Speaking of breaks, I have tomorrow off! Maybe I’ll play some video games, it’s been a while… a month or more, I think. It’s also Micro Four Thirds Day, and we happen to own a mu-43 camera, so maybe I’ll take some pictures!

Speaking of pictures, I saw this giant plume of dark smoke when I got close to home… in the exact direction of home… and I found myself hoping that home wasn’t on fire. I think, maybe, the landfill across the street from our subdivision is on fire. So maybe we’re safe. There’s certainly a lot of ash floating through the air.

Speaking of air…. um, I got nothing.

I also took a trip down memory lane, earlier in the week, when an old ex-girlfriend apologized to me on facebook, in case she was ever heartless or selfish. She wasn’t and I told her so. It got me thinking about past relationships… there are a few people I should probably apologize to; I guess I have a few regrets, but I think I only really hold one grudge, maybe two. Facebook is certainly good for bringing up these random memories and feelings.

In other news, camp is almost over, though I got roped into an extra week. It’s going to be a low-enrollment/more chilled-out version of camp, but it’s still another week of getting up early and going to the city. My hope is that my seniority and 15+ years of camp experience will mean that I’m running the show as the fill-in director. My history in these matters is that I’m promised a director’s position and/or I fill in for one until a decision is made and then it isn’t given to me… no such promise was made this time, so maybe this will be the time it happens.

The commute to camp has been made much nicer, this summer, by the set of Ultimate Ears SuperFi 5vi that I picked up when they went on super-sale at Amazon. Unfortunately, the cord busted on the first set, so I had to get myself another set, but Logitech customer service got back to me about my complaint and replaced the first set for free… in the meantime, the cord started to separate, right at the jack, on the second set. I put some electrical tape on there to hold it together until the replacement set came. I’m hoping they replace them as well. The foam tips are the most comfortable, but it makes me sad that they fall apart after a week and half or so. I think my ear canals are too small or something because all of the various sized silicone tips irritate my ears a bit and seem to wiggle their way out. The cord is obviously cheap on this model, both have broken and it makes lots of contact-noise when I’m walking around, but if I ever upgrade to something better, I might look into those custom ear-molded ones.

I’m also still playing the music on my commutes from my iPod. I was hoping to be just be carrying the Droid. I am carrying an extra battery for the phone, so I don’t have that excuse anymore, and it’s not that it’s not capable, but the lack of gapless playback (for those few albums that really need it) or built-in volume normalization (for regular shuffle) or a shuffle-by-album option (for when I feel like reconnecting with my albums, which is most of the time) makes me continue to carry my iPod. There are alternative music apps that attempt to solve these issues (at least the gapless and shuffle by album), but none puts it all together. I’m sure that future versions of Android will get these features in, especially if the rumors are true and they start using android as an OS for a media-player type device. Will these features make it in before I upgrade to a new phone?

I’ve found the phone very difficult to use this summer. I’m not sure if it’s just too humid at my mostly-outside job, or if I sweat too much (likely) but the touchscreen gets all freaked out and thinks it’s being touched all over the place and renders the phone useless until I clean it off… and even then, I can only get good response from it for a few seconds until it starts freaking out again. If I go somewhere cool and dry (air conditioned) and give it some time to recover… and give myself some time to recover and not be so sweaty … it works just fine. This wasn’t an issue at all in the Winter and Spring; It will probably affect when I decide to upgrade to a new phone. I’ll be eligible for a bit of a discount in early July, and that humidity will just be starting to bother me again. So whatever awesome android phone is available on July 06, 2011, you can pretty much bet that I’ll be buying one. If it continues to happen on the next phone I own, I’ll have to seal my phone in a ziploc bag all summer, or something.

I’m pretty sure I have a legitimate use for the wireless tether feature of the Droid. We’ve booked ourselves a few days at a cabin in Gatlinburg, TN, in late September. The rental policy said something about having “local Knoxville area access numbers…” Dial-up? Awesome. I don’t think I know anyone in the area (unless EJ is still around there, somewhere), so this one is going to be pure vacation, for me, and no attempting to visit friends/family. That stuff will have to wait until sometime around the holidays. It’ll be one of the longer roadtrips we’ve done in the past couple years, and I’m excited about that.

