OMB... you'll get it

This takes iPod accessories to a whole new level. Oh the random stuff you find on the internet :)

Do you SIP?

One of the topics that always tends to come up in work conversations is how much phone, internet, and cable providers charge for their services. I'm not a fan of paying a lot for these services, and phones are a big thorn in my side. Having had a particularly unpleasant experience with Qwest (MN) two years ago, I decided that I didn't need to even think about a land line until I moved into a more permanent dwelling, aka house. Right now I just use my cell phone for my limited amount of calls, but the problem is that my number is not local to where I live. Great for my parents, not for my friends and family who actually live near me. With this in mind, the only real benefit from getting a land line now is to be nice to other people and there is no way I'm going to pay a monthly bill to a phone company just to be nice; sorry guys.

So what has caught my eye? More and more VoIP services have sprung up as a great alternative to your standard phone options. You can get Vonage for about $20/mo which isn't too bad, but still not good enough for me to hop on. Skype also offers a pretty good deal for SkypeIn and SkypeOut is free which means you could choose to only pay a monthly fee for incoming calls made on land lines. A few of the concerns are that it's still only in beta and I haven't been super impressed by their computer to computer service, although not deterred by it either.

Today I read about the Gizmo project and this sounds promising. It does have a per minute charge of $0.01 cent for out going calls to land lines, but their incoming calls are a slightly cheaper than Skype if you pay for a year. The niceties include being able to call 60 different countries (Skype only does US and Canada), it's compatible with GoogleTalk, and it has this Area775 option. I've only looked into the 775 thing enough to know that I probably won't need it, but it seems like it could be useful for a small or home business. It allows you to be reached through your computer or "real" phone and can be switched (for a fee) during the call. You can also get a fax number and screen your calls, features that Skype is lacking as far as my minimal digging has shown.

While I don't intend to try any of these tools out right now, you can be sure that I'll be keeping my eye on them to see where they go.

Lego my Bluetooth

Everyone's favorite lifelong toy LEGO has made a cool announcement. They have added Bluetooth for LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT! I would love to get my hands into this and play around. The little demo robot kind of looks like Number 5 which is also appealing :). I could use a sidekick don't you think? Oh the temptation!

Bringing Up Baby

I found this link about taking your child to work while I was flipping through my Gmail random links. It isn't really what I expected, but I got to wondering how many people actually take their children to work, even for "Take your child to work day". I remember going a few times with my dad to work, and if I went with my mom, well I got to go down to our basement since she worked from home. It seemed more like and excuse for some kids to get out of school, but under the right circumstances, I think it could benefit older kids to see what their parents do and what working could be like.

I don't know if I would bring any of my (future) children to work with me, or if they would even be interested, but if others out there do, what do you do with them? Do you treat it like they're shadowing you doing your job? Do you use it as an excuse to not do work? Do they get to sit in your office or cube all day entertaining themselves? I almost think that "Take your child to work day" has been moved into middle school or high school where kids can job shadow someone for a day, but then it's more like "Send your child to someone else's work day". It seems like bringing your child to work may be frowned upon at most middle to large companies, but maybe some still see a benefit in it.

Resources

The recent desk upgrade and interest in making large purchases (bike, MacBook Pro, house) spurred me to start keeping track of my finances in a way that I could forecast and see what I was spending money on each month. I have a copy of Microsoft Money so I chose to use that. So far it seems like a typical Microsoft product. It has a lot of features that I most likely will never use, the basic tools to input individual income and expenses are easy, but when you start to use the budgeting, forecasting, and reporting tools along with automatic downloads, glitches tend to happen. For example, I setup my online banking and credit accounts so Money can automatically download my statements each month. This worked well, and other than having my 'Payee' and 'Memo' fields flipped, I was pretty happy with the ease of the task. Then I started to set up my budget information including recurring bills and income. Then Money asked me if I wanted to have my taxes tracked to get an estimate for this years taxes. I thought, why not? It would be handy to know approximately how much I would have to pay or would get back. So I grabbed my latest pay stub, input my gross income, pre-tax deductions, taxes, and post-tax deductions, click and done. Then I go back to the main line item list and hover over my latest paycheck item... Click: would you like to add this as a recurring item? Um... I thought I just did, but sure I guess. Rinse and repeat. Go back to the budget page. What happened to my income (input twice already)? Geez I guess I have to do it again! Third time through the process. Now I go to the budget area and I have three recurring income items! Well isn't that special? Microsoft thought that I should be getting paid triple, what a tease. Once that got cleared up things moved a bit faster. One thing I did like in particular was that you can add financial goals to your budget and set dates for them. So I added in things like "bike", "house", and "Europe trip with Wendy and Brad" then I set dates ranging from now to three years from now.

