This Should Work

Last night, my brother-in-law and his wife welcomed their first daughter into this world. Our family is excited for them and can’t wait to meet her.

I’ve had my iPod for only a short time, but I’ve got to say it’s awesome.

I came home for lunch today to check out my new toy and start configuring my iPod Touch. While I was downloading the latest version of iTunes, I took the device out of box and showed it to my wife who called it “elegant.” I took the device out of it’s packaging, plugged it in and started the setup process.

I bought the lower end version of the iPod touch (only 8GB) and knew that all my media would not fit on the device. Trying to decide which albums, photos and videos I want on my iPod is something I’ve never had to worry about before, and was trying to find a way to create lists and folder that would sync with my iPod Touch. To that end, I created a bunch of smart folders for my music and photos. The result is a great group of music and photos that will now automatically update on demand. One example is I’ve created an “oldies but goodies” smart folder that includes music that has star ratings of 4-5 and that I have not played in the last three months. And this folder will keep updating/changing because the songs in this folder are based on a criteria.

All the features of the iPod Touch work as advertised. Using one’s finger to scroll through albums and photos. “Pinching” photos to zoom in and out and “flicking” to move through a slideshow. Turning the device horizontally to view things in landscape mode. Wi-Fi internet browsing works very well (but it’s a little slow). Sampling, purchasing, and re-syncing songs purchased from the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store to one’s PC/Mac is flawless.

There are only two downsides to this device so far:

1. The touch screen needs to be cleaned quite frequently because fingerprints and smears get the screen messy really fast.

2.EVERYONE thinks it the iPhone. Then I need to explain what this device does, why it’s different, and why I did not get the iPhone.

My wife just called to inform me that my iPod Touch arrived on our doorstep this morning! I’m going home at lunch to check it out!

Just found out that my iPod Touch shipped from China this morning! It should be on coming home soon!

Last night, while trying to give my wife a much needed break by letting her take a bath, Lily was screaming her head off. Now, I’ve got some skills and I’m usually able to calm her down by either rocking her, playing with her on the floor, or pushing her around the house in the stroller; none of these worked last night.

I was on my way to take her upstairs to inform my wife that “Lily’s in need of her mommy” when she started to calm down and I remembered a trick I used when she was younger: walking up and down the stairs. There is something about the ascending and descending motion that seems to calm her down, so I thought ‘well if this keeps her calm, then I’ll keep doing it.’

So kept walking up the stairs then down. Up then down. Up then down. All the while she was calm and quiet. I lost count of how many times I took this trip at about thirty but I think I was doing it for about 15 minutes-which is a pretty good cardio workout.

The dogs also got a good workout because they followed me on many of my trips up and down the stairs. I finally had to put them on a down-stay at the bottom of the stairs because one of our dogs, Yoda, has a pretty bad case of arthritis in his back legs and it’s not good for him to move up and down so much.

Mentally, Yoda enjoys going up and stairs, but he physically can’t do it for long stretches. Physically, I can do it, but mentally wanted to lie on the floor next to him.

When the iPhone arrived back in June my wife asked what I thought about it.

“I would buy an iPhone without the phone,” I said, “I’m not about to break our Verizon contract, then spend $500 on a device then pay an even larger monthly cellphone bill.”

Well on Wednesday, Apple announced the iPod Touch, which is essentially an iPhone without the phone. After watching the Apple keynote, I-like many other Apple lemmings- too the plunge and pre-ordered the iPodTouch. Even though it won’t ship until the end of this month, I’ve got a warm, giddy feeling inside knowing I’ll receive mine by the first week of October.

There is another big ticket item that comes out later this month, Halo 3. This is THE GAME of the fall/holiday season for pretty much every XBox360 owner. So I-like many other XBox360 owners-took the plunge and pre-ordered Halo 3.

Needless to say, I’ve spent alot of money and have nothing to show for it, yet. But the end of this September/beginning of October I’ll be a happy camper.

One thing I do to entertain Lily/myself/my wife is put on some music and dance with my baby house. Sometimes I pick her up and dance around our sun room, other times we just sit on the floor and just move our arms and legs to music.

Some songs Lily enjoys more than others and here’s a list of her top five (and therefore mine as well) songs to dance to this summer.

1. After the Bombs-The Decemberists
2. I’m a Cuckoo- Belle & Sebastian
3. 7 Stars-Apples in Stereo
4. 1234-Fiest
5. You got Yr. Cherry Bomb-Spoon

Here’s a video my wife shot of Lily and I dancing to (and me singing-you’ve been warned-in a falsetto voice) “1234.”
(You’ll need Quicktime in order to view the video)

I’ve been here for years….

Ah, forget it.

My site had been down for a while and I did not have time to fix the server in my office, so I broke down and got a hosting site so I don’t have to worry about server stuff anymore.

I’ve placed my site on godaddy.com and after a couple of days transferring information and setup, I’m back. Not sure about this Wordpress look, but it’s different from the regular theme. I’ve still got a lot of other things to move to this new site, but I’m hoping to start posting more in the future as well.