My new goal in life is to be able to afford one of these. It's going for a cool $226K, I've got some work to do. It will apparently travel 16KM on one charge. I think I'm going to move closer to the office. "Honey, did you remember to charge my jetpack last night?"

I meant to post this a couple of weeks ago but I'm terrible about regular blogging. The Turkey Run was in Daytona a couple of weeks ago and it was one of the cooloest things ever. I dig choppers and was excited when Biketoberfest was here but this was much better. It's like the largest car show and swap meet in the country and there was a non-stop barrage of some of the coolest and rarest cars you can imagine tooling around the city for a good solid week. I took Ethan over to the main show at the speedway on Saturday for a few hours and only saw maybe 1/4 of the vehicles there. I was dumbfounded at the sheer size of the show. Here is a link to my picture album from the show, enjoy the cars.

Picture Gallery

I noticed a strange phenomenon last week. I broke my phone holster and had to carry my phone in my pocket for a couple of days instead of being clipped to my belt. Every now and then, I'd feel my phone vibrating on my belt and actually reach up to grab it before realizing it wasn't there. I don't know whether this is a cool scientific discovery or just a sad reality. Basically this means that my phone is no longer a communication device but is now part of my body and by removing it from my hip, I have effectively amputated a limb. Scary stuff.
For reference, Phantom Limb.

I've seen some very strange stuff in Daytona but I think this takes the cake.

Well, we survived Biketoberfest. I will admit we were a little worried but it all turned out fine and we got to see some cool bikes and some other interesting sights as well. Ethan had a blast checking out all the cool rides and standing on the balcony watching the masses of bikes roll up and down A1A. Maybe we didn't enjoy as much the loud pipes at 2am but all in all it was a cool experience. Check out my pics of the bikes on display at the speedway here. The bike shown above was my favorite, very old school style built using modern technology. Check out the killer engraving on the engine covers and leather. Enough commentary, enjoy the pics!

I meant to post this weeks ago. Some of you may or may not know I'm working out of town for a while. I managed to score a sweet place with a good view, check it out. This from my balcony looking northeast, to the northwest (not shown) is A1A and a view of the intercoastal. I only wish we had gotten a southern view so we could see the shuttle launches from our balcony, they are still good to watch from the beach though, I can't complain ;)

I've been slow to post lately, just haven't been feeling the posting bug. My wife reminded me that my last post was a month ago. Ok, let's get something going. I always think, "I should post about this or that" but i'm never near a computer when it happens and don't remember it when I do. Well, i'm sitting on the couch watching TV and here we are.
I'm watching Last One Standing. Anybody else watching this madness? The show is in it's 3rd episode on Discovery Channel. 6 guys from various parts of the world and various backgrounds are traveling around the world and spending around a week with various tribes and villages to learn their culture and compete in their tribal rituals and competitions. The episode I'm watching is these guys in the mountains of Mexico, running a marathon length race through the mountains. They are running in sandals made from old tire treads through rocks, hills, cactus, poisonous spiders and rattlesnake territory all while kicking a wooden ball back and forth with their teammates. It's brutal, but makes for good TV.
Last week they learned how to Stick Fight with the African Zulu tribe. They trained for 6 days and then fought with the rest of the tribe in a traditional batlle between rival villages at a tribal wedding. Some of the fighters were leaving with split open heads and bruised and fractured bones. I think that would have been my favorite challenge so far. I always managed to have fun in close quarters type adrenaline charged fits of fury for no good reason. I have friends that can attest, it's fun sometimes to let your testosterone go wild as long as no one gets hurt too bad.

On another topic, how good is Bionic Woman? I love that show. I think it is now my second favorite behind Heroes. Life is pretty good too, it's not quite top 5 status yet but if Prison Break doesn't pick it up it will be.
My top 5 network TV shows?
1. Heroes
2. Bionic Woman
3. The Office
4. Journeyman
5. Prison Break (Sucks this season but I can't dump it yet)

FYI - the funniest show on TV is on HBO. Curb your Enthusiasm makes me laugh more than any show I have ever seen but is not for the faint of heart.

