jeffpollard.net

"Mickey & Friends" OR "Damn, my feet hurt!"

Remember I said that it would be a long day with lots of pictures? I was right on the money. By the end of the day, I was both out of energy and memory on my memory card for my camera. With 150 usable pictures taken from today, I'll have plenty of memories to keep forever. You do realize that 150 regular photos would be roughly 5 36-exposure rolls of film (7, if you use 24-rolls). That alone would have run me around $50 just in film..and don't forget another $60 or so for film processing. See what I mean? I love my camera. One of the best investments I've purchased recently.

Today was yet another cool (or should I say hot and muggy) day in Orlando (or should I say Kissimmi). People suggested that we visit Magic Kingdom late in the week to avoid the heavier crowds. Since I don't have anything to compare today to, I'll just ay that it was pretty darn crowded. But I also realize that it could have been a whole lot worse. The only ride we didn't ride because of the wai was Splash Mountain where the wait was supposed to be 90 minutes or so. Ridiculous. We did, however, ride Thunder Mountain Railroad, The Haunted Mansion, Space Mountain, and sat through numerous other attractions, too. We caught the evening parade in the park at 9pm and then rushed to the 15th floor of the Contemporary resort to catch the fireworks from high above. It rocked. And I have pictures to prove all of this.

I think the highlight of the day was conquering Space Mountain. You see, back in '87 when I last visited Disney, I had a rather traumatic experience and have had a small issue with this coaster since then. Riding today brought back a ton of memories and I can see now exactly why I was so scared of it back then. It was even a bit hair-raising today because you can't see at all inside there! It was great fun and I'd definitely do it again. Good closure to a 13-year old issue.

I've posted pictures from Day 5 (Downtown Disney/Pool/Chill Day). There's only 13 photos in there, even though I actually took something like 35. These are the ones that I thought you'd all enjoy, though. So, go ahead and check em out!

Tomorrow, we leave. But not before we cram every last minute of vacation action into this trip that we can! We're thinking about visiting some other smaller-ish attractions early tomorrow before we have to have the rental van back to the rental place by 1:45pm. And then our plane doesn't fly out of Orlando until 4:30 or so. We should be arriving back in Dulles around 6pm.

Random thoughts of the day: I miss my truck. Go ahead, laugh. I hope it's ok sitting in our apartment's parking lot. Mike emailed me a few days ago to tell me that the guy at Firestone called to say that my wheels had come in, so I'm really psyched about going to try em' on early Sunday morning. YAY!

Disney Day Four: A night on the town

First of all, the pictures from day four (Epcot) are posted for your amusement, so be sure to check em' out.

We visited the area called "Downtown Disney" today. We slept in a little later than usual (on purpose this time) and then headed out on the town. Downtown Disney is basically a big shopping area with a small attractions area. But mostly shopping. Just one more way for those fine folks at Disney to milk every single penny out of every single vacationer. Poor us. By the time we were done touring the shops, I was pretty tired of seeing the Mickey Mouse ears symbol.

We came back here and had a nice dinner, took a short nap, and then headed back down to Downtown Disney to an area called "Pleasure Island". This is basically a big party place where you have to be 18 to even get on the island. On the island, there's dance clubs, and of course, more shops. So, we went and visited a few of the dance clubs where Olivia, Brian, Paul, and Christine danced the night away while I people-watched and enjoyed the music. Despite my friends' belief that you can't have fun unless you dance, I had a great time when I wasn't being harassed to come out on the dance floor with them. Some people just don't get it.

So, now we're here. It's 3:30am and we're going to be getting up bright and early and heading out for The Magic Kingdom. Not quite sure what that is, but I guess I'll find out tomorrow...(kidding). Should be a long day with lots of pictures.

In the spirit of posting pictures a day late, I should be posting pictures from today late Friday night. Enjoy your Friday! I know I will!

Environmental WHAT??

Whew. Well, one of the the rumored anograms for Epcot certainly is true. I heard a long time ago that EPCOT stands for Every Person Comes Out Tired. Brian informed me today that Epcot actually stands for Environmental something or other (feel free to correct me in the comments section if you know what it is). I like mine better. And it's true.

We woke up late yet again. This morning, we had alarm clock problems. You see, we wanted to get up at 8:15AM, not PM. Oh well. Brian fixed us all a rather large omlett which we divided between us all. It was awesome. So, after a hearty breakfast, we set sail for Disney's Epcot Center. Traffic was a total bear AGAIN and it took us the better part of an hour to get to our destination again.

The park was pretty crowded. We went immeadiately into SpaceShip Earth and rode the ride that talks about the history and future of communication. I remembered parts of it, but some parts were obviously new because they talked about PC-to-PC video conferencing as something the the present tense. I don't think that was quite possible when I last visited the park back in '87.

After that, we toured the science and technology areas and learned about home networking, home automation, and some other stuff. It was pretty cool, but I think Brian, Paul, and I already knew most of what they were showing us. Here's an example:

Tour Guide: In the future, you'll be able to turn on lights in YOUR house with a remote control!

