First off, let me start by saying I did keep the nook and it’s a wonderful device for what it does.. especially after the newer firmware.. it is pretty darn kewl.. And I really like it.. that being said, I do have to admit that I got an iPad.. and yes I do love that too.. let me tell you, for regular books however, I’d probably use the nook, but for my technical books, even tho they look pretty darned good on the nook, I’d probably read them on iBooks just because the code blocks and sample pictures are easy to read and understand… I do like the iPad almost 10″ of wonderful goodness.  Yes there are many people that say it is essentially a large iPod, which in general I’m sure it is.. but movies, books and other things are much better on the iPad than I though they would be.. I do love it

On to my next endeavour, I have been busy with some local volunteering.  Our Theatre (TCR) re-opened the flood torn building we used to be in, so that took up a few months of my time as well as working with the Cedar Rapids Rollergirls.. these ladies are a blast to work with, and are alto of fun.. if any of you live in Cedar Rapids, I highly suggest getting downtown (or even if they are away) and seeing a bout.. it is a wonderful night of entertainment and a good damn sport too.

You can find thier season schedule on thier website (at least you can tomorrow when I promote it into production).  Go see a bout..

Now onto my final point for this long post.  I’ve been saying for years that I wanted to get a tattoo and I believe that everyone in my family thought that I was never going to do it, but after talking with some of the Roller Girls (wait… maybe they are bad influences) I found a pretty good damn tattoo artist to do me a medical tattoo.  She works for Lefty’s Tattoo parlor in Lindale Mall.  Wonderful place, stop by and see ‘em if you are thinking of getting work done.  See I hate wearing jewelry.. the only thing I wear is my wedding ring usually, so I thought.. what better way to let the medics know that I’m a diabetic, than to permanently get it etched into my skin.. Nice thing, I’ll never loose it (easily)..

Well that brings my ranting to an end.. in summary.. TCR is back, Roller Girls RAWK and I have a tattoo (and plan on getting more).. Maybe this is my mid-life crisis.. but I hope not, I prefer to spend that on video games

During that time, I’ve had a few more small occurrences of my vertigo and something else, no one can seem to figure out.  I’ve had this problem for almost a month now, CT Scan was normal, more tests to come.. there are good days and there are bad days.  I just wish there were more good days.

On a lighter note, I’ve recently picked up a sock knitting book, hopefully I can get to this sometime soon.. the problem I have is finding good sock yarn.  I’m looking for a nice set of yarn, also I’m looking for some Red/White self striping yarn as well.. I checked knit picks and a few other places, but have not been able to find some.

As well, I’ve finally got all the books in the InkSpell trilogy.  I’m hoping to start those soon, however I’m really slow in reading, so it might be a while yet before I get them started.
After that I’m hoping that I can get the Alosha Series to read that, book #2 of that series, is really hard to find.. so I hope I can find that.

On the forseable future, I have a few web projects that are closing down here soon.  As well, I have a new LW projects (maybe silo too) that I want to start up, I have a friend that’s going to help me with this one.  Maybe two friends.

Not much more new to report right now, however, still got more med tests and more doctors to tell me, “We don’t see anything wrong”.

First, let me just say, that I love fried foods.  Moz Sticks, Provago Wheels, French Fries, Donuts.. it doesn’t matter, I’ll eat just about anything fried.  So, what better way to merge two of my favorite things, into one.  I found a “Fried Twinkie” recipe on the interwebs and thought I’d try it out.  I’ve heard these are supposed to be the bomb-diggity, so why not.

Okay .. Let me just say, this was the WORST food for you ever.  This thing, I’m sure, would kill a rhino!  The batter was good, the gooey-ness of the twinkie inside was awesome.  However, the heaviness of this thing I could tell was just choking off my arteries.  It was a pretty good treat.. but the recipe called for making 6, and no one else would try them, so I felt compelled to eat three of these things… needless to say I was sick for the rest of the night!

Next, can I just say that I used to LOVE wrestling, when I was a kid.  WWF, WWE or whatever it’s called now, I can see kids enjoying for entertainment value till about their 20’s (past that, I dunno).  I myself, do not consider myself a sportsman by any means either.  Loathe most of the normal sports (basketball, baseball, bad-mitten, what have you).  But let me just say if you EVER get the chance to see a bout of roller derby, DO IT.  This was the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen in my life.  These girls were good sports and they worked HARD at what they do.  You wouldn’t think that skating for 20 minutes at a time is very taxing, but just go watch these girls work out.  It was the most entertaining thing I’ve seen since ABC’s Wipeout.  And our girls trounced the Chicago Crew by 70 points.  I’m definitely hooked, and think I will be getting tickets for every bout that I can!

Finally, on the gaming front, I finished Ghostbusters (on my birthday) on the casual “portion” of the game.  The game was pretty awesome, and I will have a review coming here soon for that, but I would suggest it to anyone who liked the movie, was just as funny.  Good to know that Aykroyd has not lost his touch!

