Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Friday, November 02, 2007
Sorry for the lack of postings....
Been pretty busy with a lot of things going on lately and just haven't taken the time to do much in the way of posting. Lots of ideas on things to talk about here, but just haven't taken the time to sit down and do it.
I am trying to make a conscious effort to help keep both this blog and my "family" one updated more often. Hopefully this weekend I can steal an hour or so and get some things cleaned up on those multiple blogs / websites and make them a bit easier to start using more often. Just such a great tool for staying in touch with people and expressing your thoughts (sometimes for self meditation reasons) to the world. But you've still got to sit down and do it!!
Going to have lunch with my wife's 1st grade class today. She's been working with them the last two weeks on their behavior and promised if they did well I would come in for a pizza party with them. Definitely a great excuse to take a day off from work and remember what is truly important in life.
Please keep reading the blog and I promise to work on getting more updates and keeping things interesting.
-K
I am trying to make a conscious effort to help keep both this blog and my "family" one updated more often. Hopefully this weekend I can steal an hour or so and get some things cleaned up on those multiple blogs / websites and make them a bit easier to start using more often. Just such a great tool for staying in touch with people and expressing your thoughts (sometimes for self meditation reasons) to the world. But you've still got to sit down and do it!!
Going to have lunch with my wife's 1st grade class today. She's been working with them the last two weeks on their behavior and promised if they did well I would come in for a pizza party with them. Definitely a great excuse to take a day off from work and remember what is truly important in life.
Please keep reading the blog and I promise to work on getting more updates and keeping things interesting.
-K
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
No More Kings
A friend of mine sent me this link to a video.
The name of the band is No More Kings and the album is "Sweep the Leg." For those of us that grew up in the 80's we don't even need to stop and think of the reference. It's Karate Kid time!!
The video is just hysterical and the music is pretty good as well. I actually went right out and downloaded the entire album from Amazon's MP3 service right after watching the video. Their songs cover everything from Zombies to Karate Kid to Schroeder for Peanuts comics to Darth Vader. They seem to be like a harder version of Barenaked Ladies and I like it.
Link for MP3 of Sweep the Leg
Link for entire album on CD
The name of the band is No More Kings and the album is "Sweep the Leg." For those of us that grew up in the 80's we don't even need to stop and think of the reference. It's Karate Kid time!!
The video is just hysterical and the music is pretty good as well. I actually went right out and downloaded the entire album from Amazon's MP3 service right after watching the video. Their songs cover everything from Zombies to Karate Kid to Schroeder for Peanuts comics to Darth Vader. They seem to be like a harder version of Barenaked Ladies and I like it.
Link for MP3 of Sweep the Leg
Link for entire album on CD
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Are you ready for some football??!!
The NFL season is underway. I've got to say I'm excited about football this year. The Patriot's look really good and I'm finally taking part in a fantasy football league at work. The Maine Outhouse Dumpers are going to be pretty dominate in our 8 person league!! (I'll probably post a little more about my team later as I figure this stuff out.)
Well now that Kelly Clarkson is done it's time to watch the first pregame of the year!!!
Go Pat's!!!!
Well now that Kelly Clarkson is done it's time to watch the first pregame of the year!!!
Go Pat's!!!!
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Internet Speed Test
Now a test with just an ethernet connection through two routers in my house.
Significantly faster than the wireless. Nice!!
Significantly faster than the wireless. Nice!!
Monday, August 06, 2007
Friday, August 03, 2007
Time Warner Business Class Cable Internet
I decided to shell out for the business class upgrade over the standard residential cable internet since I'm now working from home. Big thing I was worried about was quality of the upload speed due to using Skype and Vonage and just general use.
So far the upload speed is better. It's double what it was before. The download speed appears to be the same however. It should have doubled if not tripled as well, but it's good enough so I won't complain at the moment.
Some if it could be due to my wireless connection. Next week I may do a little testing to see if that's making much of a difference.
So far the upload speed is better. It's double what it was before. The download speed appears to be the same however. It should have doubled if not tripled as well, but it's good enough so I won't complain at the moment.
Some if it could be due to my wireless connection. Next week I may do a little testing to see if that's making much of a difference.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Day one working from home....