Us:: We're already doing that.

Tour Guide: Well, did you know that in the future, you'll be able to sit in your recliner and send email..wirelessly?

Us: We're already doing that, too.

It was really neat to see the displays of stuff, like Sony's 2nd generation Aibo robotic dog that can be trained, and is more lifelike than some real dogs I've met. Pretty cool stuff. Too bad it'll cost you $1500 to have one in your home. Bleh.

After that, we visited a few more attractions in the park and then caught our 5:30PM dinner reservation over in the Morocco area. It was a pretty expensive place to eat, but the food was pretty good. Not worth $20 for 2 Chicken Kabobs, but not to shabby.

After that, we toured "The Living Sea" and then watched the nightly parade around the park. It was a really neat parade with dancers and stuff.

The last thing we did while we were there was go to the area called Test Track. The idea behind this ride is to give the audience a look "behind the scenes" at a car testing and research facility. The draw to it is that you get to ride in a test vehicle around their high-speed track. Let me tell you, to totally rocked. They take you through a number of other tests, such as hard braking, s-curves, extreme weather, etc. The final test was the high-speed track test. Our little roller-coaster-type car got up to about 70 miles per hour and then went into a high-banked curve. It was just awesome. If it hadn't been too late, I would have wanted to ride it again.

So, that was pretty much it. Another hour of traffic and we were back home. I have't posted pictures from today's Epcot adventure, but I HAVE posted pictures from yesterday's day at MGM. So, go check out the photo gallery. I've now created a central page for all of my Disney photo galleries. That should make it easier for you to figure out when I post new photos up here. So, go to my main Disney picture page and see what's new!

Tomorrow, we're gonna sorta take a day off, check out downtown Disney (a sortof shopping mall and resturant area), and go swimming in the pool. I should be posting pictures from today's Epcot adventure tomorrow sometime. I'll get caught up on these pictures eventually!

Day Three: Disney's MGM Studio

Whoo. What a tiring day. Today, we went to MGM. It, just like Universal, is much different than I remember. There was tons of stuff that looked exactly how I remember, but there's also some very different and new things.

They've added two new rides: Aerosmith's Rockin' Roller Coaster and The Hollywood Hotel Tower (of Terror). Both are what I would consider very uncharacteristic of MGM, but I would bet that they realized that Universal was taking some of their market share with their thrill ride park, "Islands of Adventures".

We rode the back lot tour and got to see some planes that they used from "Pearl Harbor". Pretty cool.

We ended the day at Brown Derby resturant. None of the other places to eat were still open at 9pm, so we had to take whatever we could find. It was a very upscale joint where Brian paid $25 for a piece of Filet Mignon the size of a silver dollar. That's exaggerating a bit, but it was pretty ridiculous. The food was great, but my entree' consisted of one(1) cheese ravioli, served in the middle of a large plate.

I've posted pictures from Day 1 (arriving here in Orlando) and now yesterday's adventure (Universal Studios). Today's adventure (MGM) should be up and running either later tonight or sometime tomorrow (Wednesday). I've decided that since FTP is working sporadically, I'm not going to post every single picture from each day, but rather just post the highlights of each day. That will give you all a good idea of what we did each day. Enjoy!

Tomorrow (Wednesday), we're heading to Epcot. Should be a lot of walking and tons of pictures. I've already some 170 pictures totalling over 48MB. Take care.

Universal and the last 2 days

Well, what a long, strange 2 days it's been so far. Sorry for not posting an update last night..or the night before, but as you can imagine, we've been really busy down here in Orlando having fun. This has been a great vacation so far; it's been very rare that I even think about anything that's computer-related. Nice change. The only thing I have still been able to think about is my new wheels for my truck(that SHOULD be waiting for me when I return)..and I didn't even think about that until late tonight. :)

We arrived at around Midnight late Saturday night. We got a ride to our new home for the week, Orange Lake Resort, in a shutte with a weird but funny lady. The place is a timeshare that Brian's parents graciously gave us for the week. So, thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Korte!

We pretty much came in, dumped our stuff and crashed hard Saturday night. We were all pooped.

Sunday, we slept in until around noon or so, and then went and got our rental car (a burgundy Chevy Venture minivan). It's not a bad little ride..it gets us around. Paul and I joked about cutting the springs on it (lowering it), but that would be too much work to reverse before we have to return it on Saturday.

Once we had wheels, we went and got groceries and drove around to see what had changed since we were here last. It's a lot different than I remember, but the last time I was here was back in 1987, I think. It still amazes me how much money and effort Disney and the other places down here put into making this whole place perfect. It's worth noting that It's very interesting to pay attentiion to hoe different life is down here. People are just really different than they are in Richmond. To me, it;s kinda like when you go to California and everyone is really laid back and cool about things. This is kinda like that, but not wuite to the extreme level that Californians are.

