So today Hugo’s daycare provider was trying to get a jump on traffic and get out of town early. That being the case, I was picking up the kiddo around 1 and we had some time for a pit-stop prior to going home. Hellloooo Hollywood Video. I had a couple of coupons for free movies expiring at the end of the month (today) so I figured we could pick up a couple of flicks to keep up busy while Leah studied.

We checked out all the new releases and nothing was really looking all that great. I ended up selecting the critically acclaimed Blades of Glory as I had previously fallen asleep watching it one night and I wanted to see the end. Hugo wasn’t to keen on this and put it back on the shelf. I explained to him that we could get TWO movies and he could pick out the other one. He seemed OK with that and off he went to find one.

A whole store of movies, and THIS is what he picks:

Yes, thats Troy Bolton Zac Efron on the cover.

Yes, he picked this out of hundreds of other choices.  Some movies get a whole wall to themselves, this movie had a whole 2 cases amongst a sea of others.

Yes, it was an awesome movie – I don’t know how we missed it when it was in theaters (was it?).

Yes, I’ve created a monster.

Waffle House.  My love affair with Waffle House began during the summer between my Freshman and Sophomore years of college.  Previously I had actually avoided them as they are admittedly somewhat seedy in appearance (I think its contractually required by the franchise).

It was the summer and I was down visiting some friends at Virginia Tech (my alma mater).  We had a particularly hard night of partying and were in need of some recuperation the next morning.  Enter Waffle House, stage left.  Whatever, I wasn’t in any condition to argue, so off we went.  And let me tell you, it was fabulous.  Not the world’s greatest SELECTION mind you, but not bad either, and mighty tasty; quick service and cheap to boot.

As fate would have it that was one of my ONLY Waffle House experiences, I later met my future wife and she wasn’t too keen on them (I haven’t really figured on why yet).  I think I have been back maybe 3-4 times, but every time we see one around breakfast time, I always suggest it.

I only bring this up because some friends of mine are planning a weekend breakfast at the Evans (Bob Evans that is).  Bob is also excellent for breakfast, but he’s no Waffle House.  So if you have been avoiding the House that Waffles built, go out and give it a shot.

You’re gonna love it.

Since I’ve bored you all to death with this High School Musical thing already, I’ll make this the last for a bit (at least 3 days).

Tonight Hugo made me a proud papa.  He asked if he could take the Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens issue of People to bed with him; we even made the article one of his bedtime stories. He can totally pick Troy Bolton and Gabriella out of a crowd.  I’ve made him into a monster!

Not only can he identify their pictures, he also knows when their music is on – singing along merrily.  I couldn’t ask for a better son.

P.S. – Big thanks to Nora for providing said issue of People.

You all probably read Hugo’s blog (http://hugo.thelucks.org). You also all probably realize that sometimes it can take Hugo… a while… to get new photos uploaded to it. What you may NOT know, is that occasionally there is a somewhat not bad (I refuse to acknowledge it as good) reason for this.

Multiple laptops and locally stored photos.

You see, Hugo takes the photos from the camera and puts them on Leah’s home laptop and imports them into Picasa (http://google.com/picasa/). Once in Picasa they are stored locally on the laptop and must be uploaded to his blog for each post. The problem is that Hugo very rarely uses that laptop EXCEPT to export the photos from the camera into Picasa. Additionally once in Picasa, it is a fairly tedious process to find the right photo and get it uploaded to the blog and into a post. I’m actually pretty impressed a 2 year old can do it.

I’ve gotten pretty tired of waiting so long for his updates so this weekend I took it upon myself to find a better solution. One that will allow Hugo to post from any computer as well as make it an easier process.

The fruits of my labor have uncovered Flickr (http://flickr.com). Of course this is nothing new and most of you are probably familiar with it already. I hadn’t really investigated it however until yesterday.

Some key features:

• Unlimited storage
• Keeps Full-sized Images
• Community Features
• Easy Organization
• Easy Blog Integration

The above is for the ‘Pro’ plan, but at $25 a year, I’ve already found it to be well worth it.  The free service is a little more limited and good for getting your photos onto the web, but not as a full sharing/backup solution.

Google has a similar service (although it wasn’t as nice in my opinion) for Picasa, however $20 a year only got you 6GB of photo storage, and I already have over 6GB of photos, so the choice was pretty easy to make.

