ExtremePumpkins.com has their 2010 carving contest winners posted. Take a look, they’re pretty good! They always have some creative ideas for your own carving too. All of their previous contest results are on their site as well–make sure you catch up!
All posts by Jim Trottier
New Art
I added a few new photos to my “Kenosha Art” set today. These include seven paintings found on the sides of the storage/restroom building between the Velodrome and the Pool in Washington Park, and a photo of the Forest Park sign. All were taken on from my Android during our walks.
Room
I’ve been reading some audiobooks lately. The last one I read was very good: “Room” by Emma Donoghue. This is an excellent story told by””and in the voice of””a 5-year-old boy. This makes it pretty unique, and the audiobook format works perfectly for this type of story, in my opinion. Here’s the publisher’s description of the story:
To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it’s where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it’s not enough…not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son’s bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work. Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.
Cell phone bliss
I started typing this post on 9/12/10. I finally decided it’s time to post it. Looking back, I guess I should have posted it as I wrote it, and just posted updates after that, so it was always current. Oh well. Anyway, here goes:
I’ve done a lot of research on smartphones recently, on a quest for getting my first one. Yeah, I know, a geek without a smartphone?!? What took me so long?? Well, money, of course, is the first consideration. It costs more money, both monthly and upfront, for a smartphone, so there’s that. Then there’s the Operating System. Do I want Apple (iPhone), Android (all providers other than apple), or something else? I quickly narrowed my choices down to iPhone or Android. Both are excellent operating systems, and Android is available on many different phones and carriers. And besides, since I’m now a card-carrying member of Appleholics Anonymous, one of their 12 steps is to own, and loyally use daily, a non-Apple device. So here I go.
My choices of phones were quickly narrowed down to one phone after I checked with my current cellular provider. It turns out I’m only a few months into a 2-year contract, and there’s a hefty “early termination” fee if I leave my contract. They’re willing to work with me though, if I want to re-up my contract for 2 more years and get a smartphone. Thay have two Android phones to choose from, the best being the HTC Desire. I reviewed the specs and they looked pretty nice, with a few exceptions. The primary reason I leaned toward Android over an iPod at first, was the openness of the system and the fact that the new Android version (2.2 Frozen Yogurt–aka FroYo) offered wifi tethering and the ability to install apps on a MicroSD card. I was excited about these two options. Wifi tethering would cure another problem we keep having. We get to a remote location–either Kevin and I, Sandy and I, or all three of us–then discover that there’s no wifi available, so we can’t check in anywhere, check our mail, or play a round of Words With Friends, so what to do except twiddle our thumbs??? But Android version 2.1, which my provider’s HTC Desire comes with, doesn’t have those features yet. So I called my provider. My first call to them resulted in them agreeing to make an exception to renew my contract and allow me to upgrade my phone again. They couldn’t tell me much about the Android version, so I explained what I had read. They still didn’t know what, if any, upgrade options were possible on the Desire.
‘, ‘
I thought about it a bit and decided to stop in at one of their stores in town the next day. I played around with the phone for a few minutes to get a feel for it and look at the menus and features. I asked the salesperson about Android 2.1 and asked if I could upgrade to 2.2. She wasn’t sure so she checked with her manager. He said “no no no, you can’t upgrade it, you have to use the operating system it comes with.” Now, I’m not sure if he misunderstood what I was asking, but I didn’t appreciate the way he said this. I told her I wasn’t going to upgrade at all if this was the case, and I left the store.
