Archive for October, 2007

The Vegas

October 31st, 2007

I headed off to Las Vegas for the SEMA Show this past Monday morning (4am!) and it has been a busy week. I flew home the afternoon on Halloween to spend time with my family, and currently I am doing some blogging at Truckblog to get some of the news and photos out from the past few days. I’ll be flying back to Vegas in the morning to finish up the show Thursday & Friday, then heading back home for good on Saturday. What a week!

Above is a photo of my Truckblog Crew on Monday. From left to right is me, Jason, Mike, Jason (Frozie), Brian and Tami.

Comments

Soda, snacks, and iPods

October 30th, 2007

I’m staying at the Las Vegas Hilton this week for the SEMA Show, and down by the elevators they have the most amazing vending machine for Apple fanboys… BOOM! It’s an Apple vending machine. Chock full of iPods, cameras, headphones, cables, adapters… everything you might need in a pinch. They even have the latest toys, such as the iPod Nano, iPod Video, and iPod Touch. Check this out. Got any spare change?

Comments

, ,

Mac OS X Leopard delayed for good reason?

October 27th, 2007

I got this (finally) late this evening from Apple:

To Our Valued Apple Customer:

Dear Apple Customer,

Thank you for your recent order with Apple.

Due to local emergency conditions in your delivery area, our carriers are unable to deliver to the address listed on your order. As a result, your Apple shipment is currently being held at your local FedEx facility.

Understanding that you may need your order sooner than it can be delivered, Apple has teamed with FedEx to allow you to pick up your order at your local FedEx facility. To claim your package, you must have:

– The tracking number
– A valid photo ID with name and address that match the delivery name and address

Regular delivery service will resume once conditions allow.

Thank you for your business.
Apple, Inc.

That explains it, however there aren’t any fires at the airport, or downtown, or anywhere on the way to my house. In fact, all of the fires are nowhere close to San Diego proper. So what’s with the delays, really? If I had to guess, it’s because Apple dumped thousands of overnight packages on FedEx yesterday (Thurs) and overwhelmed their drivers. Nice going!

Comments

, ,

Wanna go for a swim?

October 26th, 2007

I finally (yes, I have been extremely busy!) got the chance to go outside today to check on the pool. Here’s what I found:

I cleaned it off, and the edges where the ash had built up on the tile wall. Hopefully the cleaner will do its job so we don’t have to drain the pool and get it acid-washed again like we did after the Cedar Fire 4 years ago!

Now that the Santa Ana winds have stopped, there’s a real good chance all the ash that has blown out to the West will come back East and land around here.  So, I’m holding off on doing any major ash cleanup around our yard (plants, concrete, etc.) for another week at least.

Comments

, ,

Project Bank Shot for SEMA 2007

October 25th, 2007

I just realized that I never showed my first major vehicle graphics project… probably because it took so long to do, and then I just got busy with a Ford trip to Michigan and the fires here in San Diego. Plus, I was scrambling last minute to get the plotter and the software to work so I could cut all of the vinyl for this monster truck.

Well, here it is, in all its glory. Took about 3 full days (over the period of a week) to apply the graphics. Thanks to Frozone and Brian for their help (and beer!) It goes to Las Vegas this weekend (Saturday, I believe) for the week-long SEMA Show event. The owner of the truck (a Ford Super Duty F-250 diesel) is Brian Olhausen, and he named it “Project Bank Shot” since his family is in the billiards business. On a related note, his house in Poway was spared from the fires, but the homes right next to him were destroyed.

I took these photos last Saturday. My goal was to grab some sunset shots near the coast, however the marine layer moved in too fast and spoiled that for us. The fires started the next day, ruining any possibility of getting more photos. I’ll take some more in Vegas or after we get back from the SEMA Show.

Hand-drawn sketch and measurements:

Computer mock-up:

Finished work:

There are a bunch more photos at Truckblog, and that gallery will be updated along the way.

Comments

, , , , , , ,

And You Can Too!

October 25th, 2007

My sister got me hooked on watching the The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central when I was up in Seattle and while I hate politics in general, I found the show amusing because it does nothing but poke fun at politics. What follows Stewart’s show is the Colbert Report. I got hooked on that show too. Recently Colbert announced he is running for President (with his goal to lose). Last weekend he was on “Meet The Press”. Here’s his appearance, part 1 & 2. It’s quite funny, if you have a few minutes to blow:

Comments

, , ,

San Diego Fires

October 23rd, 2007

OMG what a crazy few days. First, the fire started Sunday in East County and we kept a close watch on it, knowing that I had a Monday morning flight with Frozone to go to Michigan for a two-day Ford truck media event. We made the decision early Monday morning to go ahead with my trip, as it looked like the fire was going to avoid our neighborhood. Unfortunately soon after I arrived in Michigan, Krissy called to let me know that mandatory evacuations were announced. Since we just went through this exercise 4 years ago during the Cedar fire, she knew exactly what to pack into the truck and took off to her Aunt’s house with the girls and the dogs.