And that's what I'm watching, you're welcome. Later.

Yes. I admit it. I have PHCD, a bad case of it and I’ve had it for years. For those of you that don’t know, PHCD is Phone Hardware Change Disorder. I am in the cellphone industry and I am the CIO of the company so I should have the latest and greatest right? I mean, I have to test equipment and decide if it’s right for the rest of the company and be able to provide feedback for customers as well, right? Part of PHCD is driven by the geek factor, the “need” to have the latest and greatest, but a large portion of mine is driven by never being completely satisfied with one single piece of equipment. I have at one time or another used almost every version of the Palm Treo and used a number of windows mobile devices as well as many different types of regular handsets. I have yet to find the “Holy Grail” of handsets that combine all of the hardware bits I want with real usability and non-flakiness. I have used phones that come close on the features side but generally freak out when you try to use them as a phone. If you find a really good phone device it is lacking on the cool hardware goodies side.

I have tried different formats as well and determined that a candy bar style smart phone with an exposed QWERTY style keyboard works best for me. The Treo line from palm has been my favorite over the past years in this format but palm has done a bad job of keeping up with newer technology and the Palm OS is very dated. If you have seen some of my prior posts, I recently switched from a Palm Treo 700wx running WinMo5 to a Palm Treo 755p running Palm OS. While the Palm OS phone was much more stable on a day to day basis, the integration with Exchange server via the included Versa mail app left a lot to be desired. Versa mail will not allow syncing of other folders in your mail account except for the inbox and that was driving me crazy. I’m always referring back to sent emails and organize my inbox into subfolders. After a couple of months with the device I was wearing thin on patience having to get out my laptop every time I needed something from an area other than the inbox. I ditched the 700wx because it would continually flake out and need constant rebooting to keep the phone portion of the device functioning properly. The phone on the 755p was much more usable but contact lookup was not as easy as the Windows based device.

During my 755p experiment we hired a guy that already had a Blackberry and he kept working me about getting a BES server setup. I have looked at BES in the past but the cost of the software and additional overhead on IT staff coupled with the fact that it didn’t seem to do anything better than Windows Mobile for syncing data kept it off the table. Well, this guy knew somebody at his old job that could get a cheap price on BES server and my current IT consultant told be BES was super easy to run once setup and the setup wouldn’t take him very long so here we go putting in BES. We got the new guy up and running on BES and he was happy to not be using POP anymore. I started thinking why is some sales guy using this on my network before I have? So I get on eBay and order up a new shiny Blackberry 8830 for “testing”. After a 2 week fiasco getting the blackberry service added to my plan I am finally using the device with BES.

Wow, Cool, Amazing, I’m blown away. After 4 full days with the device, that’s my comments. This is the first device I’ve had since my first Smartphone that just plain works. Every detail has been well thought out from a usability standpoint. The sub menus have everything you could need to perform day to day functions without digging around. You can create calendar events and tasks that are assigned to other users, you can spell check an email before sending, there is a search function. Wake up Palm and Microsoft, and Stephen for that matter. I can’t believe I didn’t have one of these years ago, the lost hours of productivity on the other devices that could have been saved, I’m going to cry.

I’m on my way to the in-laws in Tennessee for the holiday weekend and thought I’d take a minute to write a few posts. I’ve been swamped at work and things have been crazy at the house, seems to be the norm nowadays. Hopefully things will be settling down at work at least, I finally got an IT manager hired and he started on Wednesday this week. He is a sharp guy and is getting things done quickly. It’s nice to finally see some of those to-do items not only move from my list to his, but actually start getting completed.

Personal time has been at a premium lately. Late summer is always a busy time for as we usually vacation then and I think everybody else's kid we know was born between July and October so it’s non-stop with birthday parties. Our church moved to new facilities and I was able to be as involved as possible but I always feel like I don’t have as much time as I’d like to dedicate to it.

