NIS 2008, ‘The Valet’, ‘Breach’, penny arcade, ‘Journey From the Fall’, new GPS, ‘The Devil and Daniel Johnston’
(posted from home)
(This post covers 14-21 January, 2008)
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Monday, 21 January-
Today the new GPS arrived and I spent most of the day playing. After getting familiar with the basic operations I installed the MapSource software and drivers and connected it to the laptop. I checked for software updates (the GPS had the latest), installed the 2 GB micro-SD chip, and then loaded up my first set of maps—the BlueCharts for Southwest Florida. After my walk, I spent the rest of the day exploring South Florida waterway charts, both on the laptop and on the GPS. My unlock-code gives me charts from Miami and the Keys then through the Everglades and up the west coast to Crystal River. Also, after looking at the detail-level of the base maps, I decided to go ahead and buy the City Navigator map set and ordered that via Amazon.
That evening we watched ‘The Devil and Daniel Johnston’, a curious documentary about the mentally-unstable artist and songwriter. This one was a Sundance award-winner in 2005 and scored a 93 on the top-critics toh-ma-TOM-eter on RottenTomatoes. I see mentions of the music being an acquired taste but we didn’t get it at ALL. The movie is interesting in its portrayal of Johnston’s obsession to be famous and our hearts went out to his long-suffering parents. Recommended if you’re a fan of alternative music or other dementia.
-------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 20 January-
Today I did some more trip-prep on the web. Along the way I found a source for fee-free ATM locations. Our bank now participates in the CO-OP ATM network and that means we can find fee-free ATMs all over the US and Canada. We can either go to www.co-opnetwork.ORG or call 888-SITE-COOP for the automated voice-recognition locator. From there I learned that the 7-Elevens and Publix supermarkets in Florida all participate and that’s probably all I need for this trip. ATMs which participate in the network all have a triangular CO-OP Network logo.
That afternoon Maypo and wife came by and we spent the afternoon talking and then went out to dinner at the new Longhorn restaurant in East York — a very pleasant way to spend the day.
-------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 19 January-
Today was a cloudy, 35-degree day and felt pretty nice. After working on trip-prep through the morning, I jumped on the bike and made a DVD run. I took along my walking shoes and jacket but along the way decided I’d rather walk my regular four-mile course along the creek and did that as darkness came on. I’ll be glad to see the longer days of Florida.
That evening we watched two eps of ‘Lost-3’, Disk 5.
-------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 18 January-
Today Labashi and I had some errands to run. We first went to a local Commerce Bank which has a ‘penny arcade’ (an automatic coin-counter) to convert our accumulated pocket change into paper money. Labashi has been here a couple of times but it was my first visit. I was surprised to see a freezer-size machine with a video interface. An animated girl (her name was ‘Penny Arcade’) greeted us and offered us the opportunity to win prizes if we guessed the money amount within $1.99. After we ran our several bags of coins through, a little slip popped out which Penny told us to take to the teller for the cash. The whole design seems geared to kids bringing in their piggy-banks… very cute.
Afterwards Labashi and I went to Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Wal-Mart to finish up our shopping chores.
After my walk and supper, we watched ‘Journey from the Fall’, an interesting drama about a family’s struggle after the fall of Saigon during the Viet Nam War. The father had been sympathetic to the South and was put in a ‘re-education camp’ and asked his wife to try to escape to America. Highly recommended.
-------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 17 January-
Today was another shopping day. I drove up to Bass Pro and Big Bee Boats for an additional seat and bracket for the fishing boat and picked up waterproof gear-storage bags plus floatation bags for the VHF, SPOT, and GPS. I’m also figuring out how I want to carry and store extra gas and water for the backcountry boat trip.
The snow started coming down hard while I was out and about and I got home late enough that I skipped the walk today.
--------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 16 January-
I’ve been busy spending my Christmas money and then some. Today the handheld marine radio, the SPOT satellite personal tracker, and Outback shower and shower-tent came in so I played with my new toys all day. The VHF radio is a safety item for the boat (it also picks up NOAA weather broadcasts and alerts) while the tracker provides a personal-locator-beacon function plus ‘I’m OK’ reporting for relatives. The ‘shower’ is actually a 1.5 gpm water pump (powered by four D-cells) plus tubing and a shower-head. The shower-tent is a cool little spring-frame tent which pops up in seconds yet collapses down to easily fit in the van’s overhead storage bin.
I resumed walking my four-milers today (albeit a bit slower!).