Sunday night, we made our way to the Magic Kingdom area (but not actually IN the park) to go inside the Contemporary Resort and ride the monorail. That was pretty fun. We looked around in all of the gift shops and got some great shots of Cinderella's castle from the roof of the Contemporary Resort.

Today, we woke up at around 9am (later than we had hoped), threw on some clothes, and headed out for Universal Studios theme park. It turns out that there's TWO Universal theme parks now: Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. Islands of Adventure is basically an extension of the Universal park, but has mostly roller coasters and other thrill rides, where the regular Universal park is mostly movie tour-related rides. We ended up going to Islands of Adventure so that we could ride the thrill rides. We had an absolute blast. We rode all of the roller coasters except Spider Man (because of time), including the Incredible Hulk coaster and the Jurassic Park water ride. We had lunch at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville and it was really good. Cool place. We ended up getting SOAKED riding a few of the water rides near the end of our trip and we were all happy to be back here at home so we could change into dryer clothes.

Tomorrow, I think we're heading to MGM for the day. I've have TONS of pictures that I've taken with my digital camera so far, but I've had LOTS of problems uploading them. We brought my Airport with us and Brian and I are doing wireless with our laptops and then the access point is dialing up for us. For some reason, FTP uploading has been extremely unreliable. I'll keep trying to upload photos tonight.

Also, for a different perspective on today's events, don't forget to check out Brian's website.

Got to orlando

Just a quick note that we got here to Orlando safely. The time share place where we're staying is really nice, although it has it's fair share of insects.

More tomorrow..

We're open late, so you can eat great..even late!

Today was "clean-up-the-breakdown-room-so-that-we-can-work-back-there" day. We cleaned out and organized 4 months of old computer parts, the boxes that replacement parts came in, old toner cartridges, and other random crap that builds up in a computer work/storage room. It was a fun off-beat day. A great way to wrap up an otherwise pretty busy week.

Tonight, Eric Hurd, an old buddy from school who just happens to to live about 2 blocks away. Amazing what a small world we live in. He also works downtown doing network administration for a technology company. It's difficult to describe what his company does, but once their website is back up and running (they're switching domains), I'll post a link on here so you all can check it out. It's amazing the stuff that they're researching and doing. Very cool. he came over and checked out our apartment, and then we went over to his townhouse to see what it looks like inside. It was pretty cool. When they were building it, he snuck in one night and wired the whole place with ethernet cables and had the construction people cut out holes for wall jacks for his network. Very smart. That's one thing I'm DEFINITELY doing if/when I ever get a house. Cool place. Congrats to Eric and his fiance'- they're getting married next weekend!

We'll be leaving for Northern VA around noon or and our flight leaves Dulles at around 9pm. I might not post an update when we get there tonight, so look for an update sometime Sunday morning or afternoon.

The world (or at least 320x240 pixels of it) is my canvas

Today was a pretty cool day. It was a normal day all the way up until around 11am when Glen came to me with a little task. Hopefully telling you all about this little task won't land me in any trouble for telling the "world" about it..but here goes.

As some of you already know, The Agency is currently in the middle of a new business pitch for Michelin Tires. The final presentation for the account is tomorrow (6/22), so today was a pretty crazy day for lots of people at Martin. The pitch team came up with a neat idea to add to their presentation tomorrow: Since Merchant's Tire and Auto Centers are probably the biggest reseller of Michelin tires, they thought it would be a neat idea to have Palm devices in the Merchant's stores with an interactive tire-buying guide and specifications and details about the tires. It makes sense, though. Think about the last time you went into a tire place. Half of the people don't have all of their teeth, and sometimes it's hard to find someone that will give you the cold, hard facts about the tires that you're interested in purchasing. So, why not have these little devices tethered to the front counter and let people find out tires exactly how Michelin would want them to learn about them. So, how does this involve me? Well, Glen volunteered me to come up with a demonstration website that would run on his iPaq PocketPC for the pitch tomorrow. No pressure or anything.

So, I spent the entire rest of the day designing an entire website (at 320x240) for the final presentation tomorrow. The site consisted of two basic parts: a tire Buying Guide and a listing of all of the tires that they sell, complete with pictures, specs, etc. The tire buying guide would ask for the make and model of your vehicle, what driving conditions you have, and then recommend the right tires for your vehicle. Obviously, I didn't have enough time to make this actually work..but I made it appear to work. Pretty cool.

But here's the absolute best part: When it was close to being completed, Glen and I took it upstairs to show the account team, including John Adams, our CEO. When we got up there, Glen handed John the iPaq and after John figured out how to turn it on (DOH!), he went crazy. I can't even put into words how excited he was that we had taken his "crazy" idea and actually made it work. He was sitting there, surfing the site I had just built and stomping his feat on the floor like a little kid. He was seriously giddy. And when he was done, he looked at Glen and I, told us that it was "Fabulous" and high-fived us both. And that, my friends, was the absolute most gratifying feeling I've had since I've been at Martin. What a great feeling..to make your CEO giddy from your efforts and tell you face-to-face what a kick ass job you did.

