New Fall Hat

Fall is in the air which means it is time to switch to a new Fall hat.

Switching Cell Phone Carriers

I have been a loyal Verizon Wireless customer for a number of years, but I have finally had enough of two year contracts. I firmly believe WiMax will change the cell phone landscape and free us from the shackles of the big wireless providers. However, that time is not now.

With my contract ending soon I decided to give Cricket a shot. I will admit to some anxiety about using Cricket. I have always considered it a network for collage students who did not need a mission critical communication system. My son has used Cricket for years so I thought I would give it a try.




My reasoning was this.

1. Unlimited talk time in a Cricket area
2. Unlimited text and pic messages
3. Access to Nationwide roaming
4. Unlimited National long distance calls
5. Extremely attractive low monthly rate without a longterm contract
   

I realized I was giving up the Verizon network which has served me well, and I would not have a large selection of phones. However, I wanted a new phone, my trusty Razor had served me well but I wanted newer technology. I was not interested in signing a new contract so I was going to have to pay full price for the phone no matter which provider I selected.

I reviewed the plans offered by all the major carriers. All wanted one to two year contracts unless I wanted to go with some kind of limited prepay plan. All of which was unsatisfactory to me. Cricket offered the plans that were most appealing to me, and were a good fit for my current needs.

I signed up for the Cricket $55 a month plan that gave me all of the features listed above, 100 minutes a month of Nationwide roaming, and unlimited Web access. I signed up for the service and bought the brand new Kyocera Lingo from the Cricket web site. I was a little nervous about buying a phone sight unseen but I thought if I did not like phone I could exchange it at one of the local Cricket stores.

The phone arrived and I activated the service. This was a straight forward process and I was up and running in about 10 minutes. In my local area I found the signal to excellent. Voice was crisp and clear and text and picture messaging worked without issue. This would be expected in my home area, but I wondered how would the phone and system work on the road? I would not have to wait long as I was attending a conference in Phoenix that very week.

My first stop was DFW in Dallas. After I deplaned I turned on my phone and noticed I was in a roaming area. I though this was a little odd so I checked the coverage map on the Cricket web site and found that Dallas was not a Cricket area. I decided to make a call to see how the roaming system worked. The call went through without issue and the quality was excellent. The call used 2 minutes of my 100 minute allotment which should be plenty for my needs. Text messaging still worked fine but mobile web was off line as I was not in a Cricket area.

Upon arrival in Phoenix I found I was once again in a Cricket service area. All services worked fine and the call quality was once again excellent. The more I used the phone in Phoenix the greater my comfort level with the Cricket system.

The only negative I have found while using Cricket so far is that my Google calendar alerts do not work with the Cricket service. This is not a deficiency on Crickets part, but rather Google does not support Cricket. Perhaps this will change in the future as Cricket adds more services.

Speaking of services, I would like to see Cricket provide GPS services so Google maps would work. I would not mind paying for this service because I think it would be a real value add to my overall communications package. The Cricket web site says they are working on rolling GPS out so hopefully I will not have to wait long.

A day under sail

Today was a good day. Used my new power washer to clean the Kathryn and get her all shipshape. The rest of the day was spent under sail and watching the regatta. Good food, good fun, and a great day!

I have a new hat

Woot!!!!! I got a new hat! I love going to Hatman Jacks and I always come home with a new hat. I wish hats would come back into style. I think they add a lot of class to your wardrobe.

Playing with the Mac

Jason and Brandon came over for dinner and Brandon discovered the joys of iSight. :)

Clothing items needed for wounded troops

These is a pressing need for clothing items for wounded troops at Camp Anaconda Hospital, Balad Iraq. When wounded are brought to the hospital from the field the first process is to cut off all of their clothes so they can be examined. Once they have been treated they are moved to the recovery wards. Since all of their clothes are destroyed, they only have a gown to wear around the hospital.

Depending on their wounds, they are able to move around and go to the chow hall. This is not a fun thing to do wearing only a hospital gown. If their wounds are severe enough to be moved to Germany, they would like something more to wear than a gown.

Clothing items most needed are tee shirts, shorts, and flip flops (please do not send pink, Marines do not react well to wearing pink flip flops. :). When the temperature gets colder sweatshirts and sweat bottoms are also great to help keep the patients warm.

