Cocktail Confessions

Update on my Ford Sync and Droid issue…

Well, the Internet is a smart thing and after a brief perusing of some forums, I see that I wasn’t the only one having issues ’sync’-ing there new Droid with MS Sync in Ford cars.  It appears this is a know issue and various reports share that there is a ‘rumored’ fix coming Dec 11 in the form of a patch.

However, after a bit more digging, I did discover there is an alernate Motorola pairing code that uses four digits instead of Sync preferable 6 digits.  The good news?  Well, after fiddling with teh menu option on my steering wheel, I discovered a ‘Special’ PIN number on my Ford Edge, and once entered into my Motorola Droid…..VOILA…it works!

Granted, I’ll feel much better when both the Droid patch comes out in a few weeks AND I get Ford to upgrade my Sync firmware to what it actually should be, and not the version that is currently installed when I bought my car two years ago.  But for now, it appears I got the Bluetooth to now work.

Well, against better financial judgement I broke down and finally upgraded my cell phone after almost 3 years of using my sturdy and reliable LG. 

I went ahead and purchased myself a Smartphone, and a new Motorola “Droid” at that.  I went with the Droid as it comes pre-installed with Android OS 2.0 (Eclair) by those nifty tech heads over at Google.  Also, being my first smart phone required me to get my very first data plan as well.  Thank goodness the company I work for has a corporate account with Verizon as it affords me a nice monthly discount as well on both voice and data.

I’m still getting used to the phone.  It’s much bigger than my LG workhorse, and of course more expensive, and most likely more fragile.  So far, I love it.  It has a lot of nifty features and I’m really digging the GPS with turn-by-turn instructions and live traffic reports.  The way it handles contacts is pretty cool tool, either via the phone interface or a gmail account, and updates pretty much on the fly.  I also enabled Latitudewhich will allow me to track and locate my friends if they so choose.  I can also update my Facebook and have access to a lot of apps, although I suspect most are junk or duplicates and up to this point I’ve never used any, so I can’t really think of too much of a need to start going app crazy now like Apple-heads do.

However, one cool app that of course made it to my Droid is ‘10001 Cocktails’.  As the app describes itself: “Put the bartender in your pocket!  Browse and search thousands of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drink recipes on the shot-cocktail-recipe.com website!  Add fresh drink ideas and drink reviews and save your favorite drinks to your personal list.”  Don’t think I won’t!

As far as using my new phone as my MP3 player and viewing YouTube videos….well, not yet.  I’m still hoping to get a new Zune HD in the coming months.

The only drawbacks so far to my new toy is that battery life (when in use and not in standby mode) seems to get sucked dry faster then Motorola would like you to believe it does.  Also, the Bluetooth cannot sync with my Ford Sync yet…that may be a firmware issue on Ford’s part though.  The last 3 attempts at updating my Sync at the dealership, the machine has been ‘down’.  Ugh.  I mean the phone’s Bluetooth works great…I already paired it with my old Motorola headset just fine…I just can’t get it working with my car stereo yet.

Now in a completely different and unrelated tech issue, my XBox took a dump on me late last week.  I got the dreaded RROD (Red Ring of Death) which signifies an internal hardware error that is most likely attributed to a faulty design when it comes to dispersing the temperature inside the console.  So the bad news is my XBox has been shipped back to Microsoft and may not have it for the next 3-4 weeks….Awesome, just in time for Christmas and my holiday break where I’ll get all these new games I can’t play.  The good news is that it is still under warranty and Microsoft is supposed to fix it for free.  So it shipped out Monday this week.  I’ll just have to cross my fingers and make sure it gets back new and improved in 3 weeks.

In about 24 hours from now I will find myself standing out in the middle of the Anza-Borrego desert playing ‘desert’ golf with my father-in-law, brother-in-law and a few other ‘men’ among ‘men’, and I have no idea how I’m going to fare.

My guess: Not well.

See, I got invited on an overnight ‘guys’ camping trip by some former marines (my father-in-law and his buddy) and their sons. This is an annual thing they conjured up a few years back where it’s an excuse to supposedly get back to nature. This really translates into getting away from the womenfolk for at least 24 hours sucking down as many libations as possible.

Initially I found myself a little pressured into this field trip. Before I even knew what was happening, my wife more or less signed me up for this as a ‘bonding’ experience with the ‘guys’. Before I could even register my own thoughts on the matter, my father-in-law was already telling me what time to be at his house. “But I have no sleeping bag…” I said. “No problem, I got you covered.” Damn… “But I have no clubs.” I then said. “Got that covered too.” Double damn…. Then my brother-in-law chimed in, “Come on, you’ll have fun.” Er……”What about my dog Frankie?” where my wife then replied, “Oh, I’m not going out of town with the girls afterall, so I can stay home and feed him.” Ughh…

It’s not that I don’t want to spend time with my father-in-law. I like him. I like him a lot. But these days with my step-daughter gone for the weekend, and the thought that my my wife was also going to be gone with her girlfriends, I was really looking forward to a nice, quiet weekend by myself at home…..to do chores, maybe do some Christmas shopping, catch up on some DVR recordings, and looking forward to working on some model train structures I am building.

