In today's Sunday newspaper ad section Office Depot had the Microsoft wireless laptop mouse on sale for $10. It is normally $30. It works great and I think I am going to go pick up at least one more. You do not need to mail in a rebate. It is $10 at the cash register. The package says the one AA battery it takes should last about 6 months.

After picking that up at Office Depot we stopped at PetSmart to see if there were any dogs to say hi too. We also picked up two pounds of small Scooby snacks to have on hand for the neighbor's dog we like.

From there we went to Walgreens because they had a good sale on cosmetics. While Sheri was picking out her stuff I wandered around the store and I came across the second incredibly good deal of the day. The Timex heart rate monitor usually retails for around $50, and they had it on sale for only $26! I got the last one too. Last year I was kicking around buying one, and probably would have eventually even without the bargain-basement price.

We have a stationary exercise bike with a built in heart rate monitor and I love using that because it ensures that you are both:

a) not overdoing it by making sure your heart rate does not go over your high target, and
b) makes sure the 30 minutes you are taking out of your schedule to exercise is actually benefiting you by making sure your heart rate is high enough.

There have been times I have been on my regular bike and I didn't know if I was pushing myself too hard or not. Maybe it just felt like I was because it was hot or thirsty? I didn't know. With this monitor I will have more productive rides because I will know for sure what my body is doing.

It has an upper and lower limit alarm. If it hits the upper limit you know to back off before you hurt yourself. If the lower limit goes off you know to kick it up a notch to make your exercise time really count.

I have read a few studies that said exercising above your recommended heart rate does not burn significantly more calories or give you any extra health benefits, and could actually be dangerous. If you do not get your heart rate high enough you are missing out on all of the benefits of your exercise time. Keeping your heart rate in your zone is the best way to make the most out of your efforts.

There is a transmitter on a strap that goes around your chest and transmits your heart rate to the watch. I tried it on and it picked up the signal and my heart rate right away. I got on the bike to see if the two numbers matched up. They did to within just a few beats from each other.

Sheri got a paged to a bridge call while we were out, so we had to cut it short and go home. When we got home she could not connect to work, so she had to drive into work to fix things. I didn't have anything going on so I came with her. I am sitting at the desk next to hers writing this and using my new wireless mouse on my laptop.

When she is done we might go to the Starbuck's next door for an iced coffee and see if there is anything we want to do on this end of town. We are spitting distance from O'Hare for your reference.

We were watching a movie, but Sheri got paged to a bridge-call, so I turned the TV to Sabado Gigante (good eye-candy to watch without volume) and I am going to make a batch of guacamole. It sounds like a network problem so I don't think she will have to get too involved. Just hang on the line in case they have a systems issue.

I like going down to the river and try to get the geese to bite my fingers. Today I was successful.

click for close-up

I don't know how it works in the ladies room, but in the men's room if you walk in and every urinal and toilet bowl is being used, you are obligated to say "It looks like a full house."

You are also obligated to say it in such a way that indicates you think it is the funniest and most original line ever quipped.

This picture was taken mere minutes ago as we sit in Burger King having breakfast. I am picking out a hotel on the Internet for a trip I have coming up while Sheri works a crossword.

We just got back from the grocery store where we discovered a new pasta product from Barilla called Barilla Plus. Here are the amazing ingredients in the order listed on the package:

Semolina (same as regular pasta)
Lentils
Chickpeas
Oats
Spelt
Barley
Egg whites
Flaxseed
Wheat fiber
Durum (same as regular pasta)

One 2 ounce serving has 17% RDA of protein and 16% RDA of fiber. It also has 15% of the RDA of ALA Omega-3.

I can't go nuts eating it, but when I do eat pasta it will be much better for me than regular pasta. I have already cooked half of it and made macaroni salad. It tastes just like regular pasta. We have tried some other low carb and high fiber pasta that was too tough or cardboard tasting.

After Sheri spent 15 hours last night holding a telephone handset to her ear we thought it would be a good idea to invest in a good telephone headset. I had done just a little bit of preliminary research and it seemed a good one, not the best, but a good one, would be in the $80 to $130 range.

Then we had the thought that maybe she could just bring her headset from work home on the weekends she is on call, or maybe they had an extra one lying around. So when we left the house this afternoon our intention was just to go to a few places and price them out and read the packaging.

