We’re back from Utah. What a great trip — conditions were great (springtime, but we got 6+ inches of new snow while we were there), the kids all made huge progress in lessons, and it was a lot of fun hanging with the Harnesses. Here are Kris and Anna at lunch on the mountain at Snowbird:

Our travel back to Seattle yesterday took a bit longer than expected (about 10 hours longer), due to a snafu involving Delta and the Salt Lake City airport. Long story, but suffice it to say that if the airline tells you that your flight has been delayed, it’s worthwhile to stay in touch with the gate in case they bring a new plane in and end up leaving on time, while you are waiting around in an airport restaurant killing time… We finally made it back to Seattle late last night — vacation is wonderful, but nothing beats sleeping in your own bed.

Today we took the kids to the Mariners game at Safeco where we saw the M’s win — a great end to a wonderful week. It reminds me of what life is all about — family, friends, and fun. Sounds overly simple? Maybe so - but it works.

All the pictures from our trip are in the gallery here.

Categories: Family, Uncategorized
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Hi there.  Been a while since we talked.  Rest assured, I’m not ignoring you, it’s just that life has gotten pretty busy.  I’ll catch you all up later, but how about just the current events.  Right now, we’re at Snowbird in Utah, getting some last snow days in.

Paul has been kind enough to house sit and watch Tilly and Lucas, and we escaped with the Harnesses to The Cliff.  The snow has been pretty good (typical spring skiing conditions - hard in the morning, nice by midday, slushy in the afternoon), but we got a couple of inches last night with more forecasted for tomorrow.  The kids have been having a blast - Alex is the “mad bomber”, and Leah had a GREAT day at her first ski lesson at Alta yesterday (after much trepidation).  We’ve been spending the rest of our time in the pool (yes, outside), the hot tub, and the game room.  Fun stuff.  Pix are in our gallery here.

Categories: Family, Play, Uncategorized
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Happy Holidays to you and yours.  We’ve had a wonderful time with the family, and so far have:

• ate
• drank
• gone Christmas caroling (yes, outside with candles to the neighbors)
• played countless games of cards
• cooked a big pot of posole
• unwrapped many presents
• saw Santa
• played with the dogs
• ate and drank some more

A wonderful time so far - next we head out to WV for some time at the cabin, and are planning on climbing Ice Mountain, making a big fire in the fireplace, contemplating our resolutions for 2007, and having a big dinner.  Good times…

Categories: Family
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Now that the great “pre-Christmas wind storm” has come and gone in Seattle, life has gotten back to normal for the most part for us.  Luckily, we were only without power for about 12 hours, which is great considering that there are folks on the Eastside that are still in the dark.  Our roof lost a bunch of shingles, so I climbed up there and tarped it over the morning after the storm, while I called around to roofers in vain attempts to get the roof patched up.  Needless to say, we were at the bottom of the list behind folks who lost whole sections of roofs to fallen trees, etc.

Luckily, I found a local company (Lau Construction through Judy’s Book) who came out on Monday to inspect, and then had a crew out here on Tuesday to repair.  They did a fantastic job, and now my roof is good as new (well, as good as it was before the storm) — just in time for the next weather system to come through the area.

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I retired my Audiovox SMT5600 right before Thanksgiving in favor of the shiny new Cingular 8525 (aka HTC TyTn / Hermes). It’s got all the neat bells and whistles, and also marks my migration from Windows Smartphone to Windows PocketPC platform.

Things I like:

• Speed - I am showing 500-800kbps in speed tests, occasionally busting over 1000. Not too shabby, and now that Cingular looks close to launching a new rev of HSDPA in Seattle, it will get even faster. Plus, it’s got WiFi b/g…
• Flexibility - it’s a good phone, a good web browser, a solid OS (although it, like all MSFT devices, needs a reboot every now and then), and lots of software available.
• Sync - now that the phone supports push email, I get all of my email, calendar items synced from the Exchange server to my phone instantly. Nothing new there from the 5600, but I’m also getting my Tasks and Notes synced over the air too, which required me to do a USB sync on my 5600.

Things I don’t like:

• Web connect latency - it was taking me ~10 seconds to “Locate” web sites that I wanted to go to. After troubleshooting with Cingular and reading the many support forums, I ended up changing my DNS servers to point to those at OpenDNS.com. So far so good…
• No Profile Manager - my 5600 gave me the options to set the phone to “Meeting” or “Silent” or “Normal” or “Outdoor”, etc. The PPC doesn’t have such a beast. It’s either ring or no-ring. Grrr…
• No Ringer, No Music - I found this out the first day when trying to set up my phone to only vibrate on incoming calls. If you set the phone volume to “Vibrate”, it does that fine, but it also cuts off all volume from the music player. Frustrating.