I went back down to my desk and tweaked the rest of the site-let for the rest of the day with a huge smile on my face and an excited feeling in my stomach. They'll take the iPaq with them tomorrow and show it to the Michelin folks. I can't wait to hear if we won or not. I sure hope so. That would make this an even sweeter day.

Have a wonderful Friday, everybody.

If you build it, they will come (preconfigured)..we hope

Today, I worked with Tommy on building our two "model" machines for our new computers. Let me explain: We're ordering 50 500mhz Titanium PowerBooks, 37 Dual-533mhz PowerMac G4s with CD-RWs, and 3 733mhz PowerMac G4s with DVD-R drives. Pretty schweet. But, as you can imagine, it's a royal pain in the ass to build (by hand) each and every computer. Building a machine from scratch (and getting it right) is a very tedious task. By "building a machine", I mean loading the necessary software onto it. So, the best thing to do in a situation like this is to build ONE SINGLE machine that is exactly perfect and then make a disk image of that drive. You can burn that image onto a CD, and then pop that CD into each of the other machines, blast the new computer with your "perfect" image, and VIOLA!. A perfect machine every time. Since we've got basically two different computers that we're ordering, we made one "perfect" build for each computer. The cool thing is, PC Connection (whom we order most of our stuff through) is building these machines for us! So, after building the two G4 powerhouses, we sent them back to PC Connection, where they will build each of our new computers with our image that we sent them. This will cut down a lot of time that Tommy and I would have to spent later making sure each one was the same.

Tonight, Maggie and Sara came over for dinner and socializing. Actually, Maggie wanted to ask Olivia and I some questions about her company's website. For those of you that might not know, Maggie was one of Olivia's roomates and upon graduating from RU last month, she has purchased a business: Creations Bridal, a custom bridal shop here in Richmond. The company has a website (www.creationsbridal.com), but she would like to do some different things with it. Hopefully she understands the power of the web: You (and your website)are only limited by your own imagination..and possibly your developer. But, first, I've made the suggestion that she move to a better host. Currently, her host is charging her $19.95 a month, plus charging her for maintaining the site. I suggested that she move to OLM.net and save $10 a month and let Olivia and I maintain her website for her. I think we can some great things with it. Go check it out..and..enjoy the music..heheh.

That's about alll for tonight. 2 more days until we leave for Orlando. I still can't believe that we're going. By the way, even though I'll be on vacation all next week, I'll be checking my email and updating the site each and every night with all of the pictures and stories from the day's adventures.

Shave and a hair cut..toupe'?

I'd like to ask the men out there a question: What is one of the best feelings (in the summer) in the whole wide world? Comon', lemme hear it. Ok, I'll fill the ladies in: it's a haircut. You know that sloppy feeling you get when your hair gets waayy longer than you're used to having it? So, as you may of guessed, I got a haircut this evening..and MAN, I feel MUCH better. I knew I'd be totally miserable if I went to Florida next week with long hair. I think it's because my hair grows so thick, but when it gets long, it's like wearing a wool sock hat. Bleh.

Still no wheels today. You know, I think I may have forgotten to mention that here a few days ago. I broke down and ordered the set of 17" wheels that I've been lusting after for months (probably more than a year). After toasting the factory tires on the way home from Dinwiddie, the guys at Firestone gave me a heck of a deal on the set of 17" chrome Enkei Shurikens, plus they were willing to take back the tires they sold me a week ago and credit me for the full amount that I paid for them. I couldn't pass up the deal. When it was all said and done, it was about $400 less than I could've gotten them anywhere else. Plus, the guys there are really nice. Apparently, for the backspacing that I wanted (+42 offset), the wheels are going to be coming straight from Enkei's warehouse, not from whatever retail warehouse they ordered them from. Not quite sure if they'll even be in this week, but if they are..you can be sure you'll see them on here that night. :)

Dad left a message on our machine tonight saying that Buster had come home and was doing pretty well. He said that Buster still had problems walking straight and that he wasn't eating much. He's on some kind of medication, but Dad didn't say what it was. (Maybe he'll respond in the comments area and tell the world what type of drugs they're giving Buster) It's good to hear that he's doing better, but I can't help but wonder how much better he'll ever be?

And finally, congrats to my buddy Brian, who finally broke down and purchased himself a kick-ass Sony VAIO laptop. It looks like a sweet machine..800mhz AMD, 10gig, USB, Firewire, and 14" screen. Not too bad. And..only $1400. Great deal. Check out his website for the full story.

From the we're-all-pullin'-for-ya-bud dept.

It's been a pretty sad evening. Mom called me at around 2pm and told me that she had just rushed Buster to the veterinarian. It seems as though he suffered a stroke. Without getting too much into the details of it, the cause of the stroke is still unknown but Dr. Burgess (the doctor and family friend) says that there was some brain swelling.