About 24 hours later (Tuesday afternoon), my family was allowed back to our house. No damage in the immediate area, and surprisingly there wasn’t much more ash here than before I left. The fires are still burning all around San Diego County, but thankfully, none that are close by. Everyone that I know in San Diego is safe, including friends in Poway and Romona; two areas that were hit hard.  All San Diego schools are closed this week for obvious reasons, mainly because of the poor air quality.

On the way to Michigan (Monday morning, 8:30am) I took a few photos from my window seat on the plane (see below). On the way home tonight we could see fires still burning from the air, but nothing impressive enough for a photo.

Click photos to enlarge:

Comments

, ,

zunePhone Advertisement

October 15th, 2007

Kathy sent this one to me… pretty funny for you Microsoft bashers out there.

Comments

,

Boost your WiFi signal using foil

October 12th, 2007

Check this out. Create this simple “EZ parabolic reflector template” out of aluminum foil and some paper and give your router a ridiculous signal boost. I haven’t tired it, since the freeantennas.com website appears to be down at the moment.

Check out this Lifehacker site for more tips.

Comments

, , ,

New plotter arrives

October 11th, 2007

With Brian’s huge SEMA vehicle decal project I have this weekend I couldn’t do the job with my 8 year old Roland Stika SX-12 10″ plotter. While it’s done a great job over the years, its time has come to be replaced by something bigger. Since Mike wasn’t using our 24″ plotter in Houston, he shipped it to me. It’s a behemoth 24″ GCC Bobcat plotter that’s basically brand new. Here’s a shot of it with my old Roland Stika cutter sitting on top for size comparison. There’s also a photo of it after the break (barely) sitting on my desk. The stand arrives tomorrow, which will replace the current (sweet) box stand.

(more…)

Comments

, , , ,

Google acquires Jaiku. eBay to buy Twitter?

October 10th, 2007

Now that Google has acquired Jaiku, what does that mean for the even more popular mini-blogging SMS service, Twitter? Well, first I’m surprised that Google acquired Jaiku and not Twitter. I don’t know anyone that uses Jaiku, even though I have mashed it into Runner+. Kind of an odd purchase, actually. So that leaves Twitter open to acquisition.

What about eBay? eBay bought Skype back in 2005 for 2.5 billion, so why not scoop up Twitter for a few poultry million and integrate Twitter in with Skype’s 8+ million users? Then take it another step further and mash Twitter into eBay itself?

Even though Twitter is the best mini-blogging SMS service out there, I’m still frequently annoyed with its downtime and unreliability. It is a service that I’ve always wanted to create on my own, as it’s a fairly simple web application, but I just haven’t had the time.

Comments

, , , , ,

Tis the season to irritate your dog

October 9th, 2007

Krissy forwarded a forwarded X 100 email to me and this one is worth sharing. Time to get your pets ready for Halloween!

More…

(more…)

Comments

,

Quick Disneyland trip

October 7th, 2007

We made an unexpected trip up to Disneyland today, mainly because I found someone who wanted my old 300C exhaust and since I couldn’t find anyone to buy it, I found someone who wanted to trade me for it. Plus, our annual Disneyland passes are still good so it doesn’t cost us anything to get into the park.

He lives in L.A. so we met him at Disneyland before we entered the park. I gave him the exhaust and he gave me his 2-week-old 80GB iPod Classic (the new one that just came out). It’s in excellent condition, and I’m currently filling it up with 30+ GB of music.

We spent the day at Disneyland and it was hot (about 85F) and had a really fun time. We’ve never gone during the month of October, so it was fun to see all of the Halloween decorations they had up.

Here’s a funny pic of Mel and I on our favorite ride, Space Mountain. Tip: ride in the front (wait for it if you have to), it’s 100% better being in the front!  Click the photo for a larger version.

Comments

, ,

Don’t jump on slides

October 4th, 2007

Thanks to cdharrison for this one. I can imagine a few kids I know doing this.

Comments

, ,

Verizon’s LG Voyager an iPhone killer?

October 4th, 2007

This week Verizon announced several new phones and one of them is very iPhone-like. Check out this video of this dude demonstrating the new LG Voyager with touch screen, due out next month.

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play

Comments

, , ,

« Previous Entries