The first place we stopped, Office Depot, had the GN Netcom 5140, normally $80, on sale for $60. GN Netcom and Plantronics were the two brands I saw most often during my research so I felt comfortable with the brand. For that price we just went ahead and bought it.

When I got home and set it up I could hear the other person but they could not hear me. Also it wasn't working the way the instructions said it should. When I hung up the phone the call was supposed to terminate. It didn't and I still heard the call through the headset. I also could not dial when in headset mode. I had to switch to handset mode, dial, and then switch back to headset mode.

I tried another phone and it behaved the exact same way. I thought a faulty microphone could of course be way the other person could not hear me, but I couldn't see how that could be responsible for the other problem with the hanging up and the dialing stuff, and I couldn't believe that an $80 headset could have two major things wrong with it. I decided to take it back and exchange it. When I brought it back home I behaved exactly the same as the other one. Crap. The chances of two units have the exact same defect seemed to be about zero, so the problem had to be me. I have set up several telephone headsets before, and I checked and rechecked how I had everything connected, but it just wasn't working.

I tried calling their customer service line but it is closed on the weekends. I decided to just put it out of my mind and give them a call on Monday. Something was just not right, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

About an hour or so later a thought slammed into my head: both of the phones I tried were the Slimline style where most of the guts of the phone are in the handset. That put the hook downstream of the amplifier. With a conventional phone the hook would be upstream of the amplifier.

Did we even have a non-Slimline style phone in the house? I couldn't remember. I guess I would go to Radio Shack tomorrow and find the cheapest conventional style phone. Then I remembered a packing box that I have not touched since we moved here five years ago. I wasn't sure, but I really seemed to remember a phone in that box.

I dug out the box and sure enough there was a phone. I plugged everything in and it worked like a champ! Then I felt bad that I returned a perfectly good headset.

I am glad we picked one up today and that I persevered to get it working because Sheri has been on the phone again for almost an hour, and it looks like she will be on for at least another two hours.

Poor Sheri. It is 9 AM and she is still on the phone. 13.5 hours. She doesn't think it is going to be fixed in the next hour or two either.

What makes it even more sucky is she thinks rather than pay her the extra 15 hours, or whatever it turns out to be, they are just going to tell her to take a day or two off.

I woke up at 4:30 am, rolled over, no Sheri. Panic. "SHERI!?" No answer. "SHERI!?" No answer. At the top of my lungs "SHERI!?" I hear a whispered response from downstairs. "what?" OK, she's alright and not blacked out somewhere.

Poor thing. She is still working. The last box got corrupted and they are trying to restore or rebuild some databases. I am just glad it was the very last box they did and not one of the first ones. Well at least she is hourly right now, and so far that is almost an extra 10 hours. From the way it sounds it will probably be at least another two hours which puts her at 7 am and 12 hours of extra pay. I feel wide awake now but I know I am going to crash hard later today.

Sheri has to work tonight, but fortunately she can do it from home. I am not sure what exactly she is doing but it involves 22 servers and several other people on a conference call. She is stopping them. Loading stuff on them. Other people do stuff. Starts them back up. It was scheduled to go from about 7:30 PM until midnight. It is almost 12:30 AM and she still has a few more to do. At least she can do it from home.

I want to go to bed but I will stay up and keep her company. We got a pizza for dinner so she could pick on it if she got hungry. I have made coffee. Read a little bit of the book I am reading about coffee. Surfed the Net. Played with my GPS. Made iced tea. Drank iced tea. When it is time to go to bed I know the coffee and tea are going to start wanting back out and I probably won't sleep very much. We have a brunch date with her Starbuck's friends tomorrow morning. (Actually this morning now.)

I started 12 sunflowers in 6 starting pots about a month ago and they are ready to be planted outside. I want to do it this weekend but I am concerned it might be too cold. I have rabbit repellant to spray them with once I plant them. I will plant the rest of the packet of seeds in the ground around the sprouted seedlings.

Work is going well. I feel like people appreciate and value my work which is always a nice environment to be in. Plus I enjoy it most of the time. I think I am ready for a day off though. I can not take vacation or sick time for my first six months there. Stupid. I wonder if they would change that rule if a new hire came to work with the flu and got the HR director sick because the newbie couldn't take a sick day.

The "b" key on our laptop's keyboard is broken. I am thinking about taking it apart to see if I can fix it, but I am worried I might cause more damage than good.