I’m also back to trains and other public transportation for the summer and have been listening to a lot of music (and Half-Blood Prince, lately, in preparation for the movie). I like how the commute in the summertime gives me a chance to reconnect with my music collection. I’d still love to replace my phone (which still turns itself off quite a bit) and my iPod and the GPS with one device… but I don’t know if I should wait for the Garmin phones to come out or just cave in and get an iPhone. So I’m still nursing my phone along and carrying both.

The wedding and trip out to Maine  was fun. I haven’t really had a chance to go through those pictures and pick out the best ones yet, but again, I’ll post a link, when I do. I don’t think I have another day off until camp is over… though, I may take a Saturday, next week or the week after. I’m LOVING my Macbook pro. I haven’t completely set myself up on it and decided what programs I’m going to use for photo work and web work to replace my windows favorites (Paint Shop Pro and Homesite 5.5). It’s an awesome piece of hardware, and I’ve already used it to do some stats work for adventure ed. and it was almost a pleasant experience. I’ve definitely gotten used to the trackpad and the multi-touch-ness.

I’m also eating a little healthier. When I’m picking out meals, I constantly think of the Dead Milkmen song “nutrition,” which is fun to hum, but it’s kind of a silly song. I’ll get more into the reasons for this sudden health-consciousness when I’ve completely wrapped my head around it.

Macbooks down in price! Great timing! Cheap upgrade to Snow Leopard, too! Now, convince me not to switch to AT&T and get an iPhone … or convince me to switch, turn-by-turn GPS was one of the things holding me back from the iPhone and I guess that’s not an issue for much longer. I need a reliable phone ASAP. I’d love to wait for an Android phone on Verizon, but the chances that Verizon will cripple its coolness (app store and free access to all of googleness) is almost guaranteed… or convince me to wait and risk a few weeks of camp with a phone that turns itself off a few times a day. If I go all apple on hardware, will I be tempted by the apple counterparts to the Google stuff I use and love?

Looking forward to a trip out east next week… hope Sarah and I can shake our weird ailments before then.

I don’t have a timeframe for the phone upgrade. I was waiting for the nuvifone, but there isn’t a release date for that yet, and the main reason I was leaning towards it was the GPS-centric nature of it. The word on the street is that the new iPhone OS will enable using the Google maps in other applications and allow turn-by-turn directions. I don’t know if I can go Apple in such a big way… but the iPhone does have great customer satisfaction ratings and such. My phone turned itself off three times, completely at random, on Thursday… it is definitely time for that upgrade, but it also might not happen until the summer.

I don’t know if it’s actually going to be an upgrade, but we’re supposed to switch from Dish to U-Verse next month. Our DSL is currently with AT&T, and it can’t even handle streaming Netflix movies… I don’t think we ordered any more speed, so it probably won’t change, but the girl who set up the install sure did try to convince us that it was a newer, better, more exclusive dsl line. As far as I’ve heard, U-Verse is just TV over DSL. It’s pretty likely that we’re actually trying to squeeze TV and the internet over the same pipe and actually downgrading. We shall see.

This site’s wordpress code is due for an upgrade, but I don’t have any desire to do that. All of my little plugins are working fine. Maybe, if I get a little more into tumblr/twitter/etc. after the phone/macbook upgrade, I’ll feel the need to tweak the code here to keep up with more mobile updates.

My car doesn’t need any upgrades… I guess Doug’s van is dead, though. We peeked at some craigslist ads for similar vehicles in our price range, but haven’t started actively looking at anything yet. I’ve been using the Sirius in my car much more often, lately. I got an eMail from Sirius and I was tempted to buy the latest portable radio while I can still “lock in” the current rates. Who knows if Sirius will survive? I’ve done my part to support them. I resisted the urge by telling myself that the radio I had put in my car works fine and I don’t need another portable music player… I like the idea of combining a couple devices, not adding one to carry around.

My camera also doesn’t need to be upgraded, but I haven’t used it much, lately. When I had time to be taking pictures, I was mostly playing video games. I’ll bring it along on the field trips for work and maybe that’ll respark my desire to shoot. Maybe a new toy would help… Or maybe I should get a Diana+ for myself, since it seems to be getting all the cool attachments and add-ons lately.

