News

Connor

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Sunday we spent the day at Beth & Tom’s 15th Annual Fish Fry.  It was great, tons of food, family and friends!  Matt, Anna, Hailey, and Connor came as well.  Connor, now fast approaching his terrible twos, was in fine form, just constantly moving about and walking non-stop.  He kept picking up a small blue kiddie chair and moving it around to various places in Beth & Tom’s backyard, unable to find a suitable spot, or just trying to show off his amazing strength at being able to lift a chair and walk around with it

But even without the chair, he just wanted to walk.  At one point, he waited at the backyard gate and I opened it to walk out, so I let him out and followed him closely.  We walked out to the front yard, then down the sidewalk.  I talked as he kept walking, telling him when a bump was coming, asking where we were going… He never answered me, but he was listening, I could tell.  He would look and hesitate when I announced hazards, and smoothly worked around them, and just kept going.

Occasionally he would walk astray and head down a driveway, so I would grab him and turn him, like correcting a robot, and he’d just keep going in the new direction, with no hesitation.  It was pretty amusing.  When we got to the corner, he tried to keep going into the street, but I stopped him and again redirected him back where we came from, talking to him and asking him where we’re going.  No response again, he just resumed walking contently in the new direction, back over the same old hazards in the opposite direction.

It reminded me of Forrest Gump…how he just had to walk and walk, with no rhyme or reason, he just had to keep going and going.  How far would little Connor go before he finally gave up? Forrest just stopped one day, in the middle of walking, after reaching the edges of each coast more than once.  At that time, in the movie, Forrest had probably close to 100 close followers who were walking with him, blindly going everywhere he was without question, as if disciples.  He had walked for 3 years, 2 months, 14 days, and 16 hours, then he just stopped and turned around.  One of his followers then says “Quiet! Quiet! He’s gonna say something!”.  Forrest then says “I’m pretty tired… I think I’ll go home now.”

We’ll all follow Connor and see where he goes.  He’s got his whole life ahead of him, and he’s on the move!  Go Connor, Go!  I bet he slept pretty good Sunday night too!

Entertainment, Music

Spotify Review

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I’m trying out Spotify. After hearing so many good things about it, and having looked at a few other streaming music services, I thought I’d give this one a shot. I’m already past my 7-day trial, and now on my first free 30 days. I’m hoping to know definitively, by the time it comes to charge me the first time, whether I’m going to stick with it or go back. So far, here’s what I’ve learned:  Spotify seems to have the largest music library out of all of the streaming music services–or at least pretty close–and it’s definitely the most popular.

The Good: I love the 12-second cross-fade. I haven’t seen this feature since my old MediaMonkey days, and I really like it. It sort of feels like a DJ-blended mix when I listen this way, smoothly fading between each song. Then there’s the simple “SAVE” button on every album, which saves it to “My Music” instantly, making it easy to find anything I grab when browsing their gazillion tracks. And once you “Save” an album, the option to make it “Available Offline” appears as a toggle switch, which results in the album downloading to your device locally. You can even stay offline for up to 30 days before you have to go online again, at least to “check in” to make sure you’re still a Spotify member. Very nice. It seems they’ve got both solutions (the ability to offer their vast library to their members available for STREAMING as well as offer local downloading and saving of any content for the members who prefer to download–or can’t afford to constantly stream). The interface is pretty solid with a nice layout and options. And I believe Spotify has the largest music selection out of all of the current streaming services, so it’s probably the best one to go with, if I stick with a streaming service.

The Not-So-Bad: Just after I signed up, I spot-checked some of my old classics, just to test the waters. For the most part, everything was there and easy to find. I had an issue with a few albums though, and this one kinda bugs me: I searched for Hootie & The Blowfish’s album “Cracked Rear View”, as this is an old favorite of mine. I couldn’t find the album, though there were other Hootie songs and one other album I found, as well as a few of the songs from Cracked Rear View on other albums. So I figured out how to do “Local Files” on the PC, I dropped my old copy of Cracked Rear View into it, then created a playlist that contained the album, which showed up on my phone in Spotify, then I was able to stream and/or download it. That worked ok, but the very next day, I played around some more, and there was Cracked Rear View, in Spotify, like it had always been there. I removed it from my “Local Files”, and it’s on Spotify now. Was that just a weird coincidence, or does Spotify just monitor user searches and Local Files and act on what they find really really quickly??? If it’s the latter, that would be amazing to learn. Wow, that would be amazing. Now I’m anxious to find another one that’s missing and do the exact same thing just to prove it was a coincidence. So that’s not so bad.

The Bad: I have over 67,000 local songs and audiobooks, all purchased as MP3’s, extracted from CDs, or converted from other formats, accumulated over the years. To quickly answer my next question, I pointed “Local Files” on my PC to my entire music section. I gave it a full day to add, catalog and index it all, but it failed miserably. Spotify on my PC froze up each time I clicked on Local Folders to view them, sometimes it even worked, somewhat, and displayed the tracks, but I wasn’t able to search them so they were pretty much useless to work with. If I were going to use “Local Files”, I would have to pick and choose the exact albums to make available to Spotify. I think 67,000 songs is way too much for it to handle at this time. One other feature that most other music players that I’ve used on my android device (and Audible) have is the ability for the app to pause or at least lower its volume when it loses temporary “focus”–this is when a notification sound occurs on the system, or another application uses the audio momentarily, such as Runtastic, which has a voice coach that announces my workout progress every so often while I walk. Spotify doesn’t have this feature, and I’ve grown very fond of it over the years with all my other apps. It makes them sort of “cooperate” with each other instead of fighting for the audio all at the same volume.

So, overall, I’m fairly impressed. It has it’s flaws, but nothing so bad I find it unusable. I’ll continue giving it a solid workout for a couple more weeks before they take their first $9.99 out of my wallet.