I'm still sifting out which tools I want to really use and which ones are just fluff to me, but the ability to automatically download my statements shows much promise for continued use.

Hungry for travel

About a month ago I got to go on an awesome trip to Europe courtesy of my mom. We traveled to Austria (Vienna and Salzburg) and the Czech Republic (Prague and Klatovy/Pilzen). There are a few things I don't like about traveling, mainly long flights and stupid American tourists, but even those downsides can't overshadow the thrill of getting lost in another culture and coming back to tell everyone about it. There are too many details to tell the whole trip here, but I can spare some highlights and some pictures. I can't say that I have one favorite place or event from this trip, but one of the most thrilling things for me is navigation. Just getting from place to place, finding travel options and blending in with "the locals". Give me a map and a list of places you want to see and I'm happy. Both Vienna and Prague were very easy to get around in. They had plenty of restaurants, history filled buildings, and "government buildings" according to my mom. If you're looking for hot European shopping, Vienna is most definitely NOT the place to go. With my mother in that city for 5 days, we found no good shopping areas and that is impressive. Prague however had tons of places if you're looking for either cheap touristy knick knacks or beautiful crystal or garnets.

An insightful thing to think about is how you deal with pictures while traveling. Are you the type that wants to take a picture of everything even if you don't know what it is, or won't remember what it was when you get home? Or are you the type that prefers to enjoy the moment and then hopes that someone else got a picture of where you were? I definitely fall into the latter until I get home and try describing the trip to people and have few visual aids. Then I wish I were more of the former. I was somewhat lucky in that the three other people I was traveling with on this trip all took pictures of everything, so eventually I could have pictures of everything times three.

In summary, I make a good, cheap tour guide... hire me for your next trip! Just make sure to hire someone else as a photographer.

Here are some pictures from this adventure:

Me and Amy in Grinzing, Austria with the Lamm sign














St. Stephans Church in Vienna















Charles Bridge seen from Prague Castle














Changing of the Prague Castle guard (in the pouring rain)

How I got my groove back

I sit in front of a computer on a desk for work, so if I'm going to come home and do something on my computer I sure don't want a crappy little desk to greet me. The previous desk I used had barely enough surface space to put my monitor and keyboard on and had legs held on partially by the cardboard backing tacked onto them and the back of the top. I finally found a desk that would work well for my activities, computer and non, that didn't cost $200! I have plenty of room for my monitor, keyboard, mouse, picture frames, and open space for projects. I was so excited to have a desk I wanted to be at that I started using Microsoft Money to keep track of my finances (description in a future post), and once I finally have all of my odds and ends in their places, I'll be using the open desk area to frame one of my pictures from my trip to Europe (also in another post). As poor of an excuse as it may sound, my previous desk was a large factor in why I didn't use my home computer as often, and hence, haven't posted here for a long time.

For anyone who may be interested in purchasing the desk linked from this post, good luck. Because it was such a good deal through Staples, all resources have been exhausted. I got very lucky and found the last one from the second Staples store I tried and they are out of stock online. If you do find one, I highly recommend it.

If I scrunch up my cord and let go...

a bunch of posts come out all at once. Let's skip the part where I admit that I suck for not posting in a long time. Weather does funny things to people. It can create allergy problems, it can lift peoples' spirits, and apparently it encourages some people to smoke more often and with large quantities of other smokers.

I have been riding the bus now for several months and there is only one building standing between the bus depot and where I work. I can either go through the entry way (great for cold days) or walk around the outside (great for enjoying the weather). During the cold months there would sometimes be one, maybe two, people shivering outside having a hit of nicotine by the door. Now that the weather has changed to favor more outside activities, smoking has become the popular outside activity for this building. What makes it worse for me is that not only is there a large quantity of smokers outside when I walk by, but both of my potential walking routes are blocked by at least three cloud sources. I also love the section of a conversation I overheard as I ran by the outside pack of polluters. Smoker A asked if Smoker B was ready to go in yet and Smoker B proudly responded, "No, I like to stay out here until the very last minute. I'm a chain smoker you know." Fantastic for you, and thank you so much for sharing bits your addiction with me. Why can't they have those smoking booths like in the airports for outside areas too? They can still get their hits and hang with their friends, but I wouldn't have to practice speed walking while holding my breath.

