Declan's Blog

I am not a Mac head, but we’ve had some additions to the toy cache. The campus bookstore had a great deal on a 24″ iMac, with a rebate on an iPod. So Elaine got the big Mac and I got an iPod Touch. It’s a ton of fun!

Our newest arrival is an iPhone 3g that I got for work. It is even cooler than the Touch because it has a camera. I’ll have a lot of lower quality photos now, but it’s super convenient.

A couple complaints about the phone, that I’m sure I’ll get the whine about on the MacVeritas podcast soon:

Battery life – with 3g, wifi, and heavy use, don’t expect this thing to last more than 5 hours.

Charging change – this just kills me. The device won’t charge in my car now. Lots of discussion on the forums that Apple decided to drop the pins where most car systems charge the phone. I’m hoping there can be a firmware fix. If not, maybe my car device has a switch, or I can build a little wire switching dongle. Either way, shame on Apple for messing with this with no real warning.

Exchange email set up was a snap – but I think I’m missing some emails… It’s being a little flaky with the ActiveSync. More experience with the device is needed.

Calendar confusion – some recurring events that have canceled exceptions are showing up as valid meetings. I know this is complicated programming from the WirelessKnowledge days. Apple needs to get ahead of this or people will lose confidence in their data.

Apps crash a lot – and have to be reinstalled. AIM, Twinkle, and others just try to start, then go back to the home dock. I’ll even get an occasional reboot.

Other than that, the device is nice! It’s sleek, so it slips in and out of pockets nicely. So far it is way more resistant to scratches than my 60G iPod.

Now that I have the phone, I don’t know if I need the Touch. The girl wants it, but I might sell it and the cool Surefire flashlights I won and buy a proper lens for the camera.

Last Wednesday was a full moon very close to the summer equinox, so Erin and I went out to the park and waited for it to come up:

Not great, but some cool color. I should have brought out the telescope, but it’s too heavy for my mule… um, Erin to carry 😉

The Girl and the Moon:

A tree with moonshine:

I took Erin with me to go to the San Diego Bloggers Meetup.

Dan Tentler was on hand to take pictures with his new light boxes:

She decided to wear a geek shirt to match my stylin’ MacVeritas shirt!

Well, the time had come. It was time for braces for the kidlet!

Here’s the “before” picture:

She looks much better here:

Wow, those braces are SO worth it! 🙂

First we got up and had some presents:

The we joined some buddies and had some Dim Sum!

We have an 18 year old boy! How’d that happen?

Mom got up and made apple pancakes. Dad got out the camera. 😉

She’s almost a teenager!

I finally relented and let her get here ears pierced. I think she liked it:

Looks like she was a little scared…

This is a project Erin turned in for a class.  Ain’t she cute?  🙂
[youtube]CFNgqyIsRe4[/youtube]

Last night I got to see Erin open as a Lady in Waiting in her school’s production of “Once Upon a Mattress.”

She did great!  Here she is on stage:

And here she is being rather rude, I must say:

More pictures here.  They’re pretty blurry, the light was low.

December’s a pretty busy month at our house. Nathan’s (the boy) birthday is on the 5th, Elaine’s (the wife) is on the 16th, then there’s Christmas soon after. Because the wife handles most of the shopping around here, I’m just on the hook for her birthday and Christmas gifts. Yes, it’s a little inconsiderate for her birthday to be so close to Christmas, but I can’t blame her for that. I blame her parents.

Anyway, somewhere near the beginning of December, I normally log on to Amazon, check the wife’s wish list, add a few things, and, bada bing, I’m done. All I need to do is collect boxes as they come in and decide which things I’ll give the wife for her birthday and which I’ll save for Christmas. There’s a whole other story about brow beating Erin (the daughter) into doing the wrapping for me, but I’ll save that, or get her to blog it.

So, I fire off my order on December 3rd, and within a week three big boxes show up addresses to me from Amazon. Now, we’re a Midwest family who transplaned to San Diego. At this time of year, there are boxes coming in every day. Since I outsource the mundane business of mail to the wife, I just had the boxes piled up under my desk, planning to select her birthday booty the evening before the 16th. The wife is a crossword freak and had added:

“Excalibur The NY Times Deluxe Touch Screen Crossword Puzzle”
Excalibur Electronics; Video Game

to her Wish List. I ordered that, and, since I wanted to look like I put SOME effort into the process, I added:

“Wordplay”
Chris Astoyan; DVD

a (very entertaining! who knew?!?) movie about crossword freaks. I imagined her delight upon opening TWO birthday presents, ONE of them a non-Wish List SURPRISE, and ANOTHER that’s also on-theme! (And not just a Starbucks card. “Here, you LIKE coffee. Right?”)

So, the evening of the 15th comes and I go hide in my office and pop open the three big boxes, in search of the two crossword related items. Three boxes. Three items. WHAT? There were eleven items in total that I’d ordered for the two occasions. Oh man, I’m screwed… Thankfully, the crossword video game was one of the three, but my masterwork, the accompanying DVD, was not here. In fact, the only items that had shown up were the ones Amazon offered through third parties. All of the other stuff, DVDs and books, Amazon stock and trade, were missing. I quickly looked through my email for the Amazon Order confirmation and was stunned to finally notice this:

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