Further research on the Internet that evening didn’t help much. A few postings by other users mentioned that the upgrade to 2.2 for my carrier hasn’t been released, but was expected in the near future, though no definite date was quoted and no source of this information was provided. My carrier has nothing posted on their website, even in their FAQs about Android. So today, very frustrated and torn as to whether I should take the plunge or not, I called my carrier’s tech support again. I explained the situation and asked if there was anyone there who could provided some technical information on Android for this specific carrier. I was placed on hold for about 20 minutes and then a support tech picked up. He seemed very knowledgeable about Android and the HTC Desire, but said basically the same thing I was told before–the Android 2.2 upgrade hasn’t been approved yet for this carrier, and he’s not sure if the wifi tethering feature will be supported or not. I explained that someone else–the lady I talked to before him–said that wifi tethering is definitely not supported by them and they are not responsible for any additional charges resulting from attempting to use this feature. He couldn’t elaborate, only repeated that they wouldn’t know more until the release is actually approved by the carrier. I explained that wifi tethering is a pretty big tipping point for me upgrading to this phone, and he explained that the phone has a ton of excellent features even as it is now, without the wifi tethering, and it does have USB tethering right now, but if wifi tethering is that much of a factor for me, he suggests I hold off until I can get more information on the upgrade after it is approved for this phone. I thanked him for his time and help and let him go. It was nice to finally talk to someone who understands what I’m looking for, even though he couldn’t really provide any additional information for me.
So here I sit, wondering what my provider is going to do regarding the Android 2.2 upgrade on this phone. It’s Sunday September 12, 2010. It should be very interesting to see what happens. I’ll complete this post when I either know more or have a smartphone in my hands.
9/25/10 – I now own an Android phone. I went with the HTC Desire. It’s not the best Android phone out there (Jay has that–the HTC Evo 4G), but it’s pretty close. I’ve had it about a week, and I’m quite impressed. I think I’ll stick with it. And I’ll keep my iPod too. Just like the XBox 360 and the PS3, it’s fun to be able to play on “both sides of the fence”. I get to learn all of the differences of each platform, all the advantages and disadvantages of them, and maybe I can even help someone in cyberspace keep better informed. So here’s my impressions so far:
1. The touch screen is far more sensitive than the iPod Touch. Just holding the phone tightly seems to be able to heat up a few screen edge areas (where my flesh is just above it) enough to trigger a selection sometimes. It’s not a problem now that I know I’m doing it and I can back off a little, but it was pretty confusing at first.
2. It’s Android 2.1, which isn’t so bad, but I’ll be upgrading to 2.2 as soon as it’s available from my carrier. The ability to install apps to the SD Card is extremely critical. This phone came with so many pre-installed (and good) apps that the internal memory was nearly full before I installed anything myself! I have to juggle apps now, uninstalling those I’m not currently using, just to install what I want to use. I have tons of space left on my SD Card, so this makes little sense. Android 2.2 should solve this problem completely. And wifi tethering is just that much more of a bonus coming with 2.2
3. AT&T (not my carrier) disables the ability to download apps from outside the Android Market on all of its Android phones. This is disappointing, because one of the main Android benefits is it’s “openness”. It’s an open source operating system, and everyone is free to develop for it and publish software for it, either in the Android Market store or outside, via their own website or others. Locking it to just the Market, however, seems like a pretty big restriction, pushing it close to the Apple model. I think one big reason a lot of people go with Android is to get away from that model, even if it’s just to be different, and even if you don’t necessarily download apps from outside the Market, it’s the principal of the thing. I would think this would discourage a lot of potential AT&T customers and drive them away from the AT&T cellular service. Then again, already having the entire exclusive iPhone market (for the moment), I guess if any company was going to take this risk it would be AT&T.
4. Android has TRUE multitasking. Not the fake “application in suspended-state” multitasking that the iPod and iPhone have, this is the real thing. You can start something in an app (like Slacker’s station caching) that takes awhile to process, then just move on to another app and the processing still continues in the background. In fact, the top “notification bar” displays an icon for that app, just so remind you that it’s still running. Yes, it does slow down your other tasks, but that’s real multitasking.
5. Ringtones are unbelievable. And free. There’s no need to pay for a ringtone ever again, thanks to abundant apps that let you record any sound and use it as your ringtone, and other free apps that let you download millions (literally) of ringtones that others have already made. I could spend years just trying to listen to all of them one by one. Search for anything that interests you and you instantly find hundreds of ringtones to choose from.
