If the stroller box could talk

It would tell a story that started a few weeks ago when our My4 stroller frame's adjustable handle mechanism broke, after 4 solid years of use.  I called Mothercare in the UK to get another one, but they had been discontinued, and they had run a sale, so there were none available online to order.  I was told by customer service that their stores may have some, but there was no way they could check the store stock.  This meant, if I wanted one, I needed to call individual stores, and so I did. I had a day trip to London coming up, so maybe I could get one while over. Unfortunately, many of the stores were also out of stock. After about a dozen calls, I found one London store that had one My4 chassis, and I asked them to hold it on Saturday and would be in on Monday to pick it up.  The store was just a few miles from our office, so a little detour and I'd have it.
A little detour it was not.  I flew in to London this morning, and took taxi direct to store.  As we got close to the store the traffic was at a crawl.  After about 3 hours for a 30 minute trip, we arrived near the store; near because the store was completely taped off and surrounded by police officers. There was no way to get to the store.  I asked several times, but no foot or car traffic was being allowed through the street in front of the store. I called the store, they suggesting going around back.  More police, but after several requests, I was finally allowed through to the store. Yea!  I rushed in, and bought the stroller, and just as I'm leaving the store, the police take down the barricades. Of course.  Back in the taxi, and we're off, back to the office, then over to external meeting, and to the airport, box in tow at each step, and "Is that really a stroller in the box?", asks any person I came in contact with.  I reply, "Yes it is; long story," and move to a different topic quickly, because it was a long story, which finally ended with the box arriving in the Netherlands on the baggage claim belt just fine.

Random thoughts from 2011, and 2012 resolutions.

This is my first post in 2011. Wow, I guess I don't come here often anymore. I made a resolution to get into social networking for 2011, and that's what it seems like has happened. I joined Facebook, set up a Twitter account, set up LinkedIn account, have the necessary Skype account for video calls with family, due to being oversees, and got involved in FourSquare.

How did my 2011 social networking go? I got a BlackBerry Bold 9700 in Fall of 2010 and used a lot of the apps during 2011, mostly reading updates. I post to Facebook the most and check in on FourSquare often, mostly when I'm travelling. I don't tweet much, and only Skype occassionally.

It's a time thing. Most of my free time is spent with Dena and Andrew, and a toddler keeps one busy. When I do have some free time, I surf Google news, and few websites on my personal mobile phone, which as of early November, is a Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone. Mobile phones are now about ecosystems, and Microsoft is just starting to deliver on their 3 screens and a cloud vision of the future, so I finally invested some money in some stocks during 2011.

Stock ownership is a bit like gambling, as one never knows what can happen, but stock is ownership in a company, so research should be done to buy a part of a company just like buying a car, house, or new electronic equipment. I currently own stock of Halliburton, McDonalds, Microsoft and Nokia. I'm long on Nokia as I feel they will come around, and bought Microsoft due to their vision for the future. Having a uniform look and feel across all the platforms has been needed for a long time.

With a baby on the way, due mid-February, I expect 2012 to be much the similar to 2010 and 2011, with me still seeking to achieve a work/life balance. It's been tilted a bit tto much to the prior and causing a little too much stress in the later.

I bought a bicycle during 2011, so I've been bicycling to work a few days a week. (If I'd work to learn the language, I would complete my Dutch immersion.) I'm still struggling to stay in touch with my friends more often, and family also. Mass emails are a nice way to send an update, but just aren't personal enough. It's standing in a crowd listening to a lecture, which isn't the same as sharing a coffee or beer with an individual at a table.

What's 2012 going to bring? I need a personal hobby. Currently this may come from 3 areas: a updated/new Radio Controlled car, electric scooter, or 36 inch wheeled bicycle. Andrew is completely into cars, and this would be fun to get my Traxxas Sledgehammer back functional, or something new. Electric vehicles are going to come into the mainstream, and an electric scooter would be a fun and cheap way to get into an electric vehicle. 29ers, or 29 inch tired mountain bikes are all the rage for 2012, and there have been a few custom 36ers built. I'm so tall that a 36er would be a nice fit to my 2 meter frame.