The doctor called late this evening to tell them that Buster was doing a little better than before, although he was still acting a little disoriented and his eyes were still constantly going back and forth.

Please keep Buster in your thoughts and we'll hope that he comes out of this OK. I'll have more details on his condition tomorrow, probably.

A rainy day at Busch Gardens

Wow, what a rainy, sloppy day at Busch Gardens. We left here at 8:30 am yesterday and it wasn't really raining at all..spitting, maybe. We got to 64 and traffic was pretty backed up. When we finally made our way up to where the accident had happened, it looked like a Geo Tracker had flipped at least once. It was in pretty bad shape. By this point, it was POURING down rain. Traffic from then on was fine..but it poured almost all the way to Williamsburg. It started clearing just before we got to Busch Gardens.

We met Olivia's friends Andrea and Luke just inside the intrance to the park and we set off accross the park to find some trouble to get into. We had enough time to ride Alpengeist twice, and then it started pouring. My guess is that the storm that we drove through on the way there earlier had finally caught up with us. So, it rained. And it rained. From about 11 until around 4 it dumped a couple hundred gallons of rain on the park. All of the sidewalks were totally flooded and just about all of the rides were shut down. But we stuck it out. We ate lunch in FestHaus (in the Germany area) and watched the Oktoberfest show. Pretty interesting. It was freezing cold in there, though, and the fact that we were all soaked didn't help at all. I'm suprised I'm not sick today.

At around 4pm, the storm had finally passed most of the way by and the rides started running again. So, we made our way over to Apollo's Chariot and The Big Bad Wolf. By around 8 we were totally pooped and decided it was time to leave. Even though it was a rainy, dreary day, it ended up being one of the best days to visit the park after all. The storm scared half of the crowd away, so when it had finally passed, there weren't many people left in the park! Most of the coasters had maybe a 2-minute wait..nice. We ended up getting to do MORE stuff than we did the last time we went with Brian and Paul and it was sunny (which means that the lines were loooong).

So, we said our godbyes to her friends and left the park. It was around 9pm. I decided that since we were so close to my grandparent's house (they live in Portsmouth), we decided to drop in on them and see how they were doing. My parents were already there visiting, so it was perfect timing. We ended up staying there for about an hour and then heading home.

Today, I decided it was time to put the mud flaps on my truck. Ok, so maybe I'm not REALLY putting the flaps on the truck the way they were designed to. I went out and pulled out my cut-down factory bump stops and brought them inside to cut the new ones to the same size. I put the new stops in and took her for a spin down the road. It's definitely much better. The back end still bottoms out on the larger bumps, but it's not half as bad as it was. Just from looking at it, I think I've got at least another half-inch of travel back there. It rides much better. Thanks to my new-found friend, Randy, from Missourri for the idea. Check out his illustration of the modification to the left.

Mom and Dad are supposed to stop by here this evening on their way home so that we can go out to dinner and enjoy Father's Day with Dad. :)

Who invented the umbrella?

Question of the day: Who the heck came up with the idea of the umbrella?? It dawned on me as I was walking through downtown this afternoon to find some lunch that I looked like an idiot carrying this peice of parachute material hooked to a bunch of metal..on a stick!! So, who would have come up with such an odd contraption? Anyone have any idea?

Exciting news today: I booked Olivia's plane ticket to New York for MacWorld. After doing some consulting with higher management people, the Agency has decided that they don't want to know about Olivia going to New York with me. You see, before, they were going to try to work out a deal with our travel department and get me a great rate on her airfare, but it turns out that I had to book her flight totally seperately..and it cost me an extra $30 or so. So, we're all set. We'll both be heading to New yawk on July 16th and returning on the 22nd, two whole days after the conference actually ends. That will give us some good time to see the sights and get mugged once or twice. Pretty exciting.

We went to the mall this evening and picked up some Father's Day items for Olivia's dad and then went to Ukrops to get our tickets for Busch Gardens tomorrow. And now, we're sitting here watching Cast Away. They actually released the DVD as a two-DVD set. The first has the movie and a few extras, and the second disc has a bunch of extra featurettes and specials about how they made the movie, etc. Very cool stuff. If you haven't seen this movie, you gotta. It's pretty cool. Thanks to Olivia for surprising me with it tonight. :)

So, tomorrow, we're off to Busch Gardens with some high school friends of Olivia's. That should be pretty fun. i can't wait to ride Apollo's Chariot again. That ride rules. As does The Big Bad Wolf isn't too shabby, either. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. The weather forecast is calling for scattered showers, so let's hope it doesn't ruin our day.

The most gratifying feeling..

Hi folks. Sorry for the lack of update last night. I was pretty tired.

