New Orleans

Wow, New Orleans is crazy!  I wish we'd had more time to spend here, but I'm glad we took the two days that we did.

Even a month after Mardi Gras, Bourbon St. was lots of fun.  At 3pm, people were walking down the street holding several beers.  The bars had happy hours with 3 for 1 beers and drinks.  There are strip clubs, bars, restaurants, shops, and even a little gay bar section (that some people call the fruit loop, like in Las Vegas.  It supposedly includes the oldest gay bar in the country, Lafitte's).

Before coming to New Orleans, we stopped at the National Naval Aviation Museum for a few hours, looking at the impressive collection of restored planes, helicopters, and spacecraft.  It was something of a last minute stop for us, and I'm very glad we did!  If you have any interest in aircraft and you're in the Pensacola area, you owe it to yourself to see this museum.  It's free!

We arrived in New Orleans around 4pm and checked into our hotel, the Iberville Suites.  It's quite a new hotel, behind the Ritz Carlton.  The rooms were very reasonable for being so close to the downtown French Quarter in a very nice room.  My room had quite the view, but my father's looked out onto another wall of a hotel.

We walked around Bourbon St. for a few hours, taking in all the sights.  As it gets later, the bars and strip clubs get more and more aggressive trying to get you to come into their establishment.  And the patrons get more and more drunk, just as the police block off the road to all car traffic.  It's quite a scene, and we enjoyed it.  We ate dinner at a little restaurant in the middle of Bourbon St. with a balcony table, which was a great place to people-watch.  The food was decent; my first time trying catfish (at least in a long time).  I quite like it!

I ended up staying up pretty late the first night, and haven't been able to catch up on sleep yet.  I think I'll need a few days to recover!  Yesterday we took a great little bus tour of the city.  We visited a lot of the touristy areas and then went down to the 9th Ward to see the still-devastated houses from Katrina.  Then on to an above-ground graveyard, a public park and golf course (complete with an alligator-filled water hazard), the parade route, a ritzy, residential area, and then back to the hotel.

We enjoyed dinner at a seafood restaurant across the street from our hotel, Deanie's.  Apparently it's fairly popular.  The seafood was mostly deep-fried but was tasty and plentiful.

This morning we are off to Austin, TX for the next part of our journey.  The next few days are going to be pretty travel-intensive until we get to Arizona, where we'll get a few days' rest before crossing the Hoover Dam to Vegas.

Photos on Flickr

I'm posting photos from our trip on Flickr.

Pensacola, FL

Today's trip went great!  We drove straight through from Port Charlotte to Pensacola.  There were a few traffic hiccups, but the TomTom routed us around them pretty well.

It was great spending time chatting with my Dad.  The ride took about 9 hours, which was about what we'd expected.

I joined my friend Laney for dinner in Pensacola.  We ate at a place called Zea, which was quite tasty.  It's across the street from the famous McGuire's Irish Pub, which was ridiculously packed.

Tomorrow we're off to New Orleans!

Shoving out

I've spent a delightful two days with my parents, and now my Dad and I are getting ready to shove out from their home on the west coast of Florida.  Our first destination: Pensacola!  It's a 9 hour drive today, one of the longest in our trip.  We're both excited about the trip and have been talking non-stop about what we're going to see.

I've got a friend in Pensacola who we're going to visit, and then tomorrow we're on to New Orleans!

The Rest of My Life

Today is the first day of the rest of my life, as they say...

For those of you who don't know, I asked Gerald for a separation a week and a half ago.  If you're interested in the reasons, talk to me privately.

I have mixed feelings about this change, but mostly I'm optimistic and excited to start my new life.  I'm wrapping up some things in St. Croix this week and then headed up to Florida to drive cross-country in my Z4 with my Dad.  The original destination was Las Vegas, but now I think I'm headed for San Diego for a little while.  I'm going to take my time and just do what feels right for a bit.

I will try to post about our road trip over the next couple of weeks!

Bellagio Fountains

One of my photos from Las Vegas was selected to appear in the Schmap Las Vegas tour guide.

Pocket Tunes 5.0 Released

Pocket Tunes 5.0 Music/Radio player for Palm OS, Treo, Centro, Windows Mobile, iPhone, and iPod Touch

Pocket Tunes Radio for the iPhone

Apple just approved Pocket Tunes Radio for the iPhone, our latest product!

Listen to your favorite radio stations using your iPhone or iPod touch with Pocket Tunes™ Radio.

