Kirk & Abby Winters

Motorola Droid: 1 week review

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:42:00 +0000

Our verizon wireless contract was ending in march so I had been doing alot of research into phone replacements. I was ready for a smartphone of some sort and was really looking hard at android devices. I wasn't against switching networks, so all the major phones were in play. I ended up narrowing it down to a handful, however:

iPhone on AT&T
Droid on Verizon
myTouch on T-Mobile
Nexus One on T-Mobile

I'm sure this will come as a surprise to some of you who know me, but despite my affinity for Apple, I ruled out the iPhone pretty early on. I wasn't eager to switch to AT&T's much-maligned network, for one. But I had other misgivings about the device that I'll go into with another post.

I really wanted the Nexus One but Google/T-Mobile didn't sell it at subsidized price ($180) with family plans. So that became cost prohibitive.

So the real choice was between the myTouch on T-mobile and the Droid on Verizon. The Droid really outclasses the myTouch in terms of hardware and software (it has a newer release of the android OS). Also Verizon's 3G coverage is much more robust than T-mobile's. T-Mobile does have cheaper plans and, historically, we spend more minutes talking to people on T-mobile's network (abby's family) than on verizon (my family). Though that might not be the case anymore.

That was were my head was during super-bowl weekend. I had pretty much made up my mind and was just waiting for new developments in the market (such as T-Mobile's recent myTouch hardware refresh). But that saturday abby spilled water in her purse and drowned her existing phone. Our hand was forced and the easiest/least expensive thing to do was to stick with verizon and renew our contract.

So we both got Droids and have had them for a little over a week. I wanted to give my initial impressions. I'll try to separate them as best I can into hardware vs software.

I'll also be comparing it, fairly or not, to my first-gen iPod Touch. It's my only real basis of comparison.

On the hardware side, there's alot to love. First and foremost: the screen. It's really great. It's bright, crisp and the font rendering is beautiful. The touch accuracy is so-so, but i'm not sure if this is a software issue.

The first thing that struck me about the phone itself was how heavy it was. It's hefty. But I find this to be an endearing quality. The device feels more substantial than heavy in your hands. I actually find that its weight keeps it from flying around my car like my iPod does. But the iPod isn't a phone either, and surely has a much smaller battery and less hardware packed in the case. So that's probably an unfair comparison.

It took me about 30 minutes to realize how glad I was that the Droid has a hardware keyboard. I never was comfortable using the on-screen keyboard on the Touch even though I got proficient with it. When you need software assistance to aid your accuracy, there's something inherently wrong with the concept. The Droid's keyboard isn't perfect, but I can type long messages with making only minimal mistakes and not get frustrated with the speed of my typing. Some people complain about the d-pad pushing the keyboard off-center in your hands, but I don't find this to be very troubling. maybe if I had smaller hands it would be an issue.

The call clarity is much better than my outgoing phone and I think it picks up a signal a little better too. Despite Verizon's superior network, we get mediocre signal strength in our house (which kinda sucks since we don't have a land-line). At least we do get 3G. The speaker on the Droid is as good as advertised. Putting calls on speaker result is clear communication (both ways, I think considering I haven't had trouble with people understanding me).

I've had zero problems with the Droid picking up my wireless G network at home. It always connects without problem and gets good throughput. It would be nice if i could use wi-fi for VOIP. Get on it, Google.

This being my first 3G device, I have a hard time quantifying the network speed. I will say that It feels much snappier than expected but that might be because of hardware processing speed being better than my iPod touch. Simple pages load quite fast and the only lagging sites are multimedia-heavy sites like ESPN.com. Downloads from the Android Market are surprisingly fast as well. I guess I can only say that I'm not at all disappointed in 3G network performance and haven't yet noticed any network lag.

The camera has been underwhelming so far. The flash was really hyped in its comparison to the iPhone but I've found it mostly useless. Photos taken in low-light are very grainy and distorted, even with the flash. I'm witholding judgement here until I can take photos in the daylight. I also haven't yet tried to take video yet.

My only real hardware gripe with the Droid is it's flimsy wake/sleep button. Unlike the one on the Touch, the droid's is recessed and situated next to the headphone jack making it hard to find by feel. The other two physical buttons are pretty flimsy too and are too easily pressed by mistake. The volume button is nice to have, but I could do without the dedicated camera button.

On the software side theres alot of ground to cover.

I'll start out by saying Android is really the linux of handheld OS's with all that that implies. And that makes since, I guess, since it's based on linux. But more than just the nuts-and-bolts underpinnings, the UI skews more towards the kitchen-sink linux approach than the refined and streamlined apple experience. But what really makes Android feel like (desktop) linux is that things just stop working randomly and problem feedback is inconsistent. I'm a computer geek who has used desktop linux alot in the past so my tolerance for this kind of thing is probably higher than joe-average consumer.

On the other hand, Abby doesn't seem to have as many problems as I do, so perhaps these problems are a result of me being a geek. I have installed and run many more apps than Abby does which is probably what gums up the works. So that's worth noting.

I'll start with the good.

Overall, it's much easier to navigate through Android than with mobile OSX. But that's by design on Apple's part. Android has back-button and a app switcher function concepts that don't exist in OSX. It's nice to be able to hit that back-button and go back to what you were doing in another app. For example, the twitter client will forward you off to the browser and you can hit back to go back to twitter. In OSX, twitterific had to create an in-app web browser to enable this same behavior (which, admittedly, works better in some situations. But that's more overhead on the developer's end).

So Android just has more range of motion within the UI that Apple lacks. The Apple approach is nice in some respects, however, because you don't have to keep track of where you are and what your'e doing. Just hit the one big button to start your next action. Of course this same behavior is available within Android too.

The maps/navigation features are really good. I have a 4 year old garmin handheld GPS that I have used for driving navigation in the past and the android features really out-class it. That's probably unfair because the garmin 1) is not a dedicated driving device and 2) it's pretty old. But having the Android navigation pull maps/data(/traffic!) from the internet and not having to store anything locally is a killer feature (and all for freesies!). These maps also look fantastic on the Droid's screen.

I've only used the turn-by-turn directions a couple times, but so far, the directions haven't been bad. They're better than my Garmin's routing at least.

Google Latitude, on the other hand is underwhelming. I was hoping to use it to keep track of abby's location and vise-versa but it seems to only update your location to friends when maps are active and even then it sends out your location too infrequently to be of any real use.

Accounts integration has been mostly positive. All my google account info gets pulled in of course, but so do my facebook contacts. I was able to add my work exchange account and get access to my work email and calendar, but so far haven't been able to get contacts. But I think this is a problem with my exchange server since I don't get contacts on my mac either.

The browser is good enough. I do miss the multitouch features in mobile safari, but I hear those features are getting enabled with Android 2.1 (which should be coming for the Droid any day now). I miss having multiple windows/tabs like mobile safari has also.

Similarly, the google talk app, messaging (texting) app, gmail app, email app, and calendar apps (two separate apps for normal and "corporate") are all very adequate. They let me get done what I want to get done and I have no complaints about them.

My biggest complaint about the Android platform is also one of its biggest strengths: multi-tasking apps. I love being able to run multiple apps at once, but I also want to be able to control when they don't run. Apps universally lack a 'close' function so there is no way of killing these processes from within the apps themselves. The only way I can kill apps/processes is by using a third party utility which gets old fast.

I've also noticed the Droid getting bogged down when switching things out of memory when I have too many apps open. The phone will get sluggish and I have to start killing apps to get things to run smoothly again.

On several occasions I've had to reboot the device to get things working again. I've even had problems with the phone functions -- functions that should be rock solid on what is still, first and foremost, a phone. I don't want my phone capabilities diminished by running too many other apps.

