Snowmageddon 2011

Overnight there's been two feet of snow. Yeah, that's a lot! I've never seen this much snow in my lifetime and I am sincerely thankful that I have nowhere to go or nothing to do today, so Lilly and I are going to sit at home and surf the Internet.

Her paws actually do work on the trackpad. She doesn't really like computers though. Just naps, bones, water, and playing tug of war.

Here are some other pictures of the snow which is piling higher and higher by the minute.

The snow is already up to the bottom of the merry go round which is about 2 ft off of the ground.

 

This is our AC unit and our grill, both which look like they have teenie tiny mattresses on the top of them.

The weather said we could have up to three or even four feet of snow by the time this is over. Insane.

48 Hours in St. Louis

Out of all the times I've ever flown, I've never been delayed until yesterday. And it happened twice. Once while sitting in the airport and once while we sat in the airplane waiting to take off. Still, after being delayed for 50 minutes, the plane was only a little late. We got off the plane (after they finally managed to get the jet bridge out to us) at around 7 and my boarding time was 7:25. I still ran... A big mistake as my lungs were burning for almost an hour and I felt like I was going to pass out. I made it to the gate in time and still had about 20 minutes to sit around before we boarded the plane. I felt like an idiot as I sat there huffing and weezing. I'm sure the people around me were staring, but I felt like I was going to die, so I didn't really care.

I didn't really get a cache to eat real food yesterday, and I didn't manage to sleep but for about two hours the night before, so when I arrived in St. Louis  all I could think about was eating and sleeping. We came home and I ate about a pound of pasta that some friends of the family had brought over because it was super delicious. 

After the feast, I brought Fast Food Nation, a movie from Netflix, and we watched that. One of those movies that is so overbearingly political, making that same political statements over and over and over again, that you almost want to scream "OK, ENOUGH!" by the time it's over. Besides that, gratuitous violence, constant profanity, and soft core porno, the movie was pretty decent. Maybe it was such a big disappointment because we thought we were renting a documentary. Oh well, at least we didn't pay movie theater prices to see it. Thank you Netflix.

This morning I wanted to capture "the Tacet game" on video and I had to do a little instigating to get it done. 

Here's an explanation of what you're about to watch. Lilly (our dog, the smaller Bassett Hound) likes to pester the beast, Tacet (the much larger and completely blind Bassett Hound). The method by which she accomplishes this is quite hilarious. Lilly will sneak up on Tacet (either from the front or the rear, it doesn't matter because Tacet is completely blind) and bark at her to get her riled up. Tacet will then chase her around the two recliners in the middle of the living room barking and snipping at her the whole way. This video only shows a small Tacet Game session (only started because I got Lilly all stirred up by fighting with her and waiting until Tacet lumbered by and pushed Lilly towards Tacet.) Enjoy. 

http://db.tt/1kDmSnV 

The time here in St Louis will end on Christmas evening when I fly home. I hate traveling, especially on Christmas, but that's retail for ya. At least I'm flying instead of driving. 

It could always be worse. I could still be working Best Buy. Lol.

Modern Day Muppets

Sometimes you have a dream that you have to write down. Sometimes you have a dream that's funny in kind of a good idea kind of way. This was one of those dreams.

Don't ask me how I was thinking of Muppets, I really don't know. I guess I was thinking of them today and they ended up in my dream. Thanks Freud.

Anyways, I dreamt of a Muppets remake that takes place in the modern day where the Muppets deal with modern issues. More on this in a minute.

Just fyi, I'm going to edit a little for clarity's sake... you know how dreams can be slightly disjointed sometimes.

It started in first person (I guess I was a Muppet or a character in the show) but all the Muppets are called to some sort of reunion at this huge mansion of a house. I get there first and start exploring this humongous house. There's at least 30 rooms and 4-5 stories. Then I hear the front door open and close. Then I hear a familiar voice echoing through the empty house, "A-NI-MAL!! A-NI-MAL!!".

I begin chasing the flurry of footsteps through all the different floors of the house trying to catch Animal before he somehow wrecks a completely empty house.

Night falls and I go to flip the light switch (still not having found Animal) and none of the lights will turn on.

