Apple’s New Shuffle … Loosing sight of reality?

I doubt I’m the first to say this but Frankly I don’t even know when the shuffle was announced. I just stumbled on it today and while I like the mini-ness of it I think there is a serious issue.

Portable music players, since the original Walkman, have always come with headphones. I’ve always expected them to be crap and never have I been disappointed in that. In the past, they were a thin metal headband and scratchy foam cover, now you can expect a hard plastic in-ear set that leaves a lot to be desired. Over the recent years I’ve settled on Sony’s relatively in-expensive in-ear buds. They are comfortable, with a rubber surround and have good sound quality. I have a set of the headphones that came with the iPod Nano and they are the typical garbage. Apples standard headphones are made of hard plastic and hurt my ears after less than an hour of listening so when I bought my iPhone I didn’t even take the headphones out of the box.

Now though, we come to the point of my ranting. The iPod shuffle has no buttons on it. None, nada, zilch, zero. So in order to control the volume, or even skip a song you MUST use Apple’s P.O.S. headphones. If you loose the headphones that came with your shuffle, or they break, you’re going to be out $30 to get a new set. That’s nearly half the cost of a new Shuffle people.

“But Kyle, Apple has better ones you would like”. They do, your right, but they are $80, the same cost as the device. Personally, I have a tough time spending $35 on the set I like, $80 is too much.

The whole thing reminds me of this very old Foxtrot comic. Before the advent of USB drives and wide spread email. Floppy disks were THE way to move data from one place to another.

Apple, I’m sure you thought this through and have a plan. But I wont be buying it, nor do I recomend it to anybody.

myPod

I am now an official Apple product owner. Last Christmas, I bought an iPod Nano for Kerry and this year, her parents got her an iPod Touch, leaving the iPod Nano in my hands

When the iPod originally came out I had a lot to say against it, however of the years and generations, Apple has made changes in all the right directions. Battery life was one of my biggest concerns with the original iPod. I don’t mean the time between charges, but the overall life of the battery sucked and from what I understood was not covered under the warranty (although I can’t find any evidence of that now). But battery technology has made leaps and bounds in the past 5 years and while the battery in my iPod Nano isn’t technically “user-replaceable” its not impossible to do with some know how.

I had, and still do to some extent have a gripe with the price. Since this particular iPod was sort-of free. But there are some things the iPod has that justify the price. The internal memory seems to be really high quality and fast, which is a nice plus. I’ve owned a couple creative devices and transfer times (particularly of encrypted content) were horrendous.

So far it’s one of my favorite Christmas presents, and it’s inspired me to do some cleanup of the 35Gb of digital music I’ve had lying around, removing the crap I dont own or listen to and organizing all my data.

Vista on an Apple

In January of 2006 I first heard of the availability of getting Windows Mobile on the Palm Treo. Now it doesn’t seem that surprising, but at the time It took me aback. Part of that post, I jokingly said that someday Vista will be available on an Apple. While you can’t actually order an apple from their website with Vista, the newest version of Bootcamp (which didn’t even release in beta until April of 2006, if there were announcements earlier than that, I never heard them) supports running Windows Vista on any current Apple.

Forbidden Fruit

Probably the only thing stopping me is that this apple isn’t $0.59 / lb.

Delayed Christmas Writings

I feel kind of bad that I have been slacking so much on keeping you up to date on things. Chadd on the other hand has been doing an awesome job, so hopefully he doesn’t mind if I yoink chunks of his posts to quickly write mine.

I had four Christmases this year, first a week before the actuall Christmas with the Klaus family (My Dad’s side, obviously), one evening with my roomates and then I spent Christmas day with both my Mom’s side of the family, and Kerry’s family.

Klaus Family Christmas (12-16-06)

Christmas is just a week away, and every year the Klaus family (my Dad’s side) gets together to exchange gifts, stockings, eat and, any time you get a Klaus group together, play cards. This year it was at my cousin’s new house in Sacramento. Jason did most of the cooking, with some help from Angela doing the dessert (a very tasty dessert I might add).