I think the Apple approach of limiting multi-tasking and using a push notifications framework for notifications is probably a smarter/more effective smartphone ecosystem. But I'll withhold final judgement until Google has time to iron out their bugs.

On the whole, I'm happy with the Droid so far. I'm hopeful that verizon/motorola will stay committed to keeping the device updated with Android updates. But if they don't, I'm prepared to hack it and install unofficial Android builds. I think that Android is still in its infancy as a platform and needs to cook a little more before it can truly rival Apple's sophistication and quality user experience. That's not to say that it's not a viable platform now, because it is. But it also has flaws that need to be corrected.

My fear is that Google is following the Microsoft model of putting a generic OS on top of variable hardware. This has been a real thorn for Microsoft and caused most of windows' reliability problems. Maybe Google is smarter than microsoft and will handle this complexity better. They've definitely outsmarted Microsoft at every other turn for the last decade.

Lifestock: 2008 - 2009, Baby On Board

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:53:00 +0000

By late 2007 abby and I were seriously considering making a family. In October, I had a rather uncomfortable surgery to clear up a problem that could cause obstacles in that department. Later that month we squeezed in a quick vacation and visited my college friend in NYC. That was alot of fun.

In December 2007 abby was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and was relieved that there was an explanation for the way she was feeling. She still is dealing with this problem today.

Then came 2008 which was the crazy year. It started out pleasant enough. We attended my sister Deanna's wedding in Fort Wayne in late January. Leading up to that Abby had been feeling wonky really tired but thought it was related to her thyroid problem for which she recently started taking medication. The next week abby was still tired, wonky and decided to take a pregnancy test. which was positive. We weren't expecting that to happen so quickly after my surgery and abby starting her thyroid treatment. but there you go.

We were wishy-washy in the past on how to go about moving back to Indiana. But now that baby part of the equation was firmly in place, it just felt right to move back to Indiana ASAP. So we acted quickly to get that lined up. First priority was to find jobs which we accomplished by the end of March. Step two was selling the house which was a daunting proposition in a suddenly-decrepit housing market. Once we had the house on the market we started looking for an apartment in Indiana move to until it sold. Fishers was pretty much the midpoint between our two places of employment. Abby's sister also lived there so we knew it reasonably well already. So we found something in Fishers.

We moved to Indy in late April and started our new jobs. Our house in Ohio sold about two weeks later. Talk about luck! We immediately started looking at houses in Fishers to move into. We didn't want to stay in an apartment any longer than we had to. We looked at a bunch of houses and found one we really liked. Somehow we managed to get the closings worked out so that we closed on the Ohio house a few days before we closed on the Indiana house. We slowly started moving in to the new house in early June.

In the middle of all that we got the important ultrasound results and found out that the baby was a boy. that was exciting. We started the fun process of picking a name. Oh, and we also had to buy a car in May as our lease expired on the Nissan Murano. That was an afterthought at that point.

The rest of 2008 was more normal as we settled into the new house and prepared for baby. Showers, birthing classes, buying and putting together the crib. stuff you'd expect.

Then came Everett at the end of September. And our lives are forever changed. but for the better.

We had a little more turmoil to end 2008 as our sump pump failed and our basement flooded. That wasn't fun. Soon after, our water heater started leaking, most likely fallout from the flood.

Looking back, we feel incredibly fortunate to have made it through such upheaval unscathed. Things aligned with nearly cosmic precision. What could have been a really *really* difficult period of change turned out to be mostly just stressful and frantic. If one of us had trouble finding a job or we weren't able to sell the house we'd have been in trouble. What's more, we both ended up in really great jobs. We didn't have to settle just to get to Indiana.

Things got gradually easier in 2009 as Everett grew up and became more independent. Our lives are now obviously based around the kid. I wouldn't say life is a struggle, but we have to be more structured and planned these days. Finding time to do anything other than maintain our routine is difficult.

We took our first vacation with Everett in August 2009 when we went to the Gatlinburg area of Tennessee. I got sick, everett had the runs and diaper rash, but overall the trip was positive. It was good to be traveling again.

So there's that. a not-so-brief history of my 3rd decade. when shit got real.

Lifestock: 2005-2007, Branching Out

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:37:00 +0000

2005 started out with me taking a new position within Miami. One that really helped me grow professionally and allowed me to make some really great friends at work. This was a very positive change.

Abby then followed suit. She left 5/3 for greener pastures at Luxotica Retail in march of 2005. There she was able to make use of her new accounting skills that she had learned in her post-grad schooling. Luxotica was also a lot closer to home being located the suburb of Mason, OH instead of downtown. Though she had a rough first six months, Luxoitica proved to be a very good experience for Abby. Mostly because she made some great friends there.

Abby broke her foot playing soccer in late June. That was a major concern at the time because Abby and I were preparing for a hiking trip in early August. Even if Abby could get back in time her conditioning was going to suffer. In the end Abby recovered and hiked the mountains like a champ. You can read about it here here and here. View the photos here.

I started growing a beard on the trip and I've kept it ever since. I can't imagine getting rid of it at this point. I cringe when i see old photos of myself without it. The beard is probably the most symbolic physical change of my maturation. well, that and the glasses. and about 10 pounds of excess weight.

I started wearing glasses full time in 2004. I got them initially in 1998 sometime so that I could better see the blackboard in the large lecture halls but didn't wear them all the time. I'm not sure what caused me to start wearing them everyday in 2004. probably just diminishing eyesight.

There's a big difference between how I looked sans glasses/beard at the end of 2004 and how i looked at the end of 2005. I got new, thicker rimmed, glasses in early 2006 which solidified my current 'look'.

I took three new albums with me on my iPod for that hiking trip. They were Alligator by The National, Illinois by Sufjan Stevens and Meadowlands by The Wrens. So much driving requires alot of music listening. And I played the hell out of these albums on the trip. I'm not sure if there is causality there, but these three albums have become some of my all-time favorites. Maybe they were just great albums that happened to coincidentally come along in time for the trip. This happened before as Radiohead's OK Computer came out just before I embarked on a similar backpacking trip to the Canadian Rockies after I graduated highschool. For whatever reason, good music and hiking trips go hand-in-hand with me.

2005 turned out to be a phenomenal year for music. for me anyway. In addition to Alligator and Illinois, Okkervil River released Black Sheep Boy, Spoon released Gimme Fiction and Animal Collective released Feels (though I wouldn't get to that until later). My interest in music certainly piqued in 2005. (note: Meadowlands was released in 2003, but i didn't get to it until 2005. and incidentally, it's probably my favorite record of the decade)

In November, 2005 we acquired our third (and hopefully last, for awhile) cat, Sid because he was just too cute to pass up. Abby promised me a computer in return. A promise that went long unfulfilled. She is forgiven, however because she let me upgrade our technology situation after moving into the new house. We got a HD projector, receiver, PS3, readynas and replaced the aging 12" powerbook with a new mac within the last year or so.

2006 was pretty uneventful. We took two vacations, New Mexico in June and Northern California to visit Abby's brother and family over labor day. Abby wasn't a huge fan of the New Mexico Vacation but I really enjoyed it. You can read about it here. We both really enjoyed the trip to California. There's something to be said about taking it easy on vacation instead of go-go-go all the time. We were able to just hang out with family which was very refreshing. We also spent a day in Napa Valley which was fun.

The last major event of 2006 was the Wii launch when abby and I camped out at Walmart for 12 hours. It was actually more fun than it sounds. and considering the scarcity of Wiis that lasted for over a year, I'm glad we did it.