Enjoy and happy holidays!

Great Skype addon for Mac iTunes users

This addon works great to show what you're listening to on iTunes through your Skype mood comment: http://www.mybdesign.com/itm/

Gus Gus Little Man Gus

Gus Gus Little Man Gus (aka Gus, aka Doodles, aka Max) passed away last night from complications from his second surgery.  Gerald and I are miserable.

His "scratching post" in St. Croix.

He loved crawling in anything about his size.  Boxes, cupboards, closets, cat carriers, and even sinks.  Every night before bed, he would meow for us to run some water in this sink so he could have himself a little nightcap from the faucet.

One of his favorite sleeping spots in St. Croix.  He made a game out of sleeping in every conceivable spot in the house, but he had a few favorites.

Bye Gus, you will be sorely missed.

Why is it so hard to watch movies anymore?

Okay this is just ridiculous.

I popped WALL-E into my PS3, ready to relax to a nice movie.

Up pops a message that I must perform an update to watch this movie. I just bought this PS3 a month ago. Fine, I say go ahead and do the update. It comes up with this huge progress bar that is moving slower than a turtle with 5 lbs of bricks on its back.

We switched over to the Tivo and watched an entire episode of House and switched back. It's only 50% complete and now it's saying that its network connection has failed. What? I am now downloading the ROM update to a USB flash card to I can upgrade my damned PS3. It's taken over 2 hours to get my PS3 ready just to play a friggin 1.5 hour movie.

Come on! Who decided to make movie watching so painful? I want my money back on my Blu Ray stuff. I'd gladly trade the lesser video quality of a DVD for this ridiculous hassle.

Criss Angel's Believe at the Luxor

Well, if I had paid $25 per seat for the show, I would have felt okay. But we paid $100 for seats on the side of the theater with not a good view. And the spotlights often shone right in our faces; through several acts I had to hold my hand up to block out the lights for a few minutes. What's with that?

The show was just not very good. There were a couple of funny parts, and some musings of "Huh, wonder how he did that". But no, "Holy shit! That was amazing!" type of thoughts that you get when watching any other Cirque du Soleil or magic show on the strip. There was some good dancing, great costumes, and decent choreography. But the plot was all over the place and just weird and didn't really flow at all. The magic was just typical magic tricks that you've seen everywhere (how many times do we have to see someone sawed in half?).

The best part of the show was that Criss Angel walked through the audience at the very beginning and only stopped to shake one person's hand: Gerald's. He was tickled, but he still didn't like the show.

This article sums it up perfectly:

http://vegasblog.latimes.com/vegas/2008/10/criss-angels-be.html

I've seen all 6 Cirque du Soleil shows in Vegas, and here is the order you should see them:

• O


• KA


• Mystere


• The Beatles LOVE


• Zumanity


• Believe

In my opinion, the first four are must sees. They will have you on the edge of your seat with awe, and you will talk about it for the rest of your life. If you are in Vegas and it's within your means, go to one (or more) of these first 4 shows! Zumanity is unique and fun in a perverted way and is a good show. Believe is totally skippable, and I wouldn't recommend it.

If you want to see a magic show for that price range, you have to see Penn and Teller. They are the real deal. (My brother-in-law was picked as the "bullet inspector" in the bullet trick, so I know they don't use a plant for that.)

Indian Food!

Woo hoo! I found an Indian grocery store not far from our house in Las Vegas! It's called India Bazar and it's at 4160 S. Ft. Apache. I went there last night to pick up some stuff for supper and was very impressed. They have a full selection of Indian spices, curry pastes (Patak's!), chutneys, etc. They also have nan bread in the refrigerator, several international beverages (including ginger beer which I miss from St. Croix), Indian desserts brought in from a place in California, and lots of frozen Indian TV dinners.

I made the nan bread, chicken samosas (from frozen - just bake for 10 minutes), and chicken Jalfrezi with the Patak's curry paste. It all came out really well except for the nan, which I heated in the oven and ended up making too crispy. It still tasted okay. Next time I may wrap it in tin foil first to keep the moisture in.