Me enjoying a cup of coffee before our Intelligentsia Coffee factory tour last weekend. I think they probably have the best coffee in the United States. It is what Charlie Trotter serves in his restaurant!


We took home a pound of coffee from this freshly roasted batch. As Shawn would say: "Deeeeeeelicous!"

There is a neat piece of free software called POI Loader you can download from Garmin for use with most of their recent-model GPS units.

POI stands for Point Of Interest. My GPS came with about 6 million POI's all over the United States. A POI can be a restaurant, airport, a historical monument, gas station, ATM, post office, shopping center, movie theater, hospital, etc. In early 2000 when Sheri had her gall bladder attack at 2:00 AM in a town we were unfamiliar with I just went to the hospital POI tab on my GPS, searched for the nearest hospital, and it got us there.

The POI Loader software lets you create your own POIs and then transfer them to your GPS unit. You could load new restaurants, mailboxes, all of your friend's houses, etc.

It would be a pretty neat tool if it stopped right there, but it does two other even neater things.

First it can load POIs with speed information attached to it, and if you go over the speed specified by that POI it will start beeping at you. You can program in speed traps, school zones, tight curves, etc. If you stay at or below what you have programmed in it does nothing. This is a feature that gets a lot of use in the UK. The have a huge network of unmanned speed cameras all around the country. A small industry has popped up that keeps track of these speed cameras and daily posts fresh POI files on the Internet. People load them into their GPS units before a drive and get a warning before they approach a speed camera. How far away from the POI it sounds an alarm is dependant on your speed. I think it said it calculates the distance to sound the alarm so you have 36 seconds before you get there. If you are going 30 mph it will warn you when you are 1,584 feet from it. If you are going 70 mph it will warn you at 3,696 feet which is almost 3/4 of a mile.

The second neat thing it can do with POI's is a proximity alert. This gives you a little warning before you get to a point regardless of how fast you are going. The impetus for this was the stop light cameras that take your picture when you run a red light. You can also use this feature for other cool stuff. Maybe for all of the rest stops along a tollway so you do not miss one. Maybe all of the Starbucks to give you a heads-up in case you need a little caffeine. Maybe extra large alignment-destroying potholes. The possibilities are endless.

I just loaded a few test ones for around the neighborhood and went for a quick drive. They work as advertised. Very cool.

The record format is longitude, latitude, description@speed

So a speed trap record on I-88 might look something like this:

-88.17385,41.80625,Speed Trap@63

I would not get a warning unless I was going 64 mph or faster.

The proximity POI has two things different about it. The first is there is no speed indication associated with it so a record would look like this:

-87.64190,41.67796,Halsted & 119th

The second thing different is not in the record format, but in the name of the file you create. If the upload program sees the word "redlight" anywhere in the name of the file it will treat all POIs in that file as proximity POIs. That's it. Piece of cake.

By the way both of my examples really are either a speed trap or a red light camera. Feel free to use them.

The type of file these records need to be in is CSV which stands for comma separated values. It is just a text file with the extension changed from .txt to .csv.

You put all of the CSV POI files in one directory and point the POI Loader to that directory. Any CSV file it sees in that directory will get loaded. It will overwrite any previous POIs you had loaded on your GPS.

One of the things we do on a regular basis is try to remember where the closest mailbox is while we are out running errands to mail back a DVD from our on-line queue. I think a long term project I might do is shoot the GPS points for all of the mailboxes I come across in our city and then load them to our GPS. Yeah, I know my idea of fun is a little bit different.

We learned on our coffee factory tour that roasting destroys acids in the coffee. A lightly roasted coffee has the most acid while French roast has almost no acids left.

As I mentioned the other night we received the GPS we ordered. It is the Garmin StreetPilot i2 and so far I think I love it. It is going to replace the GPS unit we have that cost more than five times what this one costs.

The form factor is really amazing. It is entirely self-contained in a package about the size of a tennis ball. It is only $240 so obviously there are some things missing that the $2,000 - $3,000 factory installed units have.

1. The screen is small at only 1.7" wide by 1.3" high. If you have ever driven with an automotive GPS you know that once you are going you rely mostly on the audible instructions. You glance at the screen once in a while for clarification on a turn, distance until next turn, and name of the street you need to turn on. The screen size is totally adequate for all of this.

2. The screen is black and white, not color. Color looks nice and pretty, but I think it only provides minimal, if any, extra functionality or usability over black and white.