If you use or have used Spotify, I welcome your input, tips, suggestions and/or recommendations! Thanks!

Android, News, Technology, Technology Links

New Toy

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The Moto 360 smartwatch recently dropped another $100, which puts it at $149 now. We paid $300 for Kevin’s at Christmastime, so it’s actually a decent price right now, considering its features. I also had a $20 coupon for Best Buy, which was close to expiring, so for $130, I couldn’t resist.

Let’s get the worst thing out of the way right away: The battery life SUCKS. Just getting in an 8-hour shift at work without the watch dying is rare. It does only take 1 hour to fully charge from dead though, even using any wireless Qi charger, but it’s still a hassle. If it could somehow charge within a 2-foot range while still attached to my wrist, now THAT would be awesome… But I usually have to take it off and set it on top of my Qi pad for an hour to charge it up at work. Hey, at least it’s wireless!

The only other thing wrong with this watch is the “flat tire”. This is a small flat section at the bottom of the otherwise-perfectly-circular display. I have heard that this area is there to hold various sensors that the watch uses, so it’s necessary, but does tend to take away from the “perfect circle” display somewhat, and also hides useful information from watchfaces that take advantage of this area for displaying information. Several round-display smartwatches have since been released without this “flat tire” though, so one wonders whether they found a workaround for whatever sensors Motorola needed to put in that spot. Those watches currently cost a lot more than the Moto 360 right now though, so it’s a trade-off. Save $150, but get a flat tire…? I’ll take it!

But aside from those two things, I love the watch! It uses Android Wear, which is the universal software connection between pretty much every smartwatch and Android. This apparently opens up options for just about everything you could imagine, depending on what a developer wants to use it for. First, and foremost, is telling time. Yes, it tells time like a REAL watch. And if that’s all you want it to do, you might just be able to get decent battery life out of it as well! You can simply turn off all notifications and other features, find a simple watchface with only the most basic of animations (like just moving hands on an analog watchface) and the battery will probably last quite some time. I might have to try that some time, just to test this theory. But right now, I’m still playing…too many knobs and dials to try out…gotta play, gotta tinker.

Every option for telling time is available, even if you don’t see it in whatever watchface developer’s interface or app you’re using. Developers will only provide the features THEY want to, make their interface either easy to use or very difficult, and/or even make you pay for their watchface and/or design interface to make your own watchface. So, obviously, your experience with the watch may vary greatly. For myself, I like to try out everything, then I’ll eventually settle on a few apps or watchfaces I like the most and just use those. But then there’s always new stuff coming out, so I try those as well, hoping to find better things along the way. Being a geek, this is normal for me though.

Basic interfaces allow options for time, date, battery levels for the watch AND your phone, weather, etc., and some developers will also use nice animations, include calendar events, etc., but at the expense of battery life. Apps are another option altogether. Certain apps can be “installed” on the watch, though I’m pretty sure these are just tiny “stubs” or “mini versions” of actual applications that are primarily installed on your Android device, then simply feed data to your watch as needed. If an app installed on your android device is Android Wear-compatible, it is automatically installed on your watch and appears in the Apps list when you swipe right-to-left on the watch. One of these that showed up for me, surprisingly, Ingress! This is the MMO GPS game played worldwide that I play regularly (Resistance – Blue team). On the watch, when active, it alerts me to when portals are in range, and even allows me to hack the portals from my watch! This is neat, but after some use I find that it’s pretty limited and pretty much just a novelty. Your options are pretty limited, and–just as Ingress does on your phone–it’s a real battery juice sucker! Try hacking on your watch for an hour and you’re watch is DEAD, believe me!

Basically, the experience you have with the watch and how much you like it is going to come down to the quality of the developers and the apps and options they provide. For example, there’s an amazing app available called “Tip Calculator” for calculating restaurant tips, which you would think requires a calculator-type interface with all the number keys. This app manages to work flawlessly with only the slightest learning curve, has no “keyboard” at all, but only a few numbers (which are controls as well) in its center and a circular dial around the outside circle. It works great, doing exactly what it’s supposed to very quickly for you. It’s perfect for a round watchface. I hope more developers take a lesson from this one. The design is awesome, both in appearance and functionality!

There’s certainly no shortage of watchfaces for Android Wear. There are literally thousands out there to choose from, or you can just use one of the hundreds of different interfaces and design your own! There are so many good ones that I can’t even settle on just one and keep it that way, like Kevin does with his “Chicago Bears” themed watchface. I have a few different “Google Fit” watchfaces that show me my daily stats, including a constant view of my heart rate, my steps done today, and calories burned etc., and both my watch’s & phone’s battery levels as well as and “ambient” display that shows today’s weather forecast and temperature trend through the day. Another of my favorites is a “Military” watchface with no less than 6 different screens of details to flip between, and instant color-changing of them with a simple button push.

Basically, I’m happy with it. I consider it a geek toy, and it’s perfect for that. It tickles my wrist whenever I get any type of message, e-mail or text, and I can preview a bit of it or even read the entire message most of the time right on the watch. It helps me keep my phone in my pocket more often so I’m less distracted, and the automatic tracking of my steps and heart rate is just a health-monitoring bonus I could use. During my walks it constantly shows me my walking details and displays the music I’m listening to on my headset while I’m walking. And right now it’s analyzing my daily routine and it’s supposed to come up with a plan to help me stay (or in my case, “get”) fit based on my schedule. It should be interesting seeing how it progresses. It says it’ll take a couple weeks of gathering data.