Remember that project that I mentioned a few days ago. Well, the launch for it was a few minutes ago. Literally. The people that I've been working closely with over the past few weeks held a meeting with a bunch of people from account management and new business to show them what features the new Intranet-let will have. And then, near the end of his presentation, he announced that when everybody gets back to their desks after this meeting that the site would be up and running. Everybody clapped. That was reallly cool. While the meeting was going on, I was down here putting the final polish on the site and preparing an internal news release for the launch of the new site. When I was done, I figured I'd go upstairs to make sure that I had made the end-of-meeting deadline for getting the site ready. I came in just in time to get some free lunch (pizza!) and have everybody clap for me. This is what makes it all worth it for me. It's not totally about the recognition, but it really feels good to finally be recognized for the hard work that we put into this. Nice.

The rest of the day should be pretty easy, now. Have a great day!

TiBook or iBook?

Today was pretty fun. I worked on finishing up version 1.0 of one of the internal web projects that I've been working on for the past month or so. It's a good feeling to finally see another project out the door, so to speak, and off of my proverbial plate.

On a different subject, at the Agency, we lease all of our computer equipment. This summer marks the end of a very large lease period for our many of our Macs. Some 40 or 50 PowerBooks will be going back as well as some 40 or so desktop Power Macs. That being said, we've been evaluating Apple's current portable options and trying to figure out what would be our best purchasing option. We called upon a few of our creative managers today to give us their feedback on which laptop to purchase to replace our current models. Most of them were immeadiately impressed with the Titanium PowerBook's screen and thin-ness, but were disappointed by the lack of drive options. The Titanium only comes with a DVD drive, while the new iBooks come with one of the following drives: CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, or CD-RW/DVD combo drive. I think they really like the idea of having a re-writeable drive in their portables. I know I sure would like that convenience. Rumor has it that Apple may add a CD-RW/DVD option to the Titianium PowerBooks at MacWorld next month (YAY, I'll be there!). Too bad it'll be too late for us to consider that for our replacements. :(

Speaking of MacWorld, it looks like Olivia is going to go to New York with me next month for the big Mac show. Did I mention this a few days ago? Probably. Anyways, we'll be staying an extra day to cut down on the travel expense. Plus, this will give me a chance to introduce Olivia to Miss Liberty. Should be fun.

Are you serious? Mud Flaps?

Howdy. Another fine day in Richmond. I was sortof dreading my morning commute this morning, mostly because of my rearend bottoming out on the harsh Richmond roads. The morning commute turned out to not be so bad. The back end bottomed out a few times, but it wasn't unbearable or anything. The evening commute was slightly harsher. I guess VDOT doesn't take as good of care of the northbound lanes.

I also started trying to figure out how to remedy the bumpy ride in the rear today. I found a set of Energy Suspension bump stops for lowered vehicles that may work. I also conversed online today with a guy from Missouri that has a Tacoma that has experienced the same problem, and he suggested that I install the smallest possible rubber stops on as possible, and he even suggested that I just bolt a couple strips of high-grade rubber to the frame and ride it like that. He explained that this would keep the height down, allowing my axle to travel the maximum amount, while still protecting my frame and rearend from banging each other to death. It sounded pretty ghetto at first, but then I began to think that maybe he had a good idea.

So, tonight, I went and purchased a set of think rubber mud flaps from Wal-Mart. Nope, I'm not going to attach them to my fenders, but I'll cut them the same size as my factory stops and bolt them on (in pairs of two, since they're only about a 1/4" think each). We'll see how that rides. Hopefully it'll prvent some of the bumpiness.

Somewhere on the way to Tacoma heaven

You always prepare for the worst, but you never think it's going to happen, right? Well, it did. Only, the worst was worse than I had dreamed. Here's the story:

We woke up Saturday morning and met Patrick (my coworker friend at Martin) before heading way out in the boonies to Dinwiddie to his buddy Kevin's shop. After getting the truck up on the hydraulic lift, we began installing the DJM suspension kit. It called for flipping the ball joints to the tops of both the lower and upper control arms and installing the new upper control arm that was included with the kit. The kit also included new shocks made specifically for lowered vehicles. Everything went pretty smoothly, but it was a slow process because neither Patrick nor myself had ever installed a kit such as this. So, at around 5:30 we finished installing the blocks and shocks in the rear and lowered the truck off of the lift. I decided that it would be best if I took it down the road for a "test drive" before the hour-long trip back home. When I got out on the road, I began hearing a strange squealing sound coming from the front two tires as I drove down the road. I figured that this was just caused by the alignment being off. For those of you who have never lowered a vehicle, when you lower a vehicle, you should always get an alignment soon after because it almost always throws the alignment off. Changing the geometry of a truck's suspension can have ill effects on one's camber, caster, and toe. I hypothesized that it was just an alignment problem and promised myself that I would get it properly aligned Sunday or Monday.