Finally, I'm resolving to take advantage of as many opportunites as possible, such as going to MotoGP or F1 race or something similar. It's been too easy to just sit comfortably at home, while missing some exciting opportunity the was near by and an easy drive being on Continental Europe.

Happy 2012!!!

Getting settled into Holland

We're in our house, and almost all the boxes are unpacked. Living room is set up so that the projector projects onto the front window blind, which is white, so at night it actually shows through to the outside. I'm not really sure what the neighbors think, but no one's complained yet.

Just bought a white 2005 Volvo V50 Summum, 2.4i 5 cylinder with manual. That 5 cylinder sounds really sweet in the upper revs. My first Volvo. We'll see how it ages over the next couple of years.

Andrew is just over 14 months. He crawled up the stairs yesterday and today. I'm so proud, and he's growing up fast.

My job has been keeping me really busy. I've been to Douala, Cameroon, Luanda, Angola, and Lagos and Port Harcourt, Nigeria. I'm glad I live in the Netherlands.

I've finally opened Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. I'll have to get everything linked together. Thought I'd finally jump on the bandwagons.

I've been trying to decide whether to get my HTC Touch Pro fixed, which has a busted screen, get a Blackberry, get an iPhone, or get a Windows Phone 7, of which I like the Dell Venue Pro best. I typically ride the bus to and from work, and each way is a 10-15 minute ride, which would be just long enough to browse my Social feeds and post updates.

Once again, time will tell...

Walking to work such a treat

Right now, at the Grand Winston Hotel where we are staying, I'm close enought to walk to work. Yep, walk. Only takes me about 15-20 minutes. Walking to work; it's such a foreign concept to me, as an American. I'm used to driving everywhere. My first job location out of college had me driving 75 miles one way to work. I lost over 2 hours each day during that commute. Now I walk to work. It's so sweet, especially with the nice sunny weather here in the Netherlands.

Nine months and now crawling

IMG_0193
Originally uploaded by mechanicaldan1

Andrew is nine months old today, and has been successfully rolling around for some time now, and being able to get into a sitting position without assistance. He's been able to push/crawl backwards. With some stacking cups to motivate him, Andrew crawled for the first time today; repeatedly! Dena was reading through one of the baby development books, and for his age the book said he'd like stacking cups or blocks. We had some in the tub, but never put them out on the floor, so we did, and Andrew's face got real focused, and he crawled toward the stack, and then knocked it down. Dena grabbed the video camera, and I restacked, and Andrew crawled some more, and Dena recorded. We repeated this several times. It was very momentus. We're proud parents.

Paris Gaud de Nord train station

IMAG0068
Originally uploaded by mechanicaldan1

I had a train set growing up that was on a 4' x 8' sheet of plywood in our basement in Widconsin. It wasn't anything special, but I would look through model railroading magazines and dream of having a huge complex track layout with a big roundhouse for all the trains. Well, my first train trip in continental Europe landed me in Paris at the Gaud de Nord train station, and it was a childhood dream come true! Lots of tracks and trains all gathered under one roof. The pictures were taken on my HTC Touch Pro and came out pretty good.

I rode on a Thalys HiSpeed train from Rotterdam to Paris, and it was high speed indeed. I had the GPS going at one point and briefly saw 168 mph!!! That faster than I've ever been on any of my motorcycles. I'm know I'm going to really like travelling by train. It's so much less of a hassle than flying on a plane. You just show up to a train station, and get on the train. The seats are comfortable and have a decent amount of room. Plus there are electrical outlets and Wi-Fi available.

What will 2010 bring?

SAM_0727
Originally uploaded by mechanicaldan1

So it's a couple of days into the new year and new decade, and Andrew is just over 4 months old. It's just incredible how quickly he's growing, and how his motor skills are improving. It'll be a couple years until his motorcycle skills start improving. :)

So what will 2010 bring? For my son, it will be a lot of firsts; sitting up, crawling, solid food, maybe a couple words or walking.

For Dena and me, it'll be a different global location where we live, different house, different cars, different motorcycles, different job.

I got an XBox 360 for Christmas, so I'm really looking forward to playing that, although I had to bring back my UK region system, so that I can get a US region version. I can guess that video games just like DVDs have different regions because of release dates, different languages, different government rating systems, but it is unfortunate for globally active consumers. I'm looking forward to playing some of the racing games on our projector. Should be really sweet!