6. Live Wallpapers. Android wallpapers can move. I must admit, I’ve never been a fan of animated wallpapers since Microsoft added Live Video Wallpaper to Windows and offered it as part of the “Ultimate” version of their operating system. It slowed down the PC tremendously on many occasions and could often render it unusable, performing so slow. I never use it any more. But on Android it doesn’t seem to slow anything down. Perhaps it’s just done right from the ground up this time…? You can get Live Wallpaper in just about any flavor, just like ringtones, and there are many included on the phone.
7. GPS Rules! – Having only had the iPod Touch and not an iPhone before, GPS on a phone is new to me. So far, it’s been a very fun, eye-opening experience. For one thing, I think Google has really done some amazing things. For one thing, Google Navigator (totally free) is the best navigation app I’ve seen so far, and I’ve tried several of them already, including the exclusive Navigator Plus (included with the HTC Desire) others. You can type or speak your destination and it instantly locates it (very accurate!) and starts navigating. Google speaks your directions (even much more clearly than all the others), maps flow very smoothly as you travel, and you even get a streetview of your destination as you arrive. Another must-have app–for me, anyway–is My Tracks. It’s another Google app that actually RECORDS your journey on Google Maps and lets you save and share those maps as well as provide you with detailed trip information, including distance, time, max speed, etc.. Amazing stuff.
8. Camera. Ah, the things you can do with a camera in your phone! Taking pictures and videos is just the beginning. Try Google Goggles. Take a picture of ANYTHING and Goggles goes out to the web and finds it. If it can’t find it, it will display images very similar to yours. It reacognizes any logos, text, products, etc., in the photo very nicely. I have heard that it has the capability to also recognize people, but this functionality has been disabled due to privacy concerns.
9. More Camera. There are an abundance of applications that allow you to scan barcodes out there. Most of them do a great job of identifying the product scanned, but the awesome ones will even show you the cheapest place to buy it! This is great for shopping! I’ll have to go with Sandy sometime. Another neat camera feature is face recognition. As an example of a good use for this, Photofunia is a great free app that lets you choose from hundreds of fake “cutouts”, for example a very muscular bodybuilder, a magazine cover with an executive on it, etc., then take a photo of someone, and it detects the person’s face in the photo and places it into the cutout image as best it can. The results are often very amusing and sometimes convincing! It does a nice job with it, especially considering its price!
10. Widgets. The Android has widgets. These are tiny applications that are presented in small areas of your screen that always stay open and running, just like Windows Gadgets. For example, Weather, music and photo widgets are very popular. All are available in various sizes and styles, and dozens of widgets are included with the HTC Desire. These can eat up screen space though, space otherwise used for your application icons. The HTC Desire has 7 screens though, so you have plenty of space, considering how many (or few) apps you can have on your screens.
11. All Apps. Even with 7 virtual screens–scrollable much like the iPod and iPhone–the Android still has an “All Apps” screen that displays every application installed on the phone, sorted A-to-Z. This is great, and makes it easy to find any application, even if you’ve forgotten it’s name. You also have the ability to search, as the iPod and iPhone can, by name, and it searches your phone instantly as well as optionally searching Google automatically. You can also search by voice whenever you want, with a “microphone” key right on the keyboard. You can even call someone, compose & send an e-mail, listen to music, etc. etc. etc… all with this same search function.
12. Lastly, Google Skymap is simply amazing. Using GPS, it provides a live skymap of the exact stars in the area of the sky it is pointed at. You can see all of the constellations, planets, and even the horizon, right there in front of you. This is quite fascinating, and certainly a must-have for any astronomy buffs. Totally free, of course. I’m pretty sure any app with nearly the same capabilities in the Apple Store will cost your a few dollars or more.
