Da Beard

Shaved off the mountain beard this week, disappointing many but it's just not for me. Like my boss said - back to civilization. I kept it a little over 3 weeks, so pretty good growth and I had gotten used to the look, just not the feel. I do feel like I look weird without it, but I'm sure I'll get used to not having it soon enough. I'm sure it'll make a comeback sometime in the future - probably next vacation. Although that mustache looks full of class...

Patagonia Trip Recap - Ushuaia

As I stated in the general post, after a long day of travel, we landed in Ushuaia.  The southernmost city in Argentina.   A small port city with lots of charm.  We arrived on a Thursday evening and would be boarding our cruise Saturday evening, so we figured in order to make the best of our days in Ushuaia we’d be better off renting a car.

This proved to be a wise move because it gave us more freedom to explore the surroundings.  We were able to check out Tierra Del Fuego National Park and we were also able to do a glacier hike which would have been harder to do if we didn’t have transportation.   The park and glacier hike proved to be a good taste of what we were getting ourselves into.  The scenery was fantastic and the hike to the glacier hike was challenging enough to scare us into thinking we wouldn’t be able to complete our hikes in the time we had allotted.  The weather was cool which made it perfect for all the hiking, we even got some snow as we got to the top of the glacier hike, but it never was uncomfortable.  It really was ideal conditions.  Ushuaia also has an old prison which they have turned into a museum.  It’s both a maritime museum and a historical museum about the prison, it was an interesting way to pass some time, while we waited to board the cruise on saturday.

We stayed at Hotel Austral, which I’d definitely recommend, it was reasonably priced and located very close to the main street where we found some great restaurants, bars and shops.

Where we ate in Ushuaia:

Casa de los Mariscos

Cafe Bar Bananas

Parrilla La Estancia - YouTube

Moustachchio’s

Dublin Irish Pub

Galway Irish Pub

Patagonia 2011

It’s already been a week since I’ve returned from my trip to Patagonia.  It was an incredible experience.  Everywhere we turned there was beautiful scenery to take in.  I went with 3 other friends and had a great time.  I think I’ll try to do some more detailed posts about the trip in the future, but just wanted to get a general post out there before too much time goes by. 

 

The trip started in Chicago we flew to Ushuaia, Argentina’s southernmost city via Miami and Buenos Aires.  That made for a long travel day, but well worth it.  In Ushuaia we boarded a ship that took us to Punta Arenas, Chile.   Spent a few days in Chile’s Torres Del Paine before returning to Argentina – El Calafate and El Chalten.  We ended the trip in Buenos Aires before we returned home.  Hopefully I’ll be able to updated a little bit about all those places soon.

I did try to keep a Tumblr blog going as we traveled – obviously I could only update when in a wifi area and since we didn’t have computers to upload our pictures I could only use pictures from my iphone.  but if you want a sneak peak of the trip head over to 180Southbound.

Pig Roast for Jon's 30th Birthday

Pig Roast

Last weekend my friend Jon turned 30. To celebrate he decided to have friends over for a pig roast. He put a lot of work into it, tore up his yard to build this temporary pit, had the metal part custom made which worked out perfectly. He researched different methods on the web and decided on that setup. The whole night turned out great. Good food and a fun evening spent with friends.

Christmas Movie

Here's the Christmas time lapse video. The pictures from my parents house were taken using both my macbook and my dad's macbook pro, therefore that section is longer, since we had twice the footage. Music from Trans Siberian Orchestra.

Thanksgiving

Finally got around to splicing together some time lapse videos from Thanksgiving in Michigan this year. This was my first time doing this kind of project. I thought it was pretty cool. I used Gawker on my macbook to make these.

Ovaltine

Our old apartment complex used to have this tall smokestack in the middle of the parking lot (it was an old Ovaltine factory)... It doesn't anymore.

8 in 90

Along the same lines of the previous video, here are 8 months of Buckley's life in 90 seconds.

My Day Yesterday

I came across a cool blog post where a guy recorded movie clips throughout the day and edited down to a 90 sec movie with no added soundtrack. He posted it on flickr and created a group for others to do the same. I thought it was cool so I tried it out a few saturdays ago.

The Pull

This last weekend I was at The Pull, which is a 111 year old tradition at my college. This year was pretty wild as the Odd Year team won in a pretty definitive way. Pull's usually 3 hrs long and at the end of the Pull they measure to see which side has taken more rope. Well this year the sophomore team won in 67 mins. It was quite the sight. I was one of the lucky one's that got to coach a team, that was pretty special. The others I coached with make an effort to attend every year and most of us haven't missed one yet. This year was the 10th anniversary of my team winning the Pull, so it was pretty special for me to see this team win in such a legendary way. Every year I look forward to this weekend. It's a chance for us to get together and remember the good times we had when we had the responsibility of passing on this great tradition to the next generation. I'm sure we will continue on with this tradition for as long as possible, so if you're ever in at the Pull look for me on the banks of the Black River.

