Where's my Blackberry!!!!

So being the techy triplet dad implies two things... Number one I am the father of 4 year old triplets and number two I must be involved on technology in some fashion. I am a self proclaimed gadget guru, or at least I like to think I am and I love technology. Information technology fits my ADD personality perfectly. Its constantly changing so it holds my attention to a certain degree since most things bore me fairly quickly. Well one of the coup de grâce in technology IMHO is the ever changing smart phone. It’s like a laptop on your hip. You can surf the web, make a phone call, play a game, navigate your car, ect, ect, ect.... all from this device hanging off your belt. Well my next IMHO is the blackberry is the best when it comes to enterprise smart phone solutions, key word being "enterprise". This is provided your company has a blackberry server also known as BEZ server. If your just a fly by night techy wanna be and your company doesn't have a BEZ server or its just something for personal use then you’re probably just another iPhone candidate. To me web browsing on the iPhone via Safari can't be beat with that large iPhone screen. Having said all this, my wife (who isn't on any BEZ server) loves blackberry pearl I got her a couple years ago. Also she doesn’t use any of the email features on the phone, its strictly texting and phone calls for her. She was a previous palm Treo user and I believe she prefers her BB to the old Treo she had. Now she would probably go banana's if I got her a iPhone. But my point is you don’t have to be a corporate junkie to love the BB.

So before I digress, this post is really about this cool new app I ran across the other day in my BB app store. It’s called "Where's my Phone" by a company names Essare LLC. What’s so cool about this app is it helps you find your blackberry when you lose it. Any this has become a common occurrence at my residence on one too many mornings. With 6 little wandering hands, anything sitting on a counter or in arms reach is fair game to my kids. I wish I would have found app sooner it would have saved my kids from hearing a few mumbled curse words as I stomped around the house in search of my blackberry before leaving for work. Which also I might add was found wedged behind a door on vibrate, so calling the phone was useless in order to locate it. Also looking behind the door on the floor was also probably one of the last places I would ever look. Actually I think I gave up finding my phone and ended up finding it by accident.

Well this software solves all those problems. Using a set of preprogrammed codes, you can locate your phone through a variety of ways via email using the codes. “Where’s my phone” has about all the lost situations you can think of covered. In my situation above I described earlier, what I could have done had I had this app installed? I would have sent my blackberry a email, with a code in the subject of the email. Once my phone receives the email, it would start sending out a loud beeping alarm and also lock the phones home screen. Even if the phone was on vibrate, it would have over written this profile setting and made the phone beep. In addition it will send me back a email to let me know the phone is in alarm mode now and what battery amount is left. Another feature is the phone gets is locked, if anyone finds the phone they cannot use it. However they do have the option of calling me via a link on the phone. In addition I can send a code to my phone to call me at any number and then listen to where ever my phone is to help identify its lost location. There are other multiple tools installed like GPS and other options to help locate your lost blackberry. The GPS location from what I read is spotty, and I am still having issues getting it to work correctly on my bold. But still a cool feature none the less if you can get the GPS reporting working accurately. Just the fact that it locks the BB down for security, sends out a audible alarm (even in vibrate mode), and you can do the call back to locate feature makes it worth the 3 or 4 bucks in my humble opinion. I would have paid $5 that one morning just to find my BB and not be late for work. I am crippled without it. So this is my review on a cool find in the BB app store. Probably one of the coolest apps yet I have found yet.

The Italian Christmas Donkey

Christmas Lights...

Wow

Ed Hardy is so Thomas Kinkade

The year was 1999, my wife and I are walking through the Avenues mall in Jacksonville.  We walk by a storefront that had the look of an old cottage.  We noticed some cool looking paintings in the store window so being new homeowners and having a desire to decorate our walls, we decided to walk in and take a look.  Upon entering the store one of the sales associates nabs us and leads us over to  the main display wall.  The salesperson messes with an adjustable dimmer light shining down on what turns out to be an overpriced lithograph someone had painted various highlights.  It turns out it wasn't even Thomas Kinkade who had done the highlights but some desperate artist he supposedly commissioned to do it for him.  My wife and I were buying the sales presentation until they mentioned the price.  I don't remember how much it was but being as compulsive as my wife and I were 11 years ago with a pocket full of credit cards.  It had to be really expensive because we did a 180 and walked out of the store.  Over the next 3 years, Kinkade paintings took off like a California wildfire.  Every where you turned it was Thomas Kinkade crap:  key chains, candles, plates, screen savers, ect, ect, ect...  I am soooo glad Dawn and I didn't buy one of the lithographs that day.  I got so sick of seeing his cheesy paintings plastered over everything.  You couldn't step 3 feet into a Walgreens without catching an eye shot of some tacky trinket with a house and lamp scene plastered across it waiting for some sucker to purchase.

Having said all that, Ed Hardy...  It's getting old really quick.  It was neat about a year ago.  Now just glancing through any Sunday paper ad section your guaranteed to find 100 items with Ed Hardy plastered across them.  Even in some of the most obscure stores you will find something at least one item with a snake and tiger and the letter "Ed Hardy":  winter boots, laptops, perfume, hair dryers, and even Smart cars.  In addition they have the audacity to markup the merchandise as if it were unique.  At this point Mr Hardy is about as unique as Mr. Kinkade.  I think the official breaking point for me was about 6 months ago I went to the car wash and I purchased a Ed Hardy air freshener to hang from my rear view mirror.  I give this stuff another year and it's history and man will I be glad!