And speaking of cars, the Red Bull New Year's No Limits stunt was just crazy. Jumping a car 269 ft is just mind blowing. I love Red Bull, Travis Pastrana is awesome, and I really like the new Subaru WRX STi hatchback body style, and may just have to get one in the US to replace our UK BMW 120d.

Let the good times roll

Life seems to be passing so quickly; people around me, places, just zooming by. I pause, and take a brief moment to think about my life, reflecting about where the time has gone and the distance I've covered. Wow, I'm 35, maybe this is the onset of an early midlife crisis? Happily married, beautiful new baby boy, successful career, but something suddenly feels different, lost. I feel empty. I'm waiting for something to happen, and feeling anxious. Something is missing, I know it, and I want it back. I take a big sigh, my head resting on my hands. Warm air suddenly rushes over me, and then I sense the change coming. Oh yes, there it is, that happy moment when the traffic lights change to green and the acceleration of a 130 hp Kawasaki brings another giant smaile to my face.

Not all memory is created equal

With upgrading the photography gear, I’ve also learned that not all memory is created equal. There’s a lot more to it than just size. In particular, SD (Secure Digital) cards in SD, miniSD, and microSD card sizes come with different speed ratings. The speed is important for photos and videos as it needs to be fast enough that the memory card can be written to without the camera stalling or freezing trying to wait for the write process. There are class 2, 4, and 6. I have class 6 cards in both cameras. The SD cards also come in different types. The SD card is available up to 4 GB, the SDHC is available up to 32 GB, and the SDXC will be theoretically available up to 2 TB (terabytes)! Wikipedia has a nice explanation on all the details.

Memory has both read and write speeds, which may be different, along with lots of other specifications. USB memory sticks are also not created equal. The speeds of USB sticks aren’t as generally published, as they are for SD cards, but try to find USB sticks that have read and write speeds close to 30 MB/sec, which will be close to what a portable hard drive would read and write at across USB 2.0. One of the fastest USB sticks I’ve run across is the OCZ Rally2 Turbo USB 2.0 Flash Drive, but I’m sure others can be found with a little surfing.

Upgrading the photography gear

With over 6000 pictures taken on my Sony DSC-P8 digital camera, it’s had a very long life. I bought it in 2003, and it’s lived with a 256 MB memory stick the entire time. It’s a 3.2 megapixel, with a tiny little 1.5” LCD screen on the back and a view finder to look through. It’s worked well, but my one complaint the whole time I’ve owned it is that unless you hold it really, REALLY still the picture will come out blurry. I’ve learned to shoot clear pictures with it, but anyone who has taken a picture during a party with it, or someone taking a picture of Dena and I while travelling has managed to take a fuzzy picture. During the first week Andrew was in the hospital, I took a few pictures and after seeing about half of them blurry, decided it was time to upgrade, as I just don’t want pictures of my son to be blurry and ruined. I’ve actually been looking for a replacement for some time, but nothing stood out until just now. Samsung has released the very first digital camera with a second forward facing display. This immediately caught my attention, as I take a lot of pictures of Dena and I when we’re travelling with my arm out stretched. We normally have to take several pictures to get the shot composed correctly. Now, I’ll just be able to look at the front screen and compose the shot the first time. This camera is the Samsung TL225 in the US and ST550 in the UK. Some of the other features are 3.5” touchscreen on the back, smile shutter (which is cool), dual image stabilization, microSD card, and is HD movie capable. I also love how easy it can be to use, as there are just 4 normal buttons: power, capture, zoom, and review. The touchscreen is nice to use and the camera has plenty of advanced features I’m sure I’ll grow into.

About two months back we also invested in a camcorder, to capture all the fun and special moments when our son arrived. After doing a bunch of research and comparing, I decided on a Canon HF100. I wanted a Full HD camcorder, but with memory being as cheap as it is, I wanted to record on SD card. This would be cheap and easy to upgrade later. I also did not want a built in hard drive, as this would likely be the first thing to break at some point in the future. The camcorder is plenty small, but not too small as to make it difficult to hold. I’ve just started to use it, capturing both videos and stills, and the built in still camera actually takes better pictures than the old DSC-P8. I have Adobe Premier software to burn the HD DVDs, but I’ve been reformatting Dena’s laptop, and the CD/DVD drive broke (good timing at 2 months before the warranty expired) midway through the reformat, so the movie making and DVD buring is on pause until the new drive arrives. The extended length battery is a must as the stock one lasted just barely 1 hour, and the extended battery will last over 4 hours.