Well yesterday was the first day I did the official working from home deal.
It went very well and I was pretty relieved. Anytime you start a new endeavor you have to have some honest worry that it won't go as planned. I knew I could do it, but there are often things that just go outside your control.
Luckily it was a very hectic morning and that just made things flow easier and made the time go quicker and I think that helped.
We'll see how the rest of the week goes, but I'm definitely more confident in it now.
-Kent
It went very well and I was pretty relieved. Anytime you start a new endeavor you have to have some honest worry that it won't go as planned. I knew I could do it, but there are often things that just go outside your control.
Luckily it was a very hectic morning and that just made things flow easier and made the time go quicker and I think that helped.
We'll see how the rest of the week goes, but I'm definitely more confident in it now.
-Kent
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Grampa Norm updated....
Well, Grampa is home and doing well. They had to put a pacemaker in on Tuesday morning, but everything went great.
Saw him yesterday and he's doing well. Already feels a bit better and is confident that he'll have more energy and be able to get out on the golf course and walk a lot better later this summer.
He's still hoping to be able to go to his MacArthur Honor Guard Reunion but is being realistic about it at his point.
Saw him yesterday and he's doing well. Already feels a bit better and is confident that he'll have more energy and be able to get out on the golf course and walk a lot better later this summer.
He's still hoping to be able to go to his MacArthur Honor Guard Reunion but is being realistic about it at his point.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
My Grandfather Norm
Norman Smith Sr is my grandfather on my father's side and he's got to be one of the happiest, luckiest and most content people I've ever had the good fortune to meet.
I spent about two hours today visiting him in the hospital. On Friday he felt some tingling in his arms and knew that it was time to get some help. He's had two heart attacks in the past and some pretty major heart surgery over the years. He knows enough to not play games with fate and just be stubborn. Tomorrow he's going to have another round of angioplasty and we're all expecting everything to go well and he's keeping his fingers crossed that he'll be able to be home on the Fourth of July.
I was honestly a little nervous about going in to visit him. Not because I didn't want to see him, but because I'm not good at dealing with situations like this. Luckily for me Grampa is just a master at making people feel easy. We had a great conversation that was honest, deep, funny, and relaxing. We covered everything from how lucky he's been throughout his life to his time in the Army.
For the rest of this entry I'm just going to cover a few of the items so that I will remember them. It was that special a time for me.
My grandfather got drafted into the Army in 1944. I knew he had been in the Army, but I didn't know if he was drafted or enlisted. When I asked him today he said, "Heck no. I was drafted!!" His Uncle Stubb had been in WWI and when he came home he told my grandfather and all the other kids to NEVER willingly go into the Army. The things he saw and such in Europe during and after WWI really put him off from the military. I can't say as I blaimed him.
Apparently there is a good story about the day grampa got the draft notice and my grandmother, but I don't know it. Xan was telling me a bit about it, so I'll have to ask grampa later about that one.
When grampa got to basic training they started training him for combat in Europe. At the time it looked like Europe was still in trouble and that's where he would be sent. Shortly after he started basic the Battle of the Bulge happened. The Allies lost something like 4000 people that first day. As he said, yet another case of how lucky he was to miss that. Luckily after that battle the tides changed in Europe and so their training shifted to jungle warfare for combat in Japan.
The next round of luck ocured when he got moved to a new base for deployment to Asia. I believe this was in California, but I'll have to double check that one. Anyway there was a dentist there checking all their teeth before they left and saw that grampa had only had one of his wisdom teeth taken out. Grampa explained why, but the dentist said it wouldn't be good to have one get inflamed when he was in a fox hole, so they held him back from getting deployed while he had those taken out. That was the next lucky break as the division he was in ended up going to the Philipines on mop up detail.
So next he got sent to Hawaii. There they continued training for an invasion of Japan. They were taking the normal 12 man squads and bumping them up to 20 man squads in the hopes of still having 12 men alive by the time they hit the beach. Not great odds as grampa liked to point out. On his way to Japan the US dropped the two atomic bombs and ended the war. Yet another lucky event for him.
