Tree Day!

Liz and I have been trying to get our tree for a few weeks now, but something has always happened to stop us from getting it. Today, on the day where "blizzard conditions" were forecast as a possibility, we managed to get it.

We went to a place in Redding called Warrup's Farm. We go to Warrup's twice a year: to get pumpkins for Halloween and a tree for Christmas. The family who run the farm are really nice people.

When we got there the guy gave us a saw and pointed us in the direction of the field with trees, telling us to take our pick.

We walked through the field for a few minutes, getting colder every second. We each only slipped on snow once... the temperature while were were out there was 23 degrees (-5 degrees). After a couple of minutes we found this one:

Liz cut down the tree (it was her turn this year) and I carried it back to the car (I think it's my turn every year to carry it to the car). By the time we got the tree in the car and were ready to go both of our hands were so cold that they hurt. Not just burning on the skin, but inside our hands.

We made our way home, and about 5 minutes before we got home snow started falling. It was weird though - it was coming down in little balls not unlike Dippin' Dots. After about 25 minutes though it stopped.

Tonight we set up the tree and decorated it with lights and ornaments. I took a few quick photos.

What about the snow and "blizzard conditions"? It started snowing again here at about 7. The forecast says that it is going to snow through the night, heavy at times. Total accumulation by tomorrow could be 12 - 18 inches. I love how it looks outside at night when it is snowing. I went out the back for about 30 seconds earlier, long enough to take this to show how it looked at about 9:30. At 10:30 it was sitting at about 3.5 inches. Hopefully it snows as forecast and we wake up to a lot of build up!

The Droid I was looking for

For 4 weeks I got to trial the Verizon/Motorola Droid™ phone. It runs the Google Android 2.0 operating system and is marketed as a competitor to the iPhone, which I have limited experience with. The Droid™ was awesome - I loved the device and it was with a hint of sadness that I had to send it back this week. It isn't just a phone, it is:

- e-mail (including ActiveSync, allowing for Exchange/Outlook integration)

- a 5MP auto-focus camera

- a GPS/Navigation system

- an MP3 player

- just about anything and everything, like a barcode scanner, thanks to downloadable apps

- other things that the link will probably tell you about, if you want to know more of the features.

Here is a photo of the Droid™ to give you an idea of its size:

I know what you all must be thinking: that phone is huge. But keep in mind it is next to an R2-D2 action figure, not a real R2 unit. It has a slide out keyboard in case you don't want to use the touch screen keyboard. I liked both keyboards, but other people at work have said they don't like the real keyboard on it as the keys are all flat. That didn't bother me though. Here's R2 with the keyboard on display.

Here are 2 clones fighting the Droid™. Screen image not simulated.

The display on the Droid™ was great - really clear. It comes with a decent web browser, which renders baconisgreat well.

I downloaded a few apps to see what they were like, but with the phone being a demo unit I didn't get any apps that I had to pay for. One of them that I got was Google Translate. It provided this, very literal, I imagine, translation:

When I saw this app I just had to download it and try it out. Unfortunately, I Zoolander-ed it and could only work out how to turn one way.

Perhaps my second favorite app downloaded was FartDroid. 27 different fart noises, which could be played instantly or set to go off using a timer. When it farted the little animated Droid blew lines out of, well, whatever Droids have.

"Poot" was probably my go-to fart.

This was my favorite app though by a long way: Google SkyMap. When you launch the app it determines your location and then loads the map. When you move the phone around and point it towards different parts of the sky it shows you what the stars or planets that you are looking at are.

Ah, so that bright thing in the sky is the "Sun"? I didn't look at the sun, I actually looked down towards the ground and it showed me the sky on the other side of the planet.

It made seeing the constellations a whole lot easier. For instance, I can pick Orion's belt, but I can't pick the other stars which make up Orion. But SkyMap showed me all of the stars, which was cool. If I were taking shots at night of stars it would be cool to have, then I wouldn't have to actually learn the constellations... I might just learn them in case I don't ever have an Android-based phone on me again...

Liz even enjoyed using it. It saved us from turning the laptop or desktop on a couple of times - it could hook up to the wireless here if we needed to look something up online. All-in-all the Droid™ was fun, easy to use and had heaps of useful features and apps.

Why all the trademark (™) symbols? To quote the Verizon Droid™ website,

"DROID is a trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd. and its related companies. Used under license."

That disclaimer appears on the website, TV commercials, print ads... I realize I didn't have to use it, but I did it as an homage to that fact. Or did I have to use it...

It's cold...

This morning was a little chilly when I arrived at work. Here are the temps from weather.com, shown in both Fahrenheit (terrible scale) and the more sensible, awesome Celsius.

