Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Statute of limitations

Kelli and I are going on 9 years together. Nine years.....over 3000 days. Nine years.

If I remember correctly the statute of limitations on suing Match.com is 9 years. So we both have to make really sure the other is "the one"....or sue.

A lot of changed over the last nine years. I often think about all the little choices in life that brought me to where I am today. The biggest change in direction happened with my mom passing away. If she had not left this world when she did I would likely not be living in the Dallas area. I would likely still be in Houston, working for some job I didn't really care for and married to a superficial woman who's mother hated me because of the color of my skin.

When my mom passed away my fiance left. I followed her to the Dallas area. Never reconnected. I made  few friends on AOL (yeah it wasn't as cool in 2001 as it was in 1996). Still talk to a few today.

If it wasn't for me reconnecting to my high school friend Katrina, I would have likely never joined Match.com. Katrina set up my account. The rest is history. Kelli picked me. I don't think I would have picked her as I had NO TATTOOS in my prefernences.

I "worked" more in May than I have in any month since I started flying. I flew for 77 hours and 30 minutes. Due to lots of loopholes and contract language I will actually be paid for 88 hours. Of course most people "work" 120 hours a month.  So even though I "worked" less than most "normal" people, I was "at work" much longer than the average person. My average "work" day is 10 hours. Some as long as 14 hours. Most people "work" 8-9 hours. Bleh.

Father's day is coming up. I'm working on upgrading the tech my dad uses. He is currently using a 2-3 years old computer I built that runs Windows Vista

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Roku makes me happy

I've been using my Roku box in hotel rooms for a week now. Love it. I hate having to two step it by using a travel router....but it works.

I am sure other guest don't care for me hogging the bandwidth. Bleh.

I only got 46.8 MPG on my last tank. Assume it's because the car sits for long periods and gas evaporates maybe? Still better than the 27 MPG I got in my Mazda5....or the 12 MPG I got in my 1996 Ford Explorer.....gas was cheaper then.

Storm blew through the other night. Kelli is getting used to Texas storms. Lightening, hail, high winds. Cars in the southern parking lots at DFW got hit hard. Would suck to return from a trip and have all your windows smashed in.

We love the new garage door opener. It's super silent.

I am a member of both Amazon Cloud drive and Music beta by Google. Both offer free music hosting and streaming. Google is a little easier as I simply installed it in on my media computer and told it where all the music was. With Amazon I had to manually add songs. Both are interesting.

I finished Tina Fey's book Bossypants. Very good. Now on to a book by Michael J Fox. I love reading but I don't enjoy fiction. Not sure why.

Bought a cheap toner cartridge for our laser printer on Amazon. First knock off fit, but didn't work. Second one from another seller worked fine. Saved $40 instead of using a genuine Canon cartridge. I imagine this cartridge will last a year.

Debating buying my dad an Ipad or a real computer. His current computer is about 3 years old. Not sure if he'd use an Ipad. I think he would. I will decide in a week or so.

And the dogs are still alive.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

LTE, Garage Doors and Life on the Road

The updates to all my blogs has suffered the last two months. The primary reason is my commute to work. Instead of driving 5 miles. I drive 5 miles and then fly 820 miles to work. Takes up time and energy.

I'm loving my new phone. The 4.3 inch screen is just .6 inches bigger than the Nexus One....but that .6 inch means a lot. The improved camera is nice as well. Kelli and I have had a few video chats. Works very well. Natali kinda gets it.

I've already rooted my phone. No custom ROM yet though. I rooted because the mobile hotspot app was only initially free till May 15th. After that it was $20 a year. Since then they have extended it till June 15th. Eh. I still removed all the bloatware Verizon puts on the Thunderbolt. All the apps running in the background really eats up battery life.

Speaking of battery life, Kelli and I are rolling with extended batteries now. I used my employer discount to score $12 off. They were $38 a piece. Not bad. The phones are not all day phones instead of part day phones. All day meaning I can use my phone as a hot spot, MP3 player, web browser and gaming machine. I'm happy.

Kelli and Natali have weekends off. I don't. I hope too next month. They took a weekend trip to Sacramento and San Francisco. We were in the same time zone as I was down in Los Angeles. Then last weekend they took a day trip to San Antonio. Glad they can use my benefits.

While they were in San Antonio Kelli got wind of belt driven garage door openers. Much quieter than our chain unit. Chains are more durable, but loud. Each time it opens the dogs bark. Annoying. We bought a Chamberlin Belt Driven 3/4 hp garage door opener tonight from Lowes. It should be much quieter and even has a battery back up to open in case the power goes out. Lowes will install it in the next week or so.

To make my traveling easier I bought a Roku box and router. We already have a Roku box in the living room and love it. In order to use the Roku box on the road I needed a special router. Why? The Roku box can't click "ok" in hotel rooms when connecting to the hotel wifi. I bought a ASUS WL-330gE router. It's capable of taking in a wifi signal and then creating a wifi hotspot with that signal.  Worked great.

Maybe I will have weekends off next month.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Verizon LTE.....makes the geek in me smile

Our new phones (HTC Thunderbolts) arrived on the same day the Verizon LTE network went down. The phones activated fine at first. Silly me ported my number from T-Mobile to Verizon right away. This caused my Thunderbolt to go offline. Kelli's phone worked fine. I called tech support. Nothing they could do. My phone remained dead till the next day. As did my old Nexus One as it was without a number. Glad I had the day off.

Once everything was normal I was happy. The LTE network is crazy fast. My download speeds average 14Mbps with a peak of 19Mbps. Uploads average 3Mbps and as high as 5Mbps. I did speed test in Dallas, Denver, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oklahoma City and Houston. Perk of flying for a living.

Battery life is not as good as our Nexus Ones. We are both going to get extended batteries as soon as they are back in stock.

The HTC Sense software is growing on me. At first I hated it as I was used to plain Android. Sense is okay. Still waiting for a custom ROM.

Kelli and I have had two video chats using the QIK software on our phones. Worked great. We were both on 4G and the video was very clear even though the Thunderbolt isn't supported by QIK.

Overall we are happy. My last straw with T-Mobile was my phone not working on the cruise even though I called twice prior to make sure everything was set up. Kelli was annoyed with her phone not working in her building. I believe the reason we had data access and voice access issues is linked to the high frequency T-Mobile uses versus the low frequency Verizon uses. Lower frequinces can bust through physical structures (like brick walls) easier than higher frequencies.

Not sure what we will do with our "old" phones. Kelli will likely sell hers. I might keep mine. I still have my G1. Eh.

Natali thinks everything is touch screen and is quickly learning about technology. I bought her a toy laptop. She quickly learned when she opens it, a noise happens. She then tries to open my Macbook Pro. Hmmm yeah. She also thinks everything is a touch screen as she likes playing a certain game on the Ipad. Hmm..yeah.