Lewies Blog

As she sleeps, I think of what she has done today, or what she is going to do. I think about all the things we have done together, and for each other. Does she love me as much as I love her? Do I love her enough?

We show our love for each other on different levels. She is a very emotional person and puts a lot of feeling into her love. For me, it is hard to express my own other then doing things for her. Just saying “I love you” isn’t always as meaningful for me to say other then actually proving it.

Sometimes, we are blinded by each others love for each other that we can not even see it for what it is. It is truly a joyouse moment when everything comes back together and we are able to see with each others eyes the emotion behind them.

Tags: Love, Angel, Sleep, Wife, Emotion, Feeling, Expression, I love you, Blinded, Eyes

A while back, Angel was practically saying that I was going to purchase a very expensive vacuum cleaner for her “or else”. Her sister used to sell these things and she was sold on how well they performed. I pretty much griped and complained about it.

I ended up purchasing a cheap $600 vacuum from SAM’s club. I haven’t heard the “or else” part about it yet so I figured I was in the clear.

Let’s move ahead, shall we? My mother in-law let it slip in a phone conversation that my sister in-law made a $2,000 purchase and that it was more for me then for Angel. It was supposed to be my birthday gift. She didn’t say what, but I had guessed that it may have been an HDTV. Everyone in the family knows I’ve been longing for one for quite some time now.

Today my sister in-law comes to the house and I saw a big box wrapped in wrapping paper saying “Happy Birthday”. It looked a little small for an HDTV unless it was one of those smaller monitor TV’s. Also, it was a little early for my birthday.

Angel and I sat on the couch together and oddly enough, the card on the box was addressed to her. She read the card and it was a “Happy Birthday” (April 7th) card from my sister in-law and her husband. Angel then tore off the paper to reveal yet another set of wrapping paper with a card. This time it was addressed to me wishing me a happy 30th (May 28th). (Ugh! 30… don’t get me started). I promptly tored the wrapping paper off to reveal yet another layer.

The white paper looked like it was for a wedding. We looked at the card and sure enough, it was wishing us a happy anniversarry (July 4th). We tore the layer of paper off to reveal yet another layer. This one didnt’ have a card but black marker was on it wishing us a “Merry Yule!”. (Our families celebrate Yule and it is close enough to be like Christmas - just different.) We had a heck of a time trying to get that wrapping paper off. I think it was sort of like plastic.

Under it all was a brown box and red duct tape. We got through it and found another box inside and opened it up. At first I thought it was one of those alien computers that are very curvy. It turned out to be a TriStar vacuume. While Angel was excited and putting it together, my mother in-law handed me a box. Within it was a nice wallet that she promised me. I transferred all of my monies and cards into it.

Angel wanted my old wallet as a keep sake. It seemed odd to me and I asked why. Apparently, it has “essence of Lewie” on it. I make a smart remark that it has essense of Lewies ass on it. We giggled and she kissed me. Apparently I didn’t ruin it for her, so that is good.

Angel spent the next couple hours vacuuming and even vacuumed the cats. I thought that was just a joke about people vacuuming there cats, but apparently I was wrong. She is very excited about it and her back didn’t ache after she was done. She also blogged about it too.

Tags: TriStar, Vacuum, Cats, Birthday, Anniversary, Yule, Christmas, Angel, Wallet, Present, Gift

My nephew and I headed on out for a treasure hunt today. I wasn’t really up for it, but he was getting bored. I decided to go to one that I had been to before that we could walk to. It was about a half mile away and was sure to tire him out.

My batteries were dead, so I promply replaced them and entered the coordinates for Round Top Beaver Pond (GC4F8C). It was a warm sunny day and as we began our trip, we both started to feel sprinkles of water. We headed back and got our jackets just in case it would rain.

On the way, I took many photographs of … nothing. I would take pictures of the sky, flowers, rain, traffic, the bridge. I guess I was having a little too much fun with my cell phone. My nephew didn’t seem to mind at all and we had some fun conversations.

