Click here to view the embedded video.

Only in Chicago can would you find such a fine establishment

This kid is fucking incredible!

I got to get out and ride some single track on my single speed. I even got to ride a trail with my wife this past Sunday. We drove over to Brice Creek, which is about 50 minutes or so from the house… about 25 miles or so east of Cottage Grove, OR in the Umpqua National Forest. What a beautiful canyon. Lush dark green forest with a canopy of old grove Douglas Fir.

Something i’ve been wanting to do is mess around with some video editing with mountain bike footage. Being the cheap skate and not wanting to drop the coin on a helmet cam,  I created a quick, cheap and simple mount for my Sony Cool Pix digital camera to shoot some video of our ride up Brice Creek. Once we got home I started messing around with Microsoft Movie Maker and published a quick video with music in under an hour.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Being the camera was mountained on my handle bars… its pretty shaky at some points…. especially when I started going fast.

My mom took the Amtrak from Chicago to Eugene last week and is staying through the end of the month. When she leaves she’s heading to see my sister in Arkansas but unfortunately the train doesn’t take her where she needs to go.

We looked on Orbitz this morning a little bit and found something funny. We searched a ticket from PDX to XNA.. the itinerary came back with a 2 stop flight… Portland to Eugene to Denver to Fayetteville = 201 with taxes & fees. Now here’s the funny part.. we’re in Eugene so we figure hey save the drive and the emissions and all that.. If she were to book out of Eugene the ticket is like $30 more.  I don’t get it.

Anyway, if you’re traveling soon maybe there’s a deal here for you too.

So Obama wants to re-write the tax code to make filing taxes simpler.

“For too long, we’ve seen taxes used as a wedge to scare people into supporting policies that increased the burden on working people instead of helping them live their dreams,” Obama said. “That has to change, and that’s the work that we’ve begun.”

Oh… it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.. BARF!

Simpler… right… simpler to take our money. Make it easier to say across the board I we want half and here is what we’ll allow you to deduct! Most likely making sure they (the government) get more of our hard earned money.

Just more smoke and mirrors.

It appears the plugin is installed, configured properly and successfully logged into to Facebook.  The test comes once I actually post a comment… I’ll be trying that next

Later on we bought a Maya Wrap when Jaden was a year and half.  When our second child (Nathanael) was born he caught RSV and spent 11 days in San Francisco Childrens Hospital… the Maya Wrap was my savior.. I wore Jaden (29mos)  all over SF.  We still have the Maya and use it daily with Annie (our third). I like the Maya at night when putting her to sleep because I can easily sit in the recliner and let her sleep in the sling.

But our latest and probably my favorite is our new ERGO Baby Carrier. Annie has been sick these last few days and the ERGO has been great because she likes to sleep upright due to nasal congestion.  The other night Carrie had the ERGO in the car and I had wear Annie in the Maya Wrap for a long time and it really started to strain my neck and shoulder.

The moral of this post is that there are some cool baby carriers that even dads will like, that aren’t girly and that are very comfortable.

Last year I leased a Dell Vostro 1500. Since the day I got it, it would randomly crash. After having it a month or so I finallly called support, they ran a bunch of diagnostics and they  tell me I have to run the repair process on the operating system, and if that doesn’t fix the issue then I have to reinstall the OS.

Great.. so I back everything up, run the repair.. no dice.. still locks up randomly. Do the repair a couple more times and still having issues. SO I finally get around to reinstalling the OS this past January and my problem still isn’t fixed.

The one year anniversary for my Vostro 1500 just came up so I decided to contact support again and try and fix the issue. More diagnostic tests and nothing turns up. 15 minutes on hold and my knowledgable tech comes back and says lets reseat the hard drive and remove 1 GB of RAM to determine if one of these items fixes the problem.  

So I run the laptop for 36hrs on 1 of the 2GB of RAM and it seems fine n0 crashes. I call support and now I get the run around. Now they want me to swap RAM sticks which means I have to pull the keyboard and more. 

I kindly tell the  tech that “Unless you want to pay me my hourly rate of $60 an hour I am NOT removing the keyboard to swap out RAM”. More run-around I finally tell the tech.. “look, I’m obviously not getting anywhere with you so I’ll call back later.” 

An hour later the computer crashes.. go figure. 

Finally Friday morning I call support for the 5th time… give her the run down of the whole situation dating back to May of 2008  (because almost nothing is documented) and 45 minutes later.. I’m getting a new motherboard, hard drive and 2 new sticks of RAM.

Wouldn’t it just be easier & cheaper to give me a new computer?