14 posts tagged “the dalles”

I was joined near our local Fred Meyer while working this morning by an uninvited companion who seems to have lost
his parents. I've posted his info at our local Home At Last Humane Society. John Doe Puggle is extremely friendly, well behaved around cats, and seems to be house trained. My wife has fallen in love with him, so if an owner doesn't come forward, I guess I've inherited another child to watch over.

Well, now that I have an iPhone I've been receiving a ton of questions about what I think of the phone. After playing with it for four days, I feel pretty confident I can answer most of the inquiries that have been posed to me.

For those who don't want the novel length explanations, I'm really digging it. The EDGE network  issue isn't one for me because my service area doesn't have 3G access anyway. Plus the wireless more than makes up for it. I'm in a Google town, so there are wireless access points all over the place to cater to their employees.

I've received questions concerning Safari and why there have been so many sites optimized for the iPhone in particular. The question goes, "Does this mean that the Safari browser included doesn't follow current Web Standards?" The iPhone optimized sites are sites where they are taking advantage of your ability to touch the screen, so they are generally optimized for the 320 x 356 screen. This often means larger buttons and links, because you can actually click them, as opposed to tabbing over to one on a non-touch screen phone. They also tend to include all of the bells and whistles of todays modern internet, like pretty AJAX goodness, and because some the sites don't meet normal web standards themselves the iPhone became one more incentive for them to get off their asses and bring their site up to current standards.

In my experience I have not experienced any website incompatibility issues. There is the Flash issue, but I understand why they are going with H.264 Quicktime over the currently more prevalent Flash. It is a superior compression technology that takes up less space with less loss of quality, which of course will mean a better media experience and faster download for us EDGEsters.  Also, now that Adobe has announced that they will include H.264 compatibility with their Flash it should render the whole situation moot in a short while.

The keyboard has worked nicely for me. I can even see myself doing some two thumb typing in the near future. I don't GPS because I am quite capable of knowing where I am on a map, so Google Maps works fine.

The iPod rocks. I am a tad annoyed with having to get the headphone adapter. I expect that eventually third parties will start making plenty of quality headphones with adapters for iPhone included as part their package. I've never been a big fan of earbuds going back to the Walkman day. I must confess though, that phone operation button on the earbuds, is pretty darn cool.

The SMS is great. I love how they included the iChat comic word bubble and colors that they chose for monitoring conversations. I like that you can quickly scroll up the screen through an ongoing conversation. My Gmail works nicely with the phone. I look forward to using their Calendar app in the future with Google Calendar. I also suspect they ran out of time for Notes. It works fine, but I can see where they might want to polish it with added features.  I also like that email deletions on my iPhone are not destructive to the same messages in my Gmail server account. So if there is a problem, I can always go back to my Gmail server archive.

It has also been a great conversation piece. I received a text message while at the bank and I got quite a few inquiries and more than a couple "may I see it for a second" types of communication once they saw that it was an iPhone.

I can also freely agree that it will not be THE phone for everyone. Then again, no phone on the market is. It really comes down to how the phone vibes with your lifestyle.  I find that it suits mine perfectly. I love that with your two year commitment, they've pledged that you will be receiving constant improvements in features and bug fixes, which is not something they always do so frequently at the other mobile OS companies like Microsoft and Palm.

Show us your favorite coffee shop. 
Submitted by Jane. 

Today both Jess and I are feeling a bit under the weather after we learned that our dear friend Mabel Weinrich passed away on Monday.

Mabel was a feisty woman, with a passion for life, who wasn't afraid to speak her mind, and able and willing to formulate a thoughtful response on almost every subject. She was an inspiration to us and will be remembered fondly.

We used to enjoy dining with her on take out Chinese at her home or dining out with her at the Sunflower Cafe in Mosier, Oregon. Regardless of what type of meal she had, she could be counted upon to top it off with a beer before bedtime. She was quite a character and I'm quite confident I could not hope to capture her essence with merely words alone. She lived to the worldly age of 92, and lived each of those years well.

Our sorrow and respect go out to her extended family and friends.

As I mentioned in my post yesterday I have been listening to the This Week in Geek (TWiG) podcast. Episode #009 focused on everything James Bond.

Here is my list of the best actors in order to have portrayed James Bond in the official Bond films.

By Actor:

1) Sir Sean Connery
2) Sir Roger Moore
3) Daniel Craig
4) Pierce Brosnan
5) George Lazenby
6) Timothy Dalton

by BadMojo request, a photo of me from high school:

yes, I was a band geek who received letterman jacket pins in four different musical groups.

And another one from the iron age:

Who was your best (or worst) elementary school teacher?
Submitted by Minnow. 

My worst teacher is an easy one: Mrs. Hamm in the sixth grade. She made no effort to hide the fact that she had no passion for teaching. It was pretty clear she was only there for one thing, and one thing only: to collect a paycheck.