Now, thanks to this website, Star Wars Weather, I can accurately quote Clerks Animated and say it's "Hoth cold".

Homemaking Tip...

Not the start of a new regular series, that's for sure, but I wanted to share a tip that I uncovered this evening. Say you come home and your dwelling smells foul. Ours did tonight, because tomorrow is garbage day and something in the bin reeks.

Some people may spray air freshener, others may light a candle. Some people don't like the propellants in air fresheners or the scents available, and some candles are too strong, a fire hazard and may irritate some people. My approach was completely effective and required none of those things.

For better smelling air you will need:

1 x frying pan

4 x strips bacon

Cook the bacon in the pan and enjoy the smell. Note that the offensive odor earlier present is now overtaken by delightful bacon aroma. It is important not to overcook (burn) the bacon, as that will detract from the aroma. Once the bacon is adequately cooked remove it from the pan and eat it.

Voila! Pleasant smells and bacon in the belly.

Now, time to take the garbage out.

Pathetic...

This one is more for the Australian readers...

How pathetic is this Australian flag that was on a site Liz was looking at?

American readers: this would be like looking at the US flag, and having the stripes being varying widths. The idea is right, and you can tell what it is, but you want to laugh at it because it looks stupid. Well, I think it does anyway.

Snow washed away

I woke up at 2am last night and couldn't immediately go back to sleep. I looked outside to see snow falling pretty steadily from the sky. Our back deck had a reasonable amount of buildup, and the neighbor's houses had a pretty solid covering.

I went back to bed, only to be woken up at 3:30 by heavy rain and wind. It was the same at 5:30 and 6:30, so now most of that snow has been melted and washed away.

It was a little disappointing to see it wash away. Even though snow can mean more work and a little discomfort, it is still snow, and I still get a kick out of seeing it.

Let's see if I'm still saying that in 3 months or so...

Remembering dreams

I had a dream on Sunday night, and I wish I could have remembered the details from it. In the dream I had come up with something that made Liz and I financially secure for a long time. Bucketloads of cash were coming in from it.

I had written a song. It was getting heaps of exposure and air time. Downloads of it were through the roof. I wasn't singing it, which probably helped the success of it.

When I woke up I remembered what the song was about, but couldn't remember the words. I'm pretty sure it was an original song and not something obscure I have heard somewhere.

After all, who would write a song about sharting?

Who II

This guy, our second who, walks the streets of Stamford. So many people that live or work in the city know who he is, but very few people, I would think, would know his real name.

Some people call him "Batman", but I can't see him taking on Catwoman, let alone The Joker. Plus, does he look like a scientist? Batman's a scientist. He probably gets the "Batman" moniker from the hat at left.

He wears the hats all the time. Well, they're not really hats so much as headbands with weird attachments to them. Sometimes they are bat wings, sometimes they are stars. Another time, they looked so much like reindeer antlers. Regardless of the attachments, they never cover the bald head.

He always seems to be carrying a bag with him, perhaps his equivalent of a utility belt. Maybe he carries his spare hat attachments in the bag, so he can change whenever the mood strikes him.

He often walks with his tongue hanging out.

I have also seen him wearing a skirt.

His name is Crazy Hat Man.

CNN & Awesomeness

Those 2 terms don't go together: CNN annoys me so much. In the mornings Liz and I tend to turn on the TV to find out what the weather is going to be like for the day (it helps to then work out whether to take a heavy jacket etc). Once the weather is over (it is on it's own channel) we turn on CNN to see if anything big is happening in the world.

I can't take CNN in the mornings anymore.

CNN break their morning show into half hour segments. A typical half hour segment will cover 3 topics. They start off with the war in Afghanistan. They talk about that for 10 minutes. After commercial they come back to tell everyone about how we're all going to die from H1N1 for 10 minutes. More commercials are followed by 10 minutes about health care reform. At the end of the third segment, they announce "Next half hour we will be bringing the latest on the war in Afghanistan, what you need to know about H1N1 and developments on health care reform". Last week was slightly more bearable because Tiger Woods slept around so some of the stories on health care reform were about him instead.

But enough about something annoying - time to move on to something awesome. I'll pose a rhetorical question: how awesome is Lego??? Lego, sometimes referred to in the USA as "Legos" (I shudder just typing it) is incredibly awesome. Barbara, Liz's aunt, got be some Lego for my birthday, and I got some spare time to put it together. They are small battle sets, some droids versus some clones. The clones are my favorites, I have posted some photos of them with their walker. There is also a picture of the Assassin droids that they would take out.

The plan is to name the clones; like they do in Star Wars The Clone Wars. I'm leaning towards naming one of them "Stench". I like taking photos of the Lego and clones, so I might take some more photos of them in the near future.