This is a test blog posting from Joel’s iPod. Neat!

Woohoo, time for a big, fun-filled weekend.

On Friday, we got out of the office a little late (the usual wrapping up of work), dropped off the rental car, and headed over to the ticket counter.  Of course, our flight was delayed, but they said it was “negligible.”  Somehow, between the check-in counter and the gate, “neglible” turned into a 2 hour flight delay.  Say whaaaaaat, Continental?  And while we were collectively scowling at the departure screen, it changed to a 1 hour delay.  Uh, how long did we have to scowl at the screen before the flight was on time?

So we had time to eat lunch, then board the flight.  Of course, I appreciated how Continental split the original delay, because now we were delayed taking off and again as we circled around Newark Airport after that.  Somehow, we ended up only touching down in Newark 90 mins later than expected.  One of my coworkers and I shared his car service back to his place, and then I drove home from there.

Lakewood BlueClaws game at First Energy Park

As soon as I got home, it was time to get ready for some minor league baseball!  My wife’s company paid for tickets and dinner to see the Lakewood BlueClaws play the…. er…., you know, I have no idea who was playing, nor where we were exactly going.  I didn’t care, actually, because it was a Friday night.  I found out during the drive that we were heading to Lakewood NJ, which is down the shore halfway to Toms River.  Checking their website now, it was the Lake County Captains, so…… okay.

By the time we arrived at FirstEnergy Park , it was after 8pm, and they had stopped serving our free food.  Thankfully, my wife’s friends/coworkers saved us some plates.  Josh wasn’t all that interested in the game, but we were all surprised to learn that a nearby Toyota/Scion dealership was sponsoring fireworks, which was a welcome treat.

Do you know what I don’t get? When I’m home, I watch very little TV.  Maybe I don’t have a lot of time at home, maybe there’s not much on.  I’ve at the TV on at 2am while I was doing work, and it’s just crap.  However, when I’m on the road, I can be up super late watching all the interesting stuff on TV. 

I want to go to sleep, and there’s an interesting documentary on the Korean War.  Maybe a super-interesting CourtTV-type of mystery/crime re-creation.  Here in Canada, do you know what they have?  Space, a 24-hour sci-fi channel.  Last night, I watched two hours of Star Trek, and Aliens!  It’s a better sci-fi channel than Sci-Fi in the States (soon to be SyFy in July 2009.)

I happened to find this Norwegian movie called Dead Snow. Read the following, and I am not making this up.

A ski vacation turns horrific for a group of medical students, as they find themselves confronted by an unimaginable menace: Nazi zombies.

Nazi zombies? Seriously?

My wife called me Tuesday to inform me that both the digital cable and internet were both out.  Reset modems and cable boxes, and we’ve still got nothing.  I haven’t been able to dial out to their 800 customer service number, so I’ve been contacting them via Live Chat online.  So far, I’ve spoken to “Earl” and “Bruce”.  I wonder how many Earls and Bruces there are in Chennai?

After chatting with “Earl” Tues afternoon, they were able to send a tech to look at the outdoor box on Wednesday, but according to my wife, no luck.  Wed night, I chatted with “Bruce”, and he didn’t have any great details.  However, what he did know was that the tech reported the cable line was damaged.  Damaged?  What the heck is going on?  How are we having all these issues right when we’re ending our cable service?  Isn’t this just bizarre timing?

Funny though, I don’t know if the chat reps from Comcast were all that bright.  I’m chatting with Bruce, and he asks me to reset the cable box.  I tell him, uh, I’m not at home — I’m travelling internationally.  If I have no internet access at home, how could I be home chatting? It took him a few seconds, then he said, “I see sir.” Natual mistake, I guess.

Since my wife has to, you know, go to work, we’re not going to have the situation resolved until Monday.  You bet your sweet bippy that I’m going to get some sort of credit for no cable/internet for a week.

Late lunch today between meetings, we ran to a nearby Subway for quick sandwiches. Next door to Subway is a cycling store called InVita Sport. I had seen the store back in April, but it was closed at the time.  I didn’t want to go in, so I did one of those hovering-at-the-front-door-wanting-to-go-in-but-not-sure-if-I-should deals, but the store owner smiled and called out to me that I could come in. I smiled and checked out the store.

My goodness, she had the most beautiful bicycles that I have ever seen, but I’d never heard of the names.  Speaking to the the owner, she said she focused solely on Italian frames, such as Wilier, Pinarello, and Torpado, based on the quality.  In my limited view, Trek and Cannondale were the biggies.  In that store, the Pinarellos were absolutely gorgeous.  Top-to-bottom carbon frames, forks, stays — the whole shebang.  I lifted one, and it was light as a feather. 

The prices made me put them down gently.  The average for the road bicycles were around $3000, and the time-trial bicycle in the window was a cool $10,995.  For that kind of price, you’d have to get it insured.  High prices, but they were just beautiful.

I’m back in Canada this week, so please don’t call my cell, as it’s getting expensive!

I slept from 12:30am to 2am, and then organizing, dressing up, and packing my bag for a 6:55am flight out of Newark this morning.  I drove to a coworker’s house @ 4:30am, and we shared car service to the airport (saving money.)  I prefer the Sunday evening flights, but the Ipes had prior committments this time around, so that wouldn’t work this week.  Big surprise, I personally am not an early morning person, but you do what you need to do.   