---------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 15 January –
BIG adventure today. Today was ---(wait for it)---- COLONOSCOPY DAY !!!! This was a routine event scheduled after my physical last Fall and took up the entire day. All went well with the procedure.
That evening we watched ‘Breach’ with Chris Cooper. This one is under-appreciated, I believe. It’s the story of Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent who perpetrated America’s worst security breach by selling secrets to Russia during the Cold War. I see RT top-critics give it a 74 and that seems low. Recommended.
----------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 14 January-
Well, well, well. The lawn vandal’s back. Last evening we heard a small pickup revving it’s engine just below our driveway and on the far side of our line of white-pines. I thought he was trying to clear an engine problem since I could hear it missing badly and the engine was running rough. I looked out but just saw an older small pickup, again one with a muffler problem, starting up the hill past our home. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. But this morning I found a set of muddy ruts in the lawn. What a coward.
This morning I thought it time to do something about my expired Norton Internet Security 2006 software on my laptop. My updates license expired back in November and I’ve since been doing a little research to determine what to do next. The software still provided firewall protection and antivirus scanning but I wasn’t getting the latest virus signatures. I learned reviewers of the new Norton 360 suite had found it to be both very slow and a resource hog but had found NIS 2008 to be faster and better than my NIS 2006. I kept my eye out for a good deal on the 2008 version and figured I wait until the new year when they start offering tax-season deals. But today I decided I’d better get this resolved before my trip so started looking in earnest….and today turned out to be a good day for that decision! I found Norton had not only dropped the price $10 but Staples was also offering a $20 rebate. And this was on a three-user license. That meant I could not only upgrade my laptop but could also upgrade Labashi’s desktop with one buy. And it got better. I had seen the rebate at staples.com but when I went to the store I found they had a $40 rebate offer for this week only. I jumped on that deal—under $20 net for the new version for both computers. That afternoon I installed the new version on both PCs, ran the scans, and mailed off the rebate forms. The new version does indeed run faster and less obtrusively than the old. No walk today, I’m prepping for tomorrow.
That evening we watched ‘The Valet’, a French farce about a car-parking attendant who is asked to live with a supermodel (a ‘top-mo-DELL’ au Francais) to teach her rich (and married) man-friend a lesson. There’s not much substance here but we did like seeing how the Parisian living styles were represented. And we like Daniel Auteil.
===== end of post ==========
(posted from home)
(This post covers 14-21 January, 2008)
-------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 21 January-
Today the new GPS arrived and I spent most of the day playing. After getting familiar with the basic operations I installed the MapSource software and drivers and connected it to the laptop. I checked for software updates (the GPS had the latest), installed the 2 GB micro-SD chip, and then loaded up my first set of maps—the BlueCharts for Southwest Florida. After my walk, I spent the rest of the day exploring South Florida waterway charts, both on the laptop and on the GPS. My unlock-code gives me charts from Miami and the Keys then through the Everglades and up the west coast to Crystal River. Also, after looking at the detail-level of the base maps, I decided to go ahead and buy the City Navigator map set and ordered that via Amazon.
That evening we watched ‘The Devil and Daniel Johnston’, a curious documentary about the mentally-unstable artist and songwriter. This one was a Sundance award-winner in 2005 and scored a 93 on the top-critics toh-ma-TOM-eter on RottenTomatoes. I see mentions of the music being an acquired taste but we didn’t get it at ALL. The movie is interesting in its portrayal of Johnston’s obsession to be famous and our hearts went out to his long-suffering parents. Recommended if you’re a fan of alternative music or other dementia.
-------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 20 January-
Today I did some more trip-prep on the web. Along the way I found a source for fee-free ATM locations. Our bank now participates in the CO-OP ATM network and that means we can find fee-free ATMs all over the US and Canada. We can either go to www.co-opnetwork.ORG or call 888-SITE-COOP for the automated voice-recognition locator. From there I learned that the 7-Elevens and Publix supermarkets in Florida all participate and that’s probably all I need for this trip. ATMs which participate in the network all have a triangular CO-OP Network logo.
That afternoon Maypo and wife came by and we spent the afternoon talking and then went out to dinner at the new Longhorn restaurant in East York — a very pleasant way to spend the day.
-------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 19 January-
Today was a cloudy, 35-degree day and felt pretty nice. After working on trip-prep through the morning, I jumped on the bike and made a DVD run. I took along my walking shoes and jacket but along the way decided I’d rather walk my regular four-mile course along the creek and did that as darkness came on. I’ll be glad to see the longer days of Florida.