But more to the point, at 39 years of age, I recognize that at times I am a pussy when it comes to the outdoors. You see, at the end of the night I like a hot shower, a comfortable bed, and the ability to use a clean bathroom in the morning when I have to make a dookie. None of these are present in the desert. No, the only thought process going through my head is that I will smell like smoke from the campfire, I won’t be able to fall asleep on uneven ground, I won’t be able to wash my hands or face, it’ll be 30 degrees overnight, and finally I’ll have to hold my crap as I cannot dig a hole out in the desert and squat above it. Now that I think about, I would never make a good contestant on Survivor, so Jeff, tear up my application.

The activities planned? Well, that another thing. There will be desert golf in which the loser lugs around the cooler of beer for everyone else…..Guess who will be getting his exercise that day? There will also be horse-shoes….a game I have never played. There will be rock-climbing….great, Why? There will be football tossing, in which I throw like a girl. And finally a campfire dinner with what my father-in-law says will require the “green bottle”….(i.e. Tanqueray gin martinis). Okay, that last part actually sounds fun and I may get on board with that, but I need a plan to participate yet not stay overnight in conditions that are less than optimal to me.

So am I a puss? Maybe I am these days, but I’ll have you know at one point I was indeed a Boy Scout. I actually made it up to being a ‘Life’ scout and spent plenty of nights in tents and sleeping bags and campfires and self-made latrines. I’ve dug plenty of holes in the ground and have gone without taking a shower or washing my hands a few days at a time. But that was then, and now I feel I’m a bit over that. No, I don’t see myself squatting in the early morning hours looking out for scorpions as I drop a duece while watching my breath at the same time…not when I know there is a clean toilet if I really want to.

So my solution? Invite my own father to go with us. That way I can tell my father-in-law it’s logistically inefficient for me to drive to his house (45 miles north) just to turn around and drive an additional 2 hours southeast. That would also mean I’m stuck and can only leave when he leaves which may prolong my perceived agony. No, by taking my own father I shave off at least 45 minutes each way of drive time, I can leave when we want to leave, and most importantly, I will have to take him home at the end of the evening thus sparing myself from having to sleep overnight. Yes, at the end of a long day of what I am sure will be plenty of embarassing laughs at my expense when it comes to the ‘guy’ things, I know I will have my hot shower, my clean bed, and my toilet the next morning where they will have none of these.

So my duty for tomorrow? I pick up my dad and his golf clubs, we go to the store and fill a cooler with ice and beer and snacks, I take my new camera and make the best out of the situation. Will it be horrible? No, I don’t think it will be. I’m sure I may even have some fun, and I know my father-in-law has been looking to do something with me for a long time (I kept making excuses for years why I can’t partcipate in his reindeer games). Plus my own father gets to go which will be good for our relationship as well and make my drive much more palatable.

It’s been a long time coming, but I spent a lot of the day yesterday editing this podcast episode into something I really wanted it to be.  It took a bit longer than expected to put this together as I was looking for the perfect music (thanks Limewire) for the introduction to set the mood and a great tie in to an overall theme. 

I also kind pushed myself here at a technical level in editing.  First, I used my portable Zoom H2 in the field for the first time.  It worked pretty well, although I did misplace the manual, so I had a few hiccups at first.  I have to work on the microphone gain.  For my initial recording I had set it to medium, and although we were sitting only a few feet from it with no other background noise, the recording seemed somewhat fainter than I expected, so I boosted it in Audacity.  It also took longer than I expected to transfer the raw MP3 from the Zoom to my PC.  This Podcast has a total of 3 mono tracks and 2 stereo tracks that I spliced together, remixed into a single track (to help save on bandwidth and space), faded out some entrance music and for the first time added an end trailer, and I’m pretty happy with the result seeing this is the most complex editing I’ve done thus far.

I also used Limewire for the first time, trying to find the perfect lead in bumper.  I had a specific song in mind, and I actually own a clean copy of the song somewhere but couldn’t find the CD, so I opted to download from the wild-wild-web.  The thing is, you never know exactly what you are going to get in quality or length, and sometime the descriptions don’t always match what you’re looking for so there is a few trial by fire attempts to get the right track.  Anyway, in this case, I chose “Grim Grinning Ghosts“, better known as the overall soundtrack for Disney’s Haunted Mansion.  It appears in a few various incarnations and pressed a few times in some rare LP’s and CD’s many of which are now out of print.  To me it was worth it.  For those that really like the Haunted Mansion, here’s an interesting and detailed site about the ride, it’s history, the story behind it, and its look throughout the various theme parks: DoomBuggies.com.