2007 was our last year of the easy life. Although it started out inauspiciously with me losing my wedding ring while changing a tire in the snow. Even though we couldn't quite settle our plans, we knew that we were approaching family time. We talked about moving back to Indiana and considered the various scenarios. Have kid in Ohio then move? move then have kid? We couldn't really decide. There were too many working parts.

We took a vacation to Mexico. Since we were starting to think about making babies, we knew this would be our last big vacation for awhile. We decided to go out with a bang and do the international thing. It was a very positive vacation overall. We had some really awesome food there. I successfully avoided the sun. And sammy hagar.

By 2007 i was getting really into beer thought it's hard to pin that down to a specific timeframe. My love of good beer goes all the way back to college when I was drinking sam adams varieties instead of keystone or nattie light. By 2007 I was thumbing my nose at anything macro-made and trying new microbeers every week. This continues to be my biggest obsession, i think.

That fall was my 10 year high school reunion. I decided to attend at the last minute. I ended up having a good time and left wondering how people could change so much but conversely still stay the same.

Lifestock: 2002.5 - 2004, Starting Out

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:59:00 +0000

In the summer of 2002 we packed up our stuffs in Bloomington and moved into an apartment together in Blue Ash, a Cincinnati suburb. We had the usual stress of living with your significant other for the first time. We had to start from scratch in Cincinnati since we didn't know the city or many people there.

Right after Christmas 2002 we got our first cat, Roger.

Around the start of 2003 I got a promotion at work. I was no longer a glorified customer service rep for the city and was doing honest-to-goodness IT work.

I changed jobs completely in May, 2003, accepting a job with Miami University. I had interviewed with them a year previous before we moved to Cincinnati and didn't get a job at that point. But the position re-opened a year later and they called me up to see if I was interested. My experience of working at IU was so positive that I really wanted to get back to a university setting again. So even though my work situation had improved with the GCCVB, I jumped at the Miami job.

We renewed our apartment lease in the summer of 2003. A few months later we started kinda-sorta looking at houses because we're silly like that. We came across a lovely two story, three bedroom house in Liberty Township which is an even further-away suburb of cincinnati but was closer to to my work, at least. We threw caution to the wind and bought that house.

After closing but before moving into the house we took in a stray cat that a family friend had saved in fort wayne. That was Banky. We moved into our new house in late September.

On November 1st, 2003, Abby and I were married. We had a big, expensive party with lots of guests. I think if we had it to do over again, both of us would skip the big party. It was nice though. After the big, expensive party, we went on a big, expensive honeymoon to Hawaii. It was nice and we're both glad we took the opportunity to go to hawaii when we did. However I'm not sure we'll be going back soon. There are many other great places to visit that are not as far or as expensive.

Later in November Abby's car lease expired so we traded it in for a new Chevy S10 pickup. The idea was that OMG WE HAVE A HOUSE NOW WE NEED TO HAUL. in retrospect, getting the truck was entirely unnecessary. I guess we did use it to get rid of the sandbox that one time.

Wow. Looking back, 2003 was a pretty busy year.

2004, on the other hand, was much less so. We settled into our house and married life. But I don't think we did anything interesting but take a couple vacations. Earlier in the year we visited my extended family in Florida and later we spent a long weekend in Arizona. Which was awesome. Abby and I still consider that one of our most successful vacations.

It was on that vacation that Abby and I saw the movie Garden State which was the first step for me getting into indie-ish music which continues to be a big factor in my life currently.

Abby started her masters program in the fall of 2004 at University of Cincinnati. Fifth Third payed a substantial portion of it which was nice of them.

November 1st was Abby and my first ammiversary. um. that was pretty cool i guess. And later in November we purchased our first Mac, a 12" powerbook. We've been on macs ever since.

Lifestock: 2000 - 2002.5, College, Abby

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:15:00 +0000

So in the year 2000 I was still a care-free student at IU in Bloomington. I spent half of that summer in Fort Wayne trying to find temp work and, after giving up on that, the other half in Bloomington working my computer "consultant" job (but mostly going to bars). That summer is one of my fondest memories of college. Bloomington is absolutely serene in the summer. It's a wonderful place to be. And I had little to do but work enough to cover my modest rent and living expenses--mostly consisting of beer and wings at Kilroys (they had obscene happy hour specials. I could get a 32oz pitcher of beer, stuffed sticks and wings for $6 after tip).

I was supposed live in the fraternity house my senior year. But we were on double-secret-probabtion and got caught throwing a party with (*gasp*) alcohol a couple weeks before the start of classes. So we lost our charter for good (we had already lost it the previous year and fought to get it back) and were all thrown out of the house one week into the school year. Most of the guys ended grouping up renting houses together. I had to go to class when all this went down so missed all of this scheming and was the odd man out when I got back. So I ended up finding a one-room apartment on the south side of campus. It was the first and only time I lived by myself which was an important experience.

Right around this time, Radiohead released Kid A which, to this day, brings me back to the emotions I was feeling during that period. Funny how music can do that.

That fall I continued my computer consultant job which consisted of sitting in the campus computer labs and helping other students when they had trouble with the computers. It was a cushy job. We weren't supposed to do our homework, but I always did. It was easy to hide it when I was an IT major and all of my work was on the computer anyway. One of my shifts that fall was in the education building. The person who had the shift after mine was Abby. And that's how we met. She'd come in 5-10 minutes early, I'd stay 5 minutes late. We'd chat. After a few weeks of this I finally asked her out on a "date" (used loosely) which consisted of her coming to my appartment and me cooking mac'n'cheese. smooth, i know. But you can't argue with results.

Funny story before I move on. My first car was an 1985 monte carlo SS. It was a rust bucket. It had all kinds of problems. One of which being that the passenger side door lock would stick. So after one of the first nights abby spent the night at my apartment I drove her to her home to her sorority house in the monte carlo. Of course the door lock stuck. She had to crawl across the front seat to get out. In front of the sorority house. This is worse than the walk of shame. I'm surprised she kept dating me.

2001 wasn't as exciting. I got a new job at the university where I learned how to develop web applications (in ColdFusion *shudder*). Abby and I got more serious but spent the summer apart working internships. I worked for Verizon in Fort Wayne. Abby worked for Deloitte in downtown Chicago. We met up most weekends. I'm not sure if it was in 2000 or 2001 that I bought my friends '91 Civic Si. Before buying it I had never driven a manual. I got a quick lesson and had to drive it back to bloomington from cincinnati. that was fun. But having that car made these trips back and forth from fort wayne to the region feasible. No way could I rely on the monte carlo to drive that much.

I was supposed to graduate in the spring of '01 but I needed another semester to finish my major. I moved into another apartment on the south side of bloomington and moved in with my good friend from highschool who recently returned from a year abroad in Japan. We actually roomed together previously in the fraternity as well. Unfortunately this didn't work out too well. Abby and I were very serious at this point and she spent alot of time at my apartment. Suffice to say she and my friend didn't get along well. That was a source of stress but we all made it through.

For spreak break (WOO) 2002 we took a trip to California to visit my sister Deanna in Long Beach. that was our first vacation together. We also drove to Vegas and back which was my first trip there.

I graduated in December but since Abby had another semester to go and I already had an apartment lease I elected to stick around in bloomington. Tough decision, I know. I got a different job with the university writing ColdFusion. That was another really fun time in my life. I was bringing in decent money and still had very little responsibility. Abby and I ate out all the time and I got fat. That spring Indiana made an unexpected run to the 2002 Final Four losing to Maryland in the final game. It was a very good time to be in Bloomington.