All in all things are good, we’ve got a lot of changes coming in the next few months and I should be able to kick out a few more posts than I have been going forward. Thanks for reminding me of my lack of posts Tony.

Wow, thats all I can say about yesterdays move. I was blown away by the sheer volume of people that stayed to help and even more so by the time it took to get out. As I drove the moving truck up Hwy 20 on the way to the church office, i remember looking down at my watch and realizing it was only 11:30. Didn't the service start at 9:30? How are we already loaded and out the door? I was worried earlier this week that we wouldn't be out by 12 and had planned to be out all afternoon dealing with the move. That is a testament to the dedication of the people, either that or everybody was just as eager as I was to get the heck out of the theaters. I don't know if it's a good thing or not but I do not get emotionally attached/involved with things, well maybe cars, but that's different. The theater served it's purpose for us and I look forward to the High School but it really doesn't matter to me where we meet as long as we are following the cloud.

I'm don't usually go to the movies, I'm more of a wait till the DVD comes out and sit on my couch with a cheap drink kind of guy. Somehow I managed to see 2 new movies over the last week or so and thought I'd share.

1408
My wife and I had date night last week and went originally to see Evan Almighty but when we got to the theater I was in the mood for something a little darker and Steph must have been too so we decided to check out 1408. I like John Cusack and the previews looked pretty good. I'm glad we went, man what a roller coaster ride. The movie was nuts, it was all over the place and you could never tell what was going to happen next. It wasn't the kind of gruesome horror flick you would think, it was more of a suspense/horror type film. Nobody was getting disemboweled but you were definitely jumping out of your seat.
Cusack plays a guy who lost his daughter to some type of disease and was looking for proof of the afterlife by visiting all of these supposed "Haunted" locations across the country and writing books based on his findings. While he found a bunch of places that were quite creepy, he never saw anything ghostlike or haunted. So he finally hears about this one room at a hotel in New York, 1408, that is haunted and goes to check it out. Samuel L. Jackson plays the hotel manager and hasn't let anyone stay in the room for years due to the constant deaths/suicides from when anyone stays there. Cusack thinks it's a gimmick to keep people coming to the hotel and persuades Jackson to let him stay. That's when the fun ensues as the room is decidedly evil and takes Cusack on a bizarre journey, physically and emotionally abusing him to the breaking point. Great flick if your into being scared, I'd say 7 out of 10.

Transformers
All I can say is Awesome! When I originally heard on a website someone was making a Transformers movie, I thought, that is going to be terrible. I couldn't imagine how my favorite childhood toys could be properly portrayed in a movie format and come out right. Not long after that first tidbit I got another nugget of info that changed my perspective, a lot. I read that not only is the movie really coming to the big screen but, Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg are involved in Directing/Producing. Wow, that could change things. So now I'm pretty interested in seeing what comes from this and keep my ears open for more news. A few months later a "Leaked" clip of the movie shows up on a website and as soon as I see it I'm hooked. Full on jonseing out to see this flick, the effects look spectacular and the robots are incredible.
The movie itself was great, they came up with a decent storyline without going overboard about why the Transformers are here and then went into a good hour and a half of some of the coolest action scenes and computer animation I have ever seen. I mean come on man, it's Optimus Prime and Megatron in full hand to hand and gun blazing glory in the middle of a downtown block, standing 4 stories tall going at it Bay and Spielberg style. You can't go wrong with this movie, whether you are fan of the franchise or not, if you like action and amazing special effects, you'll love this movie. 9 out of 10.

So, a week and a half into my new Treo 755p and all is well. So far I have had zero phone issues. I had an issue with some software I installed but that was the softwares issue no the phones. The palm has been there when I needed it and I actually get better reception at my house with this unit. I'm guessing it will last about 6 months until something cooler comes out and I find a reason for someone else to inherit this one.

