Tickets

William 3 Comments

I was so excited when I heard that Obama would be giving his speech to accept the nomination of the democratic party at Invesco Field. I rushed to sign up for tickets. Well, that feels like months ago. The party finally announced their plan to distribute tickets, and it didn’t sound to promising. Still, Kyllan and my parents were ready to make last minute plans just in case things worked out… Things didn’t work out. I am actually a little angry about how the whole situation played out, but I won’t go into that here.

Olympics so far

William Leave a comment

Don’t worry, no spoilers until after the fold…

I have been really enjoying the Olympics so far. If the gasp from Kyllan on the other end of the phone are any indication, she is enjoying the games too. The opening ceremony was amazing, even if there was a little controversy. Personally I think NBC has done a horrible job with communicating what sports will be on air at what time. Kyllan is getting “Live” broadcast an hour earlier than I am. It’s great that they are offering live events online, but they should have at least added an audio feed so there would be some commentary with the video. Below are so of my thoughts on the events I’ve been able to catch (click more). Consider any comments to be spoiler rich. (more…)

2008 Summer Olympic Games

William 6 Comments

The Games of the XXIX Olympiad are upon us. Will you be watching the games this year or are you planning to boycott all broadcast in protest of an oppressive government and human rights violations in China? (Oh great, now the blog is going to be blocked by the Great Firewall.) Though I have personally encountered Chinese researchers my age and older who have no idea that there were ever any protest in Tienanmen Square, I plan to watch the games as usual. While I am also not sure that Beijing was the best selection for host city, I don’t know that political opinions should interfere with sport and believe that the Chinese people may benefit from the eyes of the world focusing on their government… It doesn’t look promising though. (That last link is to an article about the Chinese government restricting public displays of faith, and enforcing these laws on athletes at the games. I thought it was really interesting.)

Here is the broadcast schedule. Hopefully the time difference won’t prevent me from catching some events live.

… I don’t know how Kyllan missed this; Her Alma mater, Wake Forest, is ranked #23 in the preseason choaches’ football poll! Is that the first top 25 preseason ranking for Wake?

Wii love Wii Fit!!

Kyllan 6 Comments

I finally found a Wii Fit!!!  After several failed attempts over the past couple of months to find one, I thought that this past weekend would end in success since one of the sales associates at Circuit City told me they usually get Wii Fit’s in on the first Sunday of the month.   Well, I went to Circuit City on Sunday around noon and they were already sold out of the Wii’s they got in that morning.  The manager told me that there was a line outside when he arrived to work at 7am.  Really??!!  Wow.  I called several other stores and they had similar situations…received some that morning, but were already sold out.  Most stores only seem to get between 3-6 per shipment.  I still don’t understand why high demand item production is so scarce!

Anyway… the guy at the Game Stop near where I work told me they usually get one on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, so just call the store and ask if they got any in.  So… I figured that was my best option (to try to find one at a store near work instead of waiting till the weekend and going to Circuit City, Best Buy, Walmart, or Toys R Us.)  Well… today, I called Game Stop at the end of the day, and calmly asked, “Do you have any Wii Fit’s?” and waited for the disappointing news.  BUT… he said, in a voice like I had just found a clue to a $1million dollar puzzle, “Actually… we do!”   At this point, I became very excited over the phone and said, “really?!  Great!”  He explained that he couldn’t hold it, to which I quickly responded, “No problem, I am on my way!”.  I was literally running through the parking lot to my car and calling William to share the great news.   When I arrived at the store, the guy says… “You weren’t lying when you said you were on your way”  The mall is about 5 minutes from where I work.  I purchased Wii Fit #3 of 4 they had received the previous day.  I was so excited!!

Despite my excitement and anxiousness to try it out.  I still went to my usual Wednesday Turbo Kick Class to make sure I got a high fat-burning workout since I figured my first day on Wii Fit would be fairly low impact.  Although the beginning started a bit slow as you learn the games, I will admit that the they do get progressively harder and higher in impact and I was very impressed!  The best thing about Wii Fit is that is focuses on aerobic activity, strength training, Yoga, and most importantly balance.  I guess they don’t call it a “balance board” for nothing!  All of the activities incorporate balance since they want you to work on good posture and overall fitness.  I think that is great!!   Even though I knew that strength training was important and Yoga is a good idea, this brought it all into perspective.  I really love it!!  I did pretty well on the aerobics (Ski Jump was by far my best event) and very well on the strength straining exercises and surprisingly well at the Yoga exercises I did (I am not very good at Yoga).  The balance exercises… that was another story.  I am not good at those (although I was good when it came to balance with strength training).  There is a balance game where you have to head bump the soccer balls, but dodge the other objects that come flying in your face (like cleats and other random objects) and let’s just say that I was horrible at that.  I would be black and blue if that were real 🙂  I did pretty good at Hula Hoop though and was able to unlock the Advanced Hula Hoop.  I thought I would be superb at Step, but you have to step at the “perfect time”, so I was not as stellar as I thought I would be, but I did manage to unlock the Advanced Step (I should explain here that as you get “better”, it unlocks new games, yoga poses, etc.).  I love how when you don’t do well, they play this depressing music.  That is hilarious to me.

I have to say that the best thing about Wii Fit is he tracking mechanism.  It can track your weight and BMI over time and it even graphs your progress!!  You an set timelines to reach certain goals, like lose 5 lbs in 1 month, etc.  You can also complete the balance test each day to track your progress with that, which I definitely need to do.