Andrew_Stirling_30_Aug_2009

Andrew_Stirling_30_Aug_2009
Originally uploaded by mechanicaldan1

Please welcome Andrew Stirling to the world. He was born on Sunday, 30 August 2009. He weighed in at 10 lbs, 8 oz and just under 23 inches long. Yes, I know this post is almost 3 weeks late, but a lot has happened. Dena required a transverse C section because only his head and one shoulder would come out, so they needed to make a second incision to make more room to get him out. This led to Dena loosing 2.5 liters of blood, which led to several transfusions, monitoring, complications and a total of 2 weeks in the Aberdeen Maternity Hospital. I must commend the staff and say that they did a great job of taking care of her and Andrew.

I had only planned to take 2 weeks off of work, but since the first 2 were spent in the hospital, I took another week off of work, and the three of us have been adjusting to life at home fairly well. Dena is breastfeeding, and Andrew is sleeping 3-4 hours at a time during the night, which means that we are not getting the sleep we used to. I'm amazed at how many diapers (nappies in the UK) he fills. We went through over 27 diapers during the first 4 days at home. Andrew is now just at 11 pounds and completely adorable. He only seems to cry when he's hungry, needs to be burped, needs his diaper changed, or just wants to be held, hugged and cuddled; other than that, he sleeps.

Yes, I'm still alive and almost a family of 3

Wow, I just looked at the date of my last post, which was almost a year ago. I guess the newness of moving to Scotland had started to wear off at that point. There have been plenty of times that I've meant to post on here, but truth be told, I was just too lazy, and a tiny bit sick of being behind a computer, as I am for most of my work day.

I'll give a nod to Joy for prompting this post. It's actually a pre-announcement of my son's birth. Yes, part of the last nine months have been spent witnessing the grown of my unborn son. What a magical experience. So, due to that, there will be more regular updates to this blog.

I've also set up a twitter account @mechanicaldan I'm just getting started, but if you have a twitter account, let me know so I can follow you.

Google Chrome scroll fix

I downloaded Google's Chrome internet browser and it's been really sweet for a first attempt. Overall, I like the layout and have become an instant fan. It's definitely FAST!!! It loads so much faster than Internet Explorer 6, and you can surf faster also. If you take the time to read the Google Chrome comic book, you'll get an understanding of why.

My one big complaint has been that I could not scroll up with the trackpad on my HP laptop. I wasn't the only person. Fortunately, with some time, PaulusDev has come up with a working solution. I downloaded it here and now I have scroll up. Yea!!

Finally went motorcycling in Scotland

As you may know, I've been really bad about not posting anything for a few months. There have been things goind on, so here's some highlights. I went back to the US for couple weeks at the end of June, Dena and I took a weekend trip to Paris the first weekend of July, then two weeks of vacation in France mid July, and then a weekend trip to London the first weekend of August. I have lots of pictures that I need to get uploaded to my Flickr site. I just haven't had anything REALLY exciting to post about until now. Well, maybe I have, and I've just been lazy. :) Back to my motorcycle ride.

Yes, I've been here for over a year now, and Dena and I have been for little rides on both bikes out of and around Aberdeen, but I have not been on a serious motorcycle ride. I haven't had any business trips planned for a couple weeks, so on Monday, I asked one of the guys at work with a brand new 2008 GSXR 1000 if he wanted to go riding this weekend. He agreed, so all we had to do was hope for good weather. It rained all week, but finally on Saturday things started to clear and the sun came out. I cleaned the Kawi, and Sunday was looking good! I wanted to get my TomTom set up to record the route we would take, but I didn't download the software in time for this ride, and I still have to wire an adapter for 5V power.

We met up at work this morning, and he brought another friend of his along with a '06 GSXR 1000. Both of them were in leathers and both had scuffed knee pucks, so I knew I was in for a good time. WOW, could both of them set a pace!