News

Swimming Silliness

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When we go somewhere or do something, I often pull out my phone and just start taking random shots, bursts, and different photo types just to experiment with the options.  While swimming at Woody’s with Kevin and Sandy recently, I took several bursts.  Google did it’s magic later on and sent me these five gems.  Give them time to load, they’re all animated:

Wind up.2gifFrom the shallow end
SwimmingBall throwA drop in the bucket

Family News, News

Blankth Wedding Anniversary

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This is a bit embarrassing, but I forgot how many years Sandy and I have been married. Not a surprise for me, with my CRS always coming into play, but I had to get it straight before Monday, July 20th…our Anniversary! I checked the web, and actually found this little gem. I didn’t even remember I had posted it! Again, not a surprise:

http://www.tremperalumni.com/couples.htm

In case that link some day no longer works, here’s what it says:

Jimmy G. Trottier – Class of ’81
Sandra Irene Wegmann – Class of ’77

Sandy and I met when we were set up for a date by my (Jim’s) sister Penny Brackney (Trottier) – also a Tremper alumni. Actually we met a few days prior to that first date, because I (Jim) couldn’t wait to meet her after we talked on the phone a few times. The rest, as they say, is history. We’ve been happily married ever since, and we now have a wonderful 2-year-old baby. Sandy worked for 21 years as a Nurse’s Aide at Washington Manor Nursing Home in Kenosha, and quit almost a year ago to accept a position at the company I work for, CirQon Technologies, where we manufacture ceramic circuit boards for such things as cellular telephones and medical devices. She is currently a QC Inspector, and I’m working a dual job as a Chemical Lab Technician and an IT
Technician.

I was hoping I at least had the sense to post my wedding date there, but no such luck. Back to my searching…

I checked my photos, hoping that at some point I had gotten around to scanning all of our old wedding photos in. Those would surely include a date and time somewhere. Nope, haven’t scanned them in yet.

I could spend $20 to get an uncertified copy of our wedding license… probably too late to get it back in time….

I found our ancestry file, thanks to Wayne Wilson, but it didn’t have our wedding date logged in it. Darn.

I found several family member obituaries…sad, but that didn’t help. We seem to document death better than marriage I guess…

Now what?

Here’s the clues I have:
Kevin was born in February 1998, and we were married before we had him.
I met Matt when he was 6 years old and he was born in March, 1989, so I probably met him (and therefore Sandy) in 1995. I just can’t remember how long we knew each other before we got married. I know it wasn’t long before I ASKED her to marry me… So was it 95, 96, or 97? Agh! The mystery continues…

That all occurred last week. Last night, on the evening of our anniversary, I finally asked Sandy: “So, HOW many years has it been??” I was shocked to find that she, too, wasn’t exactly 100% sure, but her math is probably better than mine. She said she always remembers that we were married almost 2 years when we had Kevin. Kevin was born in 1998. Doing the math, this means we’ve been married for 19 years. Whew! I guess as long as we’re both in agreement, that’s all that matters. The “Whew” is because I’m relieved it’s not our 20th yet… I really can’t afford a Platinum anniversary gift this year! Now I’ve been forewarned!

Lastly, this is probably as good a place as any to post an awesome sign we saw at an art festival last weekend. It said

“When a woman answers you by saying “What?” it doesn’t necessarily mean she didn’t hear you. It means she’s giving you a chance to change your answer.”

Android, Family News, News, Photography

Sargeant Update (less important than a General Update…right, Captain Obvious?)

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Well, Rickochet is out now, so we’ve been working on our basement a bit. I guess it’s what they call a “partially finished” basement… We have carpeting down, and have one room down there paneled, but that’s about it–the rest is your basic basement, but it’s clean and dry, so we’re fixing things up a bit. We have a carpeting install coming for the one room down there, and once that’s in, we’ll be setting that up as Sandy’s “She Shed” (that’s the equivalent of a lady’s “Man Cave”). The rest of the basement will be for recreation, laundry, etc. We also gained some much-needed garage space, so we have some room to work on getting THAT cleaned up. It’s been waiting, with everything still in boxes, since we moved 3 years ago!

Matt helped us out recently by trimming the branches on our backyard tree. I picked up a nice, lightweight electric chainsaw from Menards, along with a tall ladder, and he able to get to nearly all of the branches we wanted removed–especially those overhanging our roof and one in the front yard that had our flag wrapped around it! The flag (still attached to our flagpole) got pretty damaged, but I was able to remove the branch from it after Matt cut the branch from the tree. It’s a little shredded on the end, but it’s flying free again, in time for the upcoming holidays. Thanks, Matt!!

We sold our big Ford Edge and switched to a Ford Focus Titanium instead. It’s a bit smaller and isn’t 4-wheel-drive, but we were able to cut our payments to less than half–even with the Titanium model, which has ALL the goodies on it–so it helps us a lot. The only regret I can see us having might come in the winter–a bigger, stronger 4WD vehicle can be a blessing in certain situations. But we’re well aware of that ahead of time, so we’ll work around it as best as we can and tough through the Wisconsin winters with it. At least it has remote start and a rear-view camera, which the Edge didn’t have.

Sandy, Ty, Kevin and I went to see Jurassic World yesterday. Awesome movie, they really pulled it off with StarLord as the main character. Chris Pratt seems to be great in everything these days. And then there was Vincent D’Onofrio, who played Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket… He played a military guy (go figure) looking to use genetically-engineered animals on the battlefield. I half-expected Lee Ermey (his unforgettable drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket) to make a cameo appearance, like Stan Lee always does in the Marvel movies. It was great though–not even any really slow points in the movie either… Every time things started to slow down, BAM! They hit you with something else and off it went again. I think they were able to successfully pull off this one, using the same old island group “Isla Sorna”, etc., and they’ll probably do some record-breaking numbers. I just hope they can keep it up with the inevitable sequels. I have already heard that Chris Pratt is on board for more of them. We’ll see what happens.