Abby graduated in may and lined up a job with Fifth Third bank in Cincinnati. We decided to move there together and I found a somewhat-crappy job with the Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau. Before leaving Bloomington in June 2002, I proposed. Abby said yes, we were engaged, happy.

Lifestock

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:43:00 +0000

A friend of mine posted a decade-in-review post to his blog recently and it inspired me to do something similar. Mostly because this is a great point in my life to look back at how I got here and it happens to neatly coincide with the start of the decade. And because when I sat back to think about it I realized that the 2000's will probably end up being the most dynamic and important decade of my life.

I started out the naughties as a student. I graduated, got engaged, moved to another state, started my professional career, bought a house, got married and later became a parent. In short I grew up. I can unequivocally say I developed more individuality in this last decade than in my supposed formative teenaged years. Throughout the 90s I had a pretty vanilla personality. I didn't care too much one way or another, I didn't get worked up about things. Since embarking on adulthood I have developed my own personality and voice, learned who I am, who I am not, etc. I'm still changing, in fact. I'm not sure i'm 100% happy with who i've become, but I'm glad I'm *something* and not just vanilla.

So with that in mind, I started writing down the notable events that have happened since the start of the 2000's. I'm doing it for me more than anything. and maybe abby. I want to write it all down before I forget things. It ended up being a really long, and probably very boring narrative. I'm breaking it up into more manageable bites and will post these in the coming days.

There goes Zoomer.

awinters@gmail.com (abby) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 03:22:00 +0000

This is an update of sorts, as well as a documentation of the life of our little speedster, Everett.

Everett is 15 months old, nearing 16 months here soon. He is just a little joy to us. If you couldn't tell by my title, he's fast. People ask me if he's walking yet, and my response is, "He's running." The kid doesn't idly walk somewhere. Wherever he wants to go, it's a full out baby sprint. He always looks like he's going to fall forward. Sometimes he does, but for the most part, he has that balance down.

The title of this post, while a testament to Everett's speedy demeanor, is a good segue way into Everett's main interest in life: books. The post title is from a book by Sandra Boynton (who writes EXCELLENT children books) by dinosaurs. If Everett was a dinosaur from that book, he would be Zoomer. Anyways, we read through 10-15 books a night. All he wants to do is read "bops". We have a basket of books on the floor he goes through every night and then he requests several top shelf books that he must pick out himself. I don't think the kid even needs his toys. Usually, when we travel, we don't bring toys. We just bring a stack of books and that will do him just fine.

He's talking some. That, ball, cup, cat, bop (book), mama, dada, up, down, all done, off, on, apple, cheese, dog, Jessica (funny - the older daughter of our daycare, who we have been using as our babysitter as of late), keys, car, baby, eat, shoes, socks, hat. His favorite word is that - everything is "that" as he points because he wants it now(!). My favorite word of his is snow. It's precious. He also does sign - baby when he wants to watch baby signing time, bath, eat, hat, shoes, and sleep are a few that come to mind.

And we are just starting to get into tantrum season. It's funny. He literally throws himself on the floor. It's too bad for him that we don't fall for it.

A few funny things Everett related:
1) We use a tupperware bowl for the cat water. A couple times in the past day, Ev has gotten a similar bowl out of the cabinet and placed it right next to the cat's bowl. Maybe he thinks they need more water. It's probably true.
2) We have to diligently watch the trash for magnetic letters that magically end up there. Everett's only going to learn 2/3's of the alphabet as a result.
3) We have a water cooler, since we are such avid water drinkers. Sometimes Everett will take his cup over to it and try to fill his up too. Thank goodness he hasn't quite figured out the button, or there would be water EVERYWHERE.
4) The kitchen rug is a great hiding place for old CDs and expired credit cards.
5) The couch is the most fun place to be in the entire house. Who knew.
6) Bath time is the coolest time every day. He loves to play bathketball and wear the lobster on his head. On days he doesn't take a bath, he gets pissed and throws a tantrum. Everett would be in heaven if we could only combine bath time and the couch. Sounds like a bad idea.
7) He has finally been able to go down the family room step. He tried for a while and always ended up on his face, so he gave up. But after a month of trying to teach him to "sit (down by the step) & scoot (your butt close to the edge so that your feet can reach the floor)" method, he finally gave in. And now he expects a round of applause every time he does make it down that step!
8) He's gotten very good at saying "All done" when he doesn't want to eat what we gave him.
9) Remotes double as a play phone. Remotes are also what you hand Mom and Dad when you want to watch baby signing time.
10) This kid loves to dance like a white guy. I'm glad he likes my music, and not Kirk's, much to Kirk's dismay. But he has certainly taken after Kirk's dance moves (oh, Snap!).
11) We have a Melissa & doug puzzle where pieces get placed behind doors (i.e. dog get placed in the dog house, car in the garage, turkey in the oven). Kirk took 4 or 5 pieces out and Everett was able to place them in their appropriate places on his own.

In short, he's a funny, fast, and smart boy. You know, just like every other kid. But he's ours and that alone makes him special. :)

2009 music review

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:30:00 +0000

here's my annual wrap-up of all the music i listened to in 2009. not that you care. but that's my name on the blog so deal with it.

Favorites
my favorite and/or most listened to albums of 2009 (in no particular order)

Japandroids - Post Nothing

Real Estate - Real Estate

Dinosaur Jr. - Farm

Andrew Bird - Noble Beast

The xx - xx

Califone - All My Friends Are Funeral Singers

Polvo - In Prism

Atlas Sound - Logos

Girls - Album

Alice In Chains - Black Gives Way To Blue

The Flaming Lips - Embryonic

Metric - Fantasies

Wilco - Wilco (the album)

Cymbols Eat Guitars - Why There Are Mountains

Most unexpectedly decent album

(Album that i thought would suck but was surprisingly OK...)

Alice In Chains - Black Gives Way To Blue.

The first post-Layne Staley AIC record lacked the punch of their earlier work, but has some genuinely good songs. (Full disclosure: I was really big into AIC in the early 90's.)

What Have You Done For Me Lately...

(Best album to hit late in the year)
Real Estate - Real Estate

Favorite Songs

(in no particular order)

My Girls - Animal Collective
Stillness Is The Move - Dirty Projectors
Give Me Sympathy - Metric
Walkabout - Atlas Sound (w/Noah Lennox)
Young Hearts Spark Fire - Japandroids
What Would I Want, Sky? - Animal Collective
A Link In The Chain - Polvo
Polish Girls - Califone
Lust For Life - Girls
Pieces - Dinosaur Jr.
Some Trees (Merritt Moon) - Cymbals Eat Guitars
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Soft Shock
Wilco The Song - Wilco

Umm... I don't get it.

(Albums everybody else loved that I didn't)

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca

Sorry I'm Late...
(Really good 2008 Albums that I finally got around to listening to in 2009)

Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound
Deerhunter - Microcastle

randoms, updates, lazy edition

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:06:00 +0000

I don't have time to post anything substantial, so here's some quick random stuff all pasted together like a kindergarten craft project.

I feel like I've been sick for two months. it's getting old. I'll get well for about a week and then get cold symptoms again. Everett's been sick alot too. He's just now getting over croup.

One very annoying consequence of this sick is that I haven't been able to drink much beer. which makes me sad. When I do drink it's my basic stuff--Alpha King and Two Hearted--and not the interesting stuff. That's probably for the best because i can save that stuff for our annual new years eve get-together that we have with beer loving friends

I had a Barley Island Dirty Helen Brown last night. It won a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival recently. I've had it lots before but wanted to drink it again and refresh my memory. It is really good for a brown. really smooth and Just enough roasted malt.

Barley Island is a local brewery from Nobelsville. They do good things. They also won a medal last year at GABF for their barrel aged stout.