My best teacher is much more difficult to determine, I've been fortunate to have had a few really great elementary school teachers. I think it would have to be a coin flip between Mrs. Davido and Mrs. Buchanan, my first and second grade teachers. Both them seemed to love teaching and challenging students. Both also were very skillful about walking that fine line of being encouraging and yet prodding as well.

The embers of summer have dimmed and the grip of winter has returned.

Once again comes the suffering. My muscles will be sore, hard, lean and determined.

The biting cold is like an unrelenting monster who plods behind me nipping at my heels.

I fashion a smile to comfort myself. I hold my body to keep my shivering frame warm. I hold my head up, and drive against the cascading frigid flakes.

90 more days until the rebirth of boy inside the man. 90 more days before I can shed this tough, thick winter skin. 90 days before I can bathe anew in the light of the spring.

Director's film festival cut of "Synners" uploaded.

Back in April of 2003 we (Dead Poets Society) officially unveiled the "Synners" video to the public at the Parkdale Film Festival. That version contained nearly four minutes of footage that was cut for time in order to make it easier for the public to download the video and make it easier for broadcasters to show the video on programs and channels. Now, we've located the original Director's cut file and uploaded it to the web for your enjoyment.

In the extra four minutes you will see Raven Nightshado and I make expository appearances as well as an end credit sequence that is cued by "Drumeria" another original and unheard until now DPS track.

We apologize for the frame quality. Shooting was done on a primitive digital camcorder in 2002 and transferred at a lower than optimal range. We had hoped to make much better transfer, but unfortunately the original shooting files have since been lost.

Remixes and Rarities released and "Its Too Late" (dps mix) now available in 192kbps.

By popular demand, "Its Too Late (dead poets society mix)" is now available to listen and purchase at the higher fidelity bit rate of  192 kbps rather than the old 96kbps encoding. This means the song will sound far deeper and with more clarity than before. Check it out for yourself here. Purchase yourself a copy that is free of any DRM limits for only 75 cents. That is a higher bit rate than iTunes and 25% off of their price!

It has also been included on an exclusive mp3 CD we've created called "Remixes and Rarities" that compiles some of our better known remixes and rare songs for a measly $6.99. All tracks are Digital Rights Management free. This means you can archive the songs to as many of your computers as you wish. We only ask that you please do not make it available on P2P networks and that you do not burn copies for anyone other than yourself.

The following songs are available on "Remixes and Rarities":

 

1) Depeche Mode - I Feel Loved (dead poets society mix)

2) NIN - Only (Dead Poets Society mix)

3) Fire Bolt (performed live on our 2002 tour at the Zebra Lounge in Bozeman, Montana)

4) Minefield - After the Ball (Stark Raven Mad mix)

5) Hotboxed - Mohawk (our remix of the heavy metal classic from Hotboxed)

6) Collide - Halo (dead poets society mix)

7) Minefield - It's Too Late (dead poets society mix)

8) Madonna - Deeper and Deeper (dead poets society mix)

9) Minefield - After the Ball (dead poets society mix)

10) This Side of Forever

Since my last post I've suffered a ferocious fever that nearly fried my brain (how's that for alliteration?), lost a cat, and accidentally snapped off an arm of my black framed 1950s-esque glasses.

I was feeling great until Monday of last week. It was night and day from my healthy Sunday. Even as the mercury was pounding near a comfortable 75 degrees Fahrenheit outside, I was shivering and bundled up in my hoodie, a pair of jeans, shin-length socks, and a comfortably extra-large black cotton shirt. After 4 intensive days of soup, vitamins, orange juice and treatments of Nyquil and Advil, I pulled out it feeling stronger than I've felt since before the illness that befell me, which struck me as a bit odd. Upon further reflection, I guess It makes sense. When ill, I was probably forced to relax my schedule. Tonight, by the way, marks my 63rd day of working without a day off. So even though I probably should have taken a sick day or two, I am a bit proud of myself a masochistic sort of way

that I was able to push on day in and day out.

Also coinciding on Monday, was the disappearance of our 18 month old cat, Oliver. We tried canvassing the neighborhood, we've called the animal regulatory agencies. He just seems to have disappeared. We don't know if he was stolen, killed, or merely wandered off. Jess was very fond of Oliver and is frankly feeling pretty much devastated. She seems convinced that he has died. I understand her dark view on the matter. Over the past eight years we've had horrible luck with cats in this area. We've endured the deaths of Cartman, Martin and Jane; and the disappearances of David and Oliver.  I'm considering getting her another cat, but perhaps not now. I think the wound is still much too fresh and gaping.

This past Saturday, while working, I took a hard fall and in the process bruised my left shoulder and snapped off the arm of my glasses. I visited our eye care specialists today and it appears that they can have me shipped a new temple as soon as this Thursday. Here is hoping so. I certainly do not enjoy walking around with my glasses wrapped in bright white tape. A little too Revenge of the Nerds for my taste.