Kallie and I found a nice groupon getaway to the Lowes Annapolis Hotel.  We stayed a Saturday and Sunday night.  During the first night, there was an event held in the main atrium of the hotel.  I could imagine the noise from that event carried into the 6 floors of rooms that surrounded the atrium.  Our room was off a separate hallway though, so it was pretty quiet.  The room was great and Kallie seemed to enjoy that she got a nice robe with the room.

Breakfast was included with our deal, and it was fabulous both days.  Our waiter, Eric, had a thick accent, but he was extremely pleasant and fun.  Our vouchers were good for $40, but when our bill only came to ~$32, we were willing to just walk with that.  He suggested that he put on 2 bottles of Fiji water ($4 a piece) and have us just take it.  We appreciated the thoughtfulness and took his suggestion.  They also had a wonderful juice bar menu which included orange, pineapple, cranberry, strawberry, banana, and a bunch of other juices that you could ask them to mix together.  It was a great treat.

As for location, it may seem a little off the path from the main street and bay of Annapolis, but it was a nice flat ~1 mile walk.  The weather was great, and the walk was perfect to capture all the old buildings and history of Annapolis.  I pulled down an app which guided us around the major tourist sites of the town and provided some great historic background.

We weren’t in crab season, so we skipped that and just ate the Middleton Tavern.  The dining area is a little cramped, but the food and beer selection were pretty good.  They do have their own amber ale, which I do not recommend.  It was more of a light pilsner.  We also grabbed dessert at Reynolds tavern, which is a very historic and interesting building.  It was around 8pm or so on Sunday, so the place seemed a little empty, but as we left we noticed that there were people in each of the rooms of the building, as if they purposely gave each party their own private rooms since they could afford the space.  We really appreciated the feeling of having the place to ourselves.

I’ve had a few people asking my about my diet while Kallie is away.  It’s not great, but I’m getting by.  The nice thing is, I asked Kallie not to go grocery shopping before she left.  First, just so she didn’t have 1 more thing to do before she left, but also because I’m not that pathetic that I would need her to do that for me.  A nice bonus to not having new stuff in the fridge is the sense of accomplishment I get from finishing things.  You might not know this about me, but I have a strong affinity for finishing things so they don’t go to waste.  Kallie surely has a different perspective from me, but I see us throw out a lot of food because we’re too blessed and move on to the next meal without using up left overs or have items in the fridge that didn’t get used up, but only have limited applications.  My personal goal in the fridge is always to use up what’s there and consolidate.  So I’ve done that so far.  Chicken salad from a salad left over the the weekend, a burger with the rest of the head of lettuce from before the weekend, enchiladas, nearly empty packages of cheese, italian dressing, buns, bagels, etc, etc.  I’m making sure I get some fruits and veggies in there.  I’m actually enjoying the sense of manageability of the contents in the refrigerator and freezer rather than seeing them as an abyss where we’ll hopeless never go hungry.

so back to my day:

4:45am  – wake up to make breakfast for the labor halls.

7:00am – back in bed for a 1.5 hour name before going into work.

5:00pm – back home, start finishing up the final touches on the lair in the basement.  Kallie’s not going to like it because it’s very much my space, but it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.  With all this stuff moving around, it’s becoming apparent how close we are to outgrowing this house already, and we don’t even have the daughter yet.  A lot of what we store should go in a garage, attic, or basement.  There’s a George Carlin bit about buying stuff until you fill your house that rings all too true. here’s a link to the bit [explicit language]

6:00pm – I get a call from a friend from out of town that’s in for the holidays and he invites me over to a mutual friend’s house to hang out.  I decline because I do have to work tomorrow, I have some motivation to get things done, andd the weather is kind of crappy.  It felt somewhat redeeming after last night’s rejections though.  I’ll go back to the mon valley tomorrow to hang out with him.

9:00 pm – Kallie facetimes me on her phone.  I make her cry by expressing my feeling interrupted when she calls me unexpectedly.  I tried not to come across like I don’t want to talk to her, of course I do, I just want to focus on getting stuff done here, and when we end up with dead silence on the phone, or in this case, just staring at each other, it’s frustrating.  Maybe I’m a bad cold hearted husband, but I want to get stuff done around the house for US.  Having to drop everything from those distractions when she calls only reminds me that she’s not here and I’m alone.  It’s kind of an all or nothing thing.  I’m just not skilled enough to multitask doing things here and taking care of my wife there.