In other beer related news. There's a new liquor store opening up downtown. We walked past it yesterday on the way back from lunch. There were happy people inside unpacking tastey things. I'm pretty excited about that. Even more so now that i learned that it's going to be run by indianapolis beer maven Mike Sprinkle. MIke gets more of the really rare stuff than anyone else and his former store in carmel has heretofore been the flagship Crown location. I'm hoping he brings all his treats to the downtown store with him. I'll be checking it out tuesday when it opens.

We took a trip to Northwest Indiana to visit Abby's family last weekend. We made the rounds and visited everyone. Other than Ev's croup, it was a great trip. We really enjoyed seeing everyone. And everett did well considering the poor kid was sick.

Any trip to NWI means a stop at Three Floyds which is the best brewery in indiana and probably the world (NO JOKE). I had a pint of Lord Admiral Nelson and a sniffer of Panzer Arctic Wolf. I think i liked Admiral Nelson better. It was just so well balanced. Both beers had a creamy quality which i really liked.

Abby had the Alpha Klaus holiday (java) porter and the Drunk Monk hefe. Both of those were excellent too. I'm not a big hefe fan but the Drunk Monk is superb. Lots more flavor than most hefes. Lots of clove and banana. I think I would have enjoyed the Alpha Klaus more if I hadn't already had coffee that morning.

Oh three floyds, how I love you so.

onwards.

I went a little car crazy recently. Abby and I (mostly I) were considering trading in my civic for something with more room and less manual shifting. I did a ton of researching and narrowed my search to used V6 Nissan Altimas. Which are painfully hard to find. So I did tons of enterweb shopping. and tons of annoying abby.

Ultimately we decided to wait a year, pay off abby's car (mine will be payed off next month--in 2.5 years if you're counting. go abby) and then readdress the situation. Essentially, cooler heads prevailed.

I had a bunch of IU games in the last two weeks. Monday 11/9, Friday 11/13 and Monday 11/16. The last two were at 8 and 8:30 respectively. Which means i got home at 1 and 1:30. That was rough. Fortunately I have a little break. The next game is on saturday 11/28.

IU played well in their season opener, poorly in their followup, and then were simply outmached last night in their game against Mississippi in the Puerto Rico Shootout. IU is really strong in transition offense, so-so in the half court. They're miserable on defense no mater how you cut it. But that's to be expected with a team so young. Hopefully they'll learn how to play defense more sooner than later.

more photos from the second IU exhibition here

Speaking of basketball, some college professor types in Indiana did an analysis of college basketball officiating and the results were what you'd expect if you watch alot of college basketball. This also explains how athletic and aggressive teams fair so well (e.g. any rick pitino team). The BSU guy did an interview which can be heard here

So I think that's all i got.

IU Basketball 09-10: (very) early review

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:23:00 +0000

This is a totally different caliber of team than last year. The talent and athleticism upgrade is obvious. Watford, and Rivers, specifically, can do things that last year's team simply couldn't. This year's team shouldn't struggle offensively.

Defensively they're behind right now. But they have the tools to be a good defensive team. Especially if Bawa Miniru can step in and play center right away. But the two NAIA teams that IU played in exhibition had a pretty easy time scoring. Grace really exposed the team's terrible transition defense. But this is all stuff that can be rectified with good coaching.

The thing that really stood out to me was how fast this team wants to play. In the second game, Rivers literally sprinted up the court with the ball on a few occasions. I crunched the numbers to determine pace (because kenpom.com doesn't compute exhibition games) and proved my impressions. The pace of the Grace game was a screaming 84 possessions while the St. Joes game was a still speedy 76.

To put this in perspective, The fastest team in the nation last year was VMI who averaged 75.9 possessions per game (the slowest was around 58). Michigan State was the fastest Big Ten team last year averaging 67.3 possessions and IU was right at the national average of 66.5 last season.

Granted this was just exhibition, but that's some uncommonly fast basketball for a big ten team. I'd like to see IU continue that tred this season.

Individually, here's a quick rundown of how the players looked in the two exhibition games:

Jeremiah Rivers:
Looked dicey at times in the first game but had two back to back dunks that really opened up the game. In the second game Rivers looked much more in control and really (and i mean *really*) pushed the pace. If this team is really going to get up and down then Rivers needs to be the guy getting the most point guard minutes. Rivers also showed some good offensive skills making some nice pull up jumpers and drives to the basket.

Christian Watford:
I think Watford is going to be the difference maker on this team. He may not be consistent immediately, but he can do so many things that no one else on the team can. He really reminds me of Jered Jefferies in that he's a tall skinny wing player that can get to the rim and rebound (and even handle the ball on occasion). He doesn't have the outside shot that Jefferies had, however.

Verdell Jones III:
Alongside Rivers, I see Jones as being the driving force in the Hoosier backcourt this year. Jones played more off-ball in the two exhibitions which I feel is his more natural position. He's started up where he left off at the end of last season--which is to say: well. He's done a little bit of everything, drive, slash, hit threes, distribute. He's going to get a lot of minutes this year.

Derek Elston:
I'm impressed with Elston thus far. He has an incredible motor and intensity. He rebounds with strength and gets after defenders. His offensive game is a little dicey at this point, but give him a couple years and I think he'll be solid there too. But what he can do for this team now with this intensity and strength is battle defensively and rebound.

Jordan Hulls:
Hulls looked spectacular in the first exhibition. He didn't make mistakes, he hit two open threes, and was able to distribute the ball effectively. Unfortunately, he looked utterly pedestrian in the second game. So which Jordie will we see more often this year? time will tell.

Maurice Creek:
Maurice was the opposite of Hulls in that he looked lost in the first exhibition game but really shined in the second. He hasn't really shown off the good shooting that he was known for in HS, but he looks like he'll be a legitimate threat on the offensive side of the ball.

Matt Roth:
Roth has been what I'd expect thus far. He shoots from behind the arc and that's about it. Offensively, if he gets the ball in a non shooting situation he rarely put's the ball on the floor and instead passes it as soon as possible. Defensively, he looks a little improved, but that's against less-athletic competition.

Tom Pritchard:
Poor Tom Pritchard. He carried the team for the the first half of the year then hit a wall and started sliding downward. Unfortunately, he's showing no evidence of halting that slide. In addition, he's totally lost confidence in his shot and looks really uncomfortable on the foul line. He also managed to miss a half dozen layups in the Grace game. I think his biggest problem is in his head right now. Hopefully he can shake out of it.

Bobby Capiobianco:
Capiobianco looks like he has a ways to go at this point before becoming a consistent contributor. He doesn't seem to be adjusted to the speed of the college game yet. But if you need a big body to bang in the post, he can give you a few minutes and maybe a couple rebounds.

Bawa Miniru:
After seeing how bad Tijan Jobe looked last year I wasn't expecting much out of Crean's second African import. But to my surprise Bawa looked really solid in his first game. He's much more fluid than Tijan and has a decent shot. He doesn't seem to be much of a rebounder, but he had 3 blocked shots in his first game and that's what this team needs out of him.

Deven Dumes:
Dumes is recovering from a knee injury and only played a few minutes in the second exhibition game. he doesn't look 100% yet and really was out of sync with the offense. If he can come back and be the player he was last year I'd expect him to be a major rotation player in the back court if not a regular starter.

Tijan Jobe:
Oh, Tijan. He's improved over last season and might actually see a few real minutes this year. If anything, he's large and takes up space. that's about all he gives you though.

So. After seeing this team play twice I'm still really optimistic about them. They're young, and they'll struggle early against teams like Maryland, Pitt, and Kentucky. But if they work as hard as last year's team and gel on defense this team can be really dangerous in big ten play.