While we waited for the stuffed meatballs to cook (also very good, and very filling), we handed out stockings. One thing that my Dad got in his stocking was a bag of army men, and let me tell you, give my Dad the right toys, and he’ll turn into a kid again.

From the stockings, we all went to the table when the food was ready. For dinner we had a plate of two Lingonberry Stuffed Meatballs on Terragon and Sweet Pea Puree layered over Truffled Garlic Mashed Potatoes. Most people couldn’t finish eating both meatballs, but every agreed that it was very good. For our dessert that evening we had Lemon Brown Sugar Bread Pudding. It was more bread than pudding; something that you could eat with a fork.

-Chadd

We did a fun gift exchange this year, basically a white elephant exchange but with a $40 budget per person, and thus, more interesting gifts. I opened a shop vac, which then got stolen, so I stole an ice cream maker. When Chadd’s gift got stolen, he in turn took my ice cream maker and I ended the night with a really nice crock pot.

In all it was a fun time, and it is always nice to see some of the family that I dont get a chance to see all of them all the time.

Roomate Christmas (12-22-06)

We had a nice little thing at our house for Christmas with the roomates, as well as Kerry and Candice. If I had realized that Cody and Becca were going to be gone, I would have done it at a diffrent time and had them over too, my bad.

Anyway, I decided I really wanted to make it something to remember, so I scoured the internet (not really, google is awesome) for the recipie to that dinner that Jason had made above. And wouldn’t you know, its really not all that hard to make. For those of you interested:

Lingonberry Stuffed Meatballs Recipe
Tarragon and Sweet Pea Puree Recipe
Truffled Mashed Potatoes Recipe

I got a chance to use my new crock pot as well, filled it with a gallon of Apple Cider which was almost gone by the time the night was over.

I’m really quite proud of how it all came out in the end, a really nice dinner with some good wine, good friends and lots of laughter.

Blanchard Christmas (12-25-06)

Every year the location that we will all go to for Christmas alternates between my Grandparents’ house and my Parents’ house. This year it happened to be at my Grandparents’. On Christmas Eve, we pack all the presents under our tree at home into as few cars as we can manage, and head up to my Grandparents’ house. Now, I’ve always thought it is cool that I can say honestly, “over a river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house I go.” Sure, it may only be a small creek, and trees are probably not packed close enough for some people to classify them as woods, but it’s close enough for me.

Once we arrive, we make several trips to and from the house with armfuls of gifts. We take these presents and pile them around the tree. The tree ends up with about a three foot radius of presents around it.

…

After some snacks were munched on, and a game of magic was played with my cousin, I ventured back into the main part of the house to find a (practically) family tradition being played on the table. Every time we get enough people together from my mom’s side of the family, we break out the Rummikube game. Vaguely similar to Rummy played with cards [that my Dad's side of the family seems to play religiously], only this game is played with tiles, and there are a few differences in how you are allowed to play tiles.

After Keith arrived carrying the rest of the Playstation 2 that I left at home, we plugged it all in and started up Guitar Hero. Unfortunately, we only had one guitar controller, so we had to take turns playing. I did manage to make Kyle look somewhat like a rock star in this photo.

Kerry had come up with me to visit with my family, but she wanted to be with her family, and particuarly in her bed (since she had been house sitting for a few days prior) for christmas, so I took her home around 10PM. Unfortunatly, I was tired too and laid down on the bed and ended up falling asleep for a few hours. I didn’t make it back up to my grandparents until just after midnight and had to move around by flashlight to get to bed.

People started moving stirring about at around 7 in the morning. When everyone was inside the house (some slept in the motor home outside) we started handing out stockings. After we all sifted through our stockings, we started to open up gifts (here are some of the pictures). Kyle left after opening presents to bring Kerry up so that she could open hers. Kyle almost missed his favorite meal. We had delicious biscuits and gravy (I had jam instead, not a big fan of the gravy) for breakfast.

After we all played around with our new toys and other gizmos and gadgets, we ate [an early] dinner. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy; can’t beat a great combination like that. Afterwards, we had to try to gather up everything and stuff it all back into the car. This time we had an extra person to ride in the car since Meghann had to leave to go spend time with her family, taking her car (and Keith’s ride there) with her.