Help me Obi-Wan!

I have been to several seminars, workshops, and training sessions in my short life and I've often wondered how much other people get out of going to them and why they go in the first place. My experience ranges from a few hours, or one day of learning, on up to 12 weeks and while I tend to remember going to the longer ranging sessions more easily, I don't always remember the material I learned from them. I've participated in these events because I've been given the opportunity, someone else has suggested it, I wanted to, and various other flavors of reasons.

Here are three that I remember the most:

My first memorable seminar experience was with the Dale Carnegie weekly training classes. I remember them being very good, but I was 16 and I have forgotten some of the finer details. I still think that we get dumber as we get older, so I probably understood much more about what we were practicing than I do now. Our sessions focused mostly on improving our understanding of point of view and how to improve our situations by knowing how to interact with people in a way that will lead to positive results. I think this is a fantastic use of knowledge and extremely enlightening when you look at a situation from a different perspective. You can start to understand why people do things that seem utterly stupid or illogical.

My next "top pick" was actually a class I took in college based on ToC, or Theory of Constraints. For those of you who like logic and are interested in some concrete guidelines on how to use it in everything from your kids to running a company, this would be a great source. It teaches how to "map" out problems and "break" them, how to help prevent problems by stepping through potential negative outcomes, and how to solve chronic, or recurring problems that have been around too long.

My most recent experience was with IMS, the Institute for Management Studies. This was only a one day seminar, but it still ranks high on my list. A lot of it's ranking may have to do with the recent time frame, but it still impressed me enough to be excited about going to another seminar through this group sometime. This particular seminar was called The Art of Listening, the Power of Speaking. Listening! Who would have thought that it could be so important. Sometimes it helps to just have someone clear away the clutter of everyday life and point out the obvious.

One thing that I can say from a personal point of view is that even if you don't remember everything from each workshop, seminar, or class you take, it still leaves an impression on you if you're willing to let it. Somehow it changes or shapes you and only those who pay close attention will notice it if you don't let them in on your secret.

If you happen to be interested in any of the three "helpers" I briefed about above I have books from all of them. I may have to dig a little for certain ones, but feel free to benefit from my library. Also, let me know why you have or have not gone to something similar before and how much you really get out of them.

Just Ride It

Today I embarked on a mini adventure... riding via the public transportation system a.k.a. the bus! This post will function as both a story about my experience and some tips beyond what the website tells you.

Here begins my story: The closest bus stop listed to my apartment is about a 2-3 block walk, really not bad at all. The part about it that I wasn't excited about was that it's listed at the corner of two relatively busy streets for morning commuters. This would have been drastically less overwhelming if there had been a distinct sign that said "bus stop", however, there was nothing. I first thought that the stop might be further down away from the busy intersection, so I started walking hoping to find something, anything. Alas, there was nothing to comfort my worries that I would start the day pissing off the bus driver by waving him/her down at the wrong spot. Of course in my eagerness to not miss the bus I also arrived early to the stop which compounded my worries about the bus being late or completely skipping by my stop if it wasn't frequently used or called in ahead of time. As I later found out, the bus may be a FEW minutes late, but they don't skip stops.

At last! I saw my bus coming down the street that intersected the one I was standing on. Now my anxiety spiked, fearing that I would get passed for not being at the right pick up location or, even worse, getting yelled at! So I stuck out my arm as confidently as I could make it seem and to my great relief the bus's flashers came on and I was aboard. Now for the apologies... none needed! As I found out on the rest of my trip, the buses will stop pretty much anywhere they get flagged down within reason. In fact there were several people who were picked up nowhere near any bus sign that I could see. The driver was quite talkative and the ride was quite pleasant.

While on my trip downtown, there were only a maximum of 6 people on the bus at one time. I asked the driver if it was ever very busy and his response was that depending on the time of day, the buses that went to the mall and to Wal-mart were usually the busiest. The total trip took me about half an hour including time spent waiting at the invisible bus stop.

For the return trip I arrived a bit early again to purchase a 10-Ride Pass. This allows me to ride 10 times and doesn't expired. There is also a 31 day pass, but that would expire after 31 days. I boarded at the Transit Center or GTC. There were several people waiting for buses, but it was definitely not crowded. I had a different driver on the way home and there were a maximum of 4 passengers, including me, on the way back. If you would prefer to wait on the bus, make sure to go out right when it arrives in case the driver goes in side for a bit. Most people seemed to stay inside or on the "on deck" area to wait for the driver to come back.