13. Ok, I lied. THIS is the last point. One final app to brag about. Tasker. This is a really cool app, and it’s a tinkerer’s (aka geek’s) dream. It’s used to perform tasks on your phone, triggers by events. The tasks and the events that can trigger them number in the hundreds. You can automate just about every function of the phone you can think of. For example, you can make a task as simple as opening an application automatically at 7:00am, or a task as complicated as automatically switching off your GPS, Wifi, Cell data, and muting your phone when you get to work. Actually they can get quite a bit more complicated that than even, but you get the idea. It’s amazing, to say the least, and it really has the potential to turn your “Smart” phone into a “Super” phone. As an example of a practical application of it, I recently discovered an embarrassing side-effect of using an Android with my iPod speaker dock at work. When I disconnect the headphone cable connected to the aux jack on the dock after I power off the dock, my playing music blasts loudly through the phone’s speaker for a few seconds as I panic to turn down the volume and/or pause the music, whichever I can get to quicker. Tasker to the rescue! After this happened a few times I realized Tasker can fix this. So I created a task to detect when the headphones are unplugged and, at that point turn the volume down and close the music application. It works perfectly.
Android RULES!
Netflix goes disc-free on PS3 and Wii! Woohoo!
This is quite a relief! We no longer need a disc to watch Netflix on our PS3 and Wii! I guess their exclusivity agreement with Microsoft has now ended. We love watching Netflix on the PS3 more than the X-Box–even when we had to use the disc–because we have an older X-Box and it gets quite loud trying to keep itself cool combined with the generally louder drive. We still have an older “fat” PS3, but it’s second generation, and pretty quiet in comparison. It also keeps itself much cooler.
The new Netflix Instant on PS3 also brings to totally new interface we’re trying to get used to. It looks much better so far though, so I think we’re going to enjoy it a lot more. As for the Wii, who knows? We don’t use it for Netflix because of the much lower resolution, but we did get the Netflix disc for it in case we wanted to use it. I guess if the interfaces ALL improved a great deal, I should give it a shot sometime and see.
Now if I could only get Netflix to stream on my Android…
100 shots of one sunset
During another recent walk around Lake Andrea, I took close to 200 photos just playing with my new phone. I uploaded the “Top 100” photos out of those. Take a look. I think a few of them will make nice wallpapers, both on my phone and on my desktop.
Kenosha Officers Become YouTube Video Stars
The Kenosha Police Department is back with another Web hit, but this time it’s for a good cause. Earlier, the department got some extra attention for a send-up of the “12 Days Of Christmas” song officers made. This year, Officer Dennis Walsh said they wanted to try a different holiday. Walsh and his partner, Officer Jeff Wamboldt, made a parody of the “Monster Mash” song. Full story, The video:
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Lake Andrea walk and some photos
Socks and I walked around Lake Andrea tonight. 2.5 miles. Here’s the map. I took a few photos while walking too, and uploaded them along with a bunch of other photos I’ve taken with my new phone over the past couple weeks. It’s the HTC Desire — sweet Android phone… Thanks for the advice, Hans!
Power Outage
Sandy called me at work this afternoon around 2:15pm when our power went out. I called We Energies and they confirmed that there was an outage in the area. Power was still off when I got home at 4:00pm, but came back on about 4:15pm. Luckily it wasn’t off long enough to spoil all of our food in the fridge and freezer. Here’s the report from We Energies:
Strong winds and rain earlier today caused extensive damage to electric facilities in Racine, Kenosha and Burlington. Preliminary and approximate outage numbers are: 10,000 customers in the Burlington area, 10,000 customers in the Kenosha area and 5,000 in Racine as a result of this latest storm. Additionally, approximately 2,000 customers are out of service in Fort Atkinson and 200-300 customers in northern Milwaukee County, the result of storms that passed through the area last night. The public should exercise extreme caution around downed lines; often these lines are still carrying electricity.
Customers without service should be prepared to be without power throughout tonight. Wisconsin Electric estimates that the majority of customers will be brought back into service sometime tomorrow. Wisconsin Electric has taken almost 10,000 calls today from customers reporting power outages as a result of storms last night and today. The company has received more than 500 reports of wires down and dozens of reports of broken poles and other damaged equipment. The phone lines to report outages and down wire are extremely busy. Wisconsin Electric asks customers to be patient. The phone number is 800-662-4797. Crews are still working to restore power to some customers who lost electricity as a result of last night’s storm. Most customers had their power back on earlier today, but isolated outages remain.
