bamatone.net

Original URL: http://bamatone.livejournal.com/293780.html

Or... my trip to San Diego.

Work sent me to a conference here for a few days, and I got as much else done as I could. That included venturing around the bay where my hotel was located to Luigi's at the Beach, which is an amazingly awesome pizza (pepperoni pesto) /seafood (lobster ravioli) / beer (lots of local SD brews) place with umpteen high def tv screens. I mean really, it's amazing how many tv's they fit into that small place.

Also checked out Belmont Park, which has a pretty decent wooden roller coaster called The Giant Dipper. There's also a nice boardwalk that runs up and down the long beach. I saw a nice (tiny) three bed / two bath beach side condo for sale - only $860,000. Anyone wanna go halvsies?

My first "big adventure," though, was my trip to Target. Long story short, I needed pants. Like, nice pants. Hotel front desk said Target, so off I went. I was going to take the bus - it was only 2 miles away. But I got impatient and just started walking. And then I kept on walking. Then I saw that the Mission Bay Dr. bridge wasn't pedestrian friendly, so I took an alternate route. Through the homeless folks, the park, the dog park, and lots of busy roads.

An hour and a half later... I finally made it. It was a long, stupid walk, and it ended up being 3.7 miles. I illustrate below (click for larger image):



The coolest thing about the trip, though, was how I got back to the hotel. I'd been Tweeting (here) about my walk the entire time, and my friend Lawrence Eng, being from San Diego, took notice. You probably don't remember, but Lawrence was the person most responsible (with Espen a close second! ) for my trip to San Francisco a couple of years ago (here).

And being a kind hearted individual, Lawrence called and offered to pick me up and take me to lunch (here and here)! \o/ (Don't worry, Opera employees... We talked shop!)

Then the conference happened. Yada yada yada.

Got done early Friday, so my coworker and I decided to hit up Sea World. It's definitely nice to walk around a park like that at this time of year when there aren't many people. Oh, and by the way... they serve beer there.

And now I present to you the picture album from the trip. I worked (semi)hard on the captions. Enjoy.

Original URL: http://bamatone.livejournal.com/292467.html

During the hours long monsoon that occurred on the Quad before kickoff this weekend, my T-Mobile G1 suffered catastrophic rain damage through my shorts pocket. At first the touchscreen wouldn't work, so finally I just turned it off and waited until Sunday when it would be totally dried out. But on Sunday, it wouldn't boot at all. Dead.

I am very unhappy.

So I got my old T-Mobile Dash back from Leon and have been setting it up again. Flashed it with a Windows 6.1 ROM made by kavana at xda-developers (awesome site), loaded up a weather widget and Opera Mini, and even got the data connections all figured out. (Haven't tried MMS yet.) The trickiest part was loading all my contacts, but I decided to just go the easy route and set up ActiveSync with my Exchange server at work. Now I have contacts and email. I even set up Gmail through IMAP - first time I've ever done that. Very cool stuff.

The Dash is a good phone, but it's almost three years old, which is ancient in today's tech world! But I didn't know what to do. Don't want to spend a fortune on another G1 when there are supposed to be a lot more Android phones hitting the market by Christmas. But there are no release dates... or are there!?

Turns out T-Mobile just today announced the pre-sale of the Cliq, Motorola's first Android phone. The highlight is MOTOBLUR, which is a platform to sync all your social networks along with contacts, email, etc. (Kind of like Trillian Astra?) I was a little wary, but the demo is so well done, they could have sold me one on the spot for my right kidney.

You can take a look at the new Motorola Cliq here: http://www.t-mobile.com/cliq.

Make sure you launch the BLUR demo. Pre-sale is scheduled for Oct. 19 - Nov. 1.

Original URL: http://bamatone.livejournal.com/288062.html

Can someone please explain to me "FedEx Express?" Federal Express.... Express? Is that like double-quick?

Also, the City of Tuscaloosa just honored me with a new license plate. For $111.

Also also, just completed a Rock Band 2 challenge that included:

• Motörhead - Ace of Spades '08
• Mastodon - Colony of Birchmen
• Joan Jett - Bad Reputation
• Soundgarden - Spoonman
• Sonic Youth - Teen Age Riot

I am pleased.

Also also also, Opera 10 Release Candidate was just released, complete with a brand spankin' newly designed logo. Check it out if you love your computer and the interwebs.

Original URL: http://bamatone.livejournal.com/287626.html

So what's been going on with moi? Well, I was all set to go see Braves vs. Dodgers on July 31, but had tire issues with the Durango. By the time I changed the tire in the Ferg parking deck and got done at the Dodge dealership, it was too late to make opening pitch. So I cancelled that trip. Boo. I had great seats in the first row on the first base side, too. Sigh.

There is some good news, though. On Aug. 1, I officially took a new position in the same office I've been working in at UA. It is essentially a promotion. I'm quite happy about it, and so far I haven't bitten off more than I can chew. *knock on wood* The first few weeks are stressful since there are a couple of major upgrades to be done. (One is in the books already.) But things will even out, and I will get to go to San Diego this fall for a conference, so that's pretty neat.

Last Saturday was fun filled with shooting UA grad, then booking it to Montgomery for Melanie's wedding, topped off with a Biscuits game with Mom. The highlight of that day might have been hearing this folksy, country, gospel fusion of "Dixie" on the Oldies station that may or may not have been sung by Elvis. I'm gonna have to go look for it later. (*many minutes pass* "An American Trilogy." Bingo.)

