If you’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest you’ll understand.
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Can you understand a single word? I know that they speak English but the accent is so brutal. It’s part of a documentary but I don’t know what they’re documenting. Strangely, the little girl is the easiest to understand. I’ve had the phone for a couple of weeks and there are few flaws to this phone. Here are the highlights. Good Not so good I’d still buy this phone if given the choice to do it again and skip the Atrix. I’ve started to see reviews come in from that phone and most of the advanced features (docking etc and a little clumsy and slow). To me, it seems like a gimmick to sell the phone and accessories. My wife played around with my phone and wants to upgrade to one of the same model from her iphone. Her only concern was management of her music library but there are plenty of free programs like Media Monkey that will serve as a suitable replacement. Jessica flew in last Friday so that we could spend the weekend together. It’s been a hectic year and a weekend in the middle of a three month stretch really helps to break up the “unpleasantness” of being apart. As I mentioned, she flew in Friday afternoon and I was hoping to meet her at the airport. As things would play out, I had a flight on Friday and I wouldn’t be able to get to OKC until about 6PM. I was talking to my instructor on the intercom about my plans for the weekend while we were killing time in the air. (Most of my effort comes when the plane is on the ground. In flight, I have few duties save for responding to an emergency or dealing with passengers.) After a bit of planning with the pilots we changed the flight profile a bit so that I could do my offload and then offload myself and be done for the rest of the day. This allowed me to have an extra 90 minutes with my wife. Many of you only have time apart from your spouse as a rare event. In our home, its often the norm. 90 minutes may not sound like a lot of time but we’re happy to get every minute possible together. We didn’t plan any activities ahead of time we just played it by ear. While there, we checked out the OKC Zoo. I was quite surprised by the size of the zoo and the collection of animals. All of the major players were there and we had a great time. Jessica tends to have better jokes than I do but once in a while I come up with something really silly and I get her to laugh. I was thinking about a sketch I saw a few days ago where all of the characters had names like in a Dick Tracy comic book. I saw the animal below and the first thing that came to mind was calling him good old zebra legs. Zebra legs, of course, isn’t the correct name but it was good for a laugh.
Aside from the zoo we stopped at the Oklahoma City Memorial. The memorial was on the former site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that was one of the first cases of domestic terrorism that I remember in my lifetime. The site, as you might imagine, was quite a somber affair. The feeling I got was very similar to what I felt when I walked through the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
Jessica decided to treat me and took me to a place called Tapwerks. They had over 100 beers on tap or in bottles. Rather than ordering a specific beer I decided to let the bartender make the choice and I ordered mystery trays. It was quite a fun way to try out some new styles and flavors. At first the bartender did a fantastic job of serving me things that I’d never had before. I’m a beer lover so it didn’t take long before I starting getting repeats of things I’d had before but it was still quite a bit of fun.
Here are a few other random photos of the city. I was quite surprised. I had expected to find a place exactly like Des Moines but this was an actual city – not an overgrown suburb.
I can’t wait to head back home – only one month left. 1 month until I my check ride (flight evaluation) ahh boredom…. I drove to Lawton (home of the nearest AT&T store) to trade in my badly worn and beaten Blackberry Bold for the just released HTC Inspire. Per the norm, things didn’t go as planned. As it was a brand new phone the staff didn’t know too much about it. They had one hell of a hard time opening the battery compartment. For a minute, I thought that they actually broke it. After a few minutes messing with the phone and processing the required paperwork I was on my way. I didn’t make it far. Before I left I attempted to sign into my google account. I received an error relating to the lack of configured access points. I stopped and started the wireless data service but nothing would work. Luckily, I hadn’t left the parking lot so I went back inside to figure it out. Ten minutes later, with a brand new sim card installed I was once again on my way. I’ve never used an Android phone of any variety but this phone is slick as hell. I was on a HSPA “4G” network and downloads were blistering fast (compared to my old blackberry) and I was able to download apps in mere seconds. I’m still learning the UI so I’ve got a ways to go but this is a wicked fast phone. I’ve tested the camera and the photos turn out quite well. My knee jerk recommendation to is buy this phone if you’re in the market for a new android phone on AT&T and you want nothing to do with the forthcoming Motorola Atrix. After a bit of messing with the phone I’ve found only a few issues and those are mostly interface issues. The phone is branded as a HTC Desire HD in most of the menus. It made me laugh the first time I saw it but its surely there. Most of those fields can be changed and it doesn’t hurt anything so it’s of no consequence. Changing the ringtones is a bit of a pain due to the way it’s branded by AT&T or by the way the OS is setup. If you go to the ringtones menu you’ll only get to pick from the presets or go the HTC site to find new ones. If you’ve got media files less than 300k on the SD card (8gb included with the phone) you can make those changes direct from the media folder. This phone is going to be around for the next two years so we’ll see how it fares. I’ll agree that our planet is headed on a path of destruction. As one person among billions I can’t do anything to slow it down. In fact, by spending my income the way I do I’m only exacerbating the problem. I found a video, now a few years old, that details the problems that our planet will face in the next century. Check our the trailer below. You can see the whole movie (over 90 minutes) for free on YouTube. The video leans far to the left in terms of environmentalism. In fact, some of the lines were so far to the left that I laughed out loud. Sadly, I think the words were true. I’ve only watched a portion of the video and the visuals are absolutely stunning. I’m somehow reminded of science class when I was in grade school. We were all so turned on about saving our planet and recycling. We were so turned on about the future of the planet. Most of us have forgotten about that. I know I have. Watch the video if you’ve got the time. Make some small changes in your life if you can. It’s going to take all of us working together to start making the big changes. Hopefully, those of us in developed nations will figure it out before it’s too late for the rest of the world. 20% of the population needs to make the choices for the remainder – after all, we’re to blame. Unlike the 100 million or so other people, I didn’t watch the super bowl yesterday. I guess it all boils down to me being a sore loser. At the beginning of the season nobody predicted that my team would finish with a winning record. We were predicted to place third in our division and fail to make the playoffs. Up to our bye week I didn’t think that my team had a chance. We still had a bunch of problems on our offensive line and our defensive secondary was weak. The coaches made the right changes and my team started to click. Some of the wins were ugly but we got points on the board when it counted. My quarterback started to take better care of the ball. He was sacked more than any other quarterback in the league and he shrugged each of them off. He isn’t Mr. Personality. He isn’t the league MVP. I think that he could be the best quarterback in the league. He’s been through three offensive coordinators in three years. How well would you do? I hope that he continues to make progress next year. By the end of the season I was still in disbelief. My team was going to the playoffs. They won the conference. They were the number two seed. They worked really hard to get to that point. In the end, they were stopped by our biggest rival. I guess I took it personally. In the end, we had our biggest rival facing off against a team led by a creep. The quarterback from the Steelers should have had a longer suspension. Charges should have been filed. He should have gone to jail. How could I choose a team to win? I used to like the Steelers back in the Cowher days. I don’t like their new quarterback – he’s too much of a polarizing figure. I joked that I wanted a plane to crash into the stadium and kill both of the teams. Obviously, I didn’t mean that. A massive case of food poisoning (non fatal) would have been great. Not really. I’m just being a sore loser. My team was so close – so close to a championship. I’m going to have to listen to Packer fans chide me through the entire off season. That hurts the most. Oh well, pending a lockout we’ll have football starting in August. Let’s hope we can get some revenge. We took some video last year of the NWSDA race at Camp K. Jessica had a few hours this morning and I walked her through video editing. She took all of the video reduced it to less than two minutes. As she learned, most of the video recorded is crap and can be deleted. Well done sir, well done. |
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