Ok… well, I am sure you get the drift of my excitement by now.  I played around on it for about 2 hours, but it is after midnight now, so I need to go to bed (and call William back since I was too excited pre-occupied with the games when he called earlier… all he could do was laugh).  I definitely recommend this to anyone thinking of getting one (or even those not thinking of getting one) although it seems like many of our friends have one! I think this will really help me keep up with my workouts and fitness and weight loss goals, which is exciting!

iReview

William 7 Comments

After multiple attempts and long wait in line next to an extremely chatty woman, who compared the experience to her wait in line for an exclusive beanie baby at Target, I was actually able to pay a large sum of money obtain a iPhone 3G. (The more money something cost, the easier it should be to get someone to actually sale it to you.) While I am disappointed with how the release has been handled, I am very happy with the phone.

Now, there are lots of people this phone is not for. Save your money if you just want a cool looking phone, the hottest gadget or don’t know the difference between push and fetch. (If that is the case and you still want a cool phone, go for the nonconformist vibe and grab a Samsung Instinct or a Nokia N series). This phone is for people who already organize their lives on some sort of device and want/need to always be connected to the cloud. I just happen to be that type of person.

Off the top, the iPhone is by far the best iPod offered (as an personal music player it functions identical to the iPod touch.) As a phone, it offers much better voice quality than my old Samsung Blackjack. I was actually shocked. The 3G makes web browsing practical when not on a the wi-fi network, though the whole actual web pages with Safari still leaves a little to be desired. The thing that really makes the phone are the applications and their integration with the GPS. For instance, while Kyllan was in town, I simply pulled up restaurant reviews using the Yelp! app and filtered them by distance from our location to decided where we should eat and then pulled up a map with turn by turn directions. At this point the device is serving as my phone, iPod, e-mail client, calendar, address book, to do list, weather station, gps, stereo remote (an airport express is hooked into m reciver) and on the fly event planner. It may be the most useful device I have ever owned… and I hate liking anything made by Apple.

All that being said, the battery life sucks. I am in one of those unique work environments where a 12 hour day permits me to have head phones on for 11 hrs without anyone taking a second glance and leave teh Wi-Fi on, so I probably should not complain with all of the use the device is getting on a daily basis, but I am sick of having to hook it up to the charger at the end of the day. The majority of my accessories for my previous iPod don’t work with the iPhone, which also sucks. Apparently new accessories, that look identical to the old ones, are going to be released soon. There is no ability to send MMS, but that doesn’t realy bother me. I love the interface for SMS. I have had a few freezes when opening an app, but the phone has quickly reset afterward. That may be my only real concern, but the consensus seems to be this is associated with useage immediately after installing multiple apps.

So, those are my thoughts. I really like the phone, but only recommend it for the tech geeks and gadget fiends.

Wedding Bells and Storks

Kyllan 2 Comments

I think I officially feel “grown” now since the mail these days frequently includes “Save the Dates”, wedding invitations, and baby announcements (not from relatives, but from high school and college friends). The trend of weddings and births is definitely in full swing. Here is he summary:

2006: 1 wedding, 2 births

2007: 7 weddings (including ours), 2 births

2008: 4 weddings, 1 birth, 2 pregnancies

2009: 1 wedding (already set) and I am sure more to come

It’s pretty much an even split between William’s friends and my friends, yet William is having the hardest time adjusting to us getting older. He will still be saying, “I can’t believe Neil has a kid” at Noah’s high school graduation.

Mile High Fun

Kyllan Leave a comment

William and I had a great time in Denver this past weekend. Typically we are simply excited to be in each others presence, so we don’t really take time to “plan” anything for our visits. However, this time William planned some “touristy” things for us to do. We have previously been to the Capitol Building, Mile High Stadium, and other sites in and around downtown, but we crossed a few more sites off our list.

After breakfast on Saturday at what has quickly become one of our favorite breakfast places, The Delectable Egg, we began our tour of the Denver Art Museum. With two buildings with several levels of exhibits, we became very overwhelmed at the amount of art on display, but did not really find anything that made us extremely fascinated. I guess we have not fully developed our appreciation for art. After the museum, we spent some time exploring the 16th Street Mall. We had several lunch options on the mall, but somehow managed to wander several blocks off the mall to a cute little pizza joint. After the long walk to get there, we were wondering if it would be worth it, but we both enjoyed our selection of the “Brooklyn”, which we quickly devoured. After making the walk back to the mall, which of course seemed much shorter this time, we treated ourselves to gelato (Italian ice cream). Yes, we broke our “healthy eating” rule, but hey… the gelato has less calories and less fat than regular ice cream 🙂 We concluded the day with William’s favorite combo…dinner and a movie. William was surprised to learn that I was interested in seeing Get Smart, and I think we were both surprised that we both enjoyed the movie and laughed throughout the film despite the lukewarm reviews.

To conclude the weekend, we enjoyed Sunday brunch at Dazzle. I thought the brunch was very good and the live jazz band was a nice touch. Please do not ask William how the brownie covered in fudge that I brought to the table for us to share became Kyllan’s dessert. It had chocolate chips in it! Brownie without nuts, fudge topping, chocoloate chips….enough said.

William took pictures, of course, so I am sure he will post those soon.

Oh… and I have to report that after multiple visits to the Apple store only to come out empty handed and disgruntled, William is now the very proud owner of an iPhone, which he loves. I am sure he will post about that later this week.

Dark Knight

William 8 Comments

This past Friday I invited the lab and some of the graduate students in the department over to my apartment to watch Batman Begins. On Saturday we all met up and went to see Dark Knight (the IMAX: Experience.) Apparently a lot of other people did too. I thougt it was great! Probably the best super hero movie I’ve seen, other than Iron Man. Heath Ledger was just flat out creepy as the Joker. The film was long, it was dark, but it was also very entertaining. I highly recommend to anyone that hasn’t already seen it. (My parents also saw the movie this weekend, but did not enjoy it as much as I did. It may have been a little too dark for them.)