• 27 Feb 2009 /  Technology

    nas-digital-home-large.jpgLarge screen televisions are the big thing these days. Well, that and game systems. Well, game systems and online video. OK, online video and media servers.

    You can see, there is a lot to decide when you are setting up media in your home today. Sure, most people just get a television and a cable box. That’s for the noobs, the low-tech crowd. I would love to be a part of the high-tech crowd, but that means more bank* then I have. Since I don’t have that kind of scratch**, I’ll have to be content with mid-tech solutions.

    Before starting the job and implementing any technology, I must first decide what I want my home network to do. I would like my network to:

    - serve music and movies files from a central location, not from individual files on individual machines (I guess this is a media server);
    - allow my family to save and access their files from a central location simply;
    - allow all my devices to see the internet and the network, either wirelessly or via Ethernet;
    - back-up user data on and off-site, simply and without user intervention; Read the rest of this entry »

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  • 26 Feb 2009 /  Podcast, The Daddy Dialogues
     
     Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

    The Daddy Dialogues album artWe talk about selling off and finding a new home for old “collectibles.” Tax return preparation tips. Ways our kids want to waste spend our hard earned money. What’s in your iPod? Networking tips.

    [01:00] Time to sell off and find a new home for all those ridiculous old Star Trek toys.

    [13:15] Tax return preparation tips:

    • Use a professional to reduce risk of mistakes and to represent you if something goes wrong.
    • Organize receipts by month in an accordion binder.
    • Services like Shoeboxed.com digitize receipts for you to store online. Can also take photos with your iPhone and email to your Evernote.com account. Another option is PaperPort.
    • Don’t forget to track your mileage for business or job hunting.
    • Keeping organized throughout the year with software like Quicken or Quickbooks will help you to easily run reports for tax preparation.
    • Lost a receipt from a major retailer like Home Depot or Target. Ask them to pull up your past purchases associated with your credit card.
    • File early especially if you’re entitled to a return.

    [25:30] Kids just want to spend, spend, spend. Which is a bigger waste of your hard earned money?

    Best quote: “Who the hell do you hate enough to give a Chipmunks CD to?”
    Read the rest of this entry »

  • 25 Feb 2009 /  Faith

    lentThe first part of the year seems to always come down to some kind of sacrifice. First we have our New Year’s resolutions, which never include “spend more time on the internet, watch more television, and eat a lot of chocolate.” I spend the better part of January trying to keep to those resolutions. Of course, many of those fall to the wayside by February 1st. February is spent mostly regretting all the junk I didn’t get done.

    I forgot! I have another chance! I can give up all the same things AGAIN for Lent. Now I’m starting to think to myself “why do I bother making resolutions when Lent is coming in a month? I can make my same sacrifices and have them count TWICE!” This leaves me in a quandry, though.

    If I had resolved to give up chocolate at New Year’s, I’d have blown it about 3 days after New Years. That means my resolution is no longer in play. I can give up chocolate for Lent now, right? If I do that, does it count as a new sacrifice for my faith, or is it simply a cop out for my own convenience? Read the rest of this entry »

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  • 19 Feb 2009 /  Marriage and Family
    ski02.JPG

    Me and Wanda

    Background: My children and I ski. We love it. It started as something I had always wanted to do. I was 35, Skippy was 7. My Dad bought Skippy and I ski passes to Elk Mountain PA as Christmas Gifts. We took a lesson, and fell in love. Not only did the sport itself engage us, but the time we spent together on the lift was a welcome chance to bond.

    Wanda started skiing a few years back. After a few failed attempts, I got her on a Magic Carpet, on the right hill, and success! She loves the sport as well, including the quality time with Dad.

    I truly hit my stride when I completed a lesson in Vermont a few years back. I was at a plateau in my learning, and the instructor got me over the hump. Since then, I believe I’ve become fairly accomplished. Oh, I’m not skiing moguls or gates, but I can ski some pretty tough hills. Left to my own devices, I have some great runs. BUT NOT SO YESTERDAY!