3. It does not have a hard drive. It comes with a DVD with street level detail of the entire United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. You have to load map data from the DVD to the GPS using your computer. I uploaded all of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, and Missouri and that is all it can hold. If I was going to travel to another state I would have to delete a state and then add the new state. It took about 15 minutes to load all of that data to the GPS. If you were a salesman that covered more than five states regularly that might become inconvenient. For my purposes it is a totally acceptable tradeoff between functionality and price.

4. One of the biggest reasons for the huge price differences between this unit and other more expensive units is how it handles the temporary loss of the GPS signal when going under bridges, tunnels, heavy foliage, etc. On the factory installed units there are inputs to the GPS from the cars speedometer, a compass, and/or gyroscopes. Let's say you enter a long tunnel that has a fork about half way through. The expensive unit will keep making a guess on your location based on how far you have traveled based on your speedometer. At the fork the compass and/or gyroscopes will know if you veered left or right. This process is known as dead reckoning. When you exit the tunnel it will take a few seconds to pick up the GPS signal. To the user it should all be transparent and it will appear that the GPS knew exactly where you where the entire time. Our old portable unit was obviously not tied into our car's speedometer, but it did have a couple gyroscope-like sensors inside of the unit. When it lost the signal it would know if you veered one way or the other, and it could also sense acceleration and deceleration. If it didn't sense an increase or decrease in speed it assumed you maintained the speed you were traveling when the signal was lost. Our new GPS does not have any ancillary sensors like that. When it loses signal it will keep plotting your course for 30 seconds using the speed when the signal was lost. It won't know if you have accelerated, stopped, or if you took a turn. Again, the reduced functionality is totally offset for me by the huge price difference.

The lack of a larger screen, hard drive, and ancillary sensors is also what lets the unit be stuffed into a purse or laptop bag, and then used in any car you want.

You can search from over 6 million points of interest. (restaurants, hospitals, shopping centers, etc.) or you can enter an address or intersection.

There is software that lets you load your own points of interest data. There are lots of enthusiast sites where you can download POI files others have created. (mailboxes, speed traps, etc.)

The unit itself feels solidly built. The scroll wheel has a nice smooth feel. The buttons have a nice firm click.

We have not used it for any trips yet where we did not know where we were going, but from my experience with it so far I have no problems recommending it.

For an extra $60 (300 total) you can get the StreetPilot i3 which is the same unit except with a color display.

For an extra $140 ($380 total) you can get the StreetPilot i5 which has a color screen and all of the map data already loaded. You do not have to load map data from a DVD.

Outside the Weiner Circle late Friday night.



This was our order.



People waiting in line for some tasty dogs and abuse.

Last week was our 10 year anniversary and we wanted to do something special. We decided to spend the weekend in Chicago. At 6 PM on Friday we had a cab pick us up at home and take us to the local train station. We got to Union Station around 7:30 PM and then hopped on the L to get to the northeast corner of the Loop. We walked to the hotel, checked in, and went up to our room to freshen up and relax for a little bit. We were a little tired from the day at work as well as getting downtown.

After about 30 minutes or so at 9 PM we changed clothes and went back out. We took the Brown line north to the Diversey stop and walked to the world-famous Weiner Circle. I have never been there but have wanted to for a long time.

It is a really good hot dog stand open very late at night, but what makes it famous is the way the staff is rude to you. Not rude like at Ed Debevic's, but rude like dropping the F-bomb, along with several other bombs, every other word. If you don't order fast enough they tell you to hurry the &%$# up. If you stumble on your order they tell you to get the @#$%& out of your mouth. You get the idea. They didn't give me a tough time, but gave me a dirty look and didn't talk to me other than "What do you want?" and "$10.19". The dogs and fries were fantastic though. At least equal to Gold Coast Dogs, probably a little better because they put more stuff on. The fries were fantastic too as well as a bargain.

After we ate and hung around a bit to watch others getting abused, we walked across the street to a 7-Eleven for a few things, and then back to the L stop.

Back at the hotel we got into our PJ's and watched TV in bed until around midnight.

Saturday morning we woke up at 6:30 AM and went downstairs for the buffet breakfast. It is normally $19 per person, but because we used our AAA discount we also got coupons for free breakfast. It was really good. They had an omelet station, and they brewed Starbuck's coffee. We took our time and read the newspaper for a couple hours.