Children are starving in China....

Today was one of those cold (55 degree, brrrrrrr), raining, winter days
here in sunny Florida. I came home from work early and spent the day

laying around watching old Christmas 

specials on DVD with the trips.  You know the

one with Jimmy Duranta as the narrator. 

OK anyone under 40 probably has no idea

who Jimmy Duranta is, and neither did I

until I Googled him. But I promise if you were

watching "Frosty the Snowman" you would hear old

Jimmy D. doing the narrating and can't help but wonder where

have I heard that voice before...

So, as the evening progressed Dawn and I decided it was a lazy

night and pizza was in order.  I made a run to the grocer

and picked up a couple frozen pizzas.  One fancy chicken flat

bread for me and Dawn and another for the trips. 

The trips being your typical picky kids only like simple

cheese and peperoni pizza. However, one of the problems with

frozen pizza is the size.  I am not sure if this is another vanilla

(for a explanation of vanilla see my first blog post) marketing

technique.  But the larges are only really medium size pizzas.

Well, the kids were lucky to each have a piece of pizza.

Dawn and I devoured our flat bread pizza.  Which for a guy with

a appetite like mine, is only a apa-teaser (pun intended).  I

would have loved to eat the second half of the kid's pizza,

except they all insisted on getting a second piece to entertain

themselves during dinner.

Well, my kid's see I am hungry and bring me a piece

from their plate.  Each piece has been so nicely manipulated

and picked at to a point my dogs wouldn't be interested in eating

it.  Dawn gave me that look  and commented to make sure I thank

them for their thoughtfulness.  However, after looking at the pizza,

I lost my appetite. 

Modified Power Wheels

I was in the market for another power wheels battery operated riding toy for my triplets since they have one Power Wheels Jeep already and they constantly fight over who is going to drive. This is one of the nightmares of triplets, you have to have three of everything.  Oh sure I know parents out there who will say, "Oh what a great sharing opportunity for them to learn".  To them I say,  OK - sure get a life!  You haven't had to listen to my kid's whine for hours on end until its their turn.  I will leave the sharing lessons to their preschool teacher...

Thus starts another obsession in my crazy OCD personality.

Day 1.   I start doing a little power wheels Googling and run across a website called http://www.modifiedpowerwheels.com/ (MPW). Well this website is filled with many other OCD dad's like myself. It is amazing some of the modifications people do to these things. Check out this one: http://modifiedpowerwheels.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=10820

Day 2.  I have found and purchased from craigslist.com a Little Tykes Hummer and PW Barbie VW Beetle. Both of which are not running and I don't realize this until I get them home. Which is probably the direct result of my OCD since I am a bit compulsive and don't know what to look for when buying these things used.

Day 3.  I have traded the 2 newly acquired riding toys to a guy on the MPW website for 2 battery operated PW quads. Which if I might add was kinda what I was looking for in the first place. Since this will get my kids familiar with riding ATV's, which I'm hoping to get when the triplets get older . Also the quads run so that's better than the 2 prior riding toys. However it did cost me a little to get 2 running units.

Day 4.  After obsessive reading I'm a minor expert on the in's and out's of MPW and ready to start tearing out the rear end gear box of one of the quads, upgrade it and then put 18 volt batteries in for extra horse power (if there is such a thing as HP on a PW).

Day 5.  I think I might have my wife convinced to trade our first PW jeep (the catalyst of all this madness) for a third PW quad since now the three fight over riding the two quads and no one wants to touch the jeep anymore.  I'm not any better off than before this all started.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

So what's up with vanilla these days?

I run to the grocer (I like the way "grocer" sounds versus grocery store) this evening to pick up my late night dess-rett (pet name my wife and I have for dessert). So I pick up an old classic, a Pepperidge Farm Golden 3-Layer Cake sculpted with 3 waves of chocolate frosting which envelope the whole golden creation. It's cake-making at its decadent best. I plagiarized that off the box which I am sure you want a piece after reading... Well you can't have your cake without ice cream and of course what's a chocolate frosting envelope without vanilla. Next came the epitome of what makes America so successful, choices... I had to choose between 5 varieties of vanilla. I didn't even know there are 5 varieties of vanilla. I thought vanilla was like vanilla. I mean when someone is talking about something boring or uninteresting, they say "that's so vanilla"... Well now you can't even have boring vanilla without being extra boring... There was the old classic which I assumed there would be Vanilla, then Double Vanilla, and Vanilla Bean, French Vanilla and lastly Double Vanilla (this one I definitely don't understand). So I go with the one that seems like it would taste the best, Vanilla Bean. I really have no idea, I am only guessing the word bean implies some true natural flavor that will burst upon reaching my taste buds.

I get home and open my Pepperidge Farm Golden 3-Layer Cake sculpted with 3 waves of chocolate frosting which envelope the whole golden creation and plop 3 huge spoonfuls of vanilla bean ice cream in a metal bowl. Don't ask why a metal bowl, I would like to say it makes the ice cream taste better because it absorbs the cold chill or something scientific, however the true reason is another blog post and more related to the Christmas dishware now over taking our kitchen. So anyway, it all was just so vanilla... my taste buds didn't explode and I wish I would have gotten the double vanilla, maybe I would then see things more clearly...