So I'm having a great fathers day, we dedicated my son at church, my parents came we all went out to eat at P.F. Chang's, we hang out at some friends pool all evening and then the phone rings. An employee had stopped by the office and discovered my truck had gotten broken into over night. So we pack up and scoot up to the office and it's bad. The grabbed my stereo, satellite radio, an old wakeboard and my fishing poles. The stuff, I'll miss but the real bummer is the sheer volume of glass that is now sprinkled over the entire interior of my vehicle. I spent 2 hours last night with the shop vac trying to get it all up and the big chunks are gone but there is still a sparkling powder covering every horizontal surface. I managed to embed a piece in my hand driving home and had to literally dig it out, fun! So now I'm paranoid about having my kid in there, I guess I need to take it and have it detailed and wiped down all over to remove the dust. I was just shocked that it happened at all. We leave cars at the office all the time and have never had an issue. On the bright side, My truck is probably cleaner than it's been in a while.

After my first full day with my new Palm OS phone I am much happier. It's amazing to be able to pick up the phone and make a call without having to completely power cycle the device. The battery life seems to be better than the WM device and it's a smaller capacity battery. So far things are much better and my frustration level has gone down considerably.

When it comes to gadgets, maybe you can buy happiness.

I got this news update on a story I've been following for a while regarding the Qualcomm, Broadcom patent battle. Apparently the US International Trade Commission as halted the import of new 3G cell phones that use Qualcomm chips. Uh oh, being in the cellular business this is not good news for me. Lets hope they get this issue straightened out quickly and this doesn't affect business. More info can be found here.

I got put in time out last night by my 2 year old. I was barely able to keep a straight face the whole time. We were playing in the play room and I was throwing this big rubber ball up in the air and it landed on the train table making a loud noise. My wife kinda scolded me for setting a bad example and my son says "no throw ball on table". I said "yeah, dada was bad", he then said "dada bad, go time out there" and pointed to an empty spot on the wall. I didn't have a whole lot of choice, I went in time out and he came over a minute or to later and made me say I was sorry.

It's good to see that the whole concept has really sunk in with him. He gets it, I just gotta watch myself now, I was always the trouble maker growing up. Now I've got my wife and kid to keep me straight.

I dumped my Treo 700wx today. After weeks of problems, and a replacement unit that still wouldn't work, I was done. I'm a die hard Treo fan, I've had almot every model made, back to the monochrome flip top device and have always had great luck with them. The 700wx was not the first Windows Mobile device I've had, I had a PPC6700 before that but missed the keyboard on the front of the device. I never had a real issue with Palm OS but when we got Exchange running in house and found out about the integrated push technology via Over the Air Activesync I had to switch. Two devices later and now you can sync palm with the same technology over the air, it doesn't sync tasks but that is something I don't need instantly. So today I went to the Sprint store and picked up the new Treo 755p. Within minutes of changing my service over I had all of my contact, calendar events and email synced with the phone, wirelessly. So now I've got 30 days to try the phone and see if I really want to keep it, but so far I would definitely say yes. The phone itself seems much snappier and quicker to respond and hey, i haven't had to reboot it yet! The real test will be full on daily usage of the device, I hammer the phone and email all day, my cell is my primary phone. I am digging all of the software that came preinstalled on the device out of the box and I am excited about getting back into the palm world of 3rd party apps, the list is much larger than WM apps. I'll report back in a few days on the progress.

I finally received my new Zulu-2 Holster for my KelTec P3AT 380. I say finally because I ordered the holster on November 28 2006 and received it about 2 weeks ago (mid May). I understand custom holsters take some time and I went into the purchase knowing that but man, 6 months? Anyway, all complaints with delivery times aside, the holster is fantastic. The quality of craftsmanship is excellent, I expect this holster to last a really long time.

I spent a good deal of time looking for the perfect holster to use for daily concealed carry. I knew I wanted a pocket holster but most of the ones I looked at were either designed for the front or the back pocket, not both. The Zulu-2 combines the best of 3 worlds, front and rear pocket as well as belted carry.