Suddenly the front door of the house opens and shuts again, and I hear a familiar voice once again float through the house "Helloooooo?! Is anyone in here?"

I run to the front door so I can at least keep tabs on one of them and Gonzo has already discovered both of my predicaments.

He has an idea.

We proceed outside to the side of the house to "plug in the house". Apparently, as Gonzo tells me, he's recently stepped away from his job as an IT phone support agent and this (plugging it in) is always the first step to try.

"Even on a house?" I say. "Even on a house." he replies.

We proceed to the side of the house where, sure enough, a GIANT plug is laying on the ground. It's unplugged from the GIANT outlet in the side of the house and Gonzo says "THERE'S your problem!"

We hear a knocking on the door and proceed to the door of the house to greet our new guests. We round the side of the house and I'm so startled I almost wake up from my dream because Animal is standing right there and he screams "PATRICK STEWART AND JONATHAN FRAKES ARE HEEEEERRRREEEE!!!"

I'm getting really weirded out at this point and pretty much know I'm dreaming, so I just go with it.

One of those weird dream blur thing happens (when time passes and you don't know why or what goes on). Suddenly Animal, Gonzo, Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes and I are sitting in the parking lot of this huge house on a circle lawn chairs talking about the show and ideas for it.

I was thinking Leo was going to be there to and say "We need to go deeper!"

I'm glad he didn't because at this point I was already really confused.

A) Why would Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes be here? Are they helping with production of the show? Are they starring in the show? Did they just hear that all the muppets were getting together and decide to show up?

B) Why are all of us suddenly talking about a show that I thought we were in already? I guess that's how dreams work sometimes. They don't always make sense, they just happen.

The last part of the dream was spent talking about ideas for the show. Different modern scenarios the Muppets can get into and funny things they can do like buying a computer and discovering the internet.

Then the awesomeness of the dream wakes me up and I decided to write it down and share it with the world. I really wish I had the means to turn it into a web comic or a web show or something, I have a bunch of ideas already.

Me and my crazy brain.

CR-48 - Chapter 1 - Anticipation and Arrival

Today was a day of anticipation waiting on the CR-48 to arrive. I've never been one to be anxious, and for that I am thankful, because I was able to find many things to keep me occupied while I waited on it to show up. No matter what I was doing, I still found myself refreshing the UPS tracking page about once every 10 minutes. Even once I got to work around 2:30, I instantly put the link to the tracking page on my computer and checked it  habitually throughout the day.

Sure enough, the last time I checked it before lunch time, it said delivered. I felt the same anticipation akin to that of Christmas morning as I picked up the phone to call my wife and asked her if she was home. Sure enough, she was and had already put it inside. The last thing I wanted was to get home, open the box and find the computers LCD frozen solid. That would be bad.

The thing I was the most grateful for was when she said she hadn't opened it. I am one of those people who LOVES the unboxing moment, like I'm sure a lot of you gadget-heads out there understand.

When I got home close to 1 am, I managed to change into comfy clothes, let the dog out, go to the bathroom, hang up my clothes and jacket all before tearing into the box and being astonished by many things. (I totally would have taken pictures or a video or something, but my phone was completely dead and wouldn't let me, and at that point, the excitement took over and it was open in the blink of an eye.)

Anyways, the things that astonished me were:
1) How thin and light this thing is. It really is a netbook with a big screen.
2) How bright and clear the screen is. Really pleased with the screen.
3) The texture of it. It's a rubberish kind of plastic. Very very cool.
4) How quiet it is. Almost totally silent.
5) The speakers are WAY better than I thought they would be. The slick, integrated Grooveshark app helps me test that :-)
6) The speediness of the internet overall, app installs, and the fluid integration of all of it together. Feels just like the Chrome I'm used to (a very, very good thing).

There's a ton of cool stuff about this thing. Probably the coolest thing is that I'm one of the first thousand or so in the entire world to give this a go. Also the fact that the next revolution in computing might be sitting on my lap.

Any negatives? Yeah, a couple, but nothing huge.

I'm quite used to the Mac multi-touch, so the fact that I can't do my normal leave-one-finger-on-the-trackpad-and-click-with-it-while-scrolling-with-the-other thing is kind of a bummer, but "tap to click" is enabled by default. Werd.