The ride started about 11 am and I just got back at 5:30 pm. We put on roughly 250 miles. The roads over here are incredible! Very few truely straight stretches. The pace was close to the ton most of the time, and quite terrifing. I was probably riding at about 90% of my ability most of the time trying to keep up. I was always following because as long as either one of them was in front, I could jugde the corner speed. Most of the corners are blind, but somehow they just knew how quick they could ride through them. Unlike the US, the corners are not posted with a suggested corner speed sign. Here, there were really just 3 items to help judge corners, and they were "SLOW" painted on the road, and either a sign indicating a corner or a sign with black and white alternating arrows pointing into the really slow corners. In my opinion, not really helpful, but with all the corners, they'd have to put up a LOT of signs.

I just about ran off one of the corners early in the day. After a series of 80+ corners, this one was much slower, and I braked really hard for it leaving a nice black skid mark from my rear tire. I did get slowed down in time, but ended up jamming my right foot down as I skidded with the front tire briefly on some gravel as I was almost stopped. My right big toe is now purple from jamming the nail to the inside of my boot. Then, about midday, I ended up running a little wide on a corner, but luckily there was no car coming. Overall, I had a blast! The roads over here are excellent. I just wish the corners were marked a little better. I'm hoping there are a couple more sunny weekends to go out riding. Everyone keeps telling me I need to go ride some of the roads on the west coast. So, I guess I need to go plan and ride some of the roads on the west of Scotland. :)

Polar bears listed as threatened!

It took three years, a LOT of work, and a lawsuit to finally make the U.S. Department of the Interior make a decision on whether polar bears are at risk due to climate change. One day before they HAD to make a decision, polar bears have been listed as THREATENED, which is the first step before becoming endangered. Read the official release from the U.S. DOI.
I hope that history will look back and see this as the turning point that the US recognized climate change and global warming due to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emisions. Bush has messed up badly. He will be leaving office as the least popular President in decades, that delievered a horrible response to one of the greatest natural disaters in US history - hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the dismissal of U.S. Attorneys controversy, rising inflation, agreeing to use of "harsh interrogation techniques", continuing the second longest US war, misleading the US in regards to climate change and not acting on it, leaving when fuel prices are at record highs, food prices are going up, the economy is essentially in a recession, and the US popularity is at an all time low with governements around the world. Someone has to serve as the bad example.
I really hope the next President of the United States of America takes climate change as his top priority. Change is good, and necessary at times. It may be painful at first, but good things will happen.
Greenpeace has a 96 page document that they've defined as a blueprint to a sustainable energy future. I'm about to read it now. I'm pretty sure that for the $1.5 TRILLION dollars we spent on trying to wage an oil war in Iraq (Iraq has the second biggest oil reserved in the world), we could have secured an independant, renewable energy future for the US, which would also lead to better national security because we wouldn't be dependant on foreign oil.
No, I'm not really happy that my tax dollars will be going to pay for a messy war for many, many years into the future.

One year already

Wow, time flies by when you're working your ass off. It's almost hard to believe that Dena and I have been in Scotland for a year now. We spent the first 3 months in temporary housing and numerous rental cars. Then, we bought a couple of motorcycles, happily moved into a great house in a nice neighborhood, and picked up our BWM. I started travelling for work, and Dena spent time making our house into a home. We flew home for Decemeber to visit friends and family, and to have surgery on my back. Dena spent the next couple of months updating Marine Turbine's website. I've spent the last couple of months working longer and longer hours on various projects.
Because time is flying by, we have made a commitment to see and experience more things while we are here. I'm looking forward to taking a motorcycle trip over to Lock Ness. Dena and I plan to go down to Glasgow. We're also making plans to go visit Frederique in France and spend a couple of days on the beach in Nice.

Internet TV is finally here!

OK, internet TV has been around for a while in some form or another, but at least from my perspective there hasn't been any well know and organized software to watch TV on your computer while connected to the internet. Now there is. Adobe has just released, what else Adobe TV on their new Adobe Media Player software, and just like the PDF viewer, the software is free for Windows and Mac OS!