Jay’s Weekend Visit
Jay is in town this weekend, up from Arizona for the weekend! We had a pretty busy day today, starting with Ty’s football game this morning (which got rained out after 3 quarters just before they were going to put Ty in!) so Jay didn’t get to actually see him play. No one told Ty that his dad was coming this weekend (on purpose), so it would be a surprise. I did get one photo of Ty running…back from the porta-potty! We grabbed lunch from Hungry Head, then Jay fixed a little plumbing problem we had at the house (saving us a bundle we would have had to pay a plumber). After that we went out to Wells Brothers in Racine for their awesome, world famous, paper-thin-crusted pizza. We’re all stuffed! Click here for the photo highlights. And here’s a quick video taken after the game was rained out:
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Waukegan Air Show (FAIL)
Here’s the photos from the Waukegan Air Show from last Saturday. It was pretty much rained out. I got soaked and Kevin stayed under his Bears umbrella most of the time. There were even a few classic cars there for some reason–and a jet-powered school bus. The free flights for kids were cancelled, so we got bored quickly, and left after a couple hours of waiting around with nothing happening.
Fish Fry 2010
Beth & Tom held their annual Fish Fry yesterday. Kevin, Matt, Sandy and I attended. The food was awesome! I took a few photos, so click on the thumbnail to take a look. For yesterday’s walk I was going to have Sandy drop me off about a 1/2 mile from their house, then I figured “what the heck, I’ll just walk all the way there”, so I left about an hour before everyone else left the house and met them there. It took me just over an hour and it was my longest walk yet, at just over 2 miles. It was fun though–I listened to the Slacker Radio Comedy Channel the whole way there, so I was laughing most of the time.
Where were you on that fateful day?
9/10/10 – It’s the anniversary again. Below is the entire cumulative contents of all of my previous postings on 9/11, including the old comments posted by users. Please give it a read and feel free to post your own comments and experiences. We’d love to hear from you. I have temporarily enabled public commenting for this, so you don’t even have to sign up for an account to post a comment.
Where were you on that fateful day
Originally wrtten by Jim Trottier – Thursday, 09 September 2004
When huge historic events happen that seem to effect everyone in the world in some way or another we seem to remember everything about that day in our lives much more vividly than most other days. So let’s discuss where we were and what we were doing on that fateful morning of September 11th, 2001. Here’s MY recollection: I was working at Cirqon Technologies in Gurnee, Illinois. I was a PC Tech there, and had recently moved to that department full-time after 6 months of working half-days in the chem lab and half-days in the IT department. I was at my workstation in IT, next to my boss, Mark Stricklin. Mark and I got along great as co-workers, and he was an awesome boss. He was also a Man of The Cloth, and is very respected in his community. He does a lot of charity work, and enjoys helping everyone he can, so this event seemed to hit him extra hard. Anyway, we were working at our respective workstations when a co-worker came over from another cubicle and said a plane had just ran into the World Trade Center! To us we began to assume some sort of accident where small aircraft struck the building. We wondered, but weren’t overly concerned. A while later the same co-worker returns–more excited now–and says ANOTHER plane hit the OTHER tower now! Ok, now we began to get concerned. It was certainly no accident now. Next we learned that ANOTHER plane had struck the Petagon. I got the chills. The events ran through my head over and over as if to force me to memorize them forever, as I sure will. Shortly thereafter we also learned that yet another plane was still flying and possibly hijacked. Jeff, Cirqon’s V.P., sent our Plating Surpervisor out to buy a small television so we could watch what was happening. He returned with one, and set it up in the conference room. We didn’t have an antenna except the small one included with the TV, so the reception was pretty bad. We managed to rig up a better antenna though, using some wire and the window frame in the conference room. Still fuzzy, but at least you could see a halfway decent picture. We watched the rest of the day as they re-ran the two planes hitting the towers over and over again, the Petagon burning, and the eventual Pennsylvania field crash of the fourth aircraft. I dug out the boombox that I had stowed away in IT (I put it away after boomboxes were banned from every department a few weeks earlier) and tuned it to an all-news channel so we could keep up on events when we weren’t able to watch the TV in the conference room (when we needed to get some actual