All in all, it was a great Christmas, and it was nice to see some of my cousins again. Next year should be at my parents’ house, and if this moving out thing goes according to plan, it should be quite fun.

Bosch Christmas (12-25-06)

After leaving my grandparents house, Kerry and I headed back to her house to enjoy the rest of the evening with her family. Liz made a wonderfull dinner. I had Lamb for I think the first time. It had a very familiar taste, but I can’t think of any other time I would have had it. The best part though was Desert. Liz makes this thing called a Pepermint Crisp Tart. I dont really know what all is in it, but its delicious.

Kerry and I left her house not to long after dinner to go back down to my house where we tried to watch Batman Begins in High Definition (Both the movie and player were christmas gifts), however with my serious lack of sleep and a busy day, I couldn’t stay awake.

The Flight (Disney Day 1)

Nick was kind enough to drive us to the airport late Saturday night. Our flight was an eye blistering 12:30am departure, and didn’t make it into Orlando until around 11am with a nice convenient stop in Houston at 8am. Needless to say, by the time we got to our hotel, I was beat. Although I slept for a majority of the flight, I didn’t sleep well. When we got in, we took a rather expensive cab ride from he airport to our hotel ($60), and bought our 6-day park hopper Disney pass.

The guy in the hotel who was “helping” us with our purchases also set up a car rental for us at what seamed like an awesome price. Turns out the guy was an idiot, or a sneak. The car rental was going to end up being twice what he told us (nearly $400 for the week) so we ended up passing on that (which meant we had no way to get to the park the first day, since we had missed the last shuttle). So we took the rest of the day to eat and catch up on sleep. We walked down to really the only place worth walking to, “Bob Evans” which was basically another Denny’s or IHOP. I had a really good (and huge) meal of biscuits and gravy, as well as an apple pie desert. After eating we all went back to the room and slept for a good four hours, and then it was time to get up and eat again. This time, we just went to the 7-11 across the street for some 2 for $2 hot dogs and other miscellaneous snacks and drinks.

In all it was a complete waste of the day, which none of us really wanted to do, but because the hotel wasn’t really what they claimed, it was what we were forced to do. We thought we would be able to get to the park, when in reality it was a good 15 min drive from the hotel, despite their claim of being “1-mile away”. But it did get all of us rested for the rest of our trip, and an early start the next day.

Securing the WCG200 Wireless Access Point

When you are being chased by a lion, you do not have to out run the lion, you need only to out run the antelope in front of you.

I’m sure you’ve heard a joke similar to this at some point in your life, and I think its a good synonym to security (in all facets, not just computers). Your goal, when trying to secure something, is to make so the would-be thief, or hacker decides you are not the easiest target, and moves on to an easier one.

This guide, is in my opinion a marriage between simplicity of use, and high level security. There are more secure ways to do this, but they come at a cost of being difficult to manage. As well, while the step-by-step instructions are written for the Linksys WCG200 cable gateway, the concepts are applicable to any consumer level, or small business wireless access point.

Alright… you read? Lets go…

My approach to securing a wireless access point involves 3 separate security measures, all working together to keep your bits and bytes off somebody else’s hard drive. Think of it like the questions from The Holy Grail. Any hacker must overcome all 3 measures, independently, in order to gain access.

Here is how you can picture these security measures working together to keep your information, and connection safe. Imagine you are a person, wanting to get into a club. The club is the internet. The very first thing you have to do is find the front door. Its hidden. You have to know where it is, and what combination of bricks to push in order to open it (this is the hidden SSID security). Once you get inside the front door, the bouncer asks for your name, and checks if its on the list before he’ll let you talk to the guy behind him (This is the MAC filtering). Once you get past Bruno the bouncer, you have to talk to the guy behind him to ask for anything from the club, but he doesn’t speak any language you know. You have to use your special translator device to translate anything you say into something he can understand. If you don’t have the right translator, you wont be able to talk to him, also, anybody overhearing your conversation wont be able to understand it either unless they have the same translator (this is WEP encryption).

