Saturday, June 26, 2004

Early Saturday morning ride.

Well, I got up this morning (despite not really wanting to) and got myself ready and went for a ride. I rode just about 7 miles today. The route had some small hills, but being as out of shape as I am they felt like the alps. I am sure to USPS team they would of felt like pedaling up the drive way. But I did make it, and only stop to rest at stop lights (which feel way to short). I did learn something very important this morning. I need to get up earlier! Why, because apparently by 6:50am Saturday mornings, people (lots of them) are already out mowing their yards. So trying to ride back into shape, and being a asthmatic, allergic to grass, this combination didn't quite work out well for me. I think that is why I kind of bonked at mile 5. But I wouldn't get off the bike, I know that if I did my asthma would get the best of me and I wouldn't finish the ride. And after the flat tire the weekend before last, I wanted to finish a ride.

Friday, June 25, 2004

Logo for the blog

The other day I was goofing around in Adobe Illustrator, so I thought that I would take ten minutes (8 minutes 27 seconds, but whos counting) and come up with a logo for Adventures in Real life. Of course I was stuck on a coding issue, so that was at the forefront of my thoughts when I started the design. The other influence was the cool little lego guy icon that Channel 9 is using. Let me know what you think.

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Deadlines and Approvals

We just made our deadline. It took way to many nights working in to the wee hours of the morning. So tomorrow we will have a soft launch and next week we will have the full blown launch. It's been mentally and physically exhausting. So you would think that I would be proud, right? Not so much. I am glad it is over. It is one of those projects that change how things are done for the better. However those are the projects that take the most energy to get done. Not only do you have to get the work done, (Which was huge effort) but you also have to change the way that people think about how they do their job. That is really the difficult part. People think you are taking some freedom away from them. Which in part is true, but you are giving them time back. This project in essense took the technical part out of the equation, leaving just the creative part. So anyhow it is done. I am glad! Now I just want to get my my pajamas and watch some movies.

The other thing that happened today is we got approval on a project that we have been wanting to do for two years. After so much work just to get an approval, it feels like a victory. And in truth it is just the begining. Going to have to take a vacation soon.

Monday, June 21, 2004

The Browser Wars

Well it seems that the War of the Internet Browsers has started again. I know that some people would say that it never ended. While I admit that is true, the fighting wasn't as fast and furious as it is starting to get now. So what has changed to make this happen? A couple things, Mozilla/Netscape have had a couple of big leaps forward in their browser. Netscape 7.2/Mozilla Firefox 0.9 has been released and has been warmly received. It's a great browser, I love some of the features it has, such as tabbed windows. Which lets you have one window up with different web pages in each tab. This is such a desktop space saver that it has been adopted very quickly, by everyone but Microsoft. Of course those that Love Microsoft Internet Explorer, and want tabs can use MyIE2. It's a nice IE based browser that uses tabs. If your use to using keyboard shortcuts when you are browsing, you are going to have to relearn them for this browser.

So what is the fighting about? It's about standards of course. Mozilla has worked harded to be very standard compliant with the latest HTML, XHTML, CSS specifications from the W3C. And of course Microsoft's still in development version of IE has, supposedly taken some liberties with the specifications. This is a lot of talk on Channel 9 about this. Web Developers are asking the Microsoft team if they even care about them and their needs.

Sunday, June 20, 2004

Walmart the Retail version of a Casino

Yesterday Morning I was up way to early. So I figured since I was up that I would go run some errands. One of them was to pick up a couple things at Wal-Mart. Like I said it was pretty early, in fact it was still dark outside. The Wal-Mart we go to is open 24 hrs. So when I walked it, you could smell the in store McDonalds getting ready for the breakfast crowd. You could see the stockers filling up the shelves and it hit me. Wal-Mart is the Retail version of a Casino. I looked around and didn't see any clocks on the walls. I walked a little farther into the store and noticed that from the lighting you couldn't tell if it was day or night. The more I thought about it, the more similarities I saw. It got me to thinking, now I know that casinos will play music that has subliminal messages in it that says "lose, lose, lose". I wonder if the music they play in Wal-Mart has subliminal messages saying "spend, spend, spend".