Red Rock Canyon Loop

I finally worked up to riding the Red Rock Canyon loop on my bike. It's a really great loop, very scenic. On a bike, it was WAY harder than I thought it would be. I saw my inclinometer get to 11% in some places. Nothing quite like The Beast in St. Croix (which gets to over 20% in places), but it's 5 miles of climbing instead of 3/4. I remember driving this loop with Gerald on our first trip to Vegas in 1999. We saw lots of cyclists, and I remember commenting that they were crazy trying to ride these hills. Well, here I am now, the crazy one. Here's the profile of the ride from my house:



If you're in shape, this is a great outdoor activity to do while in Vegas. You can rent a bike from Las Vegas Cyclery at 8221 W Charleston Blvd (where I bought my bike), and then make the ride straight out to the canyon on Charleston.

I'm doing the ride again today with the mortgage broker we worked with to get the loan for our house here. I think he's in better shape than me, so I'll be hurting I'm sure...

Gus is home!

Gus is finally home from the animal hospital. He seems to be very happy to be home. He made a pass of the house, sniffing everything to re-acquaint himself, and then he placed a claim to Gerald's coat laying on the floor near the bed. He's been there since last night, only making forays to eat, drink, and request ear scratching or a warm lap for a few minutes.

We've got about 6 different kinds of liquid medicine to give him 2-3 times a day. He doesn't like that, but he tolerates it.

Phoebe is very upset that he's home. She had been happy as a clam while he was gone, but now she is hissing and growling whenever she sees him.

Fortunes

Apologies in advance for this somewhat emo post...

It's easy to get distracted with all the problems you are facing. Our kitty Gus is in the hospital for surgery this morning, and his long-term prognosis is not good. He probably has kidney failure and will need fluid therapy for the rest of his life, which will likely be shortened (he's 7 years old).

As a mental health exercise, and to publicly thank everyone around us keeping us sane, I wanted to put together this quick list of what we're fortunate for.

• We lucked out and were not in St. Croix for the hurricane.
  
• Our home in St. Croix came through Hurricane Omar relatively unscathed.
  
• Our good friends Larry and Blaine have gone to extraordinary lengths in managing repairs and cleanup of our house after the hurricane.
  
• Our move to Las Vegas has gone pretty much without any major problems.
  
• The veterinarians in Las Vegas have more modern equipment than in St. Croix and are more equipped and experienced at handling Gus's illness. (not to say anything bad about St. Croix vets; they are great! It is only due to the size of the population.)
  
• My sister Heather is an emergency veterinary technician and has been enormously generous with her time and consultation about Gus's condition.
  
• All of our friends, families, and coworkers have been understanding and supportive.
  

Anyway, thanks to everyone. I'll keep you posted on how Gus does today.

DISH Network vs. Cox Cable

In case anyone is wondering, DISH Network's DVR interface is far and away better than Cox Cable's. When we signed up for Cox, I tried to find some information on the web about which DVR was better, and I couldn't find any.

I've only been using the Cox DVR for a few days, but here are the deficiencies compared to Dish Networks's DVR:

1. Recorded episodes are displayed in a small confusing list, all jumbled together. Dish's DVR uses the full screen and sorts them nicely by show name.

2. Cox's remote doesn't have a skip forward/back button like Dish has. So to skip commercials, you have to use the fast forward button and hope to time it just right. It's a pain in the ass and takes longer.

3. I haven't found a good way to get episode information about a particular episode on Cox. With DISH, you can get the episode ID, brief description, and many movies have star ratings. Lots more info to figure out what you want to watch.

4. DISH has a special type of recording (I think it's called a season pass or something like that) where you just enter the name of the show/movie, and it records anything matching that name on any channel. I can't find anything like this on Cox.

5. The quality of the high definition channels doesn't seem to be as good. I think Cox has the compression turned way up.

It looks like we have a couple of options. We can either switch to DISH Networks or we can give Tivo a try. It looks like the latest TiVo boxes support SD and HD recording on two channels at once if you use a CableCard decoder from your cable company. I'll have to check with Cox to see if they offer that.

My new favorite airline

I've blogged about airlines before, so I'll let you know about my new favorite airline. Too bad they don't fly to St. Croix.

Virgin America is awesome. I flew them from Las Vegas to San Francisco (direct flight) on Sunday.

They announced an air traffic controller delay due to fog in San Fran. Rather than just let us sit and stew in our own grumpiness, they then immediately announced a bowling game! If you beat your bowling partner, you got a free drink coupon. So they set up a plastic bowling game on the carpet and invited everyone to join in the fun. It was noisy and fun and there was much merriment.

Once that was over, they then kept us entertained with other games, like finding things on Google or seeing who had the oldest penny in their pocket.

