectly even on EDGE so I can listen to it on the way to work.
9. SnapTell - This appears to be the only free price comparison app that I could find. It is really sweet though. You take a picture of a CD, DVD, or game and it recognizes it and searchs online and locally for the best price. This way you can see if you're getting a good price.
10. Midori / Shazam - Ever hear a song and want to know who is playing? These tools are right for you then. Both do the same thing, i.e put the iphone to a speaker, record 10 secs. and search the database. Midori adds the ability to hum or sing the song. I personally haven't gotten that to work but the recording part is usually spot on.

So yeah, I am having mad fun with the iPhone. I will be attempting to jailbreak it, possibly this weekend. Mostly I just want to change the color scheme and remove the iTunes and Stocks buttons (you cannot remove the default buttons) but right now I am so glad I went with AT&T. They too had problems porting the numbers, but they hooked us up within a day AND waived our activation fees. Pretty sweet.

Now if you'll excuse me, a metric ton of shitty work just popped up



A

I love it when a plan comes together

(StreamOfConsciousness == True) So a funny thing happened during my struggles with Sprint. I got sick of waiting on my number port without any calls or status updates about what was going on. For shits and giggles I went to the AT&T website and what's this? A refurbished 16GB iPhone is $150? (Insert high squeaky voice) Really? That is the phone I wanted all along! But wait a second, I can't go with AT&T because there's no coverage where Pam works...well let's look at the map. O.O They have coverage!!!! (StreamOfConsciousness == False)

I was going to do that last bit with HTML tags, but I'm too lazy to put the & codes in so that the browser doesn't ignore the < & > signs....of course I just did it to show the signs I was talking about and then typing to explain it. #irony :)

I was able to get a refurbed iPhone and a refurbed Samsung Propel for 100 dollars less upfront than the amount I paid for the Blackberry Pearl and Samsung Rant, so that's cool. I got it with the same plan amount as Sprint, so that's double cool. The only hitch was once again they had issues with number porting, so I had to call several times to straighten things out and they actually sent us the phones with free overnight shipping (they are arriving today).

What's funny is that I called Sprint to tell them to shove it up their ass and 10 minutes after that call, my number port magically went through and I was able to use the phone for calling. How's that for service? :) I still couldn't use it for data because I had to request the data plan that should have been offered in the first place on the website. So that sucks. I will say I do like a lot of features about the Pearl and if Sprint hadn't sucked so hard, I would have stuck with it.

The whole thing is laughable because I'm now with the phone and the plan I wanted 6 months ago. It wasn't laughable as I struggled with getting the money, ultimately giving up and going with another provider. It's just another case where everything in life just works out. The downside is that I can never believe that it's going to turn out OK or it never does. It really does make a person into a pessimist.

On a side note, I also took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese's this weekend. We had a pretty good time, but I get so exhausted with all of the naughty freaking kids around. Why doesn't anyone teach kids manners or even the simple rule that you shouldn't steal from people or sit there begging. I literally had kids coming up to me trying to tear off my tickets or beg for tokens from me. What the fuck? Of course there are misbehaved adults too. I was trying to play a game with my daughter and she wandered off back toward her mom. I continued to play the game (which I had to get on my knees for) and some cuntrag comes up and says "You know, when you have to get on your knees for a game that's usually an indicator that you shouldn't be playing it." I asked her if she could see the sign on my back. What sign? The one that says 'Please feel free to intrude in my business'. She took off in a huff probably thinking that I'M the asshole. I'm sorry but if you are going to be an asshole to me, I will return the favor.

By her account then ALL the games, save for basketball shooting, are kids only. The funny thing is that in the one game in particular, it was too tall for my kids. :) Also if it were up to them to spend all the 200 tokens we had it would take forever (as it was we were there for 4 hours). So once again to all nosy Madisonians, please go fuck yourselves if you want to get in my business.

A few more things of note:
-I'm pretty excited about the Packer's draft. The addressed every need they had (Defense and Offensive lines). I hope that the new rookies work out for them. It could be an interesting season.