That evening we watched two eps of ‘Lost-3’, Disk 5.
-------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 18 January-
Today Labashi and I had some errands to run. We first went to a local Commerce Bank which has a ‘penny arcade’ (an automatic coin-counter) to convert our accumulated pocket change into paper money. Labashi has been here a couple of times but it was my first visit. I was surprised to see a freezer-size machine with a video interface. An animated girl (her name was ‘Penny Arcade’) greeted us and offered us the opportunity to win prizes if we guessed the money amount within $1.99. After we ran our several bags of coins through, a little slip popped out which Penny told us to take to the teller for the cash. The whole design seems geared to kids bringing in their piggy-banks… very cute.
Afterwards Labashi and I went to Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Wal-Mart to finish up our shopping chores.
After my walk and supper, we watched ‘Journey from the Fall’, an interesting drama about a family’s struggle after the fall of Saigon during the Viet Nam War. The father had been sympathetic to the South and was put in a ‘re-education camp’ and asked his wife to try to escape to America. Highly recommended.
-------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 17 January-
Today was another shopping day. I drove up to Bass Pro and Big Bee Boats for an additional seat and bracket for the fishing boat and picked up waterproof gear-storage bags plus floatation bags for the VHF, SPOT, and GPS. I’m also figuring out how I want to carry and store extra gas and water for the backcountry boat trip.
The snow started coming down hard while I was out and about and I got home late enough that I skipped the walk today.
--------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 16 January-
I’ve been busy spending my Christmas money and then some. Today the handheld marine radio, the SPOT satellite personal tracker, and Outback shower and shower-tent came in so I played with my new toys all day. The VHF radio is a safety item for the boat (it also picks up NOAA weather broadcasts and alerts) while the tracker provides a personal-locator-beacon function plus ‘I’m OK’ reporting for relatives. The ‘shower’ is actually a 1.5 gpm water pump (powered by four D-cells) plus tubing and a shower-head. The shower-tent is a cool little spring-frame tent which pops up in seconds yet collapses down to easily fit in the van’s overhead storage bin.
I resumed walking my four-milers today (albeit a bit slower!).
---------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 15 January –
BIG adventure today. Today was ---(wait for it)---- COLONOSCOPY DAY !!!! This was a routine event scheduled after my physical last Fall and took up the entire day. All went well with the procedure.
That evening we watched ‘Breach’ with Chris Cooper. This one is under-appreciated, I believe. It’s the story of Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent who perpetrated America’s worst security breach by selling secrets to Russia during the Cold War. I see RT top-critics give it a 74 and that seems low. Recommended.
----------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 14 January-
Well, well, well. The lawn vandal’s back. Last evening we heard a small pickup revving it’s engine just below our driveway and on the far side of our line of white-pines. I thought he was trying to clear an engine problem since I could hear it missing badly and the engine was running rough. I looked out but just saw an older small pickup, again one with a muffler problem, starting up the hill past our home. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. But this morning I found a set of muddy ruts in the lawn. What a coward.
This morning I thought it time to do something about my expired Norton Internet Security 2006 software on my laptop. My updates license expired back in November and I’ve since been doing a little research to determine what to do next. The software still provided firewall protection and antivirus scanning but I wasn’t getting the latest virus signatures. I learned reviewers of the new Norton 360 suite had found it to be both very slow and a resource hog but had found NIS 2008 to be faster and better than my NIS 2006. I kept my eye out for a good deal on the 2008 version and figured I wait until the new year when they start offering tax-season deals. But today I decided I’d better get this resolved before my trip so started looking in earnest….and today turned out to be a good day for that decision! I found Norton had not only dropped the price $10 but Staples was also offering a $20 rebate. And this was on a three-user license. That meant I could not only upgrade my laptop but could also upgrade Labashi’s desktop with one buy. And it got better. I had seen the rebate at staples.com but when I went to the store I found they had a $40 rebate offer for this week only. I jumped on that deal—under $20 net for the new version for both computers. That afternoon I installed the new version on both PCs, ran the scans, and mailed off the rebate forms. The new version does indeed run faster and less obtrusively than the old. No walk today, I’m prepping for tomorrow.
That evening we watched ‘The Valet’, a French farce about a car-parking attendant who is asked to live with a supermodel (a ‘top-mo-DELL’ au Francais) to teach her rich (and married) man-friend a lesson. There’s not much substance here but we did like seeing how the Parisian living styles were represented. And we like Daniel Auteil.
===== end of post ==========
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:59
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