Upgrade fever is similar to Spring fever. All of our vacation planning is definitely keeping the typical spring fever symptoms at bay… unless vacation planning is a symptom of spring fever. Mom’s coming up during my spring break, we’ve got a family vacation planned for early June and a wedding back east in late June… and we’ve yet to pick out a show, but we plan to hit APT/Theater in the woods again this summer. I guess there are a few weeks between the team-building season and the camp season that I haven’t thought about, yet. There’s always video games…

I think this would be a good time to mention that I’ll be at Mom’s house the weekend after Christmas. Sarah and I will only there for a few days, but we might have a little bit of free time if anybody wants to get together.

Saturday, we spent the whole day in Mt Horeb, starting with breakfast at a great little place called Schubert’s. Then we took in the activities and sights of National Mustard Day. We didn’t actually participate in the activities or eat any mustard or mustard-themed food (Culver’s Mustard Custard?). But we did wander and take pictures and shop all the cute stores, including the gift-shop half of the Mustard Museum. Then we popped back into Schubert’s for milkshakes and rosettes. We also did some quick visits to the gift-shops of Little Norway and Cave of the Mounds. We bought some geodes. I’m not sure if we cracked them open yet. Then, after a little chillin’ at the motel, we got some yummy dinner at a place with a HUGE menu.

Sunday, we used the third part of our tickets to the House on the Rock tour. We did the other two parts last year. This was definitely the darkest part of the tour, but it was very cool… it started at the huge carousel and included the doll carousels, lots and lots of dollhouses and the amazing organ room. On the way home, we picked up some cheese and meat and ate at a Panera Bread rip-off called Atlanta Bread.

Pictures Here

It was nice to do a little road trip. I’ve been doing public transportation to work most of the summer and I’ve missed driving. I had kind of forgotten about the phenomenon that, back in high school, in the music groups that went on many trips, we called “bus head.” The theory was that sometime after two hours being enclosed in the same vehicle, something in your brain shut off. We found that it didn’t matter if it was a school bus or a nice comfy chartered bus or a van or even a car. Once you hit that point, you had “bus head.” We discussed it with our band director; It takes a long time to recover from “bus head.” We didn’t want to plan any trips with long rides and immediate performing, even if it meant leaving in the early morning. We needed at least two hours. We could unload equipment during those two hours, but we definitely couldn’t do any rehearsing or make any decisions or be expected to engage in any activities that involved a lot of thought.

Luckily, my drive to work usually stays just short of “bus head” inducing length, and the public transportation route involves changing from train to bus or “El” about halfway through. I actually drove a couple times this week. Wednesday, I got together with a couple guys, after camp, and played some music. I think it went pretty well, if it turns into something I will definitely let you all know. Thursday, we had our family night (that 60 inch TV was what my camp photos slideshow was being displayed on) and then some of the staff went to Whirlyball. I had no idea what Whirlyball was until I saw it. It’s kind of like like Jai Alai or Lacrosse, in bumper cars. It was fun.

One more week of camp left. This week includes a sleepover, possibly another trip to Eli’s cheesecake world, a visit to Independence grove and another cookout… so lots of excitement.

60 inches is big!

updates on recent trips and stuff, soon, I promise!

We’re going to see Step Brothers tonight with our recently engaged friends Jess and Jason. It looks like a typical Will Ferrel flick, which is usually a good take, and we used our $5 coupons from the opening night of Hancock… so it’s totally worth the price of admission, pretty much, no matter what.

Next weekend is our Theater in the Woods/Troll/etc weekend. I’ve definitely been looking forward to it. That also means that I have a four-day work week for camp… which is awesome. Not that camp’s hard, but it is a little draining. Only three weeks left, now. It also means that I get to do some more driving. Taking the metra/cta into work all summer has been fun, but I miss driving, and this should help make up for it. I guess I have to be more careful, now that I’m on my extended warranty. I didn’t know it was going to cost me a $100 deductible every time I needed something fixed for the next 50,000 miles.