I got a new phone last week – the Samsung Galaxy S6. 64GB of memory & a 8-core processor, but it’s sealed–no SD cards and no battery changes. So far it’s nice–amazing speed and features. The only downside is the battery time. I get about 10 hours out of it, before I need to recharge. I have to keep my brick pretty handy–but my brick is huge, so I can actually recharge my phone completely about 3 or 4 times from a single charge of my brick, so that’s not so bad. Having 64GB of internal memory–which is a first for me–eliminates a long-time problem I’ve had though: Juggling all of my apps, music and data files. Now that it’s all in one place, I don’t have to think about where things are or specially-configure specific apps (like DSub for my music) so they put their files in the proper locations. Everything just works. The camera is awesome too–supposedly the best smartphone camera out there today. 16 megapixel photos, animated GIFs, as well as many other modes, and it’ll even record 4K video. I already recorded a couple to test it out. I’ll have to watch them at Matt’s house, as he’s the only one I know with a 4K TV right now. And for those geeks who are even more curious–yes, after the usual 1-day of use, I again dumped the stock launcher and installed Nova Prime. No stock launcher ever comes close to the features and ease of use it provides!

Entertainment, Movies

Avengers: Age of James Spader

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spadertronKevin and I went to see Avengers: Age of Ultron on Sunday. It was great, but I had a couple minor issues — one with the movie, one with the seating. First, the seating. We usually always go to a new movie after it’s been out a week or two, so there’s no crowd and the seating is much better. This is what we did in this case. The movie has been out a couple weeks now, so we figured we were go to go. Wrong. I guess it says something about the popularity of Marvel movies, but it was still a nearly packed theater! We like to slip a seat and put our shared tub of popcorn between us, and I like to use both left and right cup holders (one for my phone, one for my drink) and put my sweater or coat in the other seat next to me. Well, I lost my sweater seat and extra cup holder to someone needing a seat at the last minute. Luckily we were able to keep our popcorn seat, so it could have been worse I guess.  As it was I had to hold my left arm to keep it from crowding the person sitting next to me, and had to force my left leg to stay in my seat area, which caused a bit of discomfort by the middle of the movie and through the end of it. But enough about the seating.

The movie was awesome and I only found one thing I didn’t like. The casting of James Spader as Ultron. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of James Spader–and that’s the root for the issue. Spader’s voice is all that’s used in the movie, you don’t actually see him, but his voice is so distinct and recognizable it pulled me out of the movie fantasy. I found my self thinking less “this is a huge, intelligent robot with a computerized voice” and more “hey, I know that voice from Boston Legal, The Practice, and what else was it…ummm…yeah, that new series I haven’t watched at all yet…what was the name of it… umm… ah yes, The Blacklist!” I just couldn’t think of him as a robot. But maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, excellent movie, awesome non-stop action, good humor mixed in perfectly, and the inevitable Stan Lee cameo always comes through as great, and funny, every time. Go see it. Or, better yet, wait for the Blu-Ray and watch it in the comfort of your own home, in HD, where you have room for your drink, popcorn, and perfect leg room! I guess the still-packed theater after being out a couple weeks is just another indication of how good the movie is though.  That very rarely happens to us when going to see a movie in Kenosha.

News

Leo Laporte & Kanye West

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I thought this was pretty amusing: I watch the TWiT network’s This Week in Tech and This Week in Google every week religiously. This week I got a bit behind though, so this morning I was watching last week’s episode of This Week in Google before work to catch up. It was episode #296 – “Smells Like a Pivot”. Anyway, at 1 hr 38 minutes into the episode, Leo Laporte, the host of the show, gets distracted when he gets a notification that Kanye West is now following him on Kong! He goes on to explain what Kong is–a very new social “selfie” app that makes animated GIFs you send to your friends. He says, sarcastically, that now that Kanye is following him, he’s going to retire, he’s done.

So, not knowing what the heck Kong is, I downloaded and installed the app immediately to try it out. It offered to have me follow my friends, so I OK’ed that, but there was only 1 friend that it found–a co-worker of mine. Next it shows the animated selfies from everyone you follow, so there was my co-worker. I long-pressed his photo after I figured out this is how you display a person’s username in Kong, and guess what!? His username is kanyewest! Holy crap! My co-worker was the one who interrupted an episode of This Week In Google! Unbelievable!

I talked to my co-worker at work today and explained what had happened. He hadn’t heard of that podcast, so he downloaded it and watched that section of it, confirming that he, indeed, was the one who did this! He said, when he installed the app and setup his account, he chose kanyewest as his username and there were about 200 people on his “friends” list, Leo included, but most of them weren’t his actual friends. He figured they were still working out the bugs and this was maybe a “suggested list” of users to follow, so he followed them all. Wow, what a small world, hey? What are the odds?

Here’s the link to the episode: Watch from about 1 hr 38 min. in: TWiG Episode 296

News

Big Bang Theory

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I spent last week (4/14/15-4/19/15) in Louisville, Kentucky with Jay and Will. Will was in the VEX Worlds Robotics Championship this year there! It was pretty exciting to learn how it all works and see all of the robots that people from many different countries and states created.  This story is just a little sidebar to that one, which is “coming soon”, but I thought just to get something posted sooner, I’d put this up right now, as a start.  No, it doesn’t have Sheldon, Rajesh, Howard or Penny in it (unfortunately)…it’s about a different big bang.

On one run that Jay and I took to a Kroger grocery store in Louisville, as we were driving down the road in my car, suddenly there was a very loud BANG. It was so loud for both of us we couldn’t determine exactly where it came from or what had happened at all. We looked at each other, very confused. I cautiously slowed the car down, but there were no parking places nearby and the car seemed to still be running ok, no flat that I could tell, no engine trouble or anything. So I drove slowly on for a couple more blocks to the grocery store we were headed to.

There was a light rain coming down at the time, so we both got out and walked around the car, looking for what might have happened, but could find nothing. We gave up, then Jay went into the grocery store and got what he needed and I waited in the car.