I went through the schedule and counted what i though were probably wins and losses. It came out to around 12-18. But that's mostly because the big ten is really tough this year. I was pessimistic in my guesses, however and i still think that a .500 season is a possibility.

IU Season (unofficailly) underway

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:18:00 +0000

I attended my first two IU home games with Ted. The first was very exhausting since I was doing everything for the first time and therefore had to think about what I was doing. Monday's game went much smoother and the time few by. Both nights resulted in a 8.5 hour total trip time. The games themselves started at 7pm and I got home around 11:45pm on both occasions. I'm really not looking forward to the 8pm and 9pm games. I'll have a very hard time staying awake for the return trip.

The seats are great. For those of you familiar with Assembly Hall, Our seats are are in the very first row of the main section, right behind the iconic low sweeping wall. The seats are directly behind the IU bench and 3 seats to the side of the radio broadcaster's table.

Being right behind the bench is a great experience. I can clearly hear what Tom Crean is saying to the bench during the game.

I also find it interesting to be as close to the game's production. Seeing the scorer's table, broadcasters, cheerleaders, etc. really gives you an idea of how much goes into making the game happen.

Here are some photos from the first game against Grace College:

halloweeeen

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:32:00 +0000

Everett was a sock monkey for halloween. He was cute:

at first he didn't like it:

But he was fine once we got him outside. It was a nice fall evening. A little cool, but otherwise nice.

next year he'll probably be ready to go trick'n'treating. i'm not sure how i feel about that.

Today is Abby and my sixth amiversary. we've been together for nine total. yay us.

IU Basketball 09-10. preview, prognostication

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:07:00 +0000

I'm unreasonably optimistic about this year's team. unlike last year's team that went 6-25, this team has talent and depth. unfortunately this team is nearly as inexperienced as last year.

this team will definitely be better than 6-25. I think the general consensus is that reaching .500 will constitute a good season. IU is still being slotted just above the bottom of the Big Ten (above hapless Iowa). I think they'll do better than that. I don't think Penn State or Northwestern will be as good as they were last year. And other than the top 3 teams in the league I see everybody as beatable. There just isn't much talent in this league. And not a ton of experience either. My point is that Indiana should be able to hang with just about anybody in the Big Ten this year.

Here's my guess at how the league will shape up:

1) Michigan State
2) Ohio State
3) Purdue
4) Illinois
5) Michigan
6) Wisconsin
7) Minnesota
8) Indiana
9) Northwestern
10) Penn State
11) Iowa

Ohio State will surprise people. I just don't have a good feeling about Purude this year. They're a blue collar team that overachieved two years ago and settled back to earth last year. They have some good ball players but they don't have the same athleticism as Michigan State and Ohio State. I'm probably wrong.

But back to IU.

I've been overly encouraged by the way Tom Crean is running the program. his focus on developing a fundamentally sound basketball team is refreshing after the previous two coaches. Crean has a specific idea on how he wants his team to play and he's acutely aware of the team's deficiencies and progress.

And the guy just works his ass off.

This is a fun time to be an IU fan. Expectations are still nonexistent, yet with the players Crean has brought in and the hard work he's put in there is much potential. I'm excitedly curious to see how everything ends up for IU this year.

This season will be a special one for me for other reasons however.

I have met up with an elderly IU fan that needs a ride to all the IU home games. I provide the ride, he provides a free ticket and gas money. So I'll be attending all 19 IU home games plus the Big Ten Tournament in March.

And his seats are criminally good. apparently 5th row behind the IU bench. allegedly behind Tom Crean's family.

yeah.

So i'm the luckiest IU fan in the world right now. Aside from the obvious perk of crazygood seats I get to talk IU basketball with a super fan for a few hours a week. He's seen more IU basketball than I'll ever hope to.

It's going to be a large time commitment (7-8 hours per game) but it's totally worth it. It also means a lot of work for abby since she'll have to take care of Everett on her own on game days. But she has been greatly supportive about it all. She knows what kind of opportunity it is.

I plan on keeping some kind of log or diary of my experiences. I hope to be able to take some photos and such. If I get ambitious I'll post the stuff here. no promises.

First exhibition game is next wednesday, Nov 4. I can't wait.

Everett's First Birthday

awinters@gmail.com (abby) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 01:26:00 +0000

It's really hard to sum up the first year of my sweet baby boy's life. It was hard in many ways. The lack of sleep, the absence of personal time, the commitment. But it was easy in other ways. So much love, laughter, snuggles, goofiness, and general amazement of this little guy we grew from scratch.

Looking at my child as he explores and laughs and lives amazes me in a way that is hard to put into words. We look back in awe of how small he was, we look at today of how fun and curious he is, and we look forward to watching him grow up into a child, a teenager, and an adult.We are so glad he's a part of our lives.

Quick summary for posterity:

Month 1: First month? Nothing but sleep, eat, and poop.
Month 2: First Halloween, First smile, First Thanksgiving
Month 3: First laugh, First Christmas, First Cry at Sheep Noise
Month 4: First Daycare
Month 5: First Food (CARROTS), Second Daycare, First Baby Sleep through Night, First Baby Rolls
Month 6: First Hike, First Sit up without support
Month 7: We apparently did nothing to note this month
Month 8: First Crawl
Month 9: First Stand with support, First cruising
Month 10: First Stand without support, First Cabinet inspection
Month 11: First steps, First vacation (TN), First Pool experience, First wave
Month 12: First word (CAT), Transition to Sippy, First weekend away from Mom and Dad, First BIRTHDAY!

Poem I found that I liked....

Just 12 short months ago
I made my big debut
So now I'd like to celebrate
My 1st Birthday with you.

My little hands play patty-cake
They peek-a-boo and wave.....
They catch me while I learn to walk,
And splash me as I bathe.
They hold your fingers tightly
And touch your heart so deep...
My little hands reach out to you
For hugs before I sleep.....
My little hands are tiny now
But yours will serve to guide me.
And when I'm grown I'll still reach out
And know you're right beside me.

We love you, Everett. Thanks for being so cool.

Everett's first birthday

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:59:00 +0000

So everett turned one year old yesterday. We had a small gathering to celebrate. there was cake.

more here

He had his checkup in which we learned he has the same proportions as before: skinny, average height, huge head. He's basically the hamburgler.

He's really fun these days. He's giggly and happy mostly. He's fairly self sufficient. and in keeping with his parents, very independent. he won't let anyone else feed him, for example.

He's walking. alot. instead of playing, he usually just walks in circles.

About a month or so ago we started having him watch baby signing time every day. he's completely captivated by it and has picked up a few signs. We've seen him do eat, milk, and baby. My mom said he did dog for her. I'm not sure he knows what they all mean yet, but he's going through the motions.

And he's saying the word 'cat'. Fitting.

New Camera

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 01:01:00 +0000

Abby and I have been planning on getting a DSLR camera for awhile. The Panasonic DMC-TZ3 we have works great for general point and clicky tasks. Its huge zoom comes in handy. But as everett became more mobile it became increasingly difficult to get the shots we wanted.

I also started wanting more control over the quality of the photos. Abby had always been interested in real photography. She has a good eye for it. Most of our good photos were taking by her. so having an SLR type camera has always interested her.

I began researching with the two heavyweights: Canon and Nikon. Both have quality entry level cameras but Nikon just refreshed theirs with the D3000. I had my mind made up on that one and was pricing them out when I came across the Panasonic DMC-G1.