So, we headed for home at around 9:30pm. With the tires squealing all the way up the interstate. After a little while, Olivia and I started smelling some burning rubber and that's when I decided that I should stop and check my tires. So, pulled over and turned my wheels all the way to one side so that I could inspect the tread. It was MUCH worse that I had expected. At this point, we were about 1/3 of the way home, and the tread on the inside of the tires was more than 1/2-gone. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that we weren't going to make it home without rotating the tires to the back (and the back ones to the front). So, we pulled over at Chester (about halfway home) to rotate the tires. By this point, the insides of the front tires were COMPLETELY bald..much further and the threads would start appearing and then BOOM..we would've had a blowout. So, we pulled into a Denny's parking lot (hey, it was the best lit place around) and rotated the tires. Luckily for us, Patrick had torqued the lug nuts to 100ft./lbs with the air gun at the shop, so we only had to slip one disc in our backs to get them loose. With the tires rotated, we pulled out of the parking lot. I couldn't help but feel upset because I knew what was getting ready to happen to those fresh, perfect tires. Yes, I was getting ready to completely ruin not two, but ALL FOUR tires on my truck. But it was the only way that we would get home. So, off the went. The fresh tires sounded like old hound dogs going down the road..that is, until the tread started to wear thin on those, too, and then the squealing turned to a much higher-pitched noise. But we arrived home safely and hit the hay..too tired to think about anything else. It was midnight. It had taken us two and half hours to go about 50 miles.

I woke up at 8:45 this morning, knowing that any alignment shop that was going to be open would open up at 9:00am. At 9:30, I arrived at the Firestone tire center down the road a couple blocks. And yes, the tires howled all the way there, too. They pulled the truck up on the lift, put 4 new tires on, and ran their alignment system to fix my mal-aligned truck. The service technician pulled the truck off the lift about an hour and a half later and said that it was ready. Just to be sure, I took the truck down the road for another "test drive" before I paid for the services rendered. Sure enough, when I hit the brakes, it was still pulling hard to the left. So, back in the shop I went and I told the guy what it was doing. He said that it sounded like something related to the brakes. So, after waiting for the service technician to finish his current job (another hour wait), they finally pulled the truck up on the lift and found that I had a pinched brake line. The technician re-routed my front brake lines and bled them. I took the truck for another test drive, and it was perfect. It felt just like the old truck again.

So, it makes sense now, looking back on it, that I was killing those front tires. Half of the problem was my alignment (causing me to ride ONLY on the insides of both of my front tires) and the other half was the brakes were probably about half locked-up. At least I understand now how I could completely ate through a set of tires in a 50-mile journey.

I've posted a photo gallery from yesterday, so check it out.

Now, it's back to work tomorrow. Whew! What a weekend!

A little more in touch with de 'earf

93 more pictures and the horrific story coming later today (Sunday). Stay tuned.

Jeez, am I REALLY gonna do this?

Gosh, is it Saturday yet? Not quite..but almost. This is worse than waiting for Christmas morning. I looked through the directions for my lowering kit again tonight. I've known since I purchased the kit that the back was going to be really easy to do..but it was the front that I wasn't so sure about. After looking at the directions tonight, it really looks like the front is going to be pretty difficult. Hopefully Patrick will know the front suspension components a little better than I do right now. But it's going to be a good learning experience.

Check back here tomorrow evening..I'll be taking my digital camera with me tomorrow, so I should have lots of good pictures: before, after, and during!!

Finally...a bug I don't want to smash!

Pretty, uhh, normal (read: good) day today at work.

Went to the mall this evening to try on bathing suits with Olivia. For those of you who are curious, NO, I didn't try them on with her..I was just there for moral support.

When we got home, Olivia and Mike and I went to TGIFriday's for a later later dinner. The coolest part was that I FINALLY got to drive Mike's red 2000 turbo diesel VW bug. Wow. What a cool car. One thing struck me as I was enjoying the wind in my hair (sunroof) and cool-looking gauge cluster. The most important thing when customizing a vehicle is to HAVE FUN with it. Mike's car was fun. Not because it went from 0-60 in 3 seconds (even though it has impressive accelleration once the turbo kicks in at 2500RPM), but it was just fun to drive. It felt good, it was comfortable, and it looked good. This just further confirms my feeling that if you're gonna build it, build it so that it's fun. I think as I was nearing the end of my "relationship" with the teal truck, I had tricked it out so much that it really wasn't that much fun anymore, although it was awfully fun laying frame. It'll be fun to do it again. For those of you who have never heard the sound (and felt the grinding) of your own frame on the pavement, don't even try to understand how this can be a good thing. Just trust me..it's thrilling.

Thus ends the tail light saga

So the tail lights finally arrived this morning. The eBay seller who sold me the lights finally called me yesterday. He told me that he sent the lights last week, but they were returned to him as undeliverable. So, I gave him the correct address over the phone and he promised to send them out the same day. I asked him if he would send them next day air, and he agreed to do that.

So, my precius tail lights arrived this morning at around 10am via UPS. I couldn't believe that he actually sent them as he promised. Moreover, I couldn't believe that I FINALLY had my brand new tail lights. I couldn't hold it in. I almost started running around building showing everyone, but I stopped myself. But, I decided that I would go down to the parking deck and install them during lunch. Folks, this is what sick minitruckers do.