The security of your network will be based on Something you Know (the SSID), Being Known (MAC filter), and Something you have (WEP Key)

So lets start with the easiest, and usually most overlooked security measure of all. Change the locks. When I see a wireless network named Linksys, Netgear, D-Link or some other brand name it usually means that the person who setup the network didn’t do anything except plug in the box. So the very first thing you should do is log into your device, change the username (if you can), password, and network name. Specifically on the WCG200:

I recommend you grab a network wire, and actually plug your laptop/computer into the router, otherwise when we get to the steps that involve configuring the wireless stuff, you wont be constantly having to change your wireless settings on your laptop.

1. So first, get an ethernet wire and plug in your laptop/computer directly to one of the lan ports on the device. Which one in particular you use doesn’t matter. You should have been provided in the box with the gateway, an ethernet wire that you can use for this.
2. Now, we need to get logged into the device. So open up your favorite web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox etc). And assuming you haven’t already changed any of the settings enter the Gateway’s default IP address of 192.168.0.1 in the address bar and press enter.
3. A password request page will appear. Leave the User Name blank, and enter admin (the default password) in the Password field and click the OK button.
4. There should be 7 main tabs across the top of the page once you get logged in. First things first, lets change that password.
5. Click on the Administration tab, and you’ll see another list of sub-tabs appear under the main tabs once the page loads. We want to be on the Security tab (which should be what you go to by default).
6. Find the Gateway Password box, and change the password to something besides admin. This password is your last line of defense against a hacker, so make it good but don’t forget it.
   • While its generally not recommended to write passwords down, this one may not get used often, and you will probably forget it. So choose a good strong password that is unique for just this device (read this guide here for help in creating strong passwords). And write it down either in the manual for the device, or actually write it on a sticker and place it on the under side of your device. If somebody has physical access to your router, its not really going to matter how strong your password is anyway.
   • Enter the password in both the Gateway Password box, and the Re-enter to confirm box and click save. You will be logged out of the device when it does a soft restart. It should ask you to log in again, this time enter the new password you created (still leaving the username blank).

Next, we are going to effectively hide the wireless network from prying eyes. This is your first line of defense, and admittedly a fairly week one. It does more to keep the honest people honest than anything else so I’m going to say that the actual hiding part is optional, but changing the name of the network is not.

1. Once you’re logged back into the device. Click on the Wireless Tab. You should be taken to the Basic Wireless Settings sub-tab by default.
2. Now is the somewhat fun part. You get to name your network. The particular name you choose doesn’t really matter as long as its easy to remember as being yours, and isn’t the name brand of the device. Pick something fun, but keep it to one word. Even your own name works. Put the name you chose in the Wireless Network Name (SSID) box and click Save Settings. The device will do that whole restart thing again, and you may be asked to log in again.
3. Now, the optional part. Actually hiding the network from the world. Head over to the wireless tab again, and go to the Wireless Security sub-tab, and click the disable radio button (Don’t save just yet, we aren’t done here).

The reason I say this step is optional is because it provides almost no security. What it does is hide the network, so when the guy in the apartment next to yours searches for wireless networks to hack into on Friday night when he is bored, yours doesn’t show up in his list of networks. Which is nice, but it also means the network doesn’t show up when YOU do a search, which can be a little cumbersome sometimes. If you have only one computer to setup it may not be a big deal though, as long as you know the name of the network you can connect to it.

Continuing on though, our next step is to setup WEP encryption on the device. WEP (wired equivalent privacy) is not as secure as WPA (wireless protected access), but its easier to manage and should be sufficient for home users.

What WEP does is creates a secured link between your computer and the wireless device. Similar to the kind of encryption you have when you log into your bank’s web site. It makes it so that people watching the data you send back and fourth between you and the wireless device get nothing useful out of it.