First Ride to the Park

Yesterday the Little Boy and I had our first bike ride to the park. We had a couple of things to do before we could ride. I needed a tube for my bike, and we both needed a helmet. So we headed off to Wally-World (walmart) and picked ourselves out a couple of nice helmets. When I was a kid, we never wore helmets. We just didn't even think of it. However in California there is a law that was passed a couple years ago that says, 'if your under 18 years of age, you are wearing a helmet'. Of course, I have to have one too, I need to be a good example to the Little Boy. So now with helmets in hand we head to the bike shop to get my tubes.

So we get to the bike shop, locate the tubes, now business is taken care, of and the Little Boy and I can peruse the shop. Instantly we are magnetically attracted to some very nice bikes in our sizes. The one the little boy likes is a very nice aluminum trike, and I pick a very nice aluminum bike. After ten minutes of looking and wanting, and the Little Boy trying to take a test ride on the one he had picked out we decided that it would be financially responsible of us to pay for our parts and go. On the way out we see the new Trek Medone, which is the bike Lance Armstrong will be riding in the Tour de France. So I am looking up at it in awe, and the Little Boy reaches out and spins the rear wheel (Gasp) and he says "Cool!". That rear wheel cost more then both of our bikes combined. It made me laugh, I would of never reached out and spin the wheel, I knew how much it cost. He doesn't know dollar signs. So one wheel is just as good as another. And he was right, it was cool! On the way to the front a salesman asked us if we needed any help. I said, "I need to get my stuff and go before I buy something big and my wife divorces me", to which he said, "hey, stay awhile". Anyhow we got our stuff and headed for home.

Once we are home we get to work on changing out my tube and getting our new helmets fitted and adjusted. Everything it working good, everyone is safe, so we are off. The goal is to make it to the park and back. The park is about five blocks from the house on very residental streets. So here is how it played out. My plan was to keep The Little Boy between me and the curb. I would act as the buffer between him and any traffic that we may happen upon. He would start to pedal, so I would get in the pedals (my bike has toe-clips, I am so glad I didn't go with clipless, it would of killed me on this ride), then he would pedal about 20 feet, and the stop and make the "errrt" stopping noise when he was stopping. We did this no less then 15 times. This is when we (me) came up with our riding matra, "Pedal, Pedal, Pedaallll". Now this isn't to be said loud in an unkind fashion. It must be chanted in a comical tone to receive the desired results. Which is the Little Boy pedaling further than 20 feet before stopping. So about 10 to 15 minutes after we started we got to the park. Granted when I walk to the park it takes 5 minutes, but it was a victory none the less.

Now that we made it to the park we would ride around a little. Our park has a very nice paved path that is just perfect for kids to ride their bikes around. We made about 4 loops. After each loop we would stop at a picnic table and have a drink from my water bottle. I showed the Little Boy how it works, and it just tickled him. I am going to have to get him one for his very own. (especially if Cheetos are involved in the snacking process). After our 4th victory lap around the park My Beautiful Wife pulls up and tells us about a yard sale just a couple of house down. So she parks in front of the house, and gets out, and Calls to the Little Boy, and I right there next to him chatting our matra got him to ride not stop to her. Which was almost 200 feet away from the park. Sure I only had to pedal four times, but it was four good ones and I was proud. We looked at the yard sale for a little bit, and then decided (it was lunch time, our tummies decided) it was time to go home and get something to eat.

The Little Boy was really pumped up for the ride home. He looked and me and said, "Let's ride fast". With the pace that we had going to the park, I took this to mean lets go 40 feet before we hit the brakes and make the "errrrt" sound. However to my surprise he pedaled a good two blocks before needing a little rest. Once rested he said, "Let's ride fast", to which I replied "I will ride as fast as you can go". And he would pedal (I would let off the brakes and coast) for a good little bit, and then need little rest. Lets face it, it is tough when you are little to pedal or walk any distance with out a little rest.  Anyhow we turned on to our street, and the Little Boy was just about done. With a lot of coaxing we got to the house. The poor Little guy didn't have the strength to pedal up the driveway. So I go off and helped push him up and in. He got off, sweating, and panting, ready for some rest. I got off, mentally more tired than any ride I had ever been on, but didn't even get winded. All and All one of the best rides I've ever been on.