work done). I remember quite a bit of debate that day on the radio with structural analysts who insisted that the towers could absorb that type of impact, and since they still fell there must have been some other “inside” event as well which contributed to their collapse. As it turned out, that was totally false, and the towers were actually designed to absorb the impact of much smaller planes containing much less fuel–they were, after all, designed at the turn of the century when planes the size of today’s weren’t even imagined. Overall it was an incredibly moving and horrifying day. My boss was deeply saddened, and consoled a few of his friends on the phone during his free time that day, and for several days after. Let’s hear what your experience was. Here are all of the responses that users have submitted from the two other times that I posted this article:
Jayson and I were actually sleeping. He was off work because he had just had his appendix removed. His mom called and said we were under attack—so we ran to the TV and thats basically where we sat for the rest of the day. It just seemed so unreal–I remember looking at the TV and thinking —this has to be a bad joke–it really cannot be happening. I was also calling my family and friends–knowing they were ok, but just needing to talk with them because so many did not get a chance to talk to theirs after that day.
–ishellbell
2004/09/09 19:51 I was in downtown Chicago about a block away from the Sears Tower at a client. At that time details were still sketchy and they thought another plane was on it’s way to Chicago. All buildings were being evacuated. I had no choice but to head back to the train station and get as far away as possible. Unfortunately that’s what the entire loop was doing. The station was wall to wall people. Metra handled everything perfectly. Under the circumstances, schedules were history. They just started loading trains up and running them out as they filled up. They never even charged anyone. I always meant to send Metra a letter commending them and their conductors for going above and beyond on such a frightening day, but never did.
When I got back into town, I just went home and spent the morning watching the coverage with my wife.
It will be forever etched in my memory.
–chad
2004/09/09 20:01 I was also at work(DaimlerChrysler). When a co-worker of mine came to me and told me about the first plane hitting the building, and that it was a passenger plane. Right away I knew that this was big news, having been to New York and I’ve seen how massive those 2 buildings were. So right away I went to my locker and got my boombox. We all kept working (on the assembly line) and listened to the radio as the horrible events of history were revealed. Some of my co-workers that were near me also started paying attention to the radio. It was a day that I will never forget. It is right up there with the day that Kennedy was shot in Dallas Texas. Even today I still remember where I was and what I was doing on that fatefull day.
–wainer53
2004/09/12 10:13 I had just come downstairs and turned on the TV. There was this horrible site of a plane hitting the first tower. I called my sister in Waukegan immediately, and she told me about the pentagon crash. Then while talking to her the second plane hit the second tower. It was devastating. This was the first attack in the United States.
I was 7 years old and walking home from a movie at the Vogue Theater, with my mother and sister when the paperboys were yelling “Extra”, “Extra – Japs bomb Pearl Harbor”. My mother was shocked and I in turn was also upset, but being only 7years old, I didn’t even know what a Pearl Harbor was what’s more where Pearl Harbor was ….
This attack brought back that 7 year old fear, and was a real eye opener about how vulnerable we all are. I continued to watch TV and of course they kept replaying the horrific crashes and live voice recordings from the victims in the air. The shock and grief were unavoidable. The tears and prayers were also unavoidable.
What brave people aboard those planes, and especially the victims whose actions diverted the fourth plane from the White House, as they all knew they were victims of terrorism and going to die.
Pearl Harbor, The assassinations of Martin Luther King, President Kennedy, and Senator Bob Kennedy, the attack on the Twin Towers, Pentagon and White House, the attack on the children in the Russian School, will always be unforgettable hurts in our hearts and souls.
We must always remember the victims in this tragedy and all victims of terrorism, and do everything in our power to avoid a reoccurance. Do not be afraid or embarrased to be vigilant and observant of anything out of the ordinary. Be alert and report anything that looks suspicious to the authorities. We must do everything in our power to not be victims of any wrongdoing. Support our brave servicemen and servicewomen and law enforcement personnel. Help eliminate wrong doings.