I forget now the city where he landed. There he ended up getting put into a regimental guard where he learned how to run a radio. Through a few different lucky breaks he ended up getting moved into MacArthur's Honor Guard. The requirements were basically that he had to have an IQ over 120 and be between 5'10" and 6'2" and they were only taking guys who were fairly new. (Most likely as they didn't want guys that were due to ship home any time soon.)
He absolutely loved his time in the Honor Guard. He was warned by several people that he was getting transitioned into the "most Chicken Shit outfit in the Army." His thought was that where he was wasn't all that great and if it really turned out bad where he was going he could just get kicked out by screwing up. The assignment he was currently in was crazy as they had to do inspection twice a day with their rifles and you would occasional get some hard ass who would force them to get to full attention with their rifles at their sides and then dock them for getting their rifles muddy. Absolute no win situation!!
So he got to the MacArthur Guard and knew he was better off. For all of the bad and different things said about MacArthur my grandfather definitely has a good opinion of the man. He would always great the guards on duty whenever coming or going. Most officers wouldn't even acknowledge them.
Mac's wife would come and visit them all often and just say hello and ask if they needed anything. I know from previous conversations with Grampa that Mac would often show movies in his house and invite some of the off duty men into watch with his family. He was definitely a man that cared for them men under his command.
Grampa does agree with Truman's decision to remove Mac from command during Korea. He has no doubt that Mac would have used atomic bombs on China if he'd had the chance. That would have caused World War III and a lot of problems.
After his tour of duty was over grampa was done. There was no signing up for reserves or anything like that. They tried like hell to get him to commit, but he explained his reasons and they stopped pushing.
At that time there were luxury cruise linears that were bringing officers and their families over from the US to Japan. On the return leg they were taking officers back from their tours to the US. Around that time Stars and Stripes (the Army newspaper) got wind of this and so enlisted men were allowed to start riding on those cruise linears too. Who was one of the enlisted men on the first cruise line to go? That's right, my grandfather!!
They went to their first mess for breakfast and there was a uniformed (not military, but the cruise line uniforms) waiter offering them menus and telling them they could order anything they wanted. Not a bad way to spend 6 days on the trip back to the US.
When they hit southern California there was another Liberty ship coming in that was full of soldiers. He said they were the dirtiest, sorriest looking group of men he had ever seen. Those guys had broken down in the ocean some place and had run out of water so they couldn't shower, couldn't wash their clothes and apparently had had to resort to drinking their own urine to survive. He said he and his crew decided that they wouldn't bother mentioning how they had returned from Japan. Figured it wasn't a good thing to bring up. (Yet another case of some severe luck for him!!)
The rest of the conversation dealt with a lot of stuff. I'll write more about it later. I'm too tired now and just need to spend some time thinking about what a wonderful afternoon I had with my grampa.
I spent about two hours today visiting him in the hospital. On Friday he felt some tingling in his arms and knew that it was time to get some help. He's had two heart attacks in the past and some pretty major heart surgery over the years. He knows enough to not play games with fate and just be stubborn. Tomorrow he's going to have another round of angioplasty and we're all expecting everything to go well and he's keeping his fingers crossed that he'll be able to be home on the Fourth of July.
I was honestly a little nervous about going in to visit him. Not because I didn't want to see him, but because I'm not good at dealing with situations like this. Luckily for me Grampa is just a master at making people feel easy. We had a great conversation that was honest, deep, funny, and relaxing. We covered everything from how lucky he's been throughout his life to his time in the Army.
For the rest of this entry I'm just going to cover a few of the items so that I will remember them. It was that special a time for me.
My grandfather got drafted into the Army in 1944. I knew he had been in the Army, but I didn't know if he was drafted or enlisted. When I asked him today he said, "Heck no. I was drafted!!" His Uncle Stubb had been in WWI and when he came home he told my grandfather and all the other kids to NEVER willingly go into the Army. The things he saw and such in Europe during and after WWI really put him off from the military. I can't say as I blaimed him.
Apparently there is a good story about the day grampa got the draft notice and my grandmother, but I don't know it. Xan was telling me a bit about it, so I'll have to ask grampa later about that one.