I’ll tell you a big plus of early morning flights — no delays.  Seriously, no problems with the flight this morning, and we arrived on time.  That never happens, so lesson learned.  You know what annoyed me?  Canadian Immigration.  They have been asking the nuttiest questions to people  (I know this personally and anecdotally) every time I come into the country.  You never know where they’re going with it.  This morning, I had this big, bald, burly guy.  As I was walking up to him to hand over my passport and immigration form, a small part of my mind wondered, “Hey, isn’t this kind of guy the type to give me trouble?” 

Yeah, he did.  He asked the usual questions about what I was doing here, name of the subsidiary, etc. Usually, you just say you are here on business, attending meetings, etc, and they leave you alone. This asks me in a very hostile tone, “What kind of business takes 5 days?” I told him an audit, but he didn’t reply, marked up my form, and didn’t say a word.  I then had to talk to the 2nd-level Immigration folks to explain the situation.  What a jerk. I tell you, wherever you travel, and it doesn’t matter personal or business, the bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe.

Other than that, smooth sailing, great weather, yada yada.

I’ve been testing out Apple’s Safari 4 web browser for a few days.  Personally, I’m a Firefox man myself, but I’m always interested in new shiny things.

Safari has some cool features built-in, like a coverflow history browser, and a visual display of your most-visited websites (with a star against the ones that have been updated recently.)  The browser has nice features, and it’s fast, so I’ll continue to try it out.

Apple's Safari 4

So……………. Cashback. That was an odd movie.

We have Hotel Rwanda sitting in our living room for almost two weeks now.  I want to watch it, because it is an acclaimed movie.  Nobody wants to watch it, because it’s going to be such a downer.  Maybe I should just send it back, because I don’t think I’ll be watching it even next weekend after I get back from my trip.  Tough decision.

In any case, so instead of watching Hotel Rwanda (“The feel good movie of the year!”), we watched Cashback a la Netflix streaming to our TV.  It was actually either Cashback, or Dan in Real Life. Personally, I didn’t wasn’t in the mood for Steve Carell.  So how would I describe Cashback?

The movie was originally a short film that got good reviews, so they expanded it into a full-length feature movie. A British art student named Ben breaks up with his girlfriend, but later regrets it and goes into withdrawal and sulking and such.  He can’t sleep for weeks, so he start working the night shift a supermarket with a colorful cast of characters.  He also uses his imagination to stop time, and see the beauty of girls around him, and reflect upon his life.

It was odd, quirky, it was funny, but I couldn’t figure out what this movie was trying to be.  He was interested in the checkout girl Sharon, so was it a romantic comedy? The protagonist could stop time — was it sci-fi? It could just be a quirky movie to explore a theme with the audience, but I couldn’t find the theme.  There was a lot of female nudity, so was that the theme?

Hard to put my finger on this movie. It was interesting to watch, so it was a decent movie.  I just can’t figure out what the movie was about.

Cashback (2006)

I seem to be back in the website administration business. Just when I get out, they pull me back in.  Well, not quite, but I’ll explain.

For the uninitiated, through the years in addition to my personal ode to self-indulgence (this slice of life called joelipe.com), I have managed various websites for non-profit organizations. 

1. In the late 90′s until 2003-ish, I designed and administered a website for my church, the CSI Congregation of Hudson Valley. I got busy with life, and I stopped attending church there, so I handed off the reins.
2. I also designed and briefly administered a youth-oriented website for CSI youth in North America, but the site served an non-existent need, and it didn’t go anywhere.  URL is not important, as I don’t even think the domain is around anymore.
3. From 2002 to late 2008, I designed and administered a website for the NY Chapter of the Institute of Internal Auditors.  For various reasons that I shall not go into, I haven’t attended chapter meetings in more than 3 years, and been too busy to make all the regular updates.  I recently transitioned responsibility, and I’m a free man.    Looks like they’ve already redesigned it. Good for them. Seven years later, it was looking dated.

Yes, I said “a free man.”  Now I’m just challenged to continue to indulge myself here, on this website.  It didn’t last long.  At my church, they are in need of someone to take over administrative responsibility.  Long story short, I agreed to do it. Before I agreed to take it over, the lingering question was how would I avoid not getting overwhelmed with updates?

The problems with all the previous websites were performing the weekly/monthly updates.  The designs were aesthetically pleasing (yes, I can say that), but it was all manual.  The posting of content and formatting would take forever, and my old version of the joelipe.com website was no better come month-end when I had to archive the previous month. If I was going to take on another website, the update process had to be streamlined. The current website is located at www.stbarnabas-sbnj.org, and you can tell it’s a bit dated.  Callling it “dated” is okay, because everything gets dated after a while. 

My answer?  WordPress to the rescue!  I’m exploring a streamlined design, and using WordPress as the content management system.  WordPress could do for this website what it did for my personal domain:

1. Multiple users could publish updates, so one person (me) wouldn’t be the bottleneck.
2. Themes are readily available, so I don’t have to work so hard to design one from scratch.
3. Archiving, searching, etc, are all built-in. 

Me smart.  It’s not an overnight process, but I’m researching in my limited free time.  I want to put something tangible in 30 days, and move to WordPress officially in July.