So, at the hottest, most humid part of the day, I marched down the the parking deck, pulled the old tail lights out, popped the new lights in and I was done! Oh, wait. I'd better check and make sure everything works ok. So, I started the truck up and turned on the left turn signal. Uh oh. On the dash, BOTH left and right signal indicators were flashing. That's bad. So, I went around the back of the truck to see what was really flashing. It turns out that BOTH turn signals were flashing AND my third brake light on the cab was also flashing.. That's really bad. Since I had limited time to install the lights, I decided to head back to work and deal with the faulty lights later. That kinda put a damper on my afternoon, though.

So, after work, I decided that since it was pouring down rain that I would stay in the covered parking deck and work on my lights, rather than go home and have to work on them outside in the apartment's parking lot.

To make this long story short, I figured out that the new tail lights were just flat-out wired TERRIBLY From what I can tell, the brake and turn signal wires had been spiced in together. So, I studied my factory tail lights to find out what was wired incorrectly, and cut and spliced the new tail lights to match. When all was said and done, I had practically re-wired the entire tail light..but now it works like a charm!! After thuroughly testing the newly wired lights, I decided to head home.

So, thus ends my new tail light saga. Hopefully. It's Wednesday night. That means only 2 more days until Saturday and lowering my truck. Man..I'm SO psyched!!!

Only 3 more days!!

It's getting close. It's only three days away. Yep. Three days. I can't wait. What is three days away? Lowering my truck, of course! This Saturday, I'll be driving to Dinwiddie (wherever the hell that is) and, with the assistance of my coworker and fellow custom vehicle enthusiast Patrick Antkowiak, I'll be lowering my truck. Three inches in the front and four in the rear. It shouldn't be a significant drop, but it will be a great start. I'm extremely excited that this day is finally almost here.

XMUG meeting was interesting last night. Jim Bruce, the head technician over at Cap Mac gave a "lesson" on what's in a Mac system folder and what it all does. I already knew most of it, but it was interesting to see it taught to someone else.

We also finalized my travel arrangements yesterday at work for MacWorld New York. It looks like I'll be flying out Monday the 16th and returning on Friday the 20th. That's going to be fun.

Happy birthday to my buddy Brian's website. Today, it turns 1 year old. YAY!! Make sure you check out his site today. Have a great day, folks.

A little bit o' change

Notice anything new? If not, maybe you need to open your browser a little wider. In the past few weeks, I decided that I wanted to put a couple of new features on the front page here, and so I finally figured out a good way to do it.

For those of you who visit regularly, you'll notice that I moved the "Special Features" box to the right side and added two new areas: "What's in the changer?" and an interactive survey. The first was put there to give you all an idea about what I'm listening to lately. It also helps me remember what CDs are out in my truck and not here in the house. Music is pretty important and can be a good indicator of emotions and moods, so I figured that it would be a good addition to my site.

The second new feature isn't really new, but rather an old feature that I'd like to start keeping on the front page of my site. So, that (over there -->) is now the permanent home for the survey. I'll post a new survey about once a week..and if I start forgetting, email me and remind me to change it! Also, if you've got any good survey ideas, send em'!

Thanks to everybody who wrote to tell me that they enjoyed the Summer Slam 2001 photo gallery.

Summer Slam 2001

Hi everybody. The trip to Bridgewater prevented me from posting any entries on my website over the past two days, but my hit counter tells me that nobody else really had time to check either.

So, Summer Slam was pretty awesome. I missed the show last year because I was job-hunting, and so it was really cool to go to it again this year. I'm not quite sure whether Jay and Show-N-Shine Promotions started running the show this year or last year, but the show seems improved, overall, under the new "management". By far the best part of walking around the show grounds perusing all of the custom cars and trucks was seeing all of the people I used to compete against when I used to show regularly. Shane Craighead and his spotless "Laid Low" Mitsubishi were there, dropping everyone's jaw. I also got to spend a lot of time with Mark Muse and Ed. Tuckin' Taco was also there, which sent me into a spontaneous drooling fit. For those of you who don't know what the heck I'm talking about, Tuckin' Taco is about the baddest-ass Tacoma showing on the east coast..that I've seen. He was featured in Mini-Truckin about 2 months ago, too. The truck is amazingly beautiful (see picture at right) and he just installed larger wheels (18"s in the front and 20"s in the rear)..pretty amazing. The truck is just a great looking truck all-around. Definitely a great inspiration for me and my dreams for my Taco'.

Going to this show made me realize that even though I'm older than many of the 17-19 year old kids with their vehicles at the show..I'm still very excited by this sport.

So, be sure to check out my photo gallery from the show. I took 90-some pictures..and they're all in the photo gallery for you to enjoy. Check em out!

Today's been another typical lazy Sunday. Olivia and I have been sitting around watching the race. I think we'll be getting together with Maggie later and head down to the greek festival downtown. Not quite sure what we'll see or do down there, but it should be fun.