10:00pm – deflated and defeated.  bed time for baxter.  so much for running.

So this device was announced back in September of 2010 when Apple announced their Airplay technology. I was stoked for this technology. Kallie wanted a way to play her music in the kitchen, and throughout the house for that matter, and her laptop speakers…well, they’re laptop speakers. I didn’t want to go buy a new stereo system and I didn’t just want to figure out a way to play music through the TV because that wasn’t portable. Then I stumbled upon iHome’s iW1. It was exactly what I wanted. There are a bunch of other airplay solutions out there, but none offer a rechargeable portable solution.

So I waited. for months. Finally in August 2011 I got an email that said they would start taking orders for special people like me.  I must have placed my order within 20 minutes of the 2pm EST Aug 31st.  It was reported they sold out within 45 minutes.  I must not have been quick enough though, because I was sent an email that the item I bought was out of stock and that I would receive an email when they are able to send it.  I received that email last Thursday, and got the package yesterday, Sept 29th.

In appreciation for being so patient for them to release the iw1, they also sent a free IP37, which is a nice little portable speaker for an iphone or ipod.  Great for camping or needing music on the go.  Heck, a $99 product for free?  Thanks ihome!!!

So, on to the review.  It’s not as large as I expected, but it’s still pretty sturdy and lightweight.  One thing I learned in my reading is that it does not support WEP wireless encryption.  The reason being that WEP is easily cracked and is an outdated technology.  I get that, honestly, but not to support it really seems like their enforcing network security standards.  If you have WEP like me, you are forced to decide between opening your wireless network or to change it to another form of encryption, like WPA2.  In a house with multiple devices set up on WEP, it’s a pain in the butt to do.  I’m the type of person that sees it as iHome just giving me the kick in the butt to change my wireless security, but really, I don’t appreciate that coming from them.  Really, if they’re going to force what kind of encryption is good enough, why not force people to use encryption and not support open networks?  Whatever, I’ll get over it.

Set up was pretty easy.  you can either connect an iphone/ipad/ipod with iOS 4.1 or later by the supplied(!) usb charger cable and download the free set up app.  All you have to do is give your speaker a nifty nickname and configure the wireless.  The other option is to push a button on the back of the speaker that essentially turns it into a wifi access point, get your laptop or other wifi device to connect to it’s signal, and then open up a browser configuration page to give it a nickname and configure it for your wireless network.  That it’s.  You should be all set to go.

Open up your itunes 10.1 or later, down at the bottom right corner click the speakers option and either send sound only to your new wireless speaker or send it to your PC and the wireless speaker at the same time.  Independent volume controls too.  Once it’s playing, you can leave your itunes station alone.

Back to the iw1, you have a nice remote to control next track, volume, and bass/treble.  You can also use the illuminated touch sensors for the controls on the speaker itself.  response time seemed great when using the remote.   One quirk I noticed though, I stood back about 12 feet from the speaker and tried to use the remote, and the indicator light on the speaker flashed, acknowledged I pressed a button, but it didn’t do anything.  No next track, no mute, no volume change.  As I got closer, it worked reliably though.  Weird, right?  I seemed to be within proximity for it to know I pressed a button, but not close enough for it to carry out the action?  I was bummed for like 5 seconds, until I realized — IT’S PORTABLE.  Just take it off it’s charging base and move it closer and you’re all set.

Other nice things about the unit is that you can just plug your iphone, ipod, or ipad into it and play from the usb, or you can can stream over wifi with them as well.  You can switch between wifi or cable on the remote.  The remote also allows you to turn off the device, but it will still be active on the network, which allows you to “turn it on” through itunes.  This saves a lot of time in having to set things up or configure it when you want to use it.  It’s just ready for you to play music.  So far so good.

It seems like it doesn’t have any special requirements to use and is user friendly.  We’ll see how well Kallie warms up to using it instead of relying on her laptop speakers.  Next time we have a house party, we’ll be able to play music throughout the house and control it with our remote app on our iphones, which lets you control itunes over wifi.  CONNECTED.  I’m already thinking about applications with having a baby.  Turn some music on in their room and be able to turn the volume up or off without having to go into the room and risk disturbing them.

Steve Jobs is an interesting fellow who has had quite the interesting life.  We’re probably reaching a point where some generations don’t know that he was actually fired from Apple back in the 80′s.  He went on to form Pixar, then sold it to Disney to become the largest single shareholder of Disney stock shares.  With all that money, he’s also infamous for not giving to charity.