It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve talked to everyone, I was in the hospital last week (sun – wed) with BPPV.  My type was what the therapist coined: “Extreme Horizontal Vertigo”.  Basically I had vertigo spells when I turned my head either left or right, and they would last for more than 2 minutes.  If you’d like more information on BPPV, jump here.

BPPV Canals

So far, we haven’t gotten any re-occurence of the BPPV, however they say that it’s a 10% chance that I will have it flair up again this year.

On a more positive note, more info about my world.  I have sent the Kindle back.  It was too much money for not enough return.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’d recommend it to people, I thought it was a great device, however I guess it just wasn’t the right time to get an eReader for me.

On another positive note, we had our Insurance adjuster out to see the damage caused by the storm, we have gotten a check to fix the work and we should be getting that going pretty soon, however we may be displaced for a couple of weeks during renovations.  Seems like most of the house will be replaced after this.

And on a closing note, I’ve started to do some modeling again, I’ll try to show some pics when I get them finalized.. nothing big.. nothing major.. just some “tests” to make sure I remember how to do this stuff.

Yes I sew.  Yes I knit.  Yes I Cross-Stitch (NO I don’t crochet :p).  Deal with it.  It’s fun, and you get to make things.

Well, a friend of ours was teaching a class on how to make sock creatures.  Now, I’m sure many of you have seen the Sock Monkey.  The Sock Monkey has been around since the 1930’s, and was pretty much the easiest thing to make in Arts and Crafts.  Well over time he’s budded into other Sock Creatures (just about anything you can think of), including the Spock Monkey.  I thought these things were awesome, and I figured, since I knew how to sew why not!

Cover of Stupid Sock Creatures

The class, which is 2 nights once a week, was held at Home Ec, a wonderful little Thread-Banger store in Iowa City.  They are nice people, give them a visit when you can.  The class, so far, was awesome and I have a Sock Man started.  There are, however, no plans on what he will actually be.. but it’s a start.  I’ve also been looking at maybe getting the Stupid Sock Creatures book as well and doing many more of these sorts of things.  Goodwill is a plethora of used socks I’m sure we could use and low prices.

More over, this class is  yet another attempt at trying to get the impending delivery of my Kindle.  Keep the mind busy, it won’t know how to cope.

I leave you now, with SPOCK monkey.  Live long and prosper!

Spock Monkey, attacked by tribbles

I currently ordered an Amazon Kindle DX and upgraded my shipping (of course) to two-day.  Today I checked my order status and noticed the estimated delivery date:
Yes that’s right, even though it’s just this Friday (count ‘em, 4 days and counting), I still can’t wait.

I’m very excited to get this nifty new little device, I’m just hoping that it will be everything that I hope it will be.  This is the reason I wish we had an Amazon Store nearby.

Look for my Kindle Review, sometime next week, after I’ve had time to manhandle the thing

eReader?  I thought to myself, why would anyone want a eReader.  The cold plastic book that holds books.  Doesn’t a laptop (or net-book for that matter) do the same time?  Why would anyone want to look at a screen for the amount of time that you would read a book.

These are all things that many people would say.  Let me tell you though, once I saw the Sony Reader (PRS-505) in Target one day, I fell in love with the thing.  The screen was dark gray text on light gray background, it looks almost exactly like a book would.  The text was sharp, rich and clear.  Seems, also, that it would not contain any eyestrain.

eBooks Side by Side

Seems that these LCD’s we have now have a back-light, that after a good amount of time, start to strain your eyes.  LCD’s have, granted, a faster refresh rate than CRT’s, but they do still flicker.  Granted the flicker is almost not noticeable to the human eye, but if you ever video record a Flat Panel or a CRT monitor you will see it.  This flash causes eye strain as your brain still sees the flash and tries to adjust your vision to match.  This, of course, is highly debated.

PDF and eBook, side by side

So in my quest to find the true “The One” eReader, I found a plethora of readers.  Some of which haven’t been finished yet (Plastic eReader) and some that compare to the big boys (JetBook).  I quickly found, the two most popular readers are the Sony Reader (PRS 505 and PRS 700 currently) and the Kindle.

I’m sure many of you have heard of the Kindle (or seen one somewhere) as Amazon has sure put a advertising blitz out there.  Many blogs also talk about the Kindle.  The Kindle, in my findings, seems to be the cadillac of the eReaders (some have called it the iPod of eReaders).  The sony is the nicely priced mid-sized car of the eReader line.

PDF on 700

Now, what I want to do with the eReader is be able to view books (Stephen King, Dean Koontz) and view PDF’s I’ve bought, as well as reading work documents on the go.  This would greatly reduce what I have to carry in a normal day.  Needles to say, PDF support is a must.  I also would like to be able to add notes to pages.  I’m a notorious note take in my books, be it with post it’s or writing, this is very important to me.