We walked to the L and took the Green line west to the Ashland stop, and then walked a couple blocks to the Intelligentsia coffee factory. The first Saturday of each month they give tours of the facility. I have wanted to take the tour since I discovered Intelligentsia, and it just happened to work out for us. The tour is $7 per person, but each person gets a half pound of freshly roasted coffee, which is about what their coffee costs anyway, so it's kind of like a free tour with the purchase of their coffee.

They roasted a 69 kilogram (152 pounds) burlap bag of coffee to illustrate the roasting process, and then that freshly roasted batch of coffee is what they sent us home with.

We took the L back to the Loop and went to the Marshall Field's store for a light lunch. We went to the basement deli and got a half pound of pesto chicken salad, a half pound of broccoli salad, and a couple of rolls. We split that and then just sat there for a while and watched all of the people. After a while we got an iced coffee and an oatmeal cookie.

Around 2:30 PM we walked back to the L and took the Brown line north to the Belmont stop. We had 4 PM tickets to the Blue Man Group. We had a great time and recommend it.

After the show we went to a nearby Ethiopian restaurant. We have never tried Ethiopian food and we both really enjoyed it. The most distinctive thing about the dinner is the big sour dough pancakes that come with the dinner. One large pancake is laid out on a platter and everything is ladled onto that. We ordered a dinner-for-two combo and it came with lamb, chicken, spinach, cabbage, and something similar to hummus. It also came with four of the pancakes on the side. You ripped off a piece of the pancake and used that to scoop up some food from the platter. No utensils are used. The dinner also came with a couple of appetizers: a bowl of vegetable soup, and a small bowl of cold lentils and some flour tortilla squares to scoop it up with. Sheri LOVED the lentils. Slight spicy. Dessert was a small bowl of something between yogurt and cream cheese with a raspberry sauce drizzled over it.

We enjoyed our leisurely walk back to the L and the ride back to the hotel. We watched Mad TV and Saturday Night Live in bed until we fell asleep.

Sunday morning we woke up and had breakfast at the buffet again, read the paper in the lobby for a little bit, and then took a cab to Union Station in time to get the 10:30 AM train back home.

When we got back home the GPS I ordered was waiting for me on the porch. I didn't expect it until Tuesday. I was glad to get it early, but I was also a little annoyed that it sat on porch for over 24 hours, but all's well that ends well. I LOVE it and highly recommend it. I will write more in-depth about it very soon.

Sheri came back from doing a little shopping and then we went to Meijer for a few things. We picked up some ground beef and a couple ears of corn on the cob for dinner.

I took out the glass and installed the screen on our front door, and moved the garden hose to the backyard and watered the flower beds.

We are watching Desperate Housewives now and will go to bed when it is over.

That about covers our great anniversary weekend and I will post pictures of the weekend tomorrow.

I like keeping Kashi Go Lean bars on hand at work because they are high in protein (one bar has 20% RDA), high in fiber (24% RDA), and its carbohydrates have a low glycemic index, which means your body slowly converts it to blood sugar rather than giving you a huge spike all at once.

Anyway, some of the flavors have a nougat-like center that is very very firm, to the point of hurting your teeth and tiring out your jaw. I had the idea to microwave it for a few seconds to soften it up.

I tossed it into the microwave and pressed the start button. After just two seconds the inside of the microwave was filled with bright sparks. I forgot the inside of the wrapper is metallic. I opened the microwave door and the wrapper and shrink-wrapped itself tightly to the bar. I guess the metallic part heated up quickly and caused the plastic part of the wrapper to melt and shrink. I looked really cool though.

I pried the wrapper off and put it back in the microwave by itself for an additional 10 seconds. It worked great. The inside was much easier to bite off. I think that is what I will do with them from now on.

Around 3:00 AM this morning I was half awake and heard a noise coming from Sheri's side of the bed. It took me a second for it to register, but then I determined it was Sheri grinding her teeth.

It didn't sound just like teeth clicking against each other, but a destructive high-pressure grinding that would most surely result in going to the dentist for painful crowns to replace the parts that got chipped off. Once it sunk in I quickly jumped to wake her up as quickly as possible to stop the damage. It turned it was just the sound of her trying to force the plastic cap back onto a tub of Vaseline. I got shivers for the next couple of minutes every time I heard the sound in my head and imagined it was her teeth.