1. We should still be on the Wireless Security sub-tab, if not head back that way and select “WEP” from the pull down box, and you’ll suddenly get a bunch more option boxes to fill out.
2. Starting from the top: Set the Wireless Encryption Level to 128-bit Encryption.
3. YOu can leave the “Default Key” at 1.
4. The next box (Passphrase for Keys) is part of a tool to help you generate the WEP keys. Type some gibberish into this box (no more then 32 chars though), you can type something meaningful and it will help you later in connecting to the device, but it only works if everything you have is a Linksys device, so I don’t recommend using it in this way.
5. What you’ll have in the next 4 boxes are 128-bit, hexadecimal numbers. Since we said the Default Key would be #1 in the above box, that’s really the only one we care about. Get out a piece of paper and a pencil… and write down the number in your manual.
6. Click “Save Settings”, the device will restart and you may have to log in again.

So at this point your access point is fairly secure, starting with your first line of defense, its hidden from would-be hackers, the name of the network isn’t something that somebody could quickly guess, and the connection between your computer and the access point requires an encryption key. But we are going to take it one step further, and specifically tell the router who is allowed to connect to it. Think of it like a VIP list at a club. If your name isn’t on the list, you aren’t getting past the security guard. To do this we are going to do what’s called MAC filtering. And as funny as it sounds, it has nothing to do with keeping Macintosh/Apple computers off your network. MAC stands for Machine Address Code and EVERY network device has a unique one. Its like a Social Security, or VIN number for network devices. There are no two with the same one.

1. The first thing you need to do is figure out what your computers MAC address is, and I’m going to assume you are using Windows XP for these steps, which may differ slightly on 2000, and probably wont help at all for Windows 98 or older (do all this from the computer with the wireless radio enabled and on, you don’t have to connect to any network yet, it just has to be on).
   • Click on the Start menu, towards the bottom will be “Run”. When you click on that, it will pop up a little box in the bottom left of your screen. Type “cmd” in the box (without the quotes) and click the OK button. This will pop up a Command Prompt (black screen, looks like DOS)
   • At the command prompt, type the following command and hit enter.

     ipconfig /all

   • What you should see is a whole bunch of stuff that probably doesn’t make sense to you. But that’s ok, because we are only looking fro one thing, and its fairly clearly labeled.
   • If your doing this on a laptop, chances are there are two network devices in the laptop. A wireless radio, and a wired ethernet adapter. And you’ll get information for both these devices after you enter this command.
   • Its hard for me to say exactly what to look for, because it could be different for you, but here is an example of what you might see:
   • I’ve highlighted in RED the things to look for, you are looking for the properties under the Wireless Connection, and specifically for the Physical Address. Write down this Physical Address (the number, in my case I would write down “00-13-78-B5-20″.

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : ws109
  Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : electdesign.net
  Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
  IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
  WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
  DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : electdesign.net

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : electdesign.net
  Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller
  Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-13-72-B5-A2-20
  Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
  Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
  IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.43
  Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
  Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.1
  DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.5
  DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.5
  Primary WINS Server . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.5
  Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Tuesday, September 19, 2006 7:52:30 AM
  Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Wednesday, September 27, 2006 7:52:30 AM

Ethernet adapter Wireless Connection:
  Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : electdesign.net
  Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller
  Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-13-78-B5-B2-20
  Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
  Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
  IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.43
  Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
  Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.1
  DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.5
  DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.5
  Primary WINS Server . . . . . . . : 192.168.3.5
  Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Tuesday, September 19, 2006 7:52:30 AM
  Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Wednesday, September 27, 2006 7:52:30 AM

2. Now, you can close the command prompt and head back over to your browser with the web page for the wireless device and go to the Wireless Main tab, and the Wireless Network Access sub-tab.
3. Click the Enable radio button to enable the MAC filtering.
4. Type the MAC address you wrote down into the first available spot (all zeros means its available, MAC1 should probably be the first available).
5. Save your settings and the device will restart and may ask you to log in again.

We are now done setting up the wireless access point. Now, we just need to get your laptop or computer connected to the wireless network. I’m going to assume you are using the Windows Zero Point Configuration tool for your wireless network card, because everybody should have that (This is ONLY available for Windows XP with Service Pack 2). But this usually isn’t the default. If your wireless card is trying to use its own software to configure your wireless access you are going to have to find the check box or button that will transfer control to the Windows Zero Point Configuration tool instead. Post a comment if you need help doing this and I’ll do my best to help you out.

