Archive for the Category Miscellaneous

 
 

Leave of Absense

Well, both my website and my Flickr pages have been noticeably quiet for a while. My only excuses are that I’ve been trying to keep my computer turned off more often (in an attempt to save power and be more green) and I’ve been trying to get back into my old habit of voraciously reading anything I can get my hands on. At last count, I’ve read 5 books in the last month and a half and am in the middle of 3 other books as I type this.

In the void, Lauren’s mom stopped out to visit for a week and Lauren and I also took a trip back east to visit my parents for both vacation and to get more wedding plans set in stone. Lauren toured the campus with her mother and I took a few days off to show her Mt. Lemmon and the Desert Museum. The trip back east was great; we spend a lot of time at their lake house and did everything from visit relatives, to hike at the local waterfall, to just relaxing. We went to take some July pictures of the wedding location to get ideas for next year and, at one point, Lauren took my sister dress shopping.

I’ll be posting tons of pictures to Flickr soon, so be on the look out for pictures of anything from our kittens, to a trip to the Sonoran Desert Museum, to my poor attempts at catching star streaks, to me playing with some new macro filters for my camera, to the Bushkill falls hike.

I’m hopping to get better about actively blogging at least once a week… we’ll see how that works out.

Fry’s Electronics Disappoints

Well, after growing up on the east coast reading about how great Fry’s Electronics was on all of the computer technology websites, I finally had a chance to witness it for myself.

I’d say Fry’s Electronics was a mix between Best Buy, Circuit City, and Costco. The Phoenix (Tempe, really), location was a large warehouse with bins, racks, shelves, and dirty floors. The DVD prices were nothing spectacular (typically $20 for just about any DVD). The computer hardware offerings were a bit nicer (I found a rather hard to find USB header cable that goes from a spare usb header on the mother board to a rear expansion slot), but still not spectacular. They did happen to have a decent hobbyist electronics section, but the prices were not on par with what I could get parts for from Digikey. And the other consumer electronics offerings left a little to be desired.

Another let down was the “help” (if you call it that) I received from two of the employees. Neither one really knew what I was looking for (a bluetooth GPS receiver that didn’t cost $200 and the aforementioned USB expansion cables), but after wandering around for over an hour in a store with almost no organization, I finally found one of the two sought-after items, the USB cables. The first employee handed me off to the second employee after realizing that I wasn’t looking for a USB hub. The second was a touch more helpful, but still said “it could either be here with the cables or over in that section there with the random stuff.” It turned out, the cables were in the random crap section next to some TV antenna cables and BNC connectors, who’d of thunk?

Well, at least I can say I’ve been there. As for going again, I’d have to be near there already for something else to even consider it. I’m not going to make a special trip up to Phoenix just for the Fry’s Electronics store. Now, IKEA, on the other hand…

To whom in the House of Representatives this may concern:

Quit wasting your time debating a piece of legislation that has no power whatsoever. If it passes, the President will ignore it; if it fails, the President will still do what he and his cabinet want and feel is necessary overseas. I just want you to stop wasting my hard-earned money debating a whole lot of nothing. I’d personally prefer if it passes as proposed:
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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year. Welcome to 2007!

This is Tucson, why is 35 outside?

The weather recently has been amazingly cold here in the South West. It got down to 34.4 (according to my outdoor thermometer) last night! Lauren and I have also had to wear; brace yourself for this, because it’s shocking; HEAVY COATS when doing anything at night for the last few days.

It’s amazing how quickly the cold came into town. Just last week, we were running around in T-shirts! What makes it even worse, is that the North East, where we moved from, has been having unseasonable highs! How fair is that? We moved to the desert to temporarily get away from the cold and it’s warmer there now than it is here!

In some ways it’s good though. We are getting acclimated to the cold temperatures for when we visit home for the holidays. Oh well… I’m going to put my coat on and grab some coffee at Starbucks…