–mahirose
2007/09/13 11:31 Well where to start… I got married on the 9th of September and was in Vegas on my honeymoon. I was of course in bed late and woke around 11 am, we began to walk the town and went to New York New York. As we were walking through i notice there werent very many people. Then we walked by a TV and i saw the events and since i was in New York New York i assumed it to be a movie plug, so we kept on walking and i ran into a man who was watching a small tv with others crowded around him and they were all in tears so i asked them what was going on when they all looked at me and at the same time they said we had been attacked. Well we hurried back to our room to check the news to confirm what had happened. Before you know it the streets of Vegas were empty as well as the casinos. Of course there were no flights going in and out so we could not leave to come back home until flights resumed because everyone had jumped on buses and rented cars by that time so we had to stay a few extra days, the flight home was one of the worst and scariest flights ive ever been on, as we landed everyone stood and cheered, happy just to be home safe.
–WhoDunIt
Classic Photo Album #8 uploaded
I scanned another of my dad’s old photo albums this weekend. This one includes a few more “mystery” people, so if anyone out there can give me a clue about who the people might be in those photos, I’d really appreciate the help. Most of these had no writing on the backs and nothing written in the album itself, so all descriptions were written from memory–and these sure do bring back a lot of old memories! Click on the thumbnail to view the photos in Old Photo Album #8.
Happy Labor Day…without the Labor!
I just realized, looking back on our summer this morning, that I haven’t posted any swimming photos this summer, except the tiny one of Ty diving in on opening day. So I went back and dug up the only few I took this summer–from July 4th. There’s seven of them, so I uploaded them to the “Swimming at Rosemary’s” set. They’re the first seven photos there. Now it’s off to George’s for our Labor Day cookout! L8r!
Southern Wisconsin 82nd Airborne Division Association Car Show 2010 – The Photos
Yes, we’ve had our fill of car shows this weekend! We went to the Southern Wisconsin 82nd Airborne Division Association Car Show today on Simmons Island. There were many of the same vehicles there that we saw yesterday, so whenever we recognized one of them, I skipped the photo op and moved on. So I took far fewer pictures today, but don’t get the wrong impression. It was a nice show with a lot of great cars in it, though it was a bit smaller than yesterday’s show overall. The military vehicles and equipment was all new and we enjoyed the scary hat rods with all the eye candy on and in them. Kevin even got a chance to sit in an army Jeep and feed some farm animals (Socks wanted to rip them a new one though, so we had to hold him back quite a distance–He got the zebra pretty nervous as we approached.) As usual, click on the thumbnail to view the photos.
Kenosha Classic Cruise-In Car Show 2010 – The Photos
Kevin and I went to the car show on 6th Avenue in downtown Kenosha today. It was pretty neat, with hundreds of cars. Click on the thumbnail to take a look at all of the cars. Over 300 photos in all. Enjoy!
Duck Feeding
During our walk we stopped to feed some bread to the ducks at the tot park today. Take a look at the exciting footage…in 2 videos and a few photos. It’s so exciting, I bet you could watch and stream both videos simultaneously and not miss a thing! Give it a go.
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Netflix adds instant streaming to iPhone & iPod!
Netflix has finally added instant streaming to the iPod and iPhone! Last Thursday (somehow I missed this last week) they release the app in the app store. You can now use your iPod or iPhone to watch any movie or video available on Netflix Instant! This is huge for me–I’ve been drooling for this since the iPad was first released. Netflix had the app available for the iPad several months ago when the iPod was first released, but they held back on releasing the app for the iPod and iPhone for some reason, until now. My guess is that they made an exclusivity deal with Apple so they could sell more iPads for the first few months of its release. Arrg. Anyway, it’s here now, and I’m much happier. I now have thousands of movies and TV shows available almost anywhere I am, instantly!–WITHOUT having to jailbreak my iPod.
JimTrottier.com 