1. So, with the wireless radio turned on, you should have a little icon in the bottom right of your computer (near the clock) that looks like this: . It may have a red X in it, that’s ok. Double click on it to open the Windows Configure tool.
2. If you didn’t hide your network, you should be able to just click on the “Refresh Network list” link in the left toolbar, and you’ll see your network (and probably others if you live near people) show up in the list of wireless networks.
   • If this is the case, all you have to do is double click on your network to connect to it.
   • You’ll be asked to type in the WEP key, and then again to confirm it. Its really annoying because you can’t see what your typing, so just have some patience with it. You only have to do this once. Your computer will remember the key in the future.
   • At this point, you should be done setting up your wireless security, so skip down past the rest of these numbered steps.
3. If you did hide your network, you will need to use the wizard to connect to it, so click on the link labeled “Set up a wireless network for a home or small office” on the left toolbar and it will bring up the wizard.
4. Skip past the first page that just tells you about the wizard, on the second page type in the name of the network that you setup earlier. And select the radio for “Manually assign a network key”. Leave the checkbox at the bottom of the page blank un-checked.
5. On the next page, you’ll have to type in the WEP key we created twice, I would recommend un-checking the box to hide the characters as you type, as it will make it easier to find any mistakes you make when typing in the number. Once you have that key typed in, click Next.
6. For the purposes of this guide, select the “Set up a network manually” on the next page of the wizard, but if you have more than one computer to do you may want to follow the wizard through the “Usa a USB flash drive” portion to quickly setup the other computer, but that’s beyond the scope of this guide. I may add it later once I test it out for myself. Click Next
7. Your all done, the last page gives you the option of printing out all the info about your connection settings. It should be the same info you wrote down throughout this guide, but if you want it in a nice format, go ahead and print it. Just don’t loose this paper. It is the key to 3 of the 4 levels of your security (everything except the MAC filtering).

So that’s it. You now have a secured wireless network setup. I really hope that this guide has been helpful to you, if you find any mistakes or have any questions I would ask that you please leave comments below. I do read them, and I will make updates as necessary.

EDC Weekend ‘06

In my true posting fashion… this post is a whole week late, and will probably be way to long

The weekend of the 8th – 10th of this month was the third weekend in a row that I’ve been gone on vacation, but this was probably the best one yet. I’m actually writing this from class (yes… I’m paying attention too).

Anyway, this weekend was my company vacation in Tahoe. Just about every year Electrical Design Consultants takes all the employees and a guest somewhere for a weekend. Usually it’s Tahoe, matter of fact only once has it been anywhere else and that was the year I started when we went to Vegas.

The vacation started Friday, which we all had off so that we could easily drive up there in the morning. I had asked Melinda if she wanted to join me, but she was going to be in North Carolina for auditions (hmm, need to call her and find out how those went). So instead of going up by myself or trying to keep up with Joe in bachelor mode all weekend I asked Kerry if she wanted to join me because she had been before and knew what to expect. Anyway, back to Friday. I meet up with Kerry at her house Friday morning and we both headed up the hill. I made a stop at my parents to drop off a few things first and chatted with my dad for a few before continuing on.

We had brunch at Mel’s Diner in Placerville which was nice, but that place is really starting to fall apart . I think we finally ended up getting to Tahoe and the hotel around 3 pm, and were luckily able to check in early. EDC put us up in the Embassy Suites hotel, which is always nice. The rooms are suites, so there is a bedroom (with two beds this trip), and a separate living room complete with dinning table and mini kitchen (no stove).

We got our things settled in the room and headed out to walk the shops. I think just about every time I’ve gone up to Tahoe, there are new shops. It’s probably going to slow down now since the major construction around the gondola area is done, but its a really great place to just walk and poke about in small shops if you like that sort of thing. I ended up buying a shell necklace from Del Sol. If you’ve ever been to a Del Sol store, you know what they are all about. Everything they sell in the store changes color, or gets color when exposed to UV light (daylight).
Embassy Suites has complimentary drinks in the evenings, so that’s where we headed around 4:30 and meet up with the rest of the group. I had a drink called a Cactus Bite, which was a lot of liquor but quite tasty. After that drink though, I stuck to beer.

