Monthly Archives: April 2005

Today’s Solar Eclipse

Posted on by

I was kind of bummed out when I got home today because the clouds had rolled in and were completely obscuring the sun. Much to my surprise by 5:00 they’d moved out enough that I could bring the ETX-90 out and take a few film pictures of the eclipse. It was nice, just about 20% obscured, with a few small sunspot groups visible.

These were my first film based photos with the ETX-90 and my EOS Rebel 2000, everything else has been digital so I’m looking forward to seeing what they look like. Plus I needed to burn the rest of that roll of film because it had the second half of my Finland trip on it!

Sahara

Posted on by

And thanks go out to Daimler-Chrysler’s marketing department for a fun evening. Last week I got an e-mail offering me free tickets to a sneak preview of Sahara tonight. It was a fun movie, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that it wasn’t a copy of National Treasure. The story line was interesting and it was fun seeing the multiple sub-plots diverging and coming back together.

I thought it was worth the price of admission, but then again I had free tickets!

FIOS Is Here!

Posted on by

The installation’s done. I’ve now got a 15/2 connection to the world. It’s running fine and I’m just waiting for all of the cached DNS information to expire so that e-mails and web traffic will start flowing back in again.

The installation was a breeze and the installer was professional and knowledgable. There were a few quirks, though. Because I needed static IPs I had to get one of the business packages as Verizon doesn’t offer static IP addresses on any of their residential plans. Due to that I had to call in to Verizon and spend darned near 2 hours getting them to open a ticket to move the voice service off of copper and on to fiber. That was the easy part, only taking about 20 minutes. The hard part was convincing Verizon to cancel the DSL circuit. Since I only had the circuit through them, with August.net providing my IP connectivity, it was a little harder than it should have been to get to someone who could disconnect it.

None of this will be an issue if you have Verizon DSL (circuit and IP) and go to a residential FIOS offering. It’s the business package that throws everything for a loop!

Genuine Pre Embargo Counterfeit Cubans

Posted on by

After a pretty bad day and as a treat for getting more of my paper done than I’d expected I sat down to enjoy one of these Genuine Pre Embargo Counterfeit Cubans that Tiger Bob gave me. It was a 1958 Gourmet Figurado, and was delicious. Smooth draw, a slightly uneven burn, but that’s OK. Flavors of berries and leather in the smoke. I’ve got one more in the humidor and will be looking to see if some show up on Cigar Bid.

Mold!

Posted on by

My winning bids from Cigar Bid came in yesterday and I was shocked, shocked I say!, to find mold on one of the Puros Indios Maxima Reservas. Cigar Bid was extremely helpful, and is shipping me out a replacement 5 pack and a return label to ship the others back.

That’s good customer service.

Building A Coolerdor

Posted on by

I’ve started on the coolerdor for my cigars. It’s funny, all of the parts for this were bought at Wal Mart, for less than $20. A liter of propylene glycol, some wet floral foam, and a Ziplock plastic container. I’m doing the salt test to calibrate the hygrometer now and should be able to start storing cigars in the cooler in a few days.

REI Rules!

Posted on by

I ended up at REI today and managed to snag a Hydrapak Overflow 3l camel pack on closeout for a steal. Since I’ve been riding the mountain bike a bit more and Texas summers get a little on the warm side it’ll be nice to carry some hydration around with me! Plus it’s going to get a good test when I ride up to Illinois in June.

Sin City

Posted on by

I got together with the Ufies to go see Sin City tonight. It was an interesting movie, but I really should have read a little more on the background because there were things I didn’t follow as well as I should. The cinematography was excellent. I was very impressed with how they made many of the shots look like they were somewhere in between live action and a page from one of the graphic novels.

The movie’s pretty violent and gory, so if you’re on the squeamish side or that’s just not your thing you probably wouldn’t like it. But if not, it’s definitely worth the price of a ticket!