Hello Vacation!
Well I think I have everything wrapped up at work so I guess it is officially vacation time! To say I am excited would be a complete understatement. We finally decided that we would go to Disney on top of seeing Nik, Jasmine, and new baby Ronan. I think everyone is excited we are really playing up the trains and all the swimming to Jack and he seems to be excited. Well I guess it is off to bed because we still have a ton of stuff to do before we leave.
My iPad Review
So I have had an iPad for over a week now and I thought it was about time to write something about it. The best part of having the ipad is knowing that it only cost us 25 dollars not 500 dollars. How did we pull that off? well Tiphanie donated some money to help with a great cause and ended up winning it!!!! way better details can be found on her brand spanking new site gatgensgabber.com. Now on to the review……
Overall the device is pretty amazing… a brilliant screen, awesome design, and a really nice processor to back everything up. I don’t think I would go as far as saying that it is a revolutionary product but it is definitely the next step in tablet computing and its ease of use will get it into the hands of a whole new set of people who never would have touched any version of any other tablet created previously.
the pros…
- The App EcoSystem – Everyone knows that there are a ton of great apps out there for the iPhone, iPodTouch, and now iPad. People are creating some really creative apps for the iPad which make using it easy and somewhat fun
- The stuff I mentioned before – the screen, the design, and the overall snappiness of the device make it what it is and make it fun to use.
- It’s dead simple – this is obviously the most common characteristic of most every apple device which is one if its best features. the fact that Jack(a two year old) can figure out how to navigate the interface (obviously with a little help) says a lot.
- It may make me a reader – It is a great way to read stuff from comics, to newspapers and magazines, to ebooks it does a great job with each of these content areas. Sure it is roughly 240 dollars more than the kindle but what you get for that 240 bucks makes it worth it.
Obviously it is a great product but it isn’t perfect so on to the cons…
- It’s missing multitasking – I never noticed that multitasking was missing that much from my touch but I want to do so much more with the iPad and not having multitasking becomes pretty obvious
- It doesn’t support flash – I really don’t want to spend to much time on this one but flash has been around for a long time…. it isn’t great but it is used all over the place and when you run into a site that uses it (google analytics) it becomes glaringly obvious that it is missing
- The OS – while it is dead simple and that is a great feature I just feel like it is missing some depth
- The apps are pricey – while the apps a great and pretty much the best part of the device, right now the apps are kinda pricey and I am not sure each of the ones I have bought have been worth the money
Again all in all it is a great device and I can’t wait to see what comes out later this year and how the area of tablets grows and changes.
A Communion Faux Pas
So I am going to make fun of myself and admit to doing something really really stupid…..
As a background, I grew up Catholic and went to Catholic school as a kid so for 17 years I was accustom to taking communion a certain way. When Tiphanie and I got married we made the decision that we would meet in the religious middle and become Methodist. One of the many differences between the two religions is how they distribute communion.
So several years ago we were at church and it was the first Sunday of the month which meant it was communion Sunday and that’s when it happened. The pastor went through the normal description of how you are to break a piece of the bread and then dip it into the wine and return to your seat. No worries at this point because I had taken communion several hundred times… heck… I was practically a pro. There we were in line and it was my turn… I break a piece of bread…. then (this is where everything goes south) for some reason 17 years of Catholic communion ritual kicked in and instead of dipping the bread into the wine I go ahead eat the bread and then I physically take the very large chalice from the poor stunned/shocked person and proceed to start to take a sip from it. At this point there really isn’t a problem because I haven’t taken a sip yet… I still have a chance to stop myself hand the chalice back to the person… and walk away. Is that what I did??…. nope…. and even after being questioned by the person with the chalice and Tiphanie who was behind me… I am of the mind…. “well I have gone this far I might as well commit to this horrible atrocity and go through with taking a sip from the chalice” and that is exactly what I did. After taking the sip I calmly hand the chalice back to the person and walk back to our pew stunned of what I had done. At the time I figured the church we were at was very big and other than the ribbing from Tiphanie this was pretty much a single occurrence of a brain malfunction and I would never hear about it again…. I certainly wouldn’t bring it up.