In the evening, we had dinner at the Chart House overlooking the lake. They originally put us in this great little room that was kind of in the basement, but still had a decent view of the lake, and was completely empty except for us and the wait staff. It was AWESOME! BUUUT… it wasn’t what John and Debbie (my Boss’) had asked for, so they moved us upstairs to the bar area which was loud, cramped and not nearly as awesome. Oh well… they were paying, so they get to do whatever they want.
I seem to have rubbed off on Kerry with the whole Surf and Turf dinners, because we both ordered Filet Minion, mine came with shrimp, and hers with a lobster tail, and we shared the surf portion. It was delicious.

After that, I was pretty beat, and had eaten so much food that Kerry and I both just went back to the room and crashed. I purchased “Cars” the movie in the room, but Kerry fell asleep before the opening credits, and I didn’t last much longer than that.

We got up at 7:30 Saturday morning to try to hit up the gym before we got the day started, but the diehard’s had already filled the few machines that the hotel had. So instead we just relaxed in the hot tub for a little while. Which I must admit, is quite a nice way to start a day.

Embassy Suites also has a really nice breakfast every morning for free to its guests (including cooked to order foods). So after breakfast we headed out to the docks, where EDC had rented 3 ski boats. This was really the only potion of the trip I had my camera with me, so its the only pictures I’ve got. Kerry and I were looking for a fun time, so we got in the boat with Joe who is a fun loving boat bum (he owns an alcohol burning race boat) and hauled ass over to Emerald Bay where we stopped for a nice lunch. During some no-wake time in the bay, Joe and I figured out where to best trim the I/O on the boat so we could REALY get some speed, and we defnalty made a difference. We sped across the lake at about 55MPH, with Joe jumping wakes and making hard turns. The girls (Kerry and Angelo’s wife Kelly) were sitting up front and got tossed around quite a bit. It was pretty funny to watch, Kerry was holding her boobs in one arm to keep them from flying everywhere, and holding on to the railing with white knuckles on the other hand.

After the boating, Kerry and I went up the Gondola, but didn’t spend much time because on the way up Kerry remembered that she wanted to see a movie that was starting soon. We made it back down and in the theatre only a few seconds after the movie had started back up.

We watched “The Covenant” which wasn’t bad. I don’t think I would waste the money on seeing it in the theatre (but I have a hard time with that no matter what) but I think its worth watching. Kerry loved it, and I have no doubt that it had something to do with the fact that there were 4-5 very good looking guys who spent a good portion of the movie without shirts.

After the movie, it was free drink time again at Embassy, where we once again meet up with some of the EDC crew. Joe, Chris, Alice, Greg, Kammy, Kerry and I all decided to head over to “Fire and Ice” for dinner, and although we had to wait an hour and a half the food was WELL worth it. The place is Mongolian style cooking, but the food and atmosphere is very American. Big chunks of Angus steak, mahi-mahi, seasoned chicken, muscles and an assortment of vegetable and sauces made up the menu. For $19 a plate for an all you can eat place like that wasn’t bad either. The guys doing the cooking put on a show too, flipping their utensils around, throwing empty bowls off the wok into bins etc. If you’re up in Tahoe and looking for a place to eat, I highly recommend “Fire and Ice”. The only downside was that their jalapeños were extremely hot and I spent like 10 min just trying to recover my mouth.
Kerry and I headed back to the room again after dinner to call it an early night (~11PM). We did finish watching “Cars” though, which was a pretty good movie. We wanted to try to get some sleep in before our adventure the next day.

Sunday we got up at 6:30 so that we could check out and head up to the Rubicon trailhead for an ATV excursion. I didn’t take my camera because I didn’t feel comfortable with all the dust, but it was the same basic than to what we did last time, except that Kerry and I were all alone with the guide, and we did a much longer trip this time. We went down through Dollar Hole, which was really fun because it was much more technical than only going to Miller Lake was.

