Category Archives: Technology

Brazil

Posted on by Unsigned Podcast
Reply

I have some great stories about Brazil from people I know who used to live there or have gone there on vacation. I was even invited to tour the Brazalian embassy in Washington DC, as the legal administrator to Brazil’s Ambassador was married to a co-worker and we all became good friends while we lived in the DC area.

She would show us pictures of her very very very large family in Brazil and their house on a huge plantation. They were considered well off as they owned several hundred acres of prime farmland, yet they did not have indoor plumbing in the house and they did not have a telephone on the property – and this was a recent as 1990. If you wanted to make a phone call you had to travel to the nearest town – about 200 miles away – and stand in line to use the onepay  phone mounted on a pole in the center of town.

With the advent of cell phones and satellites, they do have both phones and TV in the house now, but they still have many primitive limitations and I find it amazing that with today’s technology so many people still live with the challenge of basics like getting clean water and protecting your children from attacks by wild animals like crocodiles and panthers.

Fun Gift Ideas

Posted on by Unsigned Podcast
Reply

There used to be a fun store at the mall called Spencers where you could buy fun gifts and silly novelty items. Those stores closed last year and I’ve not found anything to take its place until tonight when I came across an online site called Creative and Unique Gift Ideas.

This is the perfect place to find gag gifts and fun things, like a coffee cup that looks like a stack of three cups but is really only one cup. My favorite item is the Wi-Fi detecor shirt that lights up when you are close to a Wi-Fi source. What a great geek gift!

If you like unique gift ideas or want some cool gadgets for yourself, check out this site!

A “Go-To” How-To

Posted on by Unsigned Podcast
Reply

Came across another “How-To” website tonight that looks promising, called Quamut. It’s a new internet venture by Barnes and Noble, completely different from any of their bookselling efforts. This site has professionally written articles on a variety of topics similar to a Wiki that you can read online free, but if you want to download the article for a printed reference that you can keep there is a small charge.

Each day there is a different download available free, so that is good incentive to keep coming back to the site every day. Today’s free download was about exterior painting. I grabbed that and put it on the wife’s desk. We’ve known for months that the exterior of the house needs a fresh coat of paint. This lets her know that we can do it ourselves if she’s willing, and we’ll save some money as long as we plan for a couple of days when the weather will be not too hot and not too much wind to paint.

Watercooler Stories

Posted on by Unsigned Podcast
Reply

Today was one of the most unproductive days at work that I can remember. Everyone was so exhausted from a busy Memorial Day weekend, that we went through coffee in the break room like string through a duck. Everyone spent an enormous amount of time walking back and forth from their desks to the coffee machine or hanging around the breakroom chatting. I wonder if anything got worked on other than reading emails and opening mail.

My secretary had one of the most exciting weekend stories to relate. She had met up with some guys that invited her to ride in the Rolling Thunder procession in downtown DC. She said it was thrilling to be a part of thousands of motorcycles thundering down Constitution Avenue Sunday afternoon.

She has been slowly getting over her divorce and back into the dating scene and was telling me about how much she likes online dating versus going out to bars to meet people. She started with a site that has a list of all the top singles and personals sites once she made up her mind to look for a dating service. This site had reviews of each dating site so she could get an idea of the process.

I’m sure by now everyone has seen the TV commercials or heard about the eHarmony site. They are oriented toward long term, serious relationships and marriage. She says that was too deep for what she wants right now.

Fresh coming off a divorce, she was more interested in just meeting people and having fun, so she wanted a more casual site, like Yahoo Personals. She found a lot of guys locally and read through dozens of profiles before setting up her own profile and starting an email relationship with them to get started. she’s traded emails with a few and even met a few, but she says she felt pressured to move too quickly and was uncomfortable with the motives of the guys she met through Yahoo.

But then she tried LavaLife and that site really clicked for her. She’s been on 3 dates with different guys that she met through that site and she says that this is the one site where she is comfortable with the type of guys and the process of sending a smile to each other before getting too deep into each other’s heads. She says it’s more natural and more like real life and that’s where she met the veteran who invited her to the Rolling Thunder ride.

Unofficial Start of Summer

Posted on by Unsigned Podcast
Reply

One of my favorite holidays has always been Memorial Day, which in many parts of the country not only honors our veterans but also signifies the unofficial start of summer.

In our house, Memorial Day means taking the kids to a parade and then at least one full day on the water. which water was the question, as we were fortunate to have many water choices, with bountiful lakes and rivers close by and the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean just a short drive away.

The past couple years we’ve chosen to join my parents at their home on the river. Their summer house has plenty of extra beds and linens, and the boat dock has a variety of boats, from a kayak to a ski boat to a john boat to a sailboat. And this year my brother towed his 30′ cruiser to the public ramp and put it in for the guys to go fishing on Sunday.

Knowing that he was coming with the cruiser, I bought a special gift for him – or rather, his boat. I remember last year how we had taken the cruiser down the river one weekend and just slept on it over night with the intention of waking early and throwing in the fishing lines at daybreak. Well, it was a great plan but when we woke there was so much fog that we couldn’t see anything for hours and to be honest it was downright frightening to be out on the open water unable to see more than a foot or two in front of the boat.