The other perk that I found was getting dropped off. Whenever you want to get off you just press the "tape" shown in the picture to signal for a stop. The bus will then stop at the next intersection or wherever is most convenient. Overall my experience was positive and I think I'll continue to ride the bus downtown when I don't have other errands to run.








Below are some extras to help encourage you to try the bus:

1. If you don't have a pass, be sure to have a dollar bill or change ready when you get on the bus. You can't get change so make sure that you have exactly one dollar.
2. Sometimes public transit can be nerve racking especially if you don't know what to expect from the other people riding. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the people on my route were using the bus to get to work or school and most worked downtown including City Hall and the ARC. Everyone seemed to have a friendly relationship with the other riders and greeted each other as they got on.
3. I know the picture is fuzzy, but I saw this sign inside the bus. It advertises that you can get a free ride home on the bus if you show your receipt for $15 or more from Hy-Vee. If you're interested, take advantage of this!
4. Benefits! Not only does riding the bus help decrease the number of cars polluting, you don't have to worry about traffic, you can read, listen to music, or entertain yourself while riding, and you get the awesome experience of seeing life through interactions with and observations of the new people you meet.

I hope this long tale encourages you to try the bus at least once and helps calm concerns. Questions? Go for it.

New Year, New Life

Aaron requested info about my first week of work. Well I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you :). To sum it up in a nutshell, I like work a lot more than school, which is good since I'll be working for a good chunk of my life. I enjoy having evenings and weekends instead of days that just blur together, and I can't help but gloat about how lucky I landed myself. The one main thing that I miss is the company. Now that I have free nights and weekends (that was for you Aaron), everyone except Jordan doesn't, or they are somewhere other than CR. The atmosphere is much different from my last four years, so it will probably take me a few weeks to adjust and find my groove again. In the mean time I will keep myself entertained by finding random things like my night-vision binoculars while sifting keepers from Goodwill donations. And just to clarify to the rest of the world who has not already asked me, no I will not be buying a new car or a house, however a new winter coat and possibly a MacBook Pro may be in my future...

Cleansing

It's raining today as I'm sitting at Keith's computer out in Washington. This is actually the first day that it has rained past early morning which is unexpected and quite refreshing. I've been slowly learning my way around the area and that has been bugging me. Now is one of those times that I wish I had some sort of navigation/gps toy to visually gather my surroundings. I usually pick up directions quickly, but the roads out here are at the mercy of mountains and water so I have a hard time picking out if we're going north or northeast once I'm in the 'burbs. However, I have accepted the challenge and I think Keith and I will go out on an exploration sometime during my trip so that I can get lost and find myself again, one of my favorite things to do.

We've had a pretty busy week so far. Our first day in we met up with my friend Michelle who also happened to be out here visiting her boyfriend's family. We spent the day in downtown Seattle and went on an interesting tour of Seattle's underground that was reccomended by Ryan, Julie, and Josh. It was a great way to get some history and we timed it perfectly to meet Michelle's boyfriend for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Before our tour we made an attempt to find the famous Pike's Place Fish Market on a whim, but we failed because apparently Seattle has a large market area on Pike Pl. Alas, it was still fun exploring and looking at all of the fresh produce. Plus we found Kasala, this awesome furniture store with funky modern pieces.

The rest of the time we've been bumming around Redmond and getting Keith's crap unpacked and placed. Today we're actually heading out to purchase a kitchen table so he can stop eating on boxes. We also have yet to decide what we're going to do to celebrate the new year. Right now we're toying with the idea of driving up north to explore some of the cities and lack of cities. We shall see! Until the next post, don't forget to take your camera OUT of your suitcase before you go to a touristy event.



I just thought I would add these two pictures of our IKEA adventure...

DONE!

If you don't like sap, skip to the next section...
I am finally done with everything college (undergraduate anyway), and the sky is even snowing to celebrate! I guess at points like this it's natural to reminisce a little, so I did a (very) brief look back and found it funny how the bad times tend to disappear and you start off only remembering the good ones. Maybe it's the adrenaline of being done and getting to rub it in everyone else's face, but either way I am happy to be graduating!

Next section
My roommate sent me this link from USA Today about how they can't find who the top 10 patent holders are in the US. It is quite entertaining not only why they can't find out, but also two potential top inventors in the US include a foreigner and a flower guy. It makes me proud to be in such a country...