After leaving the small neighborhood that I live in, we crossed a bridge that went over I-95. The bridge is long because I-95 has three seperate lanes going North, South, and one for the HOV. We looked out across traffic and were glad that we were not setting in it.

We arrived at a path when the GPS devise pointed directly to our left and we headed on in. My nephew got a kick out of the woods and all of the junk laying about. Personally, I think it is horrible that people would throw so much junk away in the woods. All he saw was really cool stuff that you could do stuff with. I remember behind his age and how I had a vivid imagination for using just about anything laying about for tree houses, forts, imaginary vehicles and other stuff.

Soon we closed in on the location. I walked up to the general area where I knew it was and told him that the GPS device said it was very close by. He had a pretty good eye and found it quick. While he was digging through the toys, I kicked off my shoes and laid back in the woods. I went through the logs and found one from when my wife had visited. I called her up on my cell phone and read her log back to her.

I told my nephew that there was a second part to the cache. There were additional coordinates in the log book. He wanted to go and check out the pond before we took off. There were quite a few mesquitoes around and the water was very still. We decided to just head on over to the next cache quickly.

We took a hike up a big hill and found another path at the top. We followed it for quite a bit until we came to an intersection of a second path joining in. We started to take it but it went in the wrong direction. He spotted another path that was less traveled joining up to the other two paths. We took it and it brought us very close to the treasure. Again, I stopped close by and told him that it was very close.

He found the cache and started going through the stuff. He found a plastic slinkey. I left my procrastinator travel bug there. It only traveled 2.5 miles from Piggyback. I picked up a dollar bill from the Where’s George website.

On our way back my nephew started complaining that he was tired. I knew that I had done my job well. We also had some fun taking pictures of our shadows. Today was a fun day.

Tags: GeoCache, Nephew, Adventure, Beaver, Pond, GC4F8C, I-95, I95, HOV, Junk, Woods, Path, GPS, Game, Hunt, Search, Hill, Slinky, Travel, Walk, Hike, Dollar, George, Shadow, Camera, Photo

I came home from a little adventure with my nephew and my niece was showing me her new pet rock. She called him “Mr Rockee”. She was a little down because he didn’t have any eyes. I told her that I could help her out.

We went on the search for a pen and I found one with my Sharpie Ultra Fine Point collection. As I drew eyes, she went on to say that he needs ears, nose, mouth, tongue, … the list kept growing. The feet got a little wierd because she didn’t like how I drew them at first. Then she wanted legs and I was running out of room. In the end she was finally happy.

Unfortunately, she wanted me to take the face off so it would be a regular rock. I tried scrubbing but only a little bit would come off. She was excited when I suggested that we could find another rock. So we are outside in the drive way and she is looking for a rock. “We need to find a rock so we can clean him” she would say. She put her hand on her chin and said “We have to think“.

She is a young one but she is very cute. She found her rock and was happy.

Tags: Pet Rock, Rock, Niece, Cute, Family, Art, Crafts, Cartoon, Sharpie

A friend of mine had asked me about the iPod with what it was and why it was so popular. So in response, I am making this post as an explination. Feel free to leave comments with additional information or corrections.

An iPod is essentially a digital music player. Sony was popular for making the cassete player “walk-man” popular. Apple broke through the barriars with the digital music “walk-man”. Most portable digital music players are coined as “MP3 Players”.

The Apple iPod itself does not play MP3 files. There have been many issues regarding piracy and copyright protection. Apple created its own file format (AAC) for digital music that prevents people from redistributing the music to there friends or over the internet. The term is known as Digital Rights Management (DRM for short).

With its integration with iTunes software, you can legally purchase individual songs for 99 cents each and load them onto your iPod. There are many promotions with pruducts such as beverages, snacks, and sweepstakes to get free songs. If you already have a few CD’s laying around the house, iTunes will let you import the songs into your iPod so that you do not have to purchase the same music twice. Unfortunately, the cost of building a large collection and then having someone erase it can lead up to murder.

