Goodbye 2008

Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, have a Happy New Year!

I know the economy is a little shaky but...

Picture the scene - 10am on a Sunday morning and the phone rings. Its someone from the bank we have an auto loan with.  After some of the usual ID verification malarkey we get down to business - when are we planning on paying?

We check online with our bank whilst they are on the phone - Did we miss a payment? No. Are we late? No.

In fact it's not due until Tuesday (remember its Sunday) and its scheduled to clear Monday. So why are they phoning?  Just to ask and check if we plan on paying on the same day, with the same amount through the same method that we have for over a year.

This is also the same bank that we had the lease, for the same car, through for 5 years. Never missing or late with any of those payments.

Surely things are this bad that my payment is going to keep them afloat.

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The newest arrival in the Mead household...

I came home Thursday and there it was.  A nice dull-brown cardboard box sitting on the table. Within lay my first-ever self-bought laptop.

I have always used the ones from my work, but when I started at my new job I felt this was the chance to have my own.  I consulted Tom (oracle of laptops) and wanted something as similar as I could get to the Dell Latitude D820 I had at Optiem.  He fired me across some recommendations and I settled on the Acer Extensa 5620Z.

This laptop comes with 4 USB ports, S-Video and one for our digital video camera. The 3GB of RAM and 160GB HD is nice, though I'm not a fan of the pre-partitioning 70/70.

It's pretty light weight, has a built in web cam and Vista installed (which I'm giving a week to see if I need to go back to XP).

It has been a little tedious installing everything (couldn't deactivate my Fireworks CS4 beforehand) but so far everything is going well.  The screen is good, camera is working, and my fingers are getting used to the new keyboard.

So I'm now loading it up with Flock, Evernote, Open Office, VLC media player, Miro and a lot other fave apps.  Only problem so far has been iTunes not seeing the music on the external drive without importing it all again.  Glenn pointed  me to an article that  might help so I'll check that.

Technorati tags: acer, laptop, vista

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Lost tapes of the Dr Who composer

Delia Derbyshire was the person that actually played the original Dr Who theme and now they've found recordings of other music she made whilst at the BBC. This includes a dance track 20 years ahead of it's time! What better person to interview about this than Paul Hartnoll of Orbital.Can't wait until more of her recordings are made public.Shared with Flock - The Social Web Browserhttp://flock.com

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The Dark Knight TV spot...

This spot gives a sense of what Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker will be.  I'm really looking forward to this coming out and seeing how Nolan's decision to use little or no CGI where possible pays off.

Embedded Video

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What my son will never see...

We’ve just taken ownership of Julie’s “new car”. It’s a 2005 Saturn and one thing we noticed was there was no cigarette lighter. Something I had taken for granted in every car I’ve really been in, even though I don’t smoke.

This got me thinking - what items would my son, now 4 years old, never experience in his day-to-day life that I took for granted.

So I started this list. Anyone have anything else?

• car cigarette lighters


• audio tapes


• video tapes


• rotary phones (and possibly land lines too)


• TV static (all TV’s are due to go digital in 2009)


• longwave radio

Unparalleled service

This morning Julie gave me a call.  When pulling out from our drive she noticed there was shattered glass in the road. I called the Willowick Service Department and by 9.05am there was someone sweeping it up.

No questions. No attitude.  Just service.

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Being eco-friendly and "going green"

We’ve been thinking about “doing our bit” for the environment and this year is when we’ve started.

We went out and got some tote bins to separate the recycling, located the local drop-off point and got going.  It’s a pretty simple habit to get into and I was really surprised how much plastic and cardboard we threw away!  I'm now only putting out two small binliners for collection on garbage day-this opposed to the two bins plus extra bags I had to haul out every Monday night.

I was also lucky enough to get a beta invite to Edenbee, a social network solely focussed on the environment.   You can see how my carbon footprint is doing  and look at the goals I have set.

A problem I’ve run into is no one seems to know what to do with all the recyclable plastics marked with anything but a 1 or 2.  I’ve contacted the collection company, the State and left a voicemail for the City but nothing.  They all think it should go somewhere but just don't know where.  If I find out I'll post here.

More soon.

Technorati tags: green, recycle, eco-friendly

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39 Today...

39 years old today.  I had a great dinner cooked for me around the in-laws yesterday.  Roast beef and Yorkshire puddings along with a couple of Guinness's.great gift

Julie surprised me tonight with a whole lemon pound cake from Starbucks.  I LOVE THIS and always try and get a slice when popping in for a drink.

Now I have to practice self-restraint :-)

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Without the Internet would this exist?

Julie sent me a link today (she's good like that) for a site where you can pay Palestinians to spray paint your message on the wall dividing them in the West Bank and they'll send you 3 photos of it.

It is romantic (her email title), noble, slightly scary and exactly the thing that I love the internet for.

Check out sendamessage.nl for more details.

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First earthquake of '08...

So first the fridge light burns out, then the toaster breaks and finally (I hope) we survive the first earthquake this year in Lake County. Oh did I mention it's January 8th and 70 degrees.

Bring it on 2008 - I'm ready for you.

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Welcome 2008...

Already 2008 and still no personal rocket-packs.  What's up with that!

So those few readers from last year know that I tried to do one post a day and failed miserably.  This year no such promise.

Christmas was very good and we got to see Josh's excitement after discovering the left-over cookies from Santa and our big present was a Sony video camera (thanks Linda & Jim).

Julie & I went to see Juno which was excellent - very funny.  I managed to get my curry fix in very early this year by going for lunch at Cafe Tandoor and getting the Chicken Jhalfrazie.

Down side, looks like our fridge/freezer is on the blink.  Of course the year's warranty run out a couple of months ago.  Go figure.

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