Google also only integrates with their own blog software (Blogger), but Flicker works with most popular blogging software (including those that you install on your own server, like Hugo has).

Hugo can now browse all his photos (once I finish uploading them) from any computer and can easily select any photo and send it to his blog with a few mouse clicks. He can also take a local photo and send it in an email and it will automatically be posted to the blog. Pretty fancy stuff Flickr.

So if you are looking for a place to not only backup your photos but to also have them easily accessible from the web, Flickr comes highly recommended.

For me, Instant Messaging (or IM henceforth) started during my high school years with a little program called ICQ.  Think of it as a much more powerful version of AOL’s AIM (at least AIM back during those days).  In fact, amongst those in ‘the know’, using AIM was one of the greatest sins that could be committed.  I still remember my ICQ number (4826971 – yes, you had numbers).

Then all the girls discovered AIM (sorry ICQ), so that became the de facto for IM’ing.  For the rest of high school and all through-out college I was constantly on AIM.  If I wasn’t I felt like I could be missing important conversations (or the all important reading of other peoples profiles/away messages).

But alas, all good things come to an end.  I graduated, moved up to Northern VA, started working, stopped chatting.  I probably hadn’t talked to anyone on IM in about 6 months prior to yesterday when I did some catching up with an old bud.  In the past 4 years I would say my number of IM conversations doesn’t even number above 30.  A number I might have had in a single (good) day of college.

I really couldn’t tell you why, other than I just didn’t see those people anymore.  Didn’t feel like I had anything to talk to them about.  It also seemed that none of the new friends I was making used IM (or at least it wasn’t like in college where you asked for their screen name before even getting a phone number).  Now that I’m back online I see that many others are still signed in (although the number has dropped significantly), probably conversing away.

So, dear reader, I ask you.  What made you stop/keep IM’ing these days?

So I’ve just been informed by the wife that the HSM Marathon will commence tomorrow night (8/24/07) promptly at 5:30pm. Be there or be lame.

Parting Question: How awesome would it be if your high school spontaneously broke out into song and choreographed dance?
Parting Answer: Very.

DC Government, you guys are geniuses.

2 months ago Leah got a parking ticket (my fault entirely – I hadn’t put the new tags on my plates).  Went online to pay it a few days later and noticed TWO tickets.  Same day, 1 block apart, 1 hour apart.  Clearly there was a mistake.  I said to Leah, I’ll call tomorrow and figure out what happened.

25 days later (and 2 days before the fines on these tickets double) I call up to figure out what happened.  They tell me the other ticket is for failure to have a proper inspection.  I tell them thats not possible as my inspection sticker was good through November of 07.  They tell me I have to mail in my case to them and then they can rule on if the ticket should be dismissed or not.

DC Government, you guys are geniuses.

I call Leah and tell her what went down and that I’ll send in the info along with photos etc prior to the weekend (we were going out of town).  30 days later (and 2 days before I could no longer contest it) I am searching for parking around the Adjudication building for a walk-in appointment.  1.5 hours later I’ve fought and won.  Awesome.

Ticket cost: $50.
Cost to go into the city and fight ticket (2.5 hours of work, gas, parking): $110

DC Government, you guys are crooks geniuses.

The Colin McRae DiRT demo came out somewhat recently for the PS3 and I downloaded it to check it out. I’m only mildly into racing games, and while this was a pretty one it didn’t really do much for me. Two things from the demo DID strike me however.

The first was the awesome menu system they have implemented (see below). It really is first class.

The second (you can see at the end of the above video) is that during level loading they display current stats on your racing like how many races you have one, max speed, average speeds, etc. It actually gives you something to do while your level loads.This got me thinking… Why don’t more game designers do something along these lines? I grow tired on the ‘loading’ splash screen pretty quickly, even if it has a little tip or something. These just don’t stand up to the replayability of many games. Instead, how about a mini-game that loads very quickly and we can waste time on while the level loads. Another idea is to pull in some sort of news feed so I can read up on current events as I wait for the level to load. I don’t really read current events but this would be a good way to get kids today into reading the news etc. Its something I think the upcoming generation needs in lieu of getting all their news from say digg.com or something.

Anyways, just an idea I am tossing out there for you developers (who aren’t reading this surely).