Now the Kindle doesn’t native support PDF’s and from what I heard their conversions aren’t the best.  (Except for the Kindle DX, releasing on June 10).  Every other eReader seems to support PDF.  So I thought I would try to find the Sony Reader that supports PDF nicely and allows notes.  The Kindle has always allowed notes and bookmarks, but has just now allowed PDF (Kindle DX).
I was able to see and touch the Sony Reader 505 at Target, which is where I fell in love with the idea of an eReader, but could NOT find a 700 anywhere.  Finally found that Borders has 700’s so I took a roadtrip to a local borders (about 1.25 hours away) to see the Reader.  The 700 honestly did not impress me at all.  The text was hard to read on a normal book, the contrast was horrid.  The PDF support was nice, it had zoom and annotation that I wanted, but reading it was hard with the glare from the touch screen.  I thought to myself, I should just try it.  So I ask Borders what thier return policy is, they only return Readers if they are defective.  The only Sony Store has a 14day return policy I believe, but after seeing the two side by side, I figure I won’t even bother.

The Kindle DX, I believe, will be my reader of choice.  The Amazon Store has an ample 30 day return policy (from delivery date) and PDF support.  Plus it has a bigger screen.  I found that while trying to read PDF’s on the Sony’s 6″ screen, it was hard to read at small “form”.. and when you expand the text the formatting kinda breaks.  The large 9.7″ screen of the Kindle DX I think will really help with that.

The only downside (besides price) of the Kindle DX, would be there is no SD Card support and the battery is in the form factor (ala the iPod).

Once I get my Kindle I will post a more functional review.

First of all, let’s talk about the house.  We got all our kitchen cabinets in and set, they look great (sorry no pictures today).  We are supposed to have the counter tops in and mounted this weekend.  After that, we have just a few rooms left to put trim up in.  The original woodwork trim that we pulled out, cleaned, sanded and stained are going back up.  We have the hallway, Jake’s room and some of the dinning room done.  We need to finish up Jennifer’s room, the living and dinning room.  It’s looking much better.

Also last week I started to work at TCR again.  We are doing the play Fences.  It’s a pretty powerful show, it’s actually pretty good.  As always there are little things that happen that make you roll your eyes.. and then we have the tech problems.  Last weeks tech problems were fun.  We had a small power surge during our opening night and made the whole of the stage lights flicker on and off (like someone flipping a switch on and off) for the whole of the second act.  On Sunday we had sound issues, the computer that runs the sound was having memory  issues and was not found until 10 minutes before house opened.  We did get that fixed up and working just fine however.

Coming up next is the closing of Fences this weekend (the 29th) and hopefully I’ll be able to get some good quality time in Azeroth, with LittleSister and in Paradise City.. Yes that’s right, I’m sure some of you got the references out there.

As well, I’ve started a new knitting blog and a new project as well.  I’m close to half done with it.  This is something, currently, I’m working on while waiting for things to happen backstage (between scene changes, and during intermission).

Today is, of course, groundhog day.  Poor phil saw his shadow which means we have 6 more weeks of winter.  I got to thinking, doesn’t he USUALLY see his shadow, I can’t remember a time where he hasn’t.  But I must due my duty and watch the movie today.. Get that out of my system.

As well, this weekend I got to play some more WOW.. I have a couple of toons up to 20, which means I get to leave the starter areas for .. well greener pastures.. however, most of the time you get quests that “point” you in a direction.. with my Draeni Paladin, however, I really didn’t have anywhere to go, I moved over to the wetlands to do some questing there.. We’ll see how that goes

The Floors

Floors & Walls

More work happened on the house this week, we had people in the last few days (sans Sunday) that was doing the mudding and did some sanding.  They should be getting close to doing the final texturing.. We have also bought all the paint and gotten all the wood for the floors that we need.  There was 53 boxes of flooring, which totalled just a little over a ton of wood flooring.. We tried not to stack it all in one place.   We are getting close.. Once the walls are up we can go full bore on the paint and floors.. I believe they can happen at the same time as long as we are careful.  The kitchen cabinets are getting ordered sometime this week, and as soon as we the floors in the kitchen, we will get our appliances put in there.. things are wrapping up hopefully.  I’m hoping that once we get the walls ready for work, we can just plow forward as we won’t really be waiting on skilled labour.  The floors however, we do have to have someone in to do those.

Well that’s all for this week.. come back next week for more ramblings and more complaining, and we’ll see how much got done on the house..

The new van

Work is going through growing pains again, but it’s like that at all places, all in all work is good..

We got a new car, pretty awesome there.. We got a 2004 Toyota Sienna that’s pretty much fully loaded.. I’m missing my remote car starter, and unfortunately I can’t get one installed in the van until the end of February.  Going to have to think about that one.  As well, our flooring should be here this week.  Our kitchen cabinets have been “Drawn out”, just waiting from the blessing from the wife.  The rebuild is going slow.. but it’s going..

Kitchen CAD Drawing

We’ve picked up paint for most of the downstairs, got to get the rest this week..

Once we get most of the floors in, we will start to move in furniture (some of which is on the way, others in the garage), appliances and such like that.

We are getting close folks!

It’s been a good week, odd, but good.