    Location: Hunter Mountain

    Personnel: Three adults, 3 teenage boys, two ‘tween girls and a ‘tween boy.

    Events- Wednesday, February 18, 2009

    • 6:30am- departure (ETA 8:30am) Breakfast on the road.
    • 8:00am- Vehicle 2 (Honda Odyssey Van, driven by me) 10 miles from destination. Enters “S” turn. Roadway treated with anti-icing chemicals. Vehicle loses control, spins 180 degrees, lands in snowbank. Wanda and I (only passengers) uninjured, van undamaged.
    • 8:02am- Trip continues. Read the rest of this entry »

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  • 18 Feb 2009 /  Podcast, The Daddy Dialogues
     
     Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

    The Daddy Dialogues album artIn episode 16, Vinny and Roland shared a number of money saving tips. In the latest episode, we share even more tips to cut costs and tighten your budget.

    [22:40] We talk about practicality versus aesthetics of Compact Fluorescent Bulbs (CFLs).

    More money saving tips:

    • Most everything is negotiable.
    • Ever hear that at a casino, you can ask an attendant to “put the slot machine to sleep” while you go to the bathroom?
    • Now is a great time to refinance your mortgage down to a lower rate.

    Read the rest of this entry »

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  • 12 Feb 2009 /  Technology

    Phone Cables.jpgIn 1844, a man named Innocenzo Manzetti first conceived of a ’speaking telegraph.’ Only 33 short years later, it had become a reality. Alexander Graham Bell made his first successful phone call in 1877. He made the call because he needed his assistant, Mr. Watson. He understood, even at the earliest stage, that the phone would be used as an extraordinary tool.

    I remember growing up, seeing the importance of the phone as I watched television shows. Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry depended on the phone. It was too far to head off to Mount Pilot every time he needed to get information, so he would call Sarah the Operator and she could not only connect him with the State Police office, but could catch him up on all the gossip.

    We watched the boys and girls of Sweet Apple, Ohio share the news about Kim Macafee getting pinned by Hugo Peabody. Even Zach Morris knew you had to have a phone if you wanted to get ahead in the world. He would use his big, honkin’ portable phone to order pizzas, plan the undoing of Mr. Belding, or call up Kelly Kapowski to tell her how awesome she was.

    Zach apparently knew a great deal. Since those days, we’ve gone from the simple little LED display cellular phones and progressed further than I ever would have thought possible. Portable devices (calling them cellular phones would be doing a disservice to these outstanding tools) allow us to stream on-demand music over the airwaves to our phones. Handhelds let us see the internet from anywhere we want. Blackberries allow us to receive our email automatically, no matter where we are. iPhones give us the ability to send SMS messages, map our location using GPS, and play SuperMonkeyBall. Oh yeah, they also make phone calls.

    Early cell phones cost a small fortune to purchase and too much to actually operate. Today they are so inexpensive, you can purchase phones simple enough to lose or replace when you’ve used up the included minutes. Everyone, their mother, and their children has a cell phone. With the proliferation of mobile devices placing them now in the hands of nearly everyone on the planet, I find it hard to believe that anyone would be reluctant to use one in important circumstances. However, I am constantly amazed by the complexities of the human mind and it’s system for managing choices.

    One such amazing feat of decision imprecision? Imagine if you were a home contractor of sorts, and you came upon a situation in which an important decision had to be made. You’ve come to a point in the project where, in order to complete a particular step, a decision must be made regarding the disposition of a 100+ year old plant. You, as the contractor, must make a choice.

    1. Change the original plan to preserve the plant, possibly upsetting the homeowner because of the change;
    2. Cut the ancient plant to make way for the project, possibly upsetting the homeowner because of the change;
    3. Stop work on the project and wait for the owner to return home, possibly upsetting the homeowner because of the delay;
    4. Pick up any one of the 6 phones on the job site and call the owner to ask “What would you prefer we do?”