It's a new type of DLSR that removes the internal mirror which saves space. That means smaller camera. Panasonic also introduced a new lens mount standard that uses smaller lenses. So the entire package is tiny in comparison to standard DLSRs. No mirror also means no optical view finder. Panasonic replaced with a pure digital one. The whole thing is incredibly geeky which, of course, had me at hello.

I went to the local camera shop to see it in person and ended up walking out with one. They matched Amazon's online price. what was I to do? But this way we have the new camera for Everett's bday tomorrow.

I've spent the last two nights getting used to it. I have absolutely zero experience with real cameras. I kinda knew how they work and what i can do with them, but all the numbers and terms and features are new to me. So excuse me if the photos look elementary. They are.

But I've been able to squeeze out a few decent looking photos. I can already appreciate the difference between the G1 and the point-n-click TZ3. Observe:

Old camera:

new camera:

I put the new camera on full auto mode with flash turned on. So it's very close to what the TZ3 does. I'm sure the clarity difference is mostly due to the additional megapixels. but still, better.

garmin kinda sucks

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:29:00 +0000

So I've had some not very great experiences with Garmin over the last month or so. First my GPS started freaking out after I upgraded the firmware. I went back and forth with support trying to figure it out. They eventually said that the device was defective and I'd have to spend $100 to have them fix it. Which was wrong. I ended up fixing the problem myself by downgrading the firmware (which had to be done in windows only). So I was pretty peeved there.

Then I had problems unlocking some street maps I bought. I had to call support who told me the product I bought isn't a compatible upgrade to the maps I currently use. They offered to sell me maps that would work. No thanks. I think I'm done giving Garmin money for now.

in hindsight, this hurts

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:16:00 +0000

I had this to say soon after Kelvin Sampson was hired as IU basketball coach in March 2006:

All things considered, I feel better about Sampson than I would about Few, Crean, Alford, Wittman, or any other rumored name that's been mentioned in the last few weeks with the exception of Matta and Calapari. Calapari just seemed to me to fit. He's a big time coach that would fit naturally at big name school. I'm kinda surprised he didn't jump at the chance. IU might not be *bling* enough for him, i s'pose.

ow. ow. One hundred times ow.

I'm pretty sure I was trying to convince myself that this was a positive step. But man, I was delusional.

For one, thinking that Sampson was a better hire than Crean... That seems so absurd after seeing how well Crean has handled the job and how poorly Sampson did. It's obvious now that hiring Sampson was a culture clash but I was blind to it.

One of my good friends pointed out his poor graduation rate in the comments. That ended up being a huge red flag that I ignored. I think that this is a result of Sampson bringing in kids who simply had no interest in being student athletes. And Sampson didn't seem to want to make them interested in academics either. This just wasn't IU basketball.

And I was convinced that Sampson wasn't going to cheat at IU because 1) IU made it clear that it wouldn't be tolerated and 2) He wouldn't be stupid enough to do it again under these circumstances. Wrong.

So yeah, silly me.

But what really pains me is that I actually thought that hiring John Calipari at IU was a good idea. Granted, much has come to light in recent months that put Calipari's dirty dealings on full display, That I ever thought that his approach would work at IU pains me.

Calipari is really Sampson on steroids. He cheats but is both more sinister in his dealings and smarter about it so that he doesn't get caught. He has even less pretense about recruiting non-students to play basketball. His entire approach is to sell kids on the NBA and he treats his program like a minor league feeder system for the pros. He doesn't coach basketball as much as he recruits talent and athleticism and just outmatches opponents. He's everything that's wrong with college basketball.

I was right about one thing, however. Calipari really did want to be at a big-time program. Looking back, I'm guessing that none of the big basketball schools were stupid enough, or desperate enough, to hire him until Kentucky came calling (Have fun with that, Kentucky).

It comes down to my own ignorance, of course. I didn't know at the time that those coaches were as shady as they really are. Unfortunately, in the case of Sampson, neither did IU.

but, OW.

good beer weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:41:00 +0000

We drove up to NWI this weekend. We stopped in at Three Floyds saturday. I had Bourbon Barrel Aged Oatgoop. it was good. I also had a Arctic Panzer Wolf. They called it an IPA but at 9% it ended up very similar to Dreadnaught. So it was good too. Abby had their Drunk Monk Hefe. It was surprisingly (for FFF) to style. We brought home a growler of Gumballhead which is sensational on draft. we're drinking it now.

I had my two oldest friends over today. We had drank some stuff I was saving.

Dark Horse Perkulator
Great Lakes Glockenspiel
Founders Devil Dancer
Founders KBS
Struise Black Albert

I screwed up and served the KBS before the Black Albert. As a result, the black albert tasted washed out. the KBS, however was OUTSTANDING. much better than the bottle I drank earlier in the year. The Perkulator had a little age on it too, and it also was better than young. Devil Dancer was great as expected. Glockenspiel was out of its class.

beer beer beer.

To Gatlinburg

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:47:00 +0000

We visited the Gatlinburg Tennessee area last week. It was our first vacation with Everett. It was interesting.

On the way we stopped at Natural Bridge State Park in Kentucky. We stayed in the lodge which was comical. the design and deco was straight out of the 70s. We're talking wood paneling galore. The wing we stayed in was not glamorous. It had rust on the door frames and our "view" was of some trees. It's as if they wanted to remind you that you were still in Kentucky.

Our room was right next to the trailhead, at least. We did a hike up to the natural bridge that afternoon. It was a nice hike even if we were overdressed (sweaty pants don't do well up tons of steps).

We got up early the next day and drove the rest of the way to Tennessee. We stayed in Sevierville which is two towns away from Gatlinburg. Sevierville was pleasant enough. It was basically one big strip mall with every chain restaurant known to man.

In between Sevierville and Gatlinburg was Pigeon Forge. Which was crazy. It was kind of like mixing las vegas with a state fair. I don't know what the hell was up with the Pancake Houses and minature golf, but you couldn't drive 500ft without seeing one of them. We didn't spend much time there.

Gatinburg itself is nice. Touristy and filled with crap, yes; but not as overwhelming as Pigeon Forge. We spent a day there. We did the aquarium which was decent. Not huge but had some cool fishes.

We made two major sojourns into the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. First we did a short hike to Grotto Falls. On the way to the trailhead we saw some turkeys, a dear, and a black bear and cub. Seeing the bear was pretty surprising. Fortunately we were still in the car at the time.

The trail was about a mile and a half each way with 600ft elevation gain. I carried Everett on my back on the way up. I'm really out of shape so it wasn't easy. Abby took him on the way down because I wasn't feeling well. Turns out that wasn't completely due to overexertion.

I started getting chills on the way back to the car. I figured it was because it was a little chilly in the forrest and i only had a tshirt. But I basically felt like ass the rest of that day. Feverish, tired. headache.

The next day we took Everett to the pool. It was his first time ever. He loved it.

That night I had the most uncomfortable night of sleep in my life. I was feverish all evning so I had chills unless I really bundled up. Then i got too hot. My hips and back were sore from the hike. I don't think i slept more than 30 minutes at a time. It was maddening. Abby didn't have a good night of sleep either. Everett woke up in the wee hours and wouldn't go back to sleep. I think she spent about 2 hours awake with him.

The next day was Abby's birthday. We went ahead with our plans to visit cades cove in the park despite my ills. On the way there abby got a ticket for speeding. It was a speed trap and it was ridiculous. Abby was not going to have a good birthday.

Cades Cove was awesome at least. Lots of great views. Lots of wildlife (including two black bear cubs in a tree).

So the vacation was a success in that we got time off to spend as a family. that was really nice. The park was great and we did enjoy visiting gatlinburg. But the speeding ticket and me getting sick wasn't fun. Oh, and everett got the runs and developed a really nasty diaper rash. that wasn't fun either.