When grampa got to basic training they started training him for combat in Europe. At the time it looked like Europe was still in trouble and that's where he would be sent. Shortly after he started basic the Battle of the Bulge happened. The Allies lost something like 4000 people that first day. As he said, yet another case of how lucky he was to miss that. Luckily after that battle the tides changed in Europe and so their training shifted to jungle warfare for combat in Japan.
The next round of luck ocured when he got moved to a new base for deployment to Asia. I believe this was in California, but I'll have to double check that one. Anyway there was a dentist there checking all their teeth before they left and saw that grampa had only had one of his wisdom teeth taken out. Grampa explained why, but the dentist said it wouldn't be good to have one get inflamed when he was in a fox hole, so they held him back from getting deployed while he had those taken out. That was the next lucky break as the division he was in ended up going to the Philipines on mop up detail.
So next he got sent to Hawaii. There they continued training for an invasion of Japan. They were taking the normal 12 man squads and bumping them up to 20 man squads in the hopes of still having 12 men alive by the time they hit the beach. Not great odds as grampa liked to point out. On his way to Japan the US dropped the two atomic bombs and ended the war. Yet another lucky event for him.
I forget now the city where he landed. There he ended up getting put into a regimental guard where he learned how to run a radio. Through a few different lucky breaks he ended up getting moved into MacArthur's Honor Guard. The requirements were basically that he had to have an IQ over 120 and be between 5'10" and 6'2" and they were only taking guys who were fairly new. (Most likely as they didn't want guys that were due to ship home any time soon.)
He absolutely loved his time in the Honor Guard. He was warned by several people that he was getting transitioned into the "most Chicken Shit outfit in the Army." His thought was that where he was wasn't all that great and if it really turned out bad where he was going he could just get kicked out by screwing up. The assignment he was currently in was crazy as they had to do inspection twice a day with their rifles and you would occasional get some hard ass who would force them to get to full attention with their rifles at their sides and then dock them for getting their rifles muddy. Absolute no win situation!!
So he got to the MacArthur Guard and knew he was better off. For all of the bad and different things said about MacArthur my grandfather definitely has a good opinion of the man. He would always great the guards on duty whenever coming or going. Most officers wouldn't even acknowledge them.
Mac's wife would come and visit them all often and just say hello and ask if they needed anything. I know from previous conversations with Grampa that Mac would often show movies in his house and invite some of the off duty men into watch with his family. He was definitely a man that cared for them men under his command.
Grampa does agree with Truman's decision to remove Mac from command during Korea. He has no doubt that Mac would have used atomic bombs on China if he'd had the chance. That would have caused World War III and a lot of problems.
After his tour of duty was over grampa was done. There was no signing up for reserves or anything like that. They tried like hell to get him to commit, but he explained his reasons and they stopped pushing.
At that time there were luxury cruise linears that were bringing officers and their families over from the US to Japan. On the return leg they were taking officers back from their tours to the US. Around that time Stars and Stripes (the Army newspaper) got wind of this and so enlisted men were allowed to start riding on those cruise linears too. Who was one of the enlisted men on the first cruise line to go? That's right, my grandfather!!
They went to their first mess for breakfast and there was a uniformed (not military, but the cruise line uniforms) waiter offering them menus and telling them they could order anything they wanted. Not a bad way to spend 6 days on the trip back to the US.
When they hit southern California there was another Liberty ship coming in that was full of soldiers. He said they were the dirtiest, sorriest looking group of men he had ever seen. Those guys had broken down in the ocean some place and had run out of water so they couldn't shower, couldn't wash their clothes and apparently had had to resort to drinking their own urine to survive. He said he and his crew decided that they wouldn't bother mentioning how they had returned from Japan. Figured it wasn't a good thing to bring up. (Yet another case of some severe luck for him!!)
The rest of the conversation dealt with a lot of stuff. I'll write more about it later. I'm too tired now and just need to spend some time thinking about what a wonderful afternoon I had with my grampa.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
The Power of the Internet and my vacation....
Well I haven't posted anything in a long time and I've now got a couple of hours to kill so I figured it's time for a quick post.