Here’s some of the top 10 unusual things about Steve:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-altucher/steve-jobs-resigns_b_935874.html

Some of them include that he made the game Breakout, he’s half Syrian Muslim, and he was adopted.

Your intelligence in any given moment has a direct correlation with your ability to access the internet.

Related: http://xkcd.com/903/

Here’s a picture of what Deirdre’s white iphone 3G used to look like:

I won’t get into the discussions, but long story short, she gave me her phone, knowing full well that I was just going to fix it and sell it.

So, her screen was cracked, but the LCD was still completely operational.  I knew I could just buy the glass panel for ~20 bucks, but I found a nice kit at ifixit.com that came with everything I would need.  I highly recommend them!  They operate out of San Luis Obispo, Ca, which I visited in December, so I couldn’t help but envision some beach bum college kids running this operation out of their dorm room or something.

Anyway, the guides make this easy!  I had the phone all disassembled and put back together in under 30 minutes.  After a little charge, she was up and operational.  The home button was a bit wonky, you had to press firmly or just right to get it to work, but Deirdre said that is the way it was before she gave it to me.  I wish I knew, or I would have tried to fix that too, but since I already used the doublesided tape to get it all back together, I figured I may as well leave it alone, since there was no guarantee i could fix it.

So, with the phone looking back to normal, it’s time to jailbreak and unlock!  since it’s rocking 3.1.3 OS, a quick visit to Jailbreakme.com on the phone uses an exploit to jailbreak it in a snap.  no tethering or restoring ipsw files or anything!  Once cydia is on the phone, open it to record the SHSH for future jailbreaks, download ultrasn0w for the unlock, and BAM, you’ve got yourself a phone ready for any sim card you want.

It was really that easy.  take a few pictures for ebay, and away she’ll go!  This counts for #18 on my 30×30 list too!

You may have noticed the new page – Words With Josh

I play words with friends (a scrabble rip-off basically) with a few people on my iphone, and I wanted to wrap some intelligence around finding the optimal word based off what letters were already played.  Now, I do not condone the act of cheating when you’re playing the game.  I was more intrigued at the logic that your brain does to determine what words to play.  Scrabble is a measurable science, and there is always a best word to play, it’s just a matter of whether you know that word and whether you recognize where to place it.

I at first wanted to write a complete scrabble game, that would track the entire board and value changing tiles, so that you could play against a computer.  I could still do that, but I would think that no one really wants to play scrabble by themselves, right?

So I set off to at least code what could be useful -IF- you decided to use it as a reference tool.  I made a version available through the blog but also a better mobile version for iphones and such here – http://sixf00t4.com/wordswithjosh.  Give it a shot.  It will help you find anagrams, words with letters in specific places, and even includes the option for blank tiles.  I was thinking about adding the functionality to set letter spaces as score modifiers (triple letter, double word, etc), but I got lazy and really just satisfied with what I have now.  It’s all php and mysql.  Let me know what you think!

Don’t waste your time in lines for new places or new experiences or new products. Novelty wears off and your time is valuable. A Nathan’s hotdog for 5 cents, for example, is a great deal, but waiting hours for it is stupid.

after a botched update to some apps, Cydia would not longer launch completely. Cydia would crash when I tried to open it, even after rebooting.

First, I got DiskAid from : http://www.digidna.net/products/diskaid
Second, connect the iphone to your computer and using DiskAid, remove the numbered and tmp files from /var/lib/dpkg/updates/  – (This may be enough to resolve your problem.  Try a reboot and open Cydia again)

Third, I don’t have SSH installed on the phone.  These steps could also work if you don’t have WiFi to use OpenSSH.  I downloaded Universal Extractor:  http://legroom.net/software/uniextract.  That will let you extract .deb files

Fourth, download the latest Cydia .deb file from http://apt.saurik.com/cydia-3.7/debs/

Fifth, extract those files to your desktop and then copy them over to your phone in the appropriate paths using DiskAid  (you’re basically just manually extracting the files)

Sixth, reboot and try again.  Good Luck!

The disclaimer here is that you’re just overwriting files and not editing them.  SAVE BACK UPS OF ANYTHING YOU ARE OVERWRITING!

Although technology can help you simplify your life, it can make it a whole lot more complicated and open the gates to wasting a lot more time.  The key is to get technology working for you, not you working with technology.