In other news, I’ve found a new feed aggregator that I like: Swurl. It has a much more blog-like design, and the timeline feature is really neat. Here’s my swurl. I also got a new camera bag. The one that came with the Pentax owed me nothing, since it was, essentially, free… it finally got too beat up to be used, so I got a Crumpler 6 Million Dollar Home and it fits a lot of stuff.

Today, we took a drive up to Wisconsin. We stopped at the Jelly Belly factory on the way and picked up some candy. Our main draw up there was a couple breweries that make good root beers around Milwaukee. We managed to visit both of them and bought four cases of soda between them. We also ate at a great German place that had a very tasty Sauerbraten. We walked across the street and picked up a bunch of sausage and cheese.

And now, I’m feeling a little bit more tired than I think I should, given that it’s only 9.30… so it’s definitely not just camp that’s got me so exhausted.

Not driving a lot in the summer has put the new GPS device decision on hold… which is fine, since I can’t decide on a unit, now. XM NavTraffic is the clear choice for traffic service, but only older portable units have it, and I definitely don’t want to replace the head unit in the Mazda. Maybe by the time I’m driving a lot, again, another traffic service will have improved or NavTraffic will score some new portable placements.

I’m too tired to remember what else I wanted to blog about. Summer is already kicking in.

Getting utterly lost on the way there, due to our complete reliance on the unerring accuracy of printed out Google directions, made me realize that I really do benefit from the GPS. It’s time to get a unit in the car that’s mountable, unlike the cheesy little laptop. I added one with a good traffic system and a big screen to my Amazon wishlist. I’m unimpressed with MSN’s traffic system, on the laptop, but I’ve heard there are a couple new traffic monitoring systems coming out soon. We did chance upon a Cosi, though, so it wasn’t a total waste.

It’s nice to have my car back. I had to pay my deductible, but the Progressive dude seemed pretty sure that once he heard back from State Farm, that I’d get reimbursed pretty quickly. I got a nifty little keychain. It’s one of those classic, flat, rubbery ones. It’s a nice addition to my growing keychain collection. The place also did some serious cleaning of the interior. I was amazed.

I’m strongly considering using public transportation for camp this summer. I don’t need to carry a whole lot of equipment to camp everyday, and I’ve got my iPod and Nintendo DS for train/bus entertainment. I did some searching through transitchicago.com for routes from a couple of the Metra stations. The system is pretty darn cool, goes through Google maps and gives you alternate routes with approximate arrival times. Maybe I’ll try out a route or two next week, during camp training.

My headache disappeared sometime shortly after I got home yesterday. We put the tree up. The stand is a bazillion times better than those old overgrown ashtray with a retaining ring stands I remember from my childhood. Got a little tree sap on my arms and a lot on my hands. Getting it off my arms reminded me of the days at Camp when I was climbing evergreens for ropes course work almost everyday. I stopped wearing shorts and started wearing a long sleeve work shirt to avoid getting that stuff in the hair… it takes so much effort and/or so much really abrasive cleaners to remove it. Getting it off my hands was easy, but I’ve still got a couple little marks on my arm that I didn’t put enough effort into. The tree smells nice, though. I hope it lasts until Christmas, it doesn’t seem to be taking up as much water as I expected for the first day. It could just be a different kind of tree than I’m used to. Obviously, my “lottery tree” didn’t need water, and that’s all I’ve really dealt with for the past 6 years or so.

Back to the boring.

Yesterday, I visited Camp Foskett and Camp Elmwood and the Hockomock Teen Center. I’ll probably make some time to go out to Hockomock again next week, since Dawn and Rebecca were out at Leader’s School. It was good to see some old familiar faces still hanging around Foskett and nice to get a warm welcome from a lot of the staff and kids at Elmwood.

When I got home, Mom pointed out all the yard sale stuff and what her goals were for pre-sale day set up (after a small distraction by some local raccoons) and then we showed each other pictures of our recent adventures.

Today, with the help of Mark, we tore through a bunch of stuff in the garages and got a few aisles full of sellable stuff and tables to display it all on. We also went to Jimmy’s Pizza for lunch.