Well as things go….. this wasn’t the end of the story… several weeks go by and I am in a bible study, after everything was wrapped up people are talking about funny things that happen during church services and someone brings up that recently someone had taken the chalice, took a sip from it, and then walked away. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing but there it was. My faux pas was very much noticed and apparently written in the book of church hilarity,
So why bring all this up now…. well several weeks ago Nik and Jasmine were in town and we were visiting with family and somehow this all comes up and the story is told…. laughs are had… and somewhere along the way Lynne’s friends David and Cindy hear about the ordeal and even more laughs are had. Well this past Sunday was Jillian’s first communion and they came to the service. After the service I am in the back of the church with Jack and Cindy hands me a gift bag and insists that I open it up and this is what was in it…..
It’s a little hard to read but it says Kevin’s Methodist Communion Kit so now I have my own cup to take communion with along with my own crackers….. Just in case I have another brain malfunction.
Oh well I guess that wraps this story…..
Thanks for the laugh David and Cindy even if it is was at my expense.
The Fish Wrangler!
So its been a while since my last post but I had to share this……
Easter 2010
Easter officially started off yesterday for us with a Easter egg hunt at Aunt Lynne’s and then we had the spring fling / Easter egg hunt at church in the afternoon. Despite the fact that it started off really early, today was awesome. Had a great worship service at church then had lunch with grandma and grandpa’s (or as Jack has started calling him…. Pop) and then dinner and a Easter egg hunt with nanna and papa. I just uploaded some pictures. Well I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter!
This was one of my favorites from the past two days.
Holy Cow….. Jack is 2???
It’s hard to believe but as of Saturday Jack is now two years old. Instead of having it at the house we had the party at the CLC at church. Everything went really well with the party and everyone had a great time. The only real snafu we hit was when we getting one of the tables we set off the alarm, luckily we were able to get in touch with someone who knew the code and we didn’t have to explain ourselves to the police. We paid Elise (the same lady who took the Jack And Sophie pictures ) last month to come take pictures so we could enjoy the party more, so we will have those soon but in the meantime here are some of the ones we took early in the morning and some new ones of Sophie.
Happy Birthday!
What a Game!
By about 10:45 yesterday I had convinced myself that the day was slowly falling apart and that it was just a matter of time before it was going to crash and burn. Then DP called……. He informed me that our friend from church Rod had an extra ticket to the UAB vs UNC game. While UAB didn’t win it was a great atmosphere for a basketball game and we had a great time. So here are some of the pics and some video from last night.
UAB had tied it up with about four minutes to go
I stitched two of the pics together to create this using hugin
A Pic For Grandpa
So several several weeks ago Grandpa, Jack, and I went to the bassmasters classic expo. We did lots of walking around and on the way out we finally decided to let Jack “drive” one of the boats.
By the looks of things he will be out on the river in no time!
Blurg!
Not sure what else to say…. the past several weeks have been a blur of sleepless nights and some long days at work, but all in all everything is going great. Sophie is doing much better after a switch in bottles and formula. Jack has been doing great as a big brother, maybe a falling apart here and there but overall he has really taken to Sophie and seems to want to help out. Not much else is new just finding our groove with two kids.
Hello Lent….. Goodbye Social Nets?
So I meant to post this on Wednesday but I just never got around to it. Last year I was really inspired by my friend Brian and the way he gave up facebook for lent. While that seems like a simple thing but social nets seem to work their way into your everyday life where they become a constant distraction to what you should be focusing on. So this year for lent I have decided to give up all the social networks that I regularly participate in. The only exception I have granted myself is posting pics either through picasa or flickr. So all apologies if you send me a message and I don’t respond please don’t take it personally.