In the middle of this new job stuff, of course, is Bid Week. So I've been Zapping when I can, which so far hasn't been too much. But Saturday and Sunday are huge because I'll be at Miss. St. Bid Day in Starkville, then back in Tuscaloosa for UA Bid Day.

Heading to Arkansas next weekend for some visiting of peoples. More on that later.

Twenty-two days until ALABAMA FOOTBALL! Just listed my Va. Tech tickets on StubHub yesterday. I'm doing my best Mr. Burns impression here. Excellent...

Original URL: http://bamatone.livejournal.com/285436.html

I've been avoiding writing the wrap up since I got back. Not sure why. The posts I intend to be epic always turn out to be fairly short, and vice versa. Anyway, on Thursday, June 25, Grant, Candice, and I trekked down from T-Town to Stockton.

About 30 minutes into the trip, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died.

Finally got to see Doug's Tiki Bar! Spent a semi-uncomfortable few hours sleeping on Samantha's living room floor, then got up at 3am so we could all begin the hour long trip to the Mobile airport.

Long story short, we made it to Belize. Even shorter story, we made it down to Placencia. This was the first real taste of the country. Actually, scratch that. The first real taste was the flight from Belize City to Placencia. You can see in my pictures how it looks from the air. The cab ride from the Placencia airport to our hotel was our first close up taste of the country. And so far, so good.

Our hotel room was very nicely located next to the beach itself, and a place called De'Tatch. There are a few things that really made the trip as excellent as it was, and one was De'Tatch. It's a little hut that serves drinks and food almost anytime you need it. The drink of choice in Belize is Belikin beer. Personally, I prefer the stout variety. Guiness Foreign Extra Stout is also very good and has a higher (7.9%) alcohol by volume. And of course they love their rum.

The first few days were spent lounging on the beach, drinking Belikins and Rum Punches, and eating lobster. Oh, right. Lobsterfest. Nom nom. I had lobster tail, lobster fritters, lobster dumplings (from an Asian lady from Maryland), and lobster on a stick. The coconut white rice there is fantastic, too.

And speaking of coconuts, you can see from the picture above that coconut trees are everywhere in Belize. You can literally just pull one down and crack it open if you wish. (Which was done.)

On Suday, Billy Mays died.

So by Monday, Lobsterfest was over and we were ready to do some adventuring. Tuesday morning we set off to see the Mayan ruins and some sort of awesome cave. We swam all up in that cave, and the water was amazingly cold and awesome. We even had these little miners' headlights to see. Oh, and the current was so strong at the mouth of the cave that standing straight up with the water up to my waist, I could not hold my ground. That was definitely one of the absolute high points of the trip for me.

Of course, there were bugs. Lots of 'em. They bit. And it was hot as Hades. And most of the roads were not paved. But all the good outweighed stuff like that. Just bring your sunscreen and bug spray if you plan on making this trip.

On Thursday, we took a boat out with Kagey. This dude was bad ass. Seriously. He could dive 60 feet with only his flippers, mask, and spear. No scuba gear. He'd go down, grab us a lobster, come back up and throw it in the boat. He once came back with four lobsters in a single dive. This was when he wasn't busy spearing barracudas and mackerels. Once we had about 12 lobsters, he drove us over to an island where he cleaned and cooked them. And we ate like kings. Also a high point in the trip.

I mentioned before that De'Tatch was one of the things that really made the trip excellent. ("It really tied the room together, did it not.") Another was the people we met. So many awesome people. Candice and I met Jason and Heidi our very first night in Belize on our way back to the hotel. (Side story: Because everything starts with the sun in Belize (i.e. really fucking early), everything also closes early. We drank so much during the day that each night it felt like 2 or 3am when it was really more like 9pm!) After that, Heather, Amanda, Jackie, Steve, and that whole group. I'm not sure when Simon and Brad fell into the mix, but as people came and went, Simon was there for the long haul. Then we met Miles and Jessica shortly before Olivia, Lindsey, and Julianne. ("Are those Arkansas A's or Alabama A's?" "Roll Tide!") The trip really would not have approached the level of awesomeness it obtained without these people.

That doesn't even include the bartenders. Greg from NYC was our guy at De'Tatch. He really was one of those people who had been everywhere and seen everything. There was David at Pickled Parrot, girl from North Carolina (or was it South?) at Barefoot, Tracy from Delaware/Florida at J-Byrd's, and of course Erik at Yoli's.

Which reminds me... Have to mention how awesome Yoli's is! I hate that I don't have any pictures of it, but it sits right at the edge of the water on a pier. You can literally dock your boat, walk 30 feet, and there you are. It's easy to spend money here, but since the exchange rate is in our favor, it's like using Monopoly money. If I had to sum up our trip in one picture, it would be this one on the right:

The day after I returned to the U.S., Steve McNair died. So allow me to recap. I go to Marietta, GA for two weeks and Alabama has to vacate 20something wins and gets put on probation again. I go to Belize for one week and at least 4 really famous people die. I think I'll try to hold off on my next big trip for a while.

Here are all the photos I took: http://my.opera.com/BAMAToNE/albums/show.dml?id=817760