I’m a Netflix subscriber. No shame in admitting that certainly. I love to watch movies and Netflix offers good value and convenience. It also has the side effect of causing me to watch movies I might (certainly) not watch otherwise. This is a GOOD THING. About a year ago I had heard about this crazy little Disney movie called High School Musical. I’m not sure how I heard about it, maybe just a bit of overheard buzz or something… who knows. All I know is for whatever reason it got added to my Netflix queue.

This was a GOOD THING. Let me say that again (this time with bold). This was a GOOD THING.

I was watching this little High School Musical thing one evening after Hugo went to bed I think. I don’t really remember the circumstances. I do remember Leah coming home as I was watching it and starting it over for her. Then we sat on the couch and watched the whole thing. I liked it for most of the movie. Then they performed the final two songs and I went from like to head over heels in love with it. It was a GOOD MOVIE. I’m not sure what I was expecting but I knew this was something special. So I think we probably watched it again the next day with Hugo. Then we bought the movie, then the soundtrack, then the board game, and t-shirt. We watched it with the lyrics displayed. Then we knew all the lyrics. Then we learned the dance moves (on our own). Then we watched a version where they taught you the dance moves. I say ‘we’ because I wasn’t the only one caught up in the HSM fever. Oh no – Leah knew the dance as well as I did and even Hugo was learning the words and dancing along.

I think in 20 years I will look back quite fondly on our family bonding time over HSM.

Wow, that was a long intro since I haven’t even started talking about what I meant to when I started talking… Hairspray (the movie based on the musical based on the movie) and High School Musical 2. Both released this summer. Both wonderful movies and soundtracks. Both listened to constantly by the family, both sung along to constantly by the family. They say HSM 2 broke the cable viewer record with 16.something million. I was one of them I am proud to say (recorded then commercials skipped of course). I don’t think Hairspray did anything special, except make me fall in love with it.

Maybe I just have a crush on Zac Efron (he starred in all 3 of these), who knows. He’s certainly crush worthy. Nora is going to marry him one day I hope. We made a HSM convert out of her as well. We’re trying to spread it, like in that movie The Ring. Only instead of killing people we just want to make them happy; show them what they have somehow been missing but didn’t even know.

We’re planning a HSM marathon (1+2). I’ve even gone and cut the commercials from the 2nd that I recorded and digitally remastered it ala George Lucas. I’ll keep you all posted as to when that is. It will be a GOOD THING.

About 4 years ago for my birthday my wonderful to-be-wife Leah went out and bought me a television. A large television. A HD television. I adore this television. Sure it’s not a fancy plasma or LCD (or even DLP) but it’s easy on the eyes nonetheless. Soon thereafter we purchased a progressive scan DVD player. Then an Xbox. Then I got component cable hook-ups for the Gamecube. Everything was going according to plan. Eventually we also got an HD cable box. Colors and resolution were glorious, life was bliss.

And then we got Tivo…

Tivo was a double edged sword. On one edge we were recording television, skipping ads, getting Tivo’s recommendations, and even Leah was loving it. On the other edge… Tivo had no HD outputs. None. S-video was as good as it got… Sweet jibblets – S-video… Maybe some HD televisions handle s-video input well. Heck, I’m SURE some do.

But not mine…

Instead I got a blocky, fuzzy, washed out image. It was painful. So bad for me in fact that I tried the HD cable box with DVR. I can sum that box up with one word. Unusable. If you have a DVR cable box I hope you never use a Tivo. You cannot go back. I don’t know who came up with the interface for Comcast (my then provider) but they should have been fired. Blacklisted. Shot. Words really cannot express the chasm that separated the usability of these products.

I digress.

Did I say Tivo was painful? Scratch that. It IS painful – we are still forced to use it. The gaming and movies have forged on in HD, moving from xbox and progressive scan to Playstation 3 and it’s Blu-Ray. But television. It lingers behind. Unable to complete the move so needed to make my TV life complete.

So I present to you my birthday wish. 4 years later it is time to come full circle into the HD era.

Tivo HD.

It’s not a Series 3. No, its affordable instead (What has become of technology when $300 is affordable?). Slightly downgraded but hey, I can live with compromise. Honey, are you listening? You’ll love it too – I promise!