After our ATV’ing we basically just headed home. Kerry wasn’t feeling well, so she slept in the car, and I took highway 88 home to keep myself entertained. It was a nice drive with almost no traffic, and some pretty views. I think I finally got home around 3 PM, and was dead tired. I played around with the new Pool Heater that came in the mail over the weekend and finally went to bed. But I’ll leave the pool heater for another discussion.

Lawsons Landing

This page/post needs an update. Likely the images, or image links do not work (due to switching from gallery2 to flickr), or some piece of formatting is visually broken. Please excuse the mess until I can get the time to update the post

Better late than never right?

Well the pictures have been up for a week now, I just haven’t gotten around to making a post. I’ll be refrencing a whole bunch of pictures in this post, so when you see a blue link, click it to see what I’m refering to. I’ll also be linking to some of Chadd’s pictures too. You can also read his post about the trip here as well.
Keith, Meghann, Matt and Tiffanee got over here around 8am on Thursday morning joining Chadd and I. We finished packing up the truck in my garage. I went over to Walmart and bought a net to cover everything, which made packing substatially easier. The drive was mostly uneventfull. We got into camp, weren’t able to get the spot we wanted at the very end because there was already somebody there, but Matt and Tiffanee found a pretty nice spot so we ploped down right there and setup camp.

After we got things settled, we all headed over the dunes to play in the sand. We took the outdoor sports set that Keith and Meghann bought and put it to a diffrent use. First, everybody played soccer using the volleyball as the ball, and the volleyball net poles as goal posts. We also played baseball until we completely obilterated the tennisball and had to call the game.

We had hot dogs and hamburgers for dinner, Matt ate way to many and regretted it later. Keith, Matt and I also enjoyed sampling a whole bunch of diffrent beers that Keith and I picked up in the large cans/bottles.

When it finally got dark out, Matt, Chadd and I headed out to the beach to try to take some night sky pictures. I’m pretty happy with how mine came out. Particularly this one where you can see the Milky Way, and this one of the big dipper.

Friday morning, I cooked up hashbrowns, bacon, saussage and eggs in the dutch oven while everybody else lounged around the fire and had s’mores as appatizers. After breakfast, the girls got into their suits, and went for a splash in the ocean. Matt, Keith and I went and got Ice and firewood. We all eventually headed down to the beach to join the girls. Matt and I took a bunch of random pictures, while Chadd and Keith lunged.

I do have to point out, that walking on the beach was a guy with a HUGE dog. An Irish Wolfhound. I didn’t get any pictures of the front of the dog, but I got him walking away. This dog is crazy, I want one!

Matt and Chadd made a sand castle while the girls continued their quest to become popsilces in the ocean. When Chadd and Matt were done, Matt and Keith went ahead and joined the polar bear club, and I started making my own sand castle. Not as exciting, but fun for me all the same.

Tiffanee had to leave shortly after that because she had to work Saturday, but the rest of us stuck around and had kabobs for dinner. As well as an apple and cherry cobler that I made in the dutch oven.

Saturday morning we got up fairly early (for camping) and started packing up. Breakfast was the same thing in a dutch oven as the morning before. We managed to make pretty good time getting everything packed up, but then on the drive home I missed a turn off of Highway 1 and didn’t realize it for a while, so we had about a 45 min detour before we finally made it home.

Deathly Ill

So I may have worked a bit to much over the weekend. Because starting last night I seem to have picked up a cold or flu in 85 degree weather. I’m feeling a lot better right now than I did last night and thismorning, and I attribute that to the mysterious of DayQuil but I still ache and have hot and cold flashes. My heachache is gone though, and my throat doesn’t feel like there is a cheese grater in it.

I’ve got a lot of things I want to do today, that I didn’t get around to over the weekend. My roomates left me a friendly note to clean up my desk since it was getting a little rediculous. But before I go I wanted to show you this recipt. I think I accidentally shorted the girl $1 when I paid because she counted it twice, but it looks like she picked up the slack, but somehow I ended up getting change back? Maybe its just the DayQuil making me a space cadet, but this looks funny. (click for a full sized view)