Yes, I realize this is a free netbook but the webcam is kind of junky. Yet to see if it's good enough for gchat or not. I'm sure it is.

So the biggest question is going to be which am I going to use more: iPad or CR-48? That is yet to be determined. I know it won't make my wife too happy if my Christmas present and new love is quickly thrown to the curb from a freebie netbook. Can't see that happening quite yet, but only time will tell.

I guess the biggest thing I worry about is the "big-brotherness" of all of it. Is someone from Google reading these words right now, even before I post this? I doubt it. I have faith in them that even if they can read this before I post it (and any of the stuff I don't put out there for the world to see) that they'll use it for good and not evil. I guess there's another thing where only time can tell.

Cr-48!!!

My wife told me she was confused with my most recent facebook status update, and being that it was sent through twitter, I only had 140 characters to speak my mind.

Here's a more detailed description of how this came about and what it means:

One of my facebook friends sent me a message that said something like "i see you're getting a chrome notebook, congrats, I'm jealous."

So I messaged him back and asked him how he found out. It's kind of cool, but in a scary way.

There's a tracker for the 60,000 netbooks that google is sending out on the Internet (more about why this is a big deal on this site here) My friend sees there's one bound for our zip code and calls UPS to see the name on it. They give him my name.

I am a little bothered by them giving out my full name. I should be glad they didn't give out my address or anything. But still, I don't think companies should give out any information about any customers, regardless of who is asking.

I'm not going to raise a big fuss about it, but just thought it should be known that UPS will give out your full name if anyone calls and has only a tracking number.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Was really glad that I didn't have to get out in the snow today and I had the day off to let my brain reset a little bit.

We were supposed to have some sort of Christmas performance at the church tonight, but it was cancelled due to the copious amounts of lake effect snow that are falling on Michiana as we speak.

So that gave me a chance to watch the first LOTR movie again. I've wanted to re-watch all of them for the longest time since I know there's tons of stuff that I've missed the first ten times and the stuff I dint remember from the other times. Such as the tests that Frodo puts the others through to see if they're really on his side. All three of this movies are some of my favorite movies in existence.

Now Mythbusters is on and so is the Christmas tree. This has been a good day and it continues to get better.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

New Place

The past three weeks have been really, really crazy. I have said I would keep this blog more up to date, but that hasn't really happened.

There are a bunch of reasons these have been an insane past few weeks:

1) My new career at Apple is totally awesome. We have an incredible group of people that are doing some incredible things for our customers. At the same time, there are many learning opportunities that have presented themselves in unpredictable ways. Every day is anew opportunity to learn more about ourselves, our team, and our customers. Every day is a new adventure and I'm absolutely loving it! I never thought I would find a place that really look forward to going every day, much less to work. This whole new experience is teaching me how reliable and dependable my teammates are and how much of a contribution I can be to changing people's lives for the better.

2) A couple of weeks ago, my wife got a call from her mom late one night and told us we needed to come to St Louis right away. Eve's dad was going into surgery. The surgeon said it was a very risky surgery and there's a chance he might not make it through. We left Mishawaka at 10 pm and arrived in SL around 3 am. We went straight to the hospital. Needless to say, it was a long and emotional night/morning. In stayed in St Louis for a few days and ended up having to miss Black Friday at Apple. I'm just glad I was able to be there for Eve and her mom and help out during such a stressful time, and thanksgiving dinner at Aunt Lorraine's was absolutely awesome, too.

3) We've somehow managed to move across town to our new place in Mishawaka! With the help of Skyler from Time Flies Errand Services (www.timeflies365.com), we got everything moved over to the new place and are still in the process of sorting out what's where. There's less space, but it's closer to my work and very very close to all the shopping which Eve is loving. It's a little bit more of a drive for her to get to work, but that's just one of the many reasons I love my wife, she's always willing to make a little bit of a sacrifice for me.

Please keep us in your prayers this holiday season as we squeeze in flights to see far away family and continue to unpack and sort out our stuff in our new home.

If you're interested in seeing a video tour of our new place, email me and I'll send you the link.

Happy Holidays from the Flowers'

Location:Travers Ct,Mishawaka,United States