I'm currently sitting in a coffee shop in Wilmington, North Carolina's airport. Through the magic of free wi-fi I'm able to kill my couple of hours that I needed to wait for my cousin (Andy) and the rest of the guys in my golf vacation group to show up. (Maybe we need a quick back story here.....)
So Xan decided for my Christmas present that I needed to go on a golf vacation with a group of guys that I know that have been trying to get me to go for years. I had turned it down (again) in order to save some cash. But Xan felt I needed to do it and saved up the cash for me and got it. Andy has been doing this trip for a few years and they generally have 10-12 guys go. They do a team event in a Ryder Cup format making it a lot of fun and apparently a lot of trash talking for the next year until the next trip.
So I went ahead and gladly accepted my gift. I then checked with my company to ensure that we were NOT having a sales meeting this year and they confirmed we would not. About a week after booking everything I get the email saying we ARE having a sales conference this year. Guess when..... Yup, same week.
So I just got off of 3 red-eye flights in order to get into Myrtle Beach in time for the first round. I'm not too sure how well I'm gonna play, but I know I'm gonna have fun!!!!
So while I'm waiting for them to show up I'm able to watch a recording of a Steven Wright stand up routine that I got from my TiVo, chat with some friends on Skype, and monitor the status of the other guys flights on the web. Oh.... and type up this blog entry.
The web is pretty cool.....
I'm currently sitting in a coffee shop in Wilmington, North Carolina's airport. Through the magic of free wi-fi I'm able to kill my couple of hours that I needed to wait for my cousin (Andy) and the rest of the guys in my golf vacation group to show up. (Maybe we need a quick back story here.....)
So Xan decided for my Christmas present that I needed to go on a golf vacation with a group of guys that I know that have been trying to get me to go for years. I had turned it down (again) in order to save some cash. But Xan felt I needed to do it and saved up the cash for me and got it. Andy has been doing this trip for a few years and they generally have 10-12 guys go. They do a team event in a Ryder Cup format making it a lot of fun and apparently a lot of trash talking for the next year until the next trip.
So I went ahead and gladly accepted my gift. I then checked with my company to ensure that we were NOT having a sales meeting this year and they confirmed we would not. About a week after booking everything I get the email saying we ARE having a sales conference this year. Guess when..... Yup, same week.
So I just got off of 3 red-eye flights in order to get into Myrtle Beach in time for the first round. I'm not too sure how well I'm gonna play, but I know I'm gonna have fun!!!!
So while I'm waiting for them to show up I'm able to watch a recording of a Steven Wright stand up routine that I got from my TiVo, chat with some friends on Skype, and monitor the status of the other guys flights on the web. Oh.... and type up this blog entry.
The web is pretty cool.....
Monday, March 12, 2007
Amazon Unbox prelim review
I've started trying out the new Amazon Unbox service. So far I'm pretty impressed, but there will be limits as to how much I use it.I have downloaded a movie to my TiVo box and it seems to have gone very well. I have not watched the video yet, but did check it to make sure it was there. The main complaint I have for the service combined with TiVo is the fact that movies are downloaded in a "TiVo format" which means it's a 4:3 rendition. I would certainly be much more interested if it were of higher quality and letter boxed. But we'll give it a shot and see how it looks. I'm sure they will add more format options if the service is successful.
I also downloaded and installed the Amazon Unbox player. I did have a little trouble getting that setup for some reason. I'm not sure why, but after uninstalling and reinstalling it seemed to work. I think my problem may have been not having a video downloading so the "player" wouldn't show up on the screen. After I started downloading a video to the computer it would show up. If that's the case it's not the best design for user experience, but hey...
Watching the video was no problem. I got my usual pings and pops on the sound for a little while, but that is just my computer and NOT the Amazon Unbox player. (I know from many hours of painful testing of various things.)
The pricing from this service is the only real issue. I can't see spending $15 for a video download when I can buy the DVD for next to that same price and have full control over what I do with it and how I play it. Where I see this getting used more for me is in Video rentals. You can rent a movie for $3-4 and you have it for 30 days. Once you start watching it you must watch the whole thing in 24 hours. That's not too bad and it saves me a couple of trips to the video store.
