She’s A Little Weathered, But Doing Fine!
Canon i550
We purchased the Canon i550 inkjet printer about 7-8 years ago. It is the only color printer that we own. We rarely have a need for printing anything in color, but when we do, I can depend on this bad boy. Like most inkjet printers, the heads occasionally clog up when not used for a long period of time. What set this one apart is that I can usually unclog the heads without a problem. The actual print head is separate from the ink cartridges which allows me to completely remove it and clean with warm water. That's right water! Even with the circuits on the heads! I just let it complete dry before putting it back into the printer. However, I must warn you. This printer is the only one that the warm water trick has worked. I have turned several printers (mostly Epson brand) into what I like to call "page counters" trying the warm water trick. Another plus of this printer (the main reason I originally purchased) is the low cost of ink. It takes 4 ink cartridges each cost individually about $10 or about ~$35 for all 4 in a bundle. Angela found some on the eBay daily deal site for $20 (all 4 colors), so we ended up getting a couple extra sets. Anyways...just had to use it again tonight to print out some labels for Marin's birthday party at school and it worked out perfectly.
Marin is turning 3!
Coloring Away!
Vancouver: Day Two
On the second day, Monday, we decided to rent a car and see a few more sites that were not easily accessible via Vancouver’s public transportation. We made the reservation online the night before for a Toyota Camry Hybrid. What did we end up getting? A 2010 Ford Mustang GT convertible…sorry Kelli. The day started out very overcast, so Budget was really slashing prices on the convertibles. It cost us a little less than $15 more. I was still sticking with the hybrid, but they then mentioned that the Mustang was ready to go, but the Camry was getting cleaned up and would be a little bit of a wait…I give the rep props for being a grade A salesman. I also got the portable navigation unit for $12, but that was actually my idea from the beginning.
Nothing like getting in a car you have never driven and pulling out into downtown Vancouver Monday morning traffic! I suppose I did okay. The kicker is all of the pedestrians. We ended up making 3 rights turn to equivalate 1 left turn several times throughout the day.
Our first stop was the Capilano Suspension Bridge. It was only about a 15 minute drive from downtown. On there way there we crossed over the Lions Gate Bridge (pictured above).
I guess it worked out that we rented a car from Budget because they gave us a free admission ticket for the Capilano Suspension Bridge. This was nice since tickets were $30 each! We hung out there for a couple of hours. It wasn’t too crowded being a Monday morning I suppose.
Next we hopped back in the car and drove on up to Grouse Mountain, which was only a few more miles up the road. You park at the base, then ride a lift about half a mile up. While we were paying for parking, we heard the announcement that the next lift up was leaving in 5 minutes…so ran on up and paid the $36 each for admission. The warned us before paying that we wouldn’t be able to see much due to the weather. The day before was nice! We decided to check it out anyways. On the 8 minute ride up the mountain, I realized that I forgot my jacket. There was about a 20 degree difference between the 70ish temperature at the base and the top of the lift. They were not kidding about not seeing much either. We stayed up Grouse Mountain for a couple of hours before I was getting pretty chilly.
After Grouse, we drove down Highway 99 a few miles before seeing a “scenic route” exit. So I took that which ended up heading up a mountain which is next to Grouse. About half way up we stopped at a scenic overlook. We continued up until it road dead ended. There was quite a bit of construction going on preparing for the 2010 Olympics. We then headed back down. It’s a little weird to go from 50 degrees and drizzle to 70 and sunny in just a few minutes. We stopped at the scenic overlook again on the way down, but this time it was so I could pop the top on the convertible. It was about 2 PM at this point and we were hungry. We headed to a Red Robin that we found via the Garmin GPS unit.
It was turning into a sunny day at this point, so we wanted to get some use of the convertible. We drove more around downtown and Stanley Park, which is downtown as well. Around 7 PM, it started getting dark. We turned in the car that night instead paying $30 for overnight parking.
Later that night we went back over to Black Frog for a night cap.
Day three to come…
Vancouver: Day One
Actually, we arrived in Vancouver on Saturday night around 7:30 PM. With a little help from Darren, we got a row to ourselves on the plane trip there, which only turned out to be a little over three and a half hours in the air. From the airport, we took the Canada Line train to downtown Vancouver and walked two blocks from the City Center Station to L’Hermitage, our hotel. After getting settled into the room, we walked down Robson and found a bar called Fogg ‘N Suds. We had some quesadillas and a few cold Coors Lights. Coors Light is apparently brewed in Canada as well because it is considered a domestic beer. I could tell a difference in the taste; however, Angela could not…the Coors Light that is…the quesadillas, awful. They tasted much different than the true Tex-Mex we were used to.
The next morning we got up and decided to walk to the closest casino which was about five blocks away. There was a car show in front of the casino that was about to start. I took a couple of pictures, but we didn’t actually go to the show. The casino, Edgewater Casino, was quite small in comparison to casinos we typically visit. It was two floors. The first floor were a few table games and slot machines and the second floor were just table games. I blew $20 on a slot machine. Angela turned her $20 into $55 on the machine next to me. So that made up for my loss.
Next we walked back to the hotel. On the way there we passed by what appeared to be a production set for a commercial.
That afternoon we walked around downtown Vancouver a bit more. We ended up walking over to Yaletown, a “trendy” area of downtown. We had two $15 burgers and $6 beers for lunch. On the walk back from the restaurant we passed a liquor/beer store. I was getting a little tired of paying top $ for drinks, so I figured I could pickup something for the hotel room. I decided against it when I saw the prices. A 12 pack of Coors Light was $25 (remember that it is considered a domestic beer)! I then looked at getting some Bacardi rum instead. A 750 ml bottle was $30, in Dallas I pay about $12-$14 for the same! At this point I accepted the fact that we would be paying out the nose for alcohol while in Canada.