    All the technological advances you can fit in one’s pocket are of no help if you are not wearing the right pants. Or something like that.

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  • 07 Feb 2009 /  Faith
    Church Clock Tower

    Church Clock Tower,
    originally uploaded by lolowar.

    Roman Catholics are the busiest of the faithful. I know that seems a bold observation and a gross generalization, but I know it to be true. How could I know such a thing? I know because I have studied it using the tools I learned in Sociology 101- observation and extrapolation.

    I’ve spent many years observing the arrival times of people to Sunday Mass. In the R.C. churches I have attended, the earliest attendee arrives at Mass approximately 30 minutes before the scheduled start time. Because she is so unique, and her arrival time so much earlier than the rest, she (and yes, it’s ALWAYS a ’she’) is an outlier, a bit of data that falls outside the normal distribution. Most if the rest arrive in a block,so the normal range for arrival begins at 8 minutes prior to scheduled start (T minus 8 minutes, to use a familiar parlance), with an increase in incidents at T minus 90 seconds that continues through T plus 5 minutes. Outliers on the other side of the range continue through the T+15 range.

    Departure times are equally revealing. Departures begin immediately following individual procession to receive communion (which researchers have termed “eat and run”) and occurs approximately 8 minutes prior to the end of mass, or D minus 8 minutes. There are a few of these, and they appear to skew towards younger members of the study group. The vast majority of attendees depart, or attempt to depart, at least 1 minute before the ending, or D minus 1. Only a scant few stay for the end of services, which is officially termed at the end of the closing hymn. Coincidentally there is a single outlier for departure as well, but she has already been discounted from the study because she is the same woman who arrived thirty minutes early. We have no statistics on her departure time, as the researchers tired of waiting for her to leave and just went home for lunch.

    Researchers have determined the average time of a Sunday Mass to be 48 minutes. Using that as a base, eliminating the outliers, and applying a high level statistical regression analysis, the average R.C. Churchgoer appears to attend only 92% of the actual service. Anecdotally (and to be studied in depth with a future study) time on task during the service appears to be low as well. Adjustments to cell phone ringers, text messaging, writing checks for the collection basket, and whispering to your neighbors about that lady’s hat appear to consume more of the time, leaving less than 90% quality time during the service. Another consideration could be that people are unaware that Mass ends at the end of the closing song, and that it is not ‘exit music’ for the congregation to recess.

    All of these statistics lead this researcher to only one conclusion- Roman Catholics may be too busy for Weekly Mass. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish this later. The Homily is ending, and I have to get back to work.

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  • 05 Feb 2009 /  Marriage and Family
    online_dating_regular_dating.jpg

    Photo from Love-Sessions.com

    One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to spend more time with my wife and value that relationship more. She and I took our first step by having the first Date Night we’ve had in a while.

    Getting out of the house for date night is no easy task these days. Going on a date before kids is as easy as picking up the phone, saying “do you have plans?” and heading out the door. Once you have kids, it gets much more complicated. When they were younger, it was about finding a babysitter for the two of them. Then as my son got to be old enough, it was “whose house is he playing at and who will watch my daughter?” Now that they are 15 and 11, it’s become complicated in other ways. Read the rest of this entry »

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  • 02 Feb 2009 /  Technology

    My New Year’s Resolutions include a pledge to lose weight and get in better shape. I’m really bad at working out alone, but luckily my quest for a better bod is supported by technology.

    I’m using this Tanita scale, which measures my body fat, BMI, and water content. Last time I got on it my weight was 250 and my BMI was, well, embarrassing. I only weigh myself once a week, as I’m told this is the best way to make sure not to be disappointed. I don’t know if it’s working. I still get depressed when I get on it. I think that’s related more to the fact that I have to look OVER my gut to see that I am overweight. It’s the Sunday Morning Weigh In Double Whammy! Read the rest of this entry »

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