Advertising for getting your own free iPod is very popular on the internet. I even tried it out myself. The basic rules are that you have to be a US citizen, you need to sign up for one of there offers, and you have to get a few of your friends to sign up for an offer under your referral link:

http://www.freeipods.com/default.aspx?referer=9016083

I started with mine back in September. I have four out of five people signed up. I went ahead with the AOL offer. I got a good bit of spam. If you are interested, I’ll give you a free gmail invite to accomidate for the spam as it had caught most of it.

The iPod design is very simple and easy to use. It is white, so it will match just about everything you have. Due to the high price of $299, many young people (who the product advertising targets) have lowered themselves to stealing the iPod from other people. The New York transit authority has advised people to purchase seperate earphones, as the standard white earbuds that come with it are a dead give away that you have one.

The high price is partially due to the large hard drive within the iPod. At 20 GB, you can store an estimated 5,000 songs on it. Apple has developed a collection of iPod players over time to help bring the cost down by reducing hard-drive space, battery life and features for the cheaper models.

iPod shuffle

This little music player is just as small as a pack of gum. Apple got a little quirky and warns that you shouldn’t eat the shuffle. The bottom cap slides off and plugs rite into your USB port. You can even use it as a memory stick for transporting other files.

There are two models for the iPod shuffle. The $99 model has 512 MB of storage space where the $149 model has 1 GB. Each model has a battery life of 12 hours.

The main turn-off for this product is that it doesn’t have a screen to choose what song you want to play next. You must build a play list on your computer to instruct it as to what order you want to play songs when you are on the go. The iPod shuffle does not have many accessories as the iPod, but there are some really cool home-made skinning crafts going on.

iPod mini

This music player is about half the physical size then the original iPod and comes in Blue, Pink, Gray, and Green. It has the same digital display that the iPod has so it is easy to navigate to a song that you would like to play. The famouse Click-Wheel is available on this player.

Again, there are two models (not including the colors) for the iPod mini. The $199 model has 4 GB of storage space and stores about 1,000 songs. The $249 model has 6 GB of storage space and stores about 1,5000 songs. Each model has a battery life of 18 hours. 80% of the battery can be charged in 2 hours. You can get it fully charged in 4 hours.

iPod

This is the original iPod that got all the attention. It’s click-wheel made it simple to scroll to your favorite music. Many accessories have been developed by Apple and other vendors for this player.

There is a standard model for $299 that has 20 GB of storage space and stores about 5,000 songs. A special edition iPod U2 is also available for $349 that is black and red, and signed by each member of the band. Each has a 12-hour battery life of 18 hours. 80% charge in 2 hours, full charge in 4 hours.

The iPod U2 doesn’t come with any of the U2 songs - but you do get a $50 coupon towards the complete U2 digital box set with more then 400 tracks for $149.99. If you are not planning to purchase the digital box set, then it iss almost a waste to spend $50 just for a few laser-engraved signatures, a poster, and a different color iPod. It would be better to invest in an iPod Photo.

iPod Photo

The iPod photo comes with a color screen and supports pictures. You can use it just like a regular iPod and listen to music, but you can also store photos from your digital camera. You can also hook up a cable to your television and sport off the photos to your friends, family, and people you wish to blackmail. Each song that you have on your iPod photo can also display a picture from the albums cover art.

Two models are available for the iPod photo. The $349 model has 30 GB of storage space and stores about 7,500 songs. The $449 model has 40 GB of storage space and stores about 15,000 songs. Each model has a battery life of 15 hours of battery life (or 5 hours for slideshows with music). The battery can be charged to 80% in 3 hours; a full charge takes 5 hours.

The price is very high for an iPod photo and it may be more economical to invest in a cheap laptop. Although a laptop is bulky and can’t fit in your pocket, you can do a lot more with it.

Tags: iPod, Free, iPod mini, iPod shuffle, iTunes, DRM, Digital Rights Management, AAC, MP3, MP3 Player, Apple, Hardware, Software, Free iPod, Products, Shuffle, Mini, Photo, U2, iPod U2, Music, Murder, Stealing, Theft, CD, USB, Walk-Man, Walkman