Later that evening we decided to try out another casino (River Rock Casino) that was a little larger. We took the Canada Line train there. This casino was much larger in comparison to Edgewater; but it was no Vegas casino. We had the $20 buffet and played a little roulette. Angela lost her $20, but I turned mine into $40. I lost at roulette too, but turned my remaining $8 into $40 on a Wheel of Fortune slot machine (got the wheel spin). Technically, Angela won the $40 since she had pressed the button when we got the spin.
On the way back from the River Rock casino, we took the Canada Line train all the way to the Waterfront Station which is the last stop, it is only one more stop past our hotel. We walked around down there and stumbled across a bar called Black Frog. I liked it there since I could get rum and diet’s for $5, which was an awesome deal considering. BC’s talls in BC! After an hour or so, we left and heading back to the hotel. We pasted the steam clock which is right in front of Black Frog.
The link below are to some other photos from the trip. I’ll post day two tomorrow.
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| Vancouver |
I Am Loving WordPress More And More
Alright!
Okay, so it has been a couple of weeks with WordPress. WordPress is a blogging engine, the underlying "meat and potatoes" of this blog and many others. There is no charge for WordPress nor its required components (PHP and MySQL) and it is VERY configurable. You could easily use it as a foundation for a small business web site. If I were a bit better with graphic design and creativity I would create a business out of creating web sites for small businesses and use WordPress as the engine. I would choose WordPress over Joomla everytime. Joomla is a similar engine that is popular with small to mid-size companies...even larger sometimes. It is highly configurable as well. In a computer comparison, Joomla would be a PC and WordPress would be a Mac (although in reality they run on Linux). I am a little bias when it comes to Joomla. A company I previously worked for had their site built with Joomla as the core and there was always something wrong with it or getting hacked. Maybe WordPress has similar security issues, but I haven't personally heard of any yet.
Here is why I like WordPress:
Free Software
As I mentioned, WordPress is free as well as its requirements. This means that hosting will be much cheaper than something requiring ASP or .NET.
Tons of plug-ins
There is a huge growing list of plug-ins available to do just about anything you might want. Although this is kind of the reason I hate Linux servers...add-ons. If you wanted to get a Linux server up and running, you had to first install one of many versions of Linux. Then you had to install Apache (web server), then MySQL (database), then PHP (script language), phpMyAdmin, Squirrelmail, Perl/CGI, etc. OR you could install Windows Server and SQL then go out for some beers.
Easy to add plug-ins
My biggest complaint to plug-ins is their complexity to add. WordPress has done a great job of making it a few mouse clicks. It's not just WordPress that has easy to install plug-ins, but it's still a plus.
Clean database structure
Compare a Joomla back-end (database) to a WordPress and see what you find. You would find that Joomla is equivalent to Kim Kardashian in the comparison. Although neither compare to the last software application I worked on which consisted of 367 tables, 513 views, and 3200 stored procedures! Talk about junk in your trunk!
Image Storage - Done right in my book
You should store DATA in databases and FILES in your filesystem (disk). And don't try to argue that images/files are data...I'm familiar, and that's not my point.
Up For Auction
I finally got around to selling my old phone, or at least posting it on eBay. We'll see if it gets any bidders.
Marin is loving her new bed. I will have to put her old one on craiglist, maybe next week.
I applied for a particular job a while back. They just now are getting to the professional reference check and background check...slow application process I suppose. They notified me of a flag that popped up under the Crimlink + National Sex Offender Registry and it was their policy to bring it to my attention. Turns out there is someone in Missouri with the same first name, middle initial, and last name as me. Luckily, our name was the only thing we had in common! I used to occasionally get a letter about owing someone money. I would always call the number and they would ask if my last 4 digits of my social were XXXX. I would say no, and they would take me off the list. I suppose I have a fairly common name, or at least when it comes to certain types of folk. I have yet to receive a check in the mail and it was meant for a different Eric Bridges! Good news is everything else checked out on my background check...I graduated from SFA in 2001, no criminal records, credit report good, and I am still alive according to the Social Security Administration!
So I got that going for me...which is nice!
...So I got THAT going for me...which is nice.
Bill Murray, Caddyshack
Changing It Up A Bit
I have finally got around to changing the site…again. The previous site used BlogEngine.net which was a quick and simple solution that served its purpose. However, the old site did not have many built in options not to mention I never got the email working correctly. The new site uses WordPress as the engine, which is very popular and mainstream. Most, if not all, of my friends use WordPress as a blog engine. Luckily when I signed up for hosting I chose a provider that offered IIS 7 because PHP (the technology that WordPress uses) is included in the new IIS. So I can not only host sites that I have created in Microsoft .NET (Wish List and My Resume), but I can also host site created in PHP like this one. NOTE: There will be some broken links to some of the images in the post until I can finish moving them over.
As Angela had mentioned in a previous post, I am no longer employed with Marketplace Software. The work itself was fun and the job wasn’t too bad either (working from home with flexible hours). The company was growing/expanding and doing well. Unfortunately, things caught up too quickly. When a payroll check was withdrawn from our account a week after receiving it, the downward spiral started. As of now, the owner of the company is working frantically alone to finish the next version of the software and has become unresponsive to employees and customers.
On a better note, Marin is doing wonderful! Although, she is getting to the stage where she says “No”…ohhhh booooyyyy. We had a Sunday Fun-Day at Lake Lavon yesterday. We swam, cooked out, and relaxed on blankets under a shade tree. We will have to do it again soon.
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