Please send donations to:
Flight Commander
332 EMDG/EMDOS/ICW
APO AE 09315-9997

The word "Donations" should be clearly written on the outside of the box to help speed its delivery to the hospital.

I cannot begin to express how much a small clothing donation like a tee shirt can mean to an injured service member. Shortly after a large donation from a Kansas American Legion post arrived the chow hall was full of smiling people all wearing matching Legion Post tee shirts and shorts. It made everyones day!

Yard Day

There was a farm girl working in the yard yesterday.

Zoo Day

Master Brandon accompanied us to the zoo today. His favorite exhibits were the penguins and the elephants. The elephants were receiving their baths and dinner while we watched and they did some amazing tricks.

Ride

It was a pretty night tonight so I jumped on my bike and knocked out 10 miles. It was nice feeling the wind in my hair and the sun on my face. I loved the feeling of the blood pumping through my veins and the adrenaline rush of charging a hill. Good times!

In Kansas City

In Kansas City for the long weekend. Plan on soaking up BBQ sauce, eating lots of seafood, and drinking and dancing till dawn. Should be a fun time!

Just Stuff

I am on vacation this week helping Kate acclimate to civilian life. Today I went out to the lake to make sure the Kathryn was all snuggled into her slip. She was happily floating along waiting for the afternoon storm.

Kate is home

After many misadventures Kate is finally home. She made it out of Balad without much difficulty but sandstorms kept her on the ground in Doha. Thankfully she is home safe and sound and our lives can return to normal.

Dog Attention

A bowl of ice cream will make you very popular.

Kate is coming home

I just got word that Kate will start home from Iraq at 11:30am CDT on the 15th (tomorrow). Yeah!!!! I am so excited I can hardly stand it. I will be relived when she is out of Iraqi airspace.

Saturday

It is a gorgeous morning here in the mid-west. It is calm and cool outside and the sun is shinning brightly. I laid in bed for a while and now I am up and about. As is often the case, I am torn between what I need to do, and what I would like to do.

I would like to be out on my bike. The windy blowing in my hair, my blood racing through my veins as I charge down the road. Unfortunately, at the moment, I have other obligations. Dang, in a perfect world I could take care of my have to's and my want to's at the same time. :) After obligations are done maybe I will go to the zoo.

My Birthday

My birthday was Monday and someone special was very nice to me. :)

Airport Extreame

A few weeks ago I bought the new Apple Airport Extreme 802.11n router. I will have to say I am very impressed with the equipment. It has good range, excellent signal propagation, and is rock solid stable.

The only downside I have seen so far is the alternate DNS settings do not work. I like to use Open DNS for my DNS servers and so far the Airport Extreme ignores the settings. The Apple forums say the engineers are aware of the problem and will look into it. We will see.

TTFN

Mac's Rule

Those of you who know me know that I have been a Linux geek for years, and have always stayed away from Microsoft and Macintosh computers for industrial grade applications. That has all changed in the last year.

With Apple moving first to a Unix based undercarriage and then the adopting the Intel platform I thought it was time to give Mac a try. I bought a Mac Mini to test the waters. I was very impressed with its ease of operation, stability, and overall good look and feel of the hardware and software.

After 3 months I was hooked. I abandoned my big high end Dell and was using my Mini for all of my work. The only downside was the graphics card did not have enough memory to play Second Life at a level that made the game fun.

So my next purchase was an 20 inch iMac with 2 gig of RAM and 250 meg of VRAM. All I can say is it is sweet. It plays Second Life like a dream, is stable, and fun to use. I have not found one work of research related task that I could not perform on the Mac. I do have Parrelles with a copy of XP loaded and ready in case I do need a Windows app for some reason but I have not needed to use it for any major tasks.

I now own a MacBook Pro which has replaced my 2 year old HP laptop as my primary carry around computer. The poor HP has been moved to the kitchen for TV viewing via Slingbox.

I have been in the IT business for over 26 years and I never in my wildest dreams would have thought I would be using a Mac at home but I am totally sold on them. I plan on selling my big Dell box and moving all of my systems to the Mac platform. I can highly recommend the new Mac for all users no matter what their computing needs.

Tragedy

It has been a long time but I am back. Unfortunately, it took the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech to bring me back. What a tragic loss. I have always worried about the security on our campus. and this tragedy highlights how insecure our public buildings are if faced with a determined attacker.