Also appearing in this episode is yet another libation.  The website is called ‘Cocktail Confessions’ for a reason, and so it keeping that dream alive I bring you Jack’s Pumpkin Spice Ale from Michelob.  It’s a seasonal beer (fall) that clocks in at 5.5% alcohol with hints of cloves, nutmeg and allspice.  As I explain in the podcast, this years batch didn’t taste all that ‘pumpkiny’ to me, and I might suggest you try Buffalo Bills Pumpkin Ale or even Blue Moon’s, Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale.  Both of these have a richer pumpkin and spice taste, and there are plenty of others.  If you know of any good ones you’d like to suggest, please drop me a line.

The meat and potatoes of this podcast however is the interview I recorded with my grandfather Harold.  He recently just turned 91 years old, and I kinda wanted to get some time with him before it was too late.  We’re all lucky he is still around after surviving being a tail gunner in a B-17 during WWII, having had open heart surgery, a pacemaker installed and a few other medical issues.  He’s still going strong…at least mentally.  He’s 100% Italian, being born here but his parents were immigrants.  I initially wanted the recording to be about his days being a master carpenter and working on the early builds of the Tiki Room, some of the facades on Main Street, and other contributions he made at the park, but after 40 minutes of great stories, I realized I wasn’t recording properly.  So instead of having him rehash everything all over, we just segued into his early days growing up in Wakefield, Michigan then eventually moving out to Anaheim, CA.  The actual recording was almost an hour long, and for this podcast I decided to break it up into a smaller segment I’m calling part 1, which is approx. 20 minutes long.

Finally my garage door died a loud and expensive death last week.  We had to buy a new one, and thus opted for the Heritage 3000, triple layer door: steel + insulation + steel.  It looks very nice, much quieter than the old one, and will hopefully help in reducing both our cooling and heating costs in the long run.  The really funny thing to me is how my neighbors have reacted.  To me, it’s just a garage door.  It’s white, it opens, it closes and does what any other garage door was designed for.  However, many of the men on my street have taken a very keen interest in its look, its operation, and overall functionality.  A real ‘Tim the Tool Guy Taylor’ moment where they all had to check it out and kick the tires per-se.  I personally found it very amusing that the men were all into it as much as they were.  In the end, it’s still a garage door.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (29.5MB)

As of this writing, it was 15 days ago that I had gone to the gym and weighed myself on the Doughboy 2000 weight-o-matic scale and was appalled at the numbers staring back in my face.

By no means am I ‘obese’ by layman’s standards, although I know my doctor has mentioned he’s like me to drop a few pounds as high blood pressure tends to run in my family.  I’m 5′11″, 39 years old, and on that day weighed in at around 238.5 lbs.  That is by far the heaviest I have ever recall myself weighing, and as I mentioned in a previous post, I had felt my waistline in my pants feeling a bit more snug lately.

But I don’t eat that horribly bad.  I rarely eat candy, may have a soda on a rare occasion, and generally watch what I eat.  Okay, I do like my Buffalo wings (but I’ve cut waaayyy back on Dr.’s orders), enjoy my cheeses and breads and I like my beer and whisky.  But even on the alcohol front, I generally only drink on weekends, drink my whisky straight, and don’t do too many mixers.

The one thing that I do feel that has altered a lot in my life is my frequency in the gym.  Before my shoulder surgeries (yes, plural…rotator cuff, left shoulder, twice), the blown out knee and injured back.  I was in the gym 4-5 times a week at about 45 minutes at a time.  On my best days I was bench pressing over 300 lbs., doing roughly 14-16 sets distributed over usually two body parts a session.  Today, I may make it the gym once a week for 30 to 45 minutes at most.  I cannot lift the amount of weight I used to and thus my cardio has gone down as has the gravity of my muscle structure.  Where once people both admired and feared my size, I now have begun taking on the appearance of a Caucasian Grimace.

I’m also 39 years old, work different hours, have increased chores at home and thus find I have have less free time than ever before.  And when I do have free time now, I don’t necessarily want to go to the gym.  My body feels tired and sore….and I’m sure my increased age and weight has also contributed to this.  Anyway, I sense I’m going off on a tangent here, so I’ll bring it back in.

For almost two weeks now I have been much more aware of what I have been eating…cutting back on portion size, eating earlier in the evenings, drinking much more water (no alcohol until the weekends) and have only managed to drop 2.5 lbs.  Well, I guess that’s a start, but I was hoping for somewhat better results.

My biggest disappointment is in myself for not getting in extra exercise as plannced at home.  Last year I bought a Wii Fit balance board and haven’t touched it in months.  Why?  My wife recently went on a business trip and I swore to myself that every day for the past week I was going to jump on it when I got home from work and do 20-30 minutes of cardio.  I had 6 days of freedom to do this without interruption, and 6 days I failed to do anything.  6 days I seemed to have come up with one excuse or another not to do anything.  I was hoping that after these two weeks, I would have at least dropped 5 lbs.

I’m so depressed about this, I wanna drink.