The entire week passed very quickly, as it turned out, and everything went fine and everyone had a pretty good time. This morning (Tuesday, 4/21/15), as Kevin and I were leaving the house to take him to school, as Kevin was getting in the car he said “Hey, you know there’s a big dent and a scratch on this side above the door?” No, I didn’t know.

This appears to be the damage from whatever hit my car in Louisville last week! There is a small dent, after 1/2″ wide, above the door frame on the front passenger side of the car. The paint seems to just now be peeling from it, so it’s noticeable. When the paint was all there, I’m guessing it was easy to overlook, which is why we didn’t see it before. That strip around the door frame seems very strong and thick, so something must have hit it very hard indeed, to dent it that much! I’m afraid to even think of what would have happened if it had hit the car even an inch in any other direction! If it had been a bullet, it could have even struck either one of us, after flying through the window! What it was we have no idea, but it sure made a lot of noise when it hit the car, that’s for sure! I’m just glad it wasn’t much worse. The area of Louisville we were in did seem a bit seedy, but I won’t theorize that it was a bullet because I really have no clue about such things. All I know is that it scared the crap out of us at the time, and I had been wondering what happened ever since then, so at least this is something. My poor car doesn’t need any more dings and scratches though…it’s been through enough lately!

Entertainment

Self-Nesting

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Socself-nestks, like myself, has a routine every morning.  Right after I get up, he’s waiting patiently to go outside.  He does his business, and in a few minutes (longer if it’s warm out) he’s knocking on the door to come in.  Once he’s in the house, the routine continues to the next step.  He waits patiently, once again, watching everything I do.  He’s waiting to be “bundled”.  I have him trained for the word “Nest”.  He expects a blanket–one of HIS blankets–to be laid out smoothly for him, then he hops in and gets comfortable, and I wrap him up tightly within it, with just his head peeking out of the roll.  From that point he is fully content for hours, or until he forced from his nest by other matters or distractions.  When I saw this animated GIF today, I got quite a kick out of it!  If I could only train Socks to do this, that’s one less chore I’d have to do each morning!  But then again, I enjoy it, so I actually wouldn’t want to stop doing it anyway… Nevermind, Socks.

News

Happy Birthday, Dad!

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haroldcake

Today is my dad’s birthday. If he had a Facebook page, I’d be uploading this photo to it. He was born 3/19/1931. I miss the old fart. He would have been 84. He died 6/7/2008. These numbers just came to me out of the blue, I have no idea how or why I have them memorized, but there they are.

His nickname was “Bozzo”, misspelled just that way. Because of the way his hair stuck out on both sides when he woke up in the morning. Such a clown.

I just finished an audiobook called “AsapScience: Answers to the world’s weirdest questions, most persistent rumors, and unexplained phenomena”. Wow, that title got me right away. It was a fairly short book though – only a couple hours long. One of the things explained in it is why time seems to go faster the older we get. The days and the summers of our childhood seemed to last forever, and now, being over 50, everything just zips by so fast it’s crazy. I think, as a result of this, most of the memories I have of my father are from my childhood.

The Hong Kong Flu nearly killed him when I was a kid.

He used to by me electronic toys, or buy one for him and one for myself so I could learn how to use it and show him how to. Plenty of visits to Chester’s Electronics and Radio Shack were made, and I once bought a “build-it-yourself computer”. The rest, as they say, is history. He put the bugs in my head and they shaped my life.

He was a hoarder. Rummage sales and flea markets were his favorite excursions, and he just HAD to come back with something every time. He was a CB’er and a scanner enthusiast, always listening to both, and he really enjoyed the early days of cell phones, when nothing was digital and with the right type of scanner you could constantly eavesdrop of dozens of personal phone conversations at any given time. Ah, those were the days.

He lived the American Dream: He built a large family (7 children), worked 40 years to retirement, and had a long happy marriage. I think ALL of those things are amazing accomplishments. These days, any one of those seems next to impossible.

Anyway, nice job dad. You did great. I wish I had told you sooner.  Here’s some photos.

Entertainment, Movies, TV

Oscars

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lego oscarDid you watch the Oscars? What a mess. I thought the host was terrible–I hate Neil Patrick Harris, and he was as bad as I figured.  Not funny at all, and some pretty insulting jokes at times. His opening number had some great effects in it, making it look like it was live, but it was all pre-configured to look that way. Nothing else on the show impressed me.  Except the Lego Oscars that were handed out during the performance of “Everything is Awesome” from the Lego movie.  Those looked 3D printed.  Now I’m wondering if they’re on thingiverse.com.

And the Oscar everyone waits for–Best Picture — always at the very end of the show – was the final nail in the coffin: Birdman.  Seriously??? I fell asleep halfway through that movie and never got around to finishing it, it just didn’t make much sense to me. I guess I should have tried–and probably will now, just to see what happened that made it worthy of the best picture Oscar.  American Sniper won far too few awards, and Grand Budapest Hotel won far too many awards. Gawd, THAT movie was a real comedic farce. The goofy sets and comical acting was like watching the game “Clue” come to life. So many backgrounds and sets were so fake-looking I didn’t know if they were SUPPOSED to look like that, or if it was just really poorly made.  Just a ridiculously goofy movie.

And Neil Patrick Harris in his tidy whities?  Come on, I know it was a reference to Birdman, but it was still just as lame as the rest of his performance and just seemed embarrassing.  That’s about all I can say.  Since the Oscars are pretty much my “SuperBowl” for the year (I prefer the Oscars over the actual SuperBowl, and watch the SuperBowl just for the commercials), I would say this year it was just as disappointing and the playoff game that lost the Packers this year’s championship.  Just a lame year all the way around I guess.  Better luck next time!