• help Mom with stuff for the Yard Sale
• visit Camp Foskett
• visit the Hock Teen Center & Camp Elmwood
• catch The Bangles @ the Woodstock Fair (sweet)
• take pictures @ the Woodstock Fair (hopefully better than theirs)
• see some Wormtown music (maybe a Wormtown Wednesday)
• hang out with whoever says they miss me

Northeast Stuff to acquire and bring home:

• Devil Dogs
• Peggy Lawton Cookies
• Coffee Syrup
• Moxie & other Polar Sodas
  

Find and bring home:

• folding chair with footrest
• last year’s Nalgene bottle with the good lid

Before I leave:

• make sure I have coverage at the Y
• get new sneakers
• load up iPod with audiobooks/new music
• get new iPod mount for car

What’d I forget?

Spent the night with the older campers at their big camp up North on Monday night. Did some normal camp stuff… lots of swimming, some archery, some s’mores, some staying up late and being obnoxious. It was a good time; bringing city kids out to the woods is always fun. The other male staff seemed more out of his element than any of the kids, though.

Last weekend was Six Flags with the discount from Sarah’s mom’s job, which was a lot of fun, even though we didn’t go for park completion by riding every big ride, like I’m used to doing. This coming weekend we’re going to a Renaissance Fair and I’ve got the whole weekend off from the Y… looking forward to a real day off.

My car went in yesterday for it’s 30k mile service, which was a tad expensive and forced me to take the train into the city for the first time. I had to catch a bus from the train station, and it took me some time to figure out that I’d gone completely the wrong way for my bus stop, but the experience was pretty good, overall. I could ride into the city if I had to. I still prefer driving, though.

I’ve got to do some decorating for the Parent’s night, but if I get some time off, some new photos might show up in the various online galleries.

Another fun week of camp… there some photos on Flickr and Zooomr (same shots). I enjoy the camp photographer role quite a bit. Next week’s trips include Lamb’s Farm and an Ice Cream Factory. Wee!

Spent July 3rd at the Taste of Chicago and stuck around in the record breaking crowds long enough to catch some fireworks. We all stayed at a hotel in the city that night and went swimming in their 19th story pool, the next morning.

Fish tank computer is going slowly. Booting off an external drive is proving more difficult than it seemed. It wouldn’t be an issue, except that I’m trying to preserve the Windows XP OS from the Gateway. I believe Linux would happily boot off a USB drive. I don’t think the machine is quite powerful enough to attempt OS X x86. I attempted a few portable XP installations, with no luck, and I think I’m going to give in and go eSATA instead. Otherwise, it’s in good shape. It runs, and the tray fits into the frame and acrylic piece that I cut to shape (which snapped into two pieces, but we’ll solve that with the silicone sealant). We decided that a blue light was necessary, so I picked one up, and then found that there are blue lights in one of the fans and the power button and the external hard drive enclosure. The machine might need a blue-themed name, when it gets finished.

The Serenity screening was very fun, it was definitely a different experience on a big screen. I knew the fan base was extreme and had obviously accomplished some great things, but the Done the Impossible documentary was pretty informative and really pointed out just how special they all are. We got a couple of Sarah’s friends hooked on the show and have been watching Firefly from the beginning with them.

So what have I been doing on my break?

Watching a lot of netflix movies and movies in the theaters. I watched From Dusk Till Dawn for the first time, and I think a couple other Robert Rodriguez flicks are in my queue. Saw Pirates 3 as well: not bad, but was lacking the cleverness of the first and the crazy chase scenes of the second.

Playing a lot of Super Paper Mario. I keep dying in the flopside pit of 100 trials… got all the way to the end last time and freaked out at the boss battle and messed up.

On the family front, my Aunt Rosemarie died. She was my Dad’s older sister. I wasn’t terribly close to her. She always seemed pretty kooky to me. I’m pretty sure she’s the only aunt who ever fit into that crazy old relative who gives you weird sloppy kisses category. The family’s talking about spreading her ashes, along with her husband’s, on the East coast… maybe sometime this summer.

Not much else is going on. Lots of relaxing, which is good. Threadless is having another one of those week-long sales where they release new shirts every day. If you’ve been waiting for the sale to pick up that clever shirt, now is the time.

Sarah’s got an interview at Calumet, this week. Think good thoughts, send her the good vibes, wish her luck… whatever your style is … much appreciated.