While this may seem silly, it's really ingenious from a psychological perspective. It instantly converts the grumpiness of a hundred passengers into bemusement. And if you're in line for the bowling game, you secretly hope that the delay will be extended just a few minutes so you can have a chance to bowl.

But they don't stop there. Once on board, rather than the usual boring announcement from the pilots about who they are and where we're headed, they pulled two kids (age 5-ish) from the passengers and gave them the mic. So you hear this 5-year-old over the PA "My name is Captain Mike... and we will be flying to San Francisco... where the weather is overcast. We will be flying at 30,000 feet." It was hilarious and everyone gave the kids a big round of applause.

Even the safety announcement is fun. They've got a really silly animated cartoon to go along with the safety speech, and they even poke fun at what they're required to say. "For the 0.001% of you who have never used a seatbelt before, here's what to do." And they continue on in an exasperated tone.

The inside of the airplane is lit with colorful red and purple lights, making you feel like you're in a nightclub. And the seats are a very comfortable leather material with modern white plastic backs.

But the best part of all is the in-flight entertainment system that they call Red. It's a Linux-based touchscreen device that has access to TV, movies, etc. Food and drink orders are hooked up to this system so that when I ordered my gin and tonic, a prompt popped up on my screen asking me to swipe my credit card. The system has several free X Windows games (xmahjongg, etc.), an inter-seat chat program, etc. You can watch about 10 channels of satellite TV from their onboard DISH Networks receiver for free. Or you can pay to watch a movie (I think it was $5 to $10). Even better, you can pay somewhere from $0.99 to $2.99 to watch the latest episodes of your favorite sitcoms. I watched two Simpsons episodes for $1.98.

I'm actually looking forward to my flight back to Las Vegas this afternoon. It takes a lot to make me feel like I want to be on a plane, so they've done a great job.

Say It in Crucian

I stopped by Savant last night for dinner to say good-bye to a good friend of mine who works there. (I'm leaving for 3 months.)

Along with the usual great food, drink, and energy, I met an extraordinary couple. Mitch is a bass player who works at the Good Hope school teaching music. We had a great discussion about digital music. And Robin works at UVI teaching English.

I was really impressed by Robin's latest project - a book called "Say it in Crucian". She asked her kids to contribute to help define the Crucian language and explain how it's used. She is working on an accompanying website Crucian Dictiontionary, which doesn't yet have any content.

I find her book fascinating because St. Croix is one of the only places I've seen in the US today where you can watch as a local culture gets assimilated into the culture of its parent country. And no one seems to be documenting it! I find it a bit sad that this local culture is changing so quickly, losing many of its customs and flavor. But it is being replaced by its own unique mixture of US and Caribbean culture.

St. Croix is unique in that its culture has remained distinct due to the distance from the US, difficulty getting here, and delayed access to TV and Internet. That has changed dramatically in the past 20 years with the building of a new airport, increased interest in Caribbean tourism by Americans, better Internet and TV infrastructure, etc. You would think that anthropologists would be all over St. Croix, but I have seen few of them. If you're an anthropologist working on St. Croix, I'd love to hear from you!

Look for "Say it in Crucian" on Amazon in the next few months. Even better, support our local St. Croix businesses and buy a copy here!

Speaking their language

I got laughed at on my bike ride this morning by some people walking on the road.

I came around a corner on the North Shore Rd. I saw the couple taking a morning walk. I prepared to wave and say Good Morning, but I then noticed a dog wandering in the bush to my left. If you're a biker, you know that stray animals get all of your attention.

80% of the dogs I encounter will simply look up at you and then go back to sniffing their ass. But the other 20% will do something unexpected, so you have to keep an eye on them.

This dog looked at me quizzically and then opened his mouth, barking, and took off after me. Prepared, I do what I always do in this situation: I moved to the middle of the road away from him, looked straight in his eyes, and barked as loud as I could.

I can't claim to know what goes through the dog's mind when he sees a human dressed in ridiculously-colored spandex atop a funny-looking contraption made of metal, carbon fiber, and rubber. But I do know that when that human barks at said dog, it will typically stop dead in its tracks, probably confused to no end.

And that's what happened.

When I looked back up, I was just coming upon the couple walking, and they were looking at me laughing. I guess you don't see that everyday. I smiled back.

PS And if you're one of those who have been following my training, yes, I finally made it up The Beast without stopping today!