-The Brewers seem to have righted the ship with the starters putting together quality outings all week and the bats getting hot at the right time. They've won 5 of 6 (The only loss was by 1 run) and are playing an injury depleted Pirates again tonight at home.

-Singstar for PS3 has gone live with trophy support now. Some of them are really hard though. You have to have an upload viewed 200 times in one week, have 8000 total views of all media, and get over 9000 on Hard on 5 different songs. That's going to take a while, especially because I've got to see if I can find a cheap webcam to work for the PS3 ( I don't really want to drop $40 on the PS3 one)

-Still got trophies to get for Rock Band, Resistance 2, and multiplayer Resident Evil 5. I'm going to have to recruit Pam to play for me when I'm at work :)

Anyways, time to get back to work and daydream about my new iPhone. It's out for delivery right now. I wish I were home right now, it's like Christmas in April :)

The sad thing is that I'm getting used to this

So I got my new shiny Blackberry on Friday and tried to activate it only to find out that there was no line listed on my account due to the fact that I didn't get the required $30/month Blackberry Data Plan. I guess I wasn't THAT surprised as I figured that $15/month for data was too good to be true. Either way, that was more than I wanted to pay per month so after stewing for a while (and what a fun person I was for THOSE few hours). I decided that I would keep the plan but return the Blackberry Pearl for a Samsung Rant (the phone I got Pam).

So I called Sprint and they said that I could return it but I'd have to wait 1-2 billing cycles to get my money back and then I'd have to pay cash to get a new phone or I could take it to a store to exchange it. Great! We have a Sprint store in Beaver Dam. He failed to mention that it had to be a 'corporate' store and not a 3rd party vendor. The nearest corp stores are 40 miles away. So then Pam and I got into it as to whether she even wants to go with Sprint anymore and then whether she needs a cell phone. So I pretty much said "OK, I'm getting an iPhone then". Then she was all like "Weeeeellll, maybe we'll pay the $30/month" for the data plan :) Figures. Anything to deny me something new and shiny (I keed, I keed ;-D )

So great, I have a Blackberry now, but Sprint is having all types of problems porting the numbers and activating the phones. Because of the porting process my fucking Verizon phone doesn't work so I'm SOL right now. Actually I'm typing this whole thing while on hold w/ Sprint while they see what they can do right now. I'm hoping we can get this done NOW because I want to get the rest of the cool shit on the Blackberry like the Google apps and Remember the Milk. Currently I'm being transferred to a supervisor....yay progress!

Other than that I had a great weekend. Of course by great I mean that I had to do a shitload of yardwork, had the horseshit go on with Sprint, have a cranky post-op kid screaming about her throat and keeping us up at all hours of the night and driving us nuts, and it was cold and rainy. So yeah, not really that great. The only good thing I did of note was finish Superhuman difficulty on Resistance 2...which will be nothing compared to the "get 10000 kills" in Competitive mode (I'm at 95 kills right now and averaging about 5 per match :( )

This whole thing with Sprint gets me to another point. What the fuck happened to customer service? I don't mean with individuals in general because all the people I've dealt with at Sprint have been decent, but I mean as a company as a whole. We've had fuckups with Westbury Bank, FNBO, and now Sprint in the last few months. Like I said with Sprint the main problem is that it didn't even mention the Blackberry plan on the site and I think that's the root of all the problems here. On top of that, with other places you get the feeling that most people couldn't give a shit about whether you're happy with a particular company's service. With this economy you'd think people would give more of a shit because it would be so easy to replace them. You'd think companies would be falling all over themselves to give you awesome service because they're competing for less dollars. However, they don't.

Of course a lot of the problem is endemic of the industry. For cell phones in particular I've been with 4 different providers (PrimeCo, US Cell, Verizon, and now Sprint) and have not had a particularly great time with any of them. The only other national provider in the area is AT&T and if I go to them after my Sprint contract I guarantee that the service will still suck. Why should any one company do a good job at customer service when they all suck?

Update: My phone still doesn't work. They've escalated it to another team. However, they did get Pam's working so that's kind of cool. Hopefully they can get me up and running soon.