So... back to the grind!

Flip rocks

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:32:00 +0000

In late July Abby and I took Everett to the state fair. It was hot but we had a good time taking him through the animal barns. After we got through them all I noticed that the Flip video recorder I had clipped to my belt loop was gone. The clip that attched to the case had broken and the camera and case had fallen off somewhere. The broken clip remained. Long story short: gone for good.

Needless to say that put a big damper on the day.

Soon after getting home I sent an email to Flip expressing my frustration at losing the camera due to their crappy case. Not only the camera but some irreplaceable videos of Everett that I hadn't moved to my compy yet.

Surprisingly they responded the next day saying that they'd send me a (referb) replacement and case. I was pretty stunned. That's good customer service right there. True to their word I received a free replacement about a week later. Thankfully in time for our vacation to Gatlinburg. There it came in handy as I used it to take video of wildlife that we encountered.

So yeah, moral of the story: Flip not only has a great recorder, but they back it up with fantastic customer service. I highly recommend their products (minus the chinsy case, maybe).

OSX, mds and firewire400

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 12:33:00 +0000

Since I use a bunch of memory hungry apps for day to day work (Firefox, IDEs) I keep a close eye on my system memory usage. I began noticing that mds was taking up huge tracts of memory, upwards of 400MB.

I have a Seagate external hard drive at work that I use for TimeMachine backups. I deduced that mds would only use large amounts of memory when that drive was mounted. I also determined that it only happens when I use my drive's firewire400 connection. When I use USB2 mds sits at a reasonable 40MB. Not sure if the Drive is to blame or OSX. Very strange behavior.

to the CLOUD

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:37:00 +0000

As you're sure to have noticed, kirkwinters.com has undergone some changes. Some things are gone, a few things added. But the most important change is under the hood. I've moved the site to google's cloud. Because it's free. and because I can.

Not too long ago, Google began supporting java in their appengine so I started tinkering with it. I came to the conclusion that it was something I could put to good use. so I did. So this site is now written in java instead of PHP.

The second major change is that I've imported (most of) my blog into Blogger (incidentally, another Google product). I've given up on managing my own end-to-end blog. I use Blogger's APIs to fetch the data from their servers and display it here. For now I'm just displaying the most recent posts here. You can find the blog archive at my full blogger blog site.

You'll notice that I've also included my most recent twitter entries here as well. I've taken grief recently for not updating my blog, but the truth is that I post more to twitter these days. So including the those here should mean more updates.

The tweets will not show up in my rss feed, however. You'll need to subscribe to my twitter feed rss for those. or take the red pill, join twitter, and follow me that way.

I haven't yet ported over my "items/what i'm doing" functionality. I'm not sure that I will. Ideally I can find another webby2.0 service to host all that info for me. But I have yet to find anything that fits my needs. Suggestions are welcome. It's mostly just beer and music that I'm worried about. And music is mostly covered by my last.fm page. If only one of the major beer sites would open up their data via APIs....

so yeah, welcome to the new site. use comments to let me know if you encounter problems or whatever.

I'm back--with geekery

noreply@blogger.com (Kirk) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:39:00 +0000

contrary to what some may think, i haven't abandoned this blog. I've been meaning to post something for several weeks but haven't had the time. Work has been off the hook crazy the last two months and baby keeps us quite busy at home. I just haven't had the time or energy to post stuff.

It also doesn't help that my life has become quite one dimensional now that I'm a parent. I'm not complaining, I just don't think it makes for interesting reading. Nobody wants to hear non-stop gushing over how great someone else thinks their kid is.

And I think abby does a better job at posting everett stuff so I'll leave that to her. Suffice to say, he's been awesome. he has established a bit of a personality over the last couple months and he's become alot of fun to be around. Exhausting, but lots of fun.

The one thing I'm really excited about right now is our technology situation at home. As someone who works in, and is very interested in geek-type things I've always been burdened by having the knowledge/ability to implement just about any option available. In more than one instance I've been paralyzed by choice. I've never been truly happy with our home technology implementations in the past.

But We've made a series of acquisitions in the last year that have really worked well.

First, we bought a new projector for the home theater in the basement. We've been enjoying this much more than I anticipated when buying the house. It has become a place of escape for me and a great exercise tool for abby.

Next, I got a PS3 to hook up to the projector (facilitated by a Sony video switching receiver). I got the PS3 because it was, at the time (and arguably still is), the best bluray player at that price point. I'd be lying if I didn't also get it for the video games, but as my game playing time has been greatly reduced this wasn't the driving factor.

The PS3 has really impressed me. The user experience is silky smooth and intuitive (even abby praised its usability). The PS3 really does make the Nintedo Wii feel like a second-class system. The experience is just more immersive.

Lastly, Abby gave me the go-ahead earlier this year to buy a Readynas Duo. With all the digital media we're capturing (photos and video) I really wanted something reliable and redundant to keep it safe. We had a 300GB external hard drive but I didn't feel comfortable using that as an endpoint for all our datas because it wasn't backed up.

I had had my eye on the Readynas NV+ for several years (when it was still infrant) but always considered it too pricey to be a realistic option. Then Netgear bought Infrant and released the Readynas Duo which was essentially half the hardware and much cheaper. The Duo offers transparent redundancy along with some other really nice perks (networked printer sharing, afp sharing etc.). I jumped at it.

I got an empty Duo along with two 1.5TB Seagate drives. The installation and setup was cake. Moving data over from all my various places took a couple days but was likewise easy. AFP sharing (apple's network file sharing protocol) was flawless and required no special setup on the macs. The printer we have wasn't officially supported by the Duo but I was able to get it sharing just fine to my mac. The Duo just worked. It's an amazing product and I can't sing its praises loudly enough.

But then it got better.

The PS3 has a native UPnP client. This allows it to consume media streaming from a server computer. The Duo has a built in UPnP server. Suddenly all this digital video that I've had stored for years was consumable on demand without any burning of DVDs, moving to USB devices, etc. I immediately set out to rip our DVDs (mostly our TV shows on DVD) into digital files stored on the readynas. So now we have an expanding digital library of tv shows and movies available in our home theater on demand. This is unbelievably cool. Even abby has found this feature useful and she's hard to impress.

But wait there's more!

Netgear recently released a firmware upgrade to the Duo enabling networked Apple Time Machine backups to the device. For those of you not familiar with the Time Machine, it's a transparent and automated incremental backup utility built into Mac OS X (in my opinion it's one of the best features of macs).

We recently bought a new 15" macbook pro to replace our aging 12" powerbook. I moved our photo library to the new mac and set it up to backup to the readynas. No hassle, no worries. just awesome.

To make wireless backups more feasible I put my birthday moneys to a new Linksys 610N simultaneous dual band wireless router. It should arrive in a few days. I know Abby won't ever plug in the macbook for backups so I'm hoping that the new 802.11n at 5Ghz will be fast enough that she won't even notice Time Machine running. I'm also looking forward to the gigabit ethernet since all of my wired devices (readynas, PS3, macbooks) support it.

As a geek it's always fun to get new toys. But when you can actually put those toys to a practical and intended use it's even better. And while each of these devices has been great in and of themselves, what I'm really happy with is the synergy that we've achieved in getting them to work well together.

just a quick funny

awinters@gmail.com (abby) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:35:00 +0000

We knew this would happen sooner or later, but I guess we expected just a little bit later.

The other day we were searching and searching and searching but we could not find his pacifier. We ended up abandoning our search. Guess what Everett did with it without us realizing it? He put it through the cat door down to the basement and dropped it. Kirk found it on the stairs leading down to the basement.

Funny kid.