The Adobe Media Player has a surprising number of channels available considering that this is now going to challenge major cable companies and satelite TV providers. I've only been checking the software and available programs for about the last 45 minutes. I've checked out some Paula Deen on Food Network (Dena misses watching Paula), watched today's Houston Weather Channel, and CSI: Miami. I've also noticed what looks to be the entire original Star Trek TV series. There are commercials, but it appears that there is only one where the normal commercial break would be. The CSI: Miami episode is only 45 minutes long, so that's a noticable reduction in commercials. There aren't a lot of well known programs yet, but I'd bet there will be.

How's the quality? I'm at a Quality Inn in Stavanger, Norway and the downloads are fast and the quality is plenty acceptable for watching on a 17" widescreen laptop. I'm watching on a HP 8710w which has a really nice Nvidia Quadro graphics card. I'm really looking forward to watching episodes on our projector when I get home.

Overall, Adobe Media Player rocks!!! It's going to be a big hit, and likely adopted very quickly. The difficult part may be how to organize everything so programs or channels can be found quickly. I'll try to do a follow up to this in a few weeks, and maybe Adobe will have posted how many downloads they've had.

Dan's 25 hour birthday

Dan's cake - Step 4
Originally uploaded by mechanicaldan1

Yep, I'm now 33. I'd like to thank my lovely wife for the yummy birthday cake.

My birthday celebration started on the 12th of Feb while I was in Holland. I went to a Chinese restaurant with some co-workers. The dishes seemed to take a while to come out, but when they did, the explaination may have been due to the elaborately carved giant carrot sculptures. None of us had the heart to eat the art.

So, leaving Holland on the day of my birthday and flying back to Aberdeen gave me an extra hour to enjoy my birthday. And enjoy it I did! There was a pile of presents waiting for me when I got back home. I scored some Technic lego sets, "Long Way Round" book, some interesting trivia cards, and a disturbing but funny book annimated book on bunny deaths.

For all the pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifeasmechanicaldan/sets/72157604130925653/

The Lego brick is 50

What a fun surprise to go to my favorite search engine and see the Google logo made of Lego bricks! The mouseover said "50th Anniversary of LEGO brick", so I had to do a little surfing. It's actually 50 years since the patent was filed, so I looked up the LEGO patent.

I was a huge Legomaniac when I was younger. More of a Legomaniac than Zach. I started with just a few bricks when I was around 6, and then for almost every birthday, Christmas, Easter, and any other special occasion I got a new Lego set. My big facination was with the Space sets, and then eventually got interested in the Technic sets. I'd play with them for hours. I think I had 40-50 sets when I sold them to raise some money for my first car. Looking back, it would have been nice to still have them, but I've been windowshopping on Ebay, and one can get used Legos in bulk pretty cheap. In fact, a Technic Lego set (or Technic blocks) is on my wish list for my birthday, which is February 13.

Even better is that you can download building instructions for new sets directly from the Lego website here and there is a website that collects and posts Lego set building instructions after the set is 3 years old here. A quick Google search shows there are likely a few others that have old scanned instructions. Just more reasons for me to love the internet.

Books I've Read

I've added a section regarding the books I've read over the last few months. I'm not a fast reader, as you can see by the length of the list. Our library is finally set up, and I have plenty of books to read now that Dena's and my book collections are together.

An Inconvenient Truth really helped bring some light to the ongoing global warming issue. Being an engineer, I wish there was more data, but the pictures do speak for themselves.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a heavy philisophical journey about a man, his inner craziness, his son, and a motorcycle trip.

Long Way Round I enjoyed a lot! It's Ewan and Charlie on a couple of BMW motorcycles as they ride around the world. What all happens? Lots. I'm eager to read the follow up journey called Long Way Down where they ride from the UK to the tip of South Africa.

Freakonomics was another book I enjoyed. It's Economics, but very interesting. How do big topic items in the world relate to other completely different objects. I highly recommend the book.

The Party's Over is about Peak Oil and what will the world do after the oil is all gone. My personal feeling is that we've hit Peak Oil right now. Another recommended read if you're interested in how energy effects the human race, but it will leave you feeling very depressed for a few days.

If you have any books that you'd recommend, feel free to post in the comments or send me an email.