However, I’ve gotten past those issues now, and I’m digging the phone. Here is my quick list of software that I’ve found to be key on my 8525:

• SPB PocketDiary - this replaces the home screen, and shows you all meetings, tasks, contacts, notes, etc etc. You can also control/access all elements from the home screen - no need to flip between different apps. Very nice.
• Batti - Neat little battery gauge that sits at the very top of the title bar (a couple of pixels high). This allowed me to remove the standard battery icon on the home screen using…
• fit4cat Hermes Tweaker - a solid utility that allows you to edit many hidden registry settings (turn of SMS sent notification, remove battery tray icon, etc.)
• Total Commander - File Manager on steroids. Also a Registry editor.
• vxUtil - all the network tools you want and need - ping, telnet, ipconfig, etc.
• Kevtris - a free Tetris clone for the PPC (and SmartPhone). Great game, and did I mention that it is free?
• Ephemeris - this might be an app that I use very infrequently, but it has some great applications. It basically calculates the phases of the moon and sunrise/sunset based on your location, but it has a cool compass to show you which way is North based on your current location relative to the sun/moon. Neat.
• StopTime - from the same author as Ephemeris, a very handy timer/stopwatch utility.
• Windows Live Search - it’s in Beta, and I admit I’m Google-biased, but this app kicks Google Maps’ butt. Much quicker, cleaner, and more fully-functioned than Google Maps for Mobile
  (which was my prior fave in this area and saved my bacon a couple of times when I was lost).
• 1-Calc Lite - super simple calculator that has functions for splitting the bill and calculating tip.
• MortPlayer - my music player. I’m not super-pumped on this, but it is better than the built-in Windows Media Player…

I think that’s it. I’ll add if anything jumps to mind. Now all I need is to find a solid pair of (reasonably priced) stereo Bluetooth headphones, and I’m golden. Until then, the wired headset that came with the phone (retrofitted with my Jabra EarGels) works just fine to turn my phone into a MP3 player. Add in a 1GB microSD card and a bookmark for the RadioParadise MP3 stream, and we’ve got MUSIC!

Enjoy - Noah

P.S. For hardware accessories for the 8525 (and your phone too), I recommend Boxwave. I like their VersaChargers that can use the existing USB cable to charge from the wall, car, or airplane. Neat!

Technorati Tags: cingular 8525 windows smartphones pocketpc ppc htc hermes tytn

Categories: Geek
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It’s been raining here in Seattle. No surprise there, it rains here quite a bit, but this has been record-level. Here are a couple of pictures that show just how much water we’re dealing with out here…

(Deception Falls…this is by Skykomish…the bridge crosses a creek)

(from the Seattle P-I)

This reminds me of a site I saw a while back, which (coincidentally) I just got notification has been updated. Flood Maps uses the Google Maps API overlaid with water level data to show the flood effects of a rising sea-level. Striking.

Categories: Seattle, Uncategorized
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It’s the time of the season to start thinking about making a family holiday card.  Last year I found Vistaprint, and they did a GREAT job on our cards (for a fantastic price).

Nice things about these guys are:

• you can upload your own pictures (nothing new there, a lot of sites do that)
• you can upload your own drawings (sure, a JPEG is a JPEG, but this is a nice idea - last year we had a drawing by Alex on the back of our card)
• they have an online design tool that is powerful and easy to use
• their prices are amazing (much cheaper than Snapfish, etc. last I checked)

These guys will be getting our business again this year, and I recommend them to you.  Please click here if you are interested in using this service - you will get 25% off your order, and I will get some savings off our upcoming order.  It’s a win-win! 

Categories: Uncategorized
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…for starting your holiday wishlist. Last year I looked all around for a good online wishlist tool, and didn’t find any I really liked. My criteria included:

• ability to import my Amazon.com wishlist
• ease-of-use (when I found something I liked, I want to be able to add to my wishlist with a click, and then get back to the page I was viewing — no copy/paste form stuff…)
• shareable (make some items easy to share with family and friends)
• private (keep other items to myself or limit who could see them)
• respect (respect for my time, as well as the privacy of those who I shared my list with - I did NOT want everyone who I shared my stuff with to have to register with the service)
• flexibility (wishlists are good, and is the main driver in my list, but a service should also be able to manage other info for me)

I think I’ve found all of that at Kaboodle (thank you again Ask MeFi).  The ones I tried last year are MetaWishlist.com and TheThingsIWant.com.  I also looked at Wists.com, but will stick with Kaboodle for now (even though it has a silly name).

(p.s. in case you wanted to get me a present, you can see my wish list here.  They also have an RSS feed in case you’re into that stuff…

Categories: Geek
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Congratulations to the Seattle Riot for getting a bid to the 2006 UPA Club Ultimate Championships! Anne and I took the kids up to Burlington on Sunday to see Sharon and the team work hard through 2 Final games (the Front-Door and the Back-Door since there were 2 bids to Nationals available via the Northwest Regionals). We didn’t actually get to see Sharon play since she had hurt her shoulder the day before, but are looking forward to her doing some rehab and kicking some serious butt at Nationals! Go Shark!

Categories: Family, Play, Sports
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I don’t remember how I found out that Alex Kapranos (the lead singer of the band Franz Ferdinand) was writing semi-regular entries about food/etc while on his latest tour. But, once I started reading them, I enjoyed his style, the content, and his thoughts. Too bad that the tour (and the writing) have come to an end. I shall look forward to the book (and the next album…)

Here’s the last entry :: Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | End of the road

Here’s a link to all of the entries (start at the beginning…) :: Alex Kapranos on Guardian Unlimited

Categories: Food, Random, World
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