Given the Apple TV product coming out and NOT being able to play on any TVs that don't have HDMI or Component Video (aka my TV)I may actually use this service even more in the future. Eventually I'll have to upgrade my TV and then perhaps the Apple service will be better. Will have to wait and see I guess. Good to have some competition in there!!
Brad Delp (1951-2007)
Just a quick post to express my sadness in the passing of Brad Delp. He's most known for his vocals on the Boston albums. He definitely has one of the most amazing voices in all of Rock 'n' Roll. I've loved their music for a long time and was looking forward to their upcoming tour this summer.
I saw Brad play with his current band, Beatlejuice, at a small club in Massachusetts and it was simply amazing. His voice was still there and it's no wonder his musical background was influenced by the Beatles.
-Kent
I saw Brad play with his current band, Beatlejuice, at a small club in Massachusetts and it was simply amazing. His voice was still there and it's no wonder his musical background was influenced by the Beatles.
-Kent
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
New Domain Name???
So I've been working for a little while to figure out a nice and easy way for Xan to get a web page and blog up and running for all of her school / reading information. I kept looking for a way to tie in Blogger and Google Page Creater to a custom domain name. It looks like Google Apps can now do that.
So now I just need to test the thing and see how it all works. Problem is that I want to pick a domain name that I can continue using myself after the testing time as I wouldn't mind having my own domain too. Trouble is that it's just not that easy to come up with something. Kent.com is already picked so that's no good.
If anyone has any good ideas either send me an email or drop me a note in the comments.
So now I just need to test the thing and see how it all works. Problem is that I want to pick a domain name that I can continue using myself after the testing time as I wouldn't mind having my own domain too. Trouble is that it's just not that easy to come up with something. Kent.com is already picked so that's no good.
If anyone has any good ideas either send me an email or drop me a note in the comments.
Monday, February 19, 2007
YouTube Video -- Tea Partay
This is a pretty funny video set as a similar style to the Lazy Muncie one done a while ago. If you haven't checked that one out your are definitely missing out!!
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Sin City movie
Well I finally got around to watching the movie "Sin City" that I had recorded on TiVo months ago. I wish I had watched it when it was first on. This is a terrific movie. It's got one of the coolest looks to a movie that I've seen in a long time. I'm not going to go into a long review or such of the movie here, but it's based on a Graphic Novel and the director did a great job at matching that look and feel.
In many places you see the actor on the screen walking in front of a city scape backdrop. The whole shot has the feel that it's a stage play instead of a movie. Normally this would make the movie look cheap. Here it just makes the movie work. It's a hard thing to describe and really just needs to be seen to understand.
One word of caution on this movie. It's out there. It's extremely violent and has a lot of blood and gore scenes. There are also issues that aren't the most pleasant to be thinking about all the time, so be forewarned. If you can handle that type of thing then you've got to see this movie. Very good.
I just heard from a friend of mine that they have already started working on the sequels (2 and 3) for this. That's great news as it's definitely something that could be extended.
In many places you see the actor on the screen walking in front of a city scape backdrop. The whole shot has the feel that it's a stage play instead of a movie. Normally this would make the movie look cheap. Here it just makes the movie work. It's a hard thing to describe and really just needs to be seen to understand.
One word of caution on this movie. It's out there. It's extremely violent and has a lot of blood and gore scenes. There are also issues that aren't the most pleasant to be thinking about all the time, so be forewarned. If you can handle that type of thing then you've got to see this movie. Very good.
I just heard from a friend of mine that they have already started working on the sequels (2 and 3) for this. That's great news as it's definitely something that could be extended.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Back from the honeymoon...
Well Xan and I made it back from our honeymoon yesterday. We had a GREAT time and it was so relaxing. Sitting on the beach or by the pool in the sun was just what we both needed to get away from things for a while.We ended up going to an Iberostar resort in the Dominican Republic city of La Romana. (Google Earth Link) It was a great choice and I'd probably go back there again. But I think for our next vacation we'll pick someplace different simply for variety. But we met several people that have been there a few times and keep going back to it.
I'll probably update a bit more on this later, but it's getting late and I've got to head back to the grind tomorrow. Here's a link to some pics on the Picasa page if your interested.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)