Now I’m off to see if I can get through Birdman without falling into a near-coma again… Wish me luck!

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Ice Sculptures

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Ice sculpturesYesterday I stopped down at Library Park and took some quick photos of the Ice Sculptures during that event.  It was so cold and windy out though, no one else wanted to come.  I had been Ingressing just before that though, so MFYL (a teammate) was with me.  With how cold it was (well below zero with windchill!) we ran through pretty quickly, then got back to the car.  Here are the photos.

Also, I just figured out how to get my Flickr “Collections” back!  These are the groupings of sets to better organize my photos.  Flickr had removed the option a while ago in their new site design.  So I finally searched for an answer and found that the option to use them was still there all along, they only remove the LINK to them on everyone’s Flickr page!  You just need to add “/collections” to the end of your Flickr page’s URL (duh).  A geek should have been able to figure that one out…  So I added the option to my Photos menu.  Or click here to view my Collections.

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Snow time like Superbowl Sunday!

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Praying MantisJust in time for the 10+ inches of snow that Kenosha is currently getting dumped on us, here’s our photos from the Snow Sculpting Championships from yesterday.  Luckily, the storm didn’t start until last night, so we didn’t have any problems going out to Lake Geneva to enjoy it.  I didn’t prune out many photos, I figured my space is unlimited, so I just left all of Kevin’s and my photos together, and just sorted them by date and time.  Enjoy!

No captions are included – sorry about that, but there’s just too many to deal with.  Here are the winners though:

1st Place: Arbor Armor by Team Wisconsin 1

2nd Place: Invisible Man by Team Illinois 3

3rd Place: Dance of the Firebird

People’s Choice Award: Green Man by Team Wisconsin 4 (a giant head made of vegetables–looking at the photo in the paper, I don’t think we saw this one at the event.  I’m not sure how we missed it… or maybe we only got it from the sides or back…? Not sure.)

Click the photo to view the album or click here.

 

Entertainment, Photography

Photomosaic of Socks

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SocksPosterI created a 3-foot posted of Socks for the wall above my desk using 10,000+ photos I had on my PC as the palette.  I created it with Andrea Modaic Professional, then loaded the final image into CorelDraw and printed it as a 3-foot poster on tiled sheets of standard 8.5″ x 11″ paper.  The hardest part was using scissors to trim the proper edges, and align and tape them, but it was fun.  If you’d like to see the actual poster, up close, here’s the actual image, full size.   I gave it the option to NOT re-use any images (but some are burst shots, to they LOOK very similar) and gave it permission to horizontally flip images, but not to rotate them.  And if you’re interested in the rest of the geeky details, here they are:  Socks Mosaic Details

 

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Snow, Bowls and Oscar

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Pretty busy these days!  Tomorrow we’re going to the annual Snow Sculpting Championships in Lake Geneva to check out the finished sculptures right after they’re done, before judging begins.  Kevin and I are going, but have to be back quick, since he has to work in the afternoon.

Then Sunday is the SuperBowl.  I was sorry to see the Packers didn’t make it this year, they got so close!  It was an exciting championship game.  I knew that much, and I don’t know sh*t about football!

After that, Kevin’s birthday is next week on February 5th, and Oscar time is coming up on February 22nd.  Before that date, I’m trying to find time to watch as many Oscar-nominated movies as possible.  We watch Boyhood, and it was really good.  American Sniper was even better though.  I watched about 1/2 of Birdman with Michael Keaton and I just couldn’t figure it out.  I ended up falling asleep and never did get back to watching the rest of it.  If I have time, I watch it over again before the 22nd.  I also watched Whiplash.  I thought that one was ok, but nowhere near as good as Boyhood or American Sniper.  Those are just some of the nominees for Best Motion Picture.  There’s several other categories I haven’t even looked at yet.  Many of which are more nominations for the same movies, but others are different movies I’ll have to look into finding.

Entertainment, Movies

Boyhood, The Beatles and The Black Album

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This holiday season we watched a movie called “Boyhood”.  One of the many great things about the movie is how it reflects many aspects of life, and in this case, passing down musical taste from generation to generation. In one scene in the movie, Ethan Hawke’s father character describes to his son (played by Ellar Coltrane) “The Black Album.” What is it? Basically, what we’re describing, a greatest hits mix-tape and “secret” Beatles record which is essentially a collection of all the best solo Beatle songs – Songs performed by all 4 Beatles BEFORE or AFTER The actual Beatles, either when they were solo or in other bands. Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater came up with the track list together. If you’ve never delved in very deep with Beatles solo albums and wished there was one more Beatles record after Let It Be, well this it the playlist for you. The whole thing acts as a mixtape that Ethan Hawke writes for his son in the movie. And there’s even liner notes that begin:

“Mason,
I wanted to give you something for your birthday that money couldn’t buy, something that only a father could give a son, like a family heirloom.  This is the best I could do. Apologies in advance. I present to you: THE BEATLES’ BLACK ALBUM.”

The Beatles - The Black AlbumAfter looking at the playlist, I drooled. I wanted this. So I spent a few days over my Christmas/New Years holiday vacation this year and actually put the REAL CDs together. I was shocked to find I was only missing 3 songs! I bought those on Amazon.com and added them to complete the albums. I spent a whopping $1.87! Then I even found a cover art image on the internet that looked perfect, and changed the cover art and metatags for the album name so it matched the album info on every track. Here’s the album cover:

I used MediaMonkey for this, which is awesome for just such mass-changes. It worked out beautifully and I now have this 3-CD set on my phone to play any time I want to. Here’s the track list if you’re interested:

Disc 1:
1. Paul McCartney & Wings, “Band on the Run”
2. George Harrison, “My Sweet Lord”
3. John Lennon feat. The Flux Fiddlers & the Plastic Ono Band, “Jealous Guy”
4. Ringo Starr, “Photograph”
5. John Lennon, “How?”
6. Paul McCartney, “Every Night”
7. George Harrison, “Blow Away”
8. Paul McCartney, “Maybe I’m Amazed”
9. John Lennon, “Woman”
10.Paul McCartney & Wings, “Jet”
11. John Lennon, “Stand by Me”
12. Ringo Starr, “No No Song”
13. Paul McCartney, “Junk”
14. John Lennon, “Love”
15. Paul McCartney & Linda McCartney, “The Back Seat of My Car”
16. John Lennon, “Watching the Wheels”
17. John Lennon, “Mind Games”
18. Paul McCartney & Wings, “Bluebird”
19. John Lennon, “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)” 20. George Harrison, “What Is Life”

Disc 2:
1. John Lennon, “God”
2. Wings, “Listen to What the Man Said”
3. John Lennon, “Crippled Inside”
4. Ringo Starr, “You’re Sixteen You’re Beautiful (And You’re Mine)”
5. Paul McCartney & Wings, “Let Me Roll It”
6. John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band, “Power to the People”
7. Paul McCartney, “Another Day”
8. George Harrison, “If Not For You (2001 Digital Remaster)”
9. John Lennon, “(Just Like) Starting Over”
10. Wings, “Let ‘Em In”
11. John Lennon, “Mother”
12. Paul McCartney & Wings, “Helen Wheels”
13. John Lennon, “I Found Out”
14. Paul McCartney & Linda McCartney, “Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey”
15. John Lennon, Yoko Ono & The Plastic Ono Band, “Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)”
15. George Harrison, “Not Guilty (2004 Digital Remaster)”
16. Paul McCartney & Linda McCartney, “Heart of the Country”
17. John Lennon, “Oh Yoko!”
18. Wings, “Mull of Kintyre”
19. Ringo Starr, “It Don’t Come Easy”

Disc 3:
1. John Lennon, “Grow Old With Me (2010 Remaster)”
2. Wings, “Silly Love Songs”
3. The Beatles, “Real Love”
4. Paul McCartney & Wings, “My Love”
5. John Lennon, “Oh My Love”
6. George Harrison, “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)”
7. Paul McCartney, “Pipes of Peace”
8. John Lennon, “Imagine”
9. Paul McCartney, “Here Today”
10. George Harrison, “All Things Must Pass”
11. Paul McCartney, “And I Love Her (Live on MTV Unplugged)”

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Our Year In Review

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JAN: In January of 2014, things are a bit foggy. My photos are a mess for that month, so I had a hard time trying to figure out exactly what happened. I see photo “highlights” that month from all different events, so maybe I did a slideshow or something of the previous year’s events at that time. I also see a dump of “all photos from Sandy’s phone”, so I’m guessing Sandy got a new phone that month. I also found a photo of our Ingress Resistance group taken at a restaurant in Waukesha on 1/26, so it looks like we had a great turnout that night. On to February!

FEB: On 2/1 we went to the Snow Sculpting Championships in Lake Geneva, which we traditionally do every year. On Friday, Feb 7th, Kevin had a birthday bowling party at Guttormsen’s Recreation Center. Several of his friends and family attended and he had a great time. This is when he got his PS4. On 2/9 it looks like either Kevin, Sandy, or both of them attended an Ice Sculpting contest in downtown Kenosha. I see the photos now, and they’re great! I don’t recall seeing them before though! I’ll have to ask about these… It appears I missed a pretty nice event with some awesome ice sculptures.

MAR: Kevin’s obsession with vinyl figures from POP! Television dominate this month’s photos, so I’m pretty sure nothing significant happened during this month.

APR: A lot of photos of Connor, the newest addition to our family tree, were taken during this month, and added to our ever-expanding “Connor Photo Album”. On Easter, Kevin even got a little Easter basket this year. Just a small one, but it did include a couple new vinyls that he wanted. There are also hundreds of art images from famous artists as well as what looks like Diviant Art collections in this month’s photos, so I think Kevin was pretty busy researching art a lot. It’s amazing what G+ photos picks up and automatically adds to our photos! On 4/26 we conquered “The Caterpillar” in Ingress. This is a very long sculpture walk in Skokie, IL, with a huge number of portals. It’s usually a green farm, so our team attacked it that day and turned it blue. On 4/27 Kevin and I went to O’Hare Airport in Chicago and picked up Tyler coming back from Arizona.

MAY: On May 5th, Kevin went to a Brewers game. On Mat 25th, he participated in the making of a zombie movie that a friend of his from school is making. On 5/26 I participated in the building of a huge “Fish Field” that Dave G. organized for our Ingress Resistance team. I provided Ops & instructions from home while many players in the field, on both sides of Lake Michigan and in Chicago, did the actual leg work. It was pretty successful with many layers. Kevin had a veteran’s event at his school on 5/27, honoring many veterans for their service. He also had Matt visit his class and they interviewed him.

JUN: Kevin had a Photography Intensive for school on 6/3. He took some awesome photos! I was pretty impressed. On 6/7 we attended Kenosha’s annual Outta Sight Kite Flight. We just watched and took photos and videos…I guess running with kites is just not our thing. On June 11th, Kevin took a bunch more photos as part of his photography class. It looks like he was around downtown Kenosha, around the sculptures and flower gardens in the area. June 15th was Father’s Day, and it looks like Kevin helped prepare a nice breakfast for me. Sunday, June 29th was a blast! It not only was the day of Kenosha’s Civic Veteran’s Parade, but it was also the day we had our “Kenosha Blues BBQ” event for our Ingress team. Every Resistance player in the area who could attend came to Kenosha that day and helped us turn the entire city blue, had some great food at the BBQ we had in a Kenosha Park, and then helped build and farm the Kenosha Lakefront area.