The anti-print panel snaps onto the holster to help conceal the outline of the gun while in your back pocket and comes off to put the gun in your front pocket.


The back side of the anti print panel is rough finish to help grip the inside of your pocket making drawing the weapon easier.



These show the gun in the holster, it fits very snugly and the shape of the anti-print panel covers the edges of the gun perfectly. The holster wears excellent and is less obtrusive in my back pocket than my actual wallet. From the back it looks just like you have a wallet in your pocket. i have only used it in my front pocket once and it functioned perfectly there as well. The belt loop tabs stick out and give the holster a flat bottom to keep the gun verticle in you front pocket, no fumbling to get to it if needed. i have yet to actually carry on my belt but i have put it on to check it out. The way the loops are cut it gives the gun a natural forward "FBI Style" tilt making drawing the weapon easier as well as bringing the butt closer to your body for added concealment.

All in all, I would highly recommend this holster if you are looking for pocketed carry with the option to carry belted. The quality is excellent and the price is very reasonable. Visit http://www.palehorseholsters.com for the full line of R. L. Graham leather products.

I went to the Tool concert at Gwinnett Arena last night. Unbeleivable, thats the only thing I can say. Musically, this was the best concert I have ever been to. I've seen a lot of shows that have had better stage shows but no one can compare to the musical talent of this band. I go to concerts quite frequently and I have never seen or heard a performance like that before in a live setting. I literally felt like I was in the recording studio with 15000 other people. The sound was incredible and the band was so tight playing together. I've been a long time fan of the band and seeing them pull off the music in a live setting so cleanly and true to the original album was just amazing. I love the fact that these guys know what they do well and they just do it. The lead singer came out and said hello Georgia, then they jammed for 2 hours, took a bow and left. It was perfect. I hate when musicians try to use the stage to spew their political and social beliefs on a large crowd, I pay to hear the music not your ranting. Hats off to the sound guys at the arena but they need to work on the traffic control. The show sold out in 3 minutes and that was the most people I have ever seen at that arena. I sat in the parking lot after the show for an hour before we even moved. Considering it's on Sugarloaf Pkwy and 1/4 mile from I85 there shouldn't be this kind of problem getting people out of there. I can't complain though, I would sit in traffic for hours to see these guys play again!

I guess normal people out there are probably not following the D5 conference very closely but for those who are or who are interested in technology and the future of it, check out the site Here. Some of the best things I've seen from there so far are the hour and a half interview with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates sitting side by side on stage, really cool to see these two interact with each other as they were asked questions, check it out Here. Also the video intro done by Steven Colbert for Viacom President, Philippe Dauman was hysterical. There was definitely some jabbing going back and forth between Google CEO, Eric Schmidt and Dauman from Viacom. You can tell they have a business relationship but there is some bad blood there.

On the Google front, they announced yesterday their new app called Google Gears, which is being downplayed by Google and a lot of other bloggers in my mind. Everybody is writing about being able to view their Google reader feeds after syncing their browser from anywhere when not connected. I second that but people are missing the big picture. If you watch the Jobs Gates interview mentioned above, they both comment on connecting the "rich" devices with the cloud and how we are not there yet, how we need full blown PC's to do editing of documents and such because to use web apps you have to have a connection. Well no more, Google has taken that notion and thrown it out the window, these guys are always playing catchup to Google. The Google announcement clearly states Gears works with Google Apps which is the doc and spreadsheet programs and I'm guessing their forthcoming presentation software as well. Now you can use Google apps from 30000 feet with no internet connection and just sync your data later. This should be a huge warning light for Microsoft as this has been one of the biggest hurdles in my mind of exclusively using the service. I told one of my business partners over 5 years ago that Google was going to take over the world, every time I turn around they are bringing a new product to market that sets them above everyone else in the market place.

I just love getting geeked out by tech stuff, so many cool new devices and technologies are starting to turn up it's hard to stay on top of them all. What a cool age to live in!