Randy Pausch 7/25/08

Prof Randy Pausch died today. He was the Carnegie Mellon professor whose last lecture I blogged about earlier. He lost his battle to pancreatic cancer. He was a great man who inspired many people with the way he led his life. Take some time to keep his family and friends in prayer.

macbook woes

My macbook is in perfect working order again. While the problem wasn't a huge deal it was quite the ordeal to get it back to normal. It took 3 visits to the apple store in 2 weeks. The problem was that red light you see in the picture above. That light is coming from the headphone jack. When that light is on the speakers on the macbook don't work and the only way to hear anything is to plug in headphones. When it first started out everything would be fine until I plugged in headphones, then when I took them out the light would come on. After a while the red light was on all the time, so the speakers didn't work at all. A quick search on the internet showed that this was problem that many were having but the responses varied from a logic board problem to just something hooking on the headphone jack. The easy fix was to plug the headphone in and pull it out a few times. I tried that - it didn't work. Finally decided to make an appoitntment. They told me to try that, the headphone jack trick. I was not very pleased with that "fix" but I tried it anyway, was never able to get it to work. So I went in again, this time they decided to keep it a few days and switch out the logic board - which is a pain but it worked. The only bad thing is that when I got the computer back the speaker issue was fixed, but now the bluetooth didn't work. In I went again, they dissassembled it and messed with the connections and now it is working again. I'm glad apple is able to take care of all these problems and its just a minor inconvinience, but I thought they were supposed to be a superior product that shouldn't have so many problems. I'm just waiting to see what else can go wrong.

Buck Buck Buckuck

Buckley got a haircut a few weeks ago here's a picture of the short haired Buckster and below a long hair.  She also graduated from puppy class.

9nineteen

So a long time ago I bought a website for our wedding. Included in the package was another domain name that I never did anything with. Recently I decided to put it to good use, so head over to 9nineteen sometime. There you will find my Tumblr site - which is a mini blog. I'll still update this blog although obviously it has been very infrequent lateley, but the way Tumblr is set up it's much easier to post little things that I come across on my everyday interwebbing. I've also set it up so that the feeds from this blog and my music blog go there as well, so you can just check there if you want.

Buckley

Two weeks ago we got ourselves a puppy. We've been wanting one for a while but never had the timing right. We finally decided to go for it and got a Soft Coated Wheaten.  Wheatens average around 35 lbs when fully grown, they don't shed, love people and they like the water.  Should make for a good pet.

After a couple of days of wrestling with name ideas - we even resorted to our own whiteboard session - we named her Buckley after Jeff Buckley (also like the dog in The Royal Tannenbaums) Elizabeth brought the name to the table and we both liked it so we went with it. So far Buckley's been a great pup, she is learning quickly although she can be stubborn at times. We are all getting adjusted to our new lives together but I think she fits right in.

old milwaukee

Last weekend Elizabeth had a baby shower to attend in Milwaukee, so I thought I'd tag along and explore a little around Milwaukee's downtown.  I met John McDonald for lunch and we hung out a few hours around there.  John brought along his 7 month old daughter so I could meet her.  We had a good time catching up.  Unfortunately Elizabeth had the good camera at the shower, I had an old camera but it didn't have any batteries.  I did venture to go buy some batteries but when I got some the camera didn't work, so I don't any pictures of our visit.  We did take some when Elizabeth came back to pick me up though.  Anyway we had a nice saturday there and truly enjoyed the Milwaukee lakefront area.

The Last Lecture

My last few years of high school I received lots of mail from Carnegie Mellon University, I didn't know anything about that school so I didn't bother to take a look at it. Had I seen this video back then I would have definitely given them a serious look.

They have a series called the Last Lecture, this particular lecture was given last year by Dr. Randy Pausch, and it was indeed his final lecture as he has terminal cancer. I remember seeing a lot of news coverage when the lecture took place but I had never listened to it, it truly is a great lecture.
Do yourself a favor and watch/listen to the whole thing sometime, I'll also post a summarized version below.

Get Your Tickets?

Photo @ hrtmnstrfr


I ordered my tickets to Lollapalooza a few weeks ago, and I'm pretty excited for this year's lineup. Of course the headliners are a big draw - Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, Wilco but I'm also looking forward to a whole lot of other bands, here are some highlights for me : Raconteurs, Black Keys, Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, G Love, The National, John Butler Trio, Battles, Rouge Wave, Mason Jennings, The Whigs, and Manchester Orchestra. Should be a great weekend, let me know if you're in.

Last weekend I gathered up all my trusty Nalgene bottles and put them away for good.  There's been a lot of coverage about those bottles and the cancer causing BPA from which they are made.  The news came out several months ago, and I didn't deem it necessary to stop using them, figuring it was just another health scare.  The reports have intensified these last few weeks and seems we've been getting a lot of news agencies trying to use our bottle collection process as a backdrop for their news reports.  Anyway last week I read that Nalgene was pulling all those bottles from the shelves of retailers nationwide.  I took that to be a pretty good sign I shouldn't use them anymore.  They are making new BPA-free bottles so look out for those, of course you can also use the old school milky-white Nalgene bottles or pick up a cool Sigg bottle, like the ones in front here.  

Nalgene and other Lexan bottles have been a staple of our generation, kind of sad to see their demise.

caLI

Last weekend, Dave and Jackie visited us from California. We took a few days off work and hung out with them doing touristy things, my in-laws joined us for most of the weekend as well. Elizabeth did a good job recapping the weekend, so check it out there , just thought I'd add some other pictures.
The first night out we ended up at a private party room, which used to be a law library, here I am catching up on my favorite torts.
Spent the next day being all touristy, here we are on the architectural boat tour.
Ended up at Wrigley watching the Cubs open a can on the Pirates (sorry Dan)