JUL: Kevin, Socks and I went to the Ultimate Air Dogs competition at the Civil War Museum on Independence Day, and also watched a little bit of the Aquanuts performance next-door in the Kenosha Harbor. We watched the July 4th Fireworks that evening from the Kenosha Public Museum, near the front door–conveniently in range of two museum Ingress portals. We loaded them up with heat sinks and multihacks and farmed them for a pile of gear before the fireworks started. On 7/19 Kevin and I visited the Milwaukee Art Museum. On July 26th, Kevin went to the Racine County Fair with Matt, Anna and the kids. On July 27th, Chester and I took a day trip to Oshkosh for an Ingress event & cookout. We farmed a good portion of Oshkosh then met up with other Resistance teammates at a park for a cookout and some farming.

AUG: On 8/2 we attended the Pike River Rendezvous, which was held on Simmons Island. We thoroughly enjoyed the jugglers. On 8/17, with the help of “duce222”, a few Resistance agents and myself toured the Great Lakes Naval Base. Usually being an Enlightened stronghold in Ingress, we took the opportunity to flip it to blue and gain some unique acquires and unique hacks. It was a very fun “Military Op”. On 8/30 we went to the Kenoisha Classic Cruise-In car show in downtown Kenosha.

SEP: On 9/6 we attended Beth & Tom’s annual Fish Fry. Unfortunately, it was also the day I got into a little fender bender with someone. The fault turned out to be pretty much eqaul, but unfortunately leaned jsut a little more my way, so my insurance covered my damages as well as the other driver’s. On 9/28 Sandy, Kevin and I went to the Society’s Assets Bears/Packers banquet. In addition to watching the game dressed in our team’s attire, they had a nice dinner, door prizes, and honored Sandy with an award for “Exemplary Service to Consumers” for her work with her clients she visits working for Society’s Assets.

OCT: On 10/5 we attended Haylie’s 5th Birthday at Matt & Anna’s house. Kevin attended his friend Stephanie’s birthday party on 10/17, and of course we celebrated Halloween throughout October, culminating with trick-or-treat on thr 31st. Kevin did a little trick-or-treating, showing off his costume creation while I walked Socks, who also wore a dinosaur costume of his own.

NOV: On 11/8, Matt and I took a day trip. He dropped me off at Hans’ house in Grafton, then he continued North to Ponderosa Pines Campground in Bancroft, WI to pick up Rick from his camper there. Rick spends 6 months up North and 6 months in Kenosha each year. While I was at Hans’, we caught up on things, noth having seen each other for several years! We didn’t have time for much though, the visit was way too short, but he did dazzle me with some new 3D printing technology that he works with as part of his job! Wow, that was amazing. He sent me home with a few 3D-printed items and even a couple things I picked out off the http://www.thingiverse.com/ website (Ingress-related of course)! Amazing technology that’s changing the world! On 11/9 the remains of POW MIA James Vanbendegom were returned to Kenosha with a homecoming parade in his honor down 60th Street to a funeral home where hundreds paid their respects before he was laid to rest. We had Thanksgiving at Matt & Anna’s house in Caledonia on 11/27. We had 2 turkeys and it was very nice. We ended up stuffed, of course. On 11/28 Kevin, Socks and I went to “Lighin’ Up Downtown Kenosha” and took a bunch of photos. We went early to avoid the crowds though, before the actual event times, so I guess we really didn’t “attend” the event per se, but we went down and took a lot of photos of the storefront displays, which were part of the contest.

DEC: Ah, now. The easiest month to remember. On December 7th, we attended Connor’s 1st Birthday party at Matt & Anna’s. On December 20th, Sandy started having a severe medical problem. We’re not sure what caused it, but I took her to the ER that morning when she could barely walk any more. She was fine when she got u, she did a few chores around the house, then it just hit her with horrible shooting pain down her right hip and leg. We just found out this morning, after having an MRI on Friday, that she has Spinal Stenosis and a Herniated Disc. They said surgery is the last resort for this, so I guess they’re going to try to treat it in other ways first. She has another doctor’s appointment today. At this point she can barely walk, and certainly can’t work, so she’s pretty upset. After this onset, she still wanted to do all the holiday festivities as usual, not wanting to disrupt everyone’s plans. What a trooper! Not sure I could have pushed through all that myself if I were in her condition. So we celebrated Christmas Eve at Matt & Anna’s and had a nice dinner that evening. Then on Christmas Day we went to Beth & Toms and had another big dinner. Kevin opened his presents at home on Christmas morning, and he is very happy with what he got, even though he no longer believes in the magic we brainwashed him with. All in all, the holidays were pretty nice, and we enjoyed them as much as possible, despite Sandy’s unfortunate problems. We’re working through them now, and we’re hoping for the best and some relief from the pain as soon as possible. The doctors just seem so darned SLOW though… it’s like they don’t really seem to care very much, since they’re not the ones in such constant pain.

Now on with 2015. Bring it!!

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Looking back: Socks

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Socks 2002While playing the Christmas Memories slideshow this holiday season, a few gems stood out for me.  Photos I remembered fondly, but never noted in any other way, so they just sort of disappeared into the mix.  They were never specifically titled or labeled, so they are difficult to find when searching using keywords.  So when they pop up, I try to remember the year and photo # which I added to the bottom right corner of the screen in the slideshow.  This is one of them.  This is Socks in 2002, just after we got him, with his first collar on.  He’s 12 years old now, and still our lil puppy.  These days he’ll do anything for a little warmth & snuggling, and loves a little “nest” anywhere he can get someone to make one.  Even the word “nest” gets him excited.  Lay out a heavy blanket–or HIS favorite blanket–when you say it and he’ll hop right on top, waiting to be folded into it like a pig in a blanket!  Then he’ll stay there as long as possible to soak up all the heat he can.  Our perpetual puppy.