Big Ad

My roommate showed me this commercial for Carlton Draught. It's pretty awesome if you think about how much coordination it would have taken to produce. So why can't we have such awesome commercials? I remember a few that make me laugh like the cow commercial from Hardee's (drag the cow one to the viewing window) and this Pop Tart commercial from many years ago, but the really good ones seem to be few and far between. It could be that I just don't watch enough TV or maybe the channels that I do watch just don't ever have good commercials. If this is true, let me know where to look! I'm always up for a good laugh even if someone's trying to get me to buy something through it.

m-bear-ass-ing

I guess this is my chance to clean out some of my old pictures that demonstrate moments in my college career. This gem on the left is me as a gangsta, aka let's see how many layers of clothing we can put on Samantha. You can't tell, but I actually had a pair of my jeans on, a pair of Keith's jeans on, some of Jon's sweatpants on, moccasins, my shirt and a pep band jersey and visor.





Down here we have me playing flag football freshman year. Our team, the Tangerine Speedos, never got a single point the entire season. That was our claim to fame I guess. I do have to say that although I'm not good at playing football, at one point I could actually throw the ball and make it spiral!


















This last picture is the only Halloween themed photo that I could find handy. I don't know what I was supposed to be other than a red head wearing black, but my roommate made a pretty mean archangel! Oh that's also her up above in the picture on the left if you want to know what she looked like normally.

Lead me, don't tease me

This past weekend was my last ballroom competition as a college student :( It was a pretty successful comp and I think that all of our new competitors had a great time. My highlights of the day included 3rd place in Tango and West Coast with Jill leading, 2nd in Waltz and Hustle with Bryan, and 1st in American Rumba with Bryan, Jack and Jill Waltz with #133, and Merengue with me leading Kathy!

I also got to drive one of the 15 passenger vans with Thomas as my co-pilot. We had the sweet setup shown below to pump our iPod music throughout the van. I love my Belkin TuneCast II FM transmitter and power adapter! There are a few cables to deal with, but once it's laid out in a good spot, there isn't a problem.

It's great for long rides because the power adapter takes care of the iPod and the transmitter, hence all of the cables. The transmitter does a great job with reception and you can choose from the whole spectrum of radio channels, so finding a free frequency is not a problem. Now I just need a new source for road trips.

Embrace your roots

I don't remember all of the fun things for my Apple back in the day, but who could forget Number Munchers and Oregon Trail? Here is an awesome site that supplies good entertainment for several hours. I'm sure I'll at least use it to keep up on my math skills :)

Cheap lovers make expensive wives....

I don't have any experience with this, so is it true, and if so, why? Does that make expensive lovers cheap wives, or is there no connection? Do they think because they were cheap before they can get more now that they are not just a lover?

This song came on today so I decided to post my internal question about this line so that I can get some input. But now for your visual enjoyment... a pretty:
Name the spot this photo was taken from and get 5 life points. I don't know what they accumulate for, but it could be fun.

Philosopher's World

Have you ever felt like you have too much energy and potential to do really good things for people, but you're stuck? I've been feeling this way for a while and I relate it to chemistry (dorky I know, but deal!): When you learn about heat and molecules and how when you heat the molecules up, they move faster and faster... This is me only in a tiny box so that I keep smacking the sides over and over wanting to get out and do something. I've decided that after I get settled into my new home I'm going to try to get a little sister or brother. No, not biological, but one through Big Brothers, Big Sisters. I think this could be a fun way to channel my energy since I love kids and can hopefully make a positive difference in someone's life. I have actually been thinking about doing it since last summer, but I tend to do everything on the long-term, so only being able to dedicate a summer was not good enough. The downside to this solution is that I still have to exert patience, but in the meantime I can sit and ponder fun activities to do with my future "little". Any suggestions?

Tadoodle!

I am now officially done with my half semester tech elective, w00t! My group gave our kickass presentation on Wednesday and I turned in my take home final today and now I just need the good ol' Dr. to give me my A and I'll be happy. This also means that I should theoretically have more time on my hands, but we should all know by now that when this rare event does happen, new activities manage to find their way into my path.

And now to throw a "you had to be there" moment in... My engineering meeting tonight was filled with fun jabs at random majors and my favorite run started with a ChemE stating that she could "do whatever she wanted" with her major, the counter attack from a CprE saying that he would hack her systems and make it backfire, so she then decided that she could blow him up. And it all ended with an Industrial Engineer saying that his major was great because it "isn't all guys" and an AgE saying that she loved her major because of all the guys. It was sad, but very entertaining.

I need a theme song...