A friend asked that I post some reviews of places I have dived and some comments on Sport Diver magazine’s suggested list of Diving and Resorts (2007 Edition). My response got a little wordy, but it may interest anyone contemplating travel to the Caribbean.
More after the fold…
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This looks like a pretty useful list of applications for iPhone users.
http://www.macworld.com/2007/08/firstlooks/iphone_apps/
So I am standing outside Merrifield Garden Center today, loading my latest garden plant purchases into the car when a lemon yellow Lamborghini Countach 5000S pulls up, parks diagonally across two handicapped spaces, and the driver jumps out and heads into Merrifield.
I was joking with a friend I ran into in the parking lot that the driver was unlikely to be picking up a lot of potting soil and bushes in the garden center, and my friend laughed and asked where the driver would put that stuff. The driver came back out a few minutes later with a potted orchid and carefully strapped the orchid into the passenger seat then drove off. He was in the store about 8 minutes.
I guess that is express orchid delivery?
I put some Lobelia into the garden beds and more river jack (stone gravel) around the fountain in back before the rain began.
Erci and I don’t go in for regular tanning sessions normally, but we’ve discovered a little trick for preventing a vacation sunburn when going someplace tropical. For a few weeks before the vacation/trip, we visit a tanning salon locally a few times a week to build up a “base coat” of protective melanin.
It probably subtracts from our total life span of skin a little, but it means we don’t have lots of pain while actually on vacation (which is a real bummer, trust me). Last vacation partially ruined by a really bad sunburn: Jamaica in 1997. First vacation probably saved by preventative tanning: Greece/Turkey cruise in 2000.
We are tanning for Hawaii now.
Funny story: in Jamaica I wanted to run along the beach at Negril. Negril is blessed with about seven miles of gorgeous sand. Since I knew I’d be sweating off any sunblock, I foolishly skipped covering myself in sunblock, but sutragirl was planning to lay out for a bit, so I rubbed sunblock on her back – and ended up with a greasy hand – which I wiped off on my chest.
I got carried away on the run, ended up running end to end and back, totally forgetting the sun… which I regretted for days afterwards, as I was burnt to a crips everywhere except for a very strange hand print on my chest. Note: sunblock works better than nothing even if you plan to exercise.
Well, Erci and I hosted Dan’s 40th Birthday Bash per arrangement made with Dan and Jeff a few months ago and it was a blast. We had something on the order of 60 people out, enjoying some Contra Dancing, some time in the pool, a lot of Erci’s cooking (Tiger Cried, yummmm!), and the company of friends.
I am using my old PowerMac Cube to send iTunes music to both the stereo in the big room, and to an airport extreme connected to the whole house stereo. Anything Deb (DJ) selected came through loud and clear in all parts of the house and out by the pool. She has awesome music, btw. Thanks Deboranter!
Gotta host more parties, yippea!
Finally found a pool service company that understands we want to swim in the pool this year, and I am very happy with Pool Boys. La Belle folks swam in cloudy water on Saturday (which was the first swimming we’ve been able to do this year), and Sunday the pool cleared up enough to see stuff on the bottom in the deep end. Turns out the previous company failed to locate and remove a winterizing plug which prevented filtering from happening.
I wish I had my camera handy to capture one priceless moment where Melanie was in the pool with sunglasses on and a margarita in her hand. Melanie, Char, S, Erci, and L were there with B and T. Nice La Belle meeting, and moving of B’s lathe to my garage for a while.
Sunday we had Soka Gakkai district leaders over for some training and a nice visit. Preparations continue for Dan’s big party to be held here next weekend. Hope we are ready. We are also researching the Hawaii vacation as we have time.
Woke up early and decided to watch “Good Night and Good Luck”, which turned out to be riveting. Recommended film, but you have to be in the mood to really listen and think.
While I am not feeling very positive about our nation lately, I can at least celebrate being independent minded and having the freedom to express myself how I like.
I went to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in DC with my partner,
We got out just before the weather turned sour and heard on NPR about the weather based evacuation of the mall. On one hand it may have been extreme over-reaction, but on the other I’ve personally seen Constitution Avenue under 30 inches of water in a torrential downpour (see Sutragirl’s account of June 26th, 2006); so perhaps evacuation was a wise move after all.
We came home to rest our sore, tired feet and do more house cleaning and gardening. Heard fireworks nearby (and were grateful for the rain, as the woods had been pretty dry lately).
Anyways, normally I tend to wonder why we aren’t in a revolution against tyranny, but the Folklife Festival and seeing so many peace/protest/liberal T-Shirts on people definitely picked up my spirits a lot. Happy Independence Day to all.
Friday, I pushed the limits of my stressed foot by dancing at The Ballroom Studio in Centreville, Darryl worked with me on Argentine, Quickstep, and Samba; then there were group classes and then a dance party (which was lots of fun). Capped a fabulous evening off with Haddock at Sweetwater with dancers. All this while Erci waited for nothing at an AT&T store, then picked up the iPhone she wanted at the Apple store.
Saturday Deb took me to Anothai restaurant in Ashburn/Brambleton for lunch. I highly recommend their fantastic Panang curry. Yum!
Sunday Jeff, Dan, and Jonathan came over to help with the garden and landscaping and together we got a huge backlog of chores done and several ideas for still more garden work. The pool continues to defy all efforts to get the water crystal clear (grrrr). We finished the day of hard work by going over to Scott and Leslie’s for Cava and dinner with friends.
This is a proxy review of my partner’s brand new iPhone.
I am impressed. My biggest concern was that this new “smart” phone would have loads of features and suck as a phone. This would be like 99% of the “smart” phones on the market and thus no big surprise. I am thrilled to announce that my presumption was completely wrong. The Apple iPhone works very well as a phone. Listening to Erci’s voice picked up by the iPhone and heard on my Nextel i580 and through the Prius speakers sounded clear. Putting the iPhone to my own ear, other people’s voices were clear. The audio quality is excellent, and not just by my small sample and subjective hearing, objective tests bear this out. Furthermore, it works as a full-duplex speakerphone, yay! Previously only Nextel got this right. Ad-hoc conferencing of multiple calls is awesome too. So first and foremost, this new mobile really works as a phone. It’s about time.
Now for the sad news, as a PDA it is not quite ready to replace my Palm Tungsten C. The Notes application fails give me what I want, and it fails to reproduce what I already have. I want lots and lots of plain text notes available in my hand-held that sync up to the desktop computer automatically. Palms do this pretty well (though the 4kb character limit, the lack of search within a note, and perennial sync problems are all annoying). The new iPhone does not have any sync yet, the note application is hobbled by this and the fact that it looks hard to search/navigate/read. I could not even figure out at first attempt how to create separate notes (Edit: I was foolish, pushing the + button adds new notes/memos, but still no sync yet).
This could be fixed easily in software. I think I could even fix it via habit by just using Safari to hit my own blog sites and use blogs as notes… but that means new habits. Must think on this a little.
Datebook works well and it does alarm for meetings (which is the main reason I still use my Palm).
Now I want an iPhone, but am I willing to break an 20 months (remaining) contract with Nextel, or eat the cost of having two phones? Perhaps I’ll wait for version 2.0. Decisions, decisions…
As predicted, the update to AppleTV was available this morning and I downloaded and installed the update via remote control… it took about 12 minutes. YouTube is now a menu option and we enjoyed some Robo Chicken Star Wars spoofs as a test.
Navigation of YouTube is going to be interesting; I have to figure out how to subscribe to the YouTube stuff I know I want and hope that is easier to navigate to then. Video quality was surprisingly good, much better than the home video stuff we’ve added to iTunes for ourselves.
