The garage is almost cleaned up and unpacked and the office downstairs is about 75% complete.  Rummaging through some boxes, I was able to find quite a few of my old video games, put them up on my amazon.com sellers account, and boom, I sold 11 games ranging from $1.99 to $14.99.  Minus the ~25% amazon commissions fee, I made $110!  There’s a lot to more to sell too from DVDs to other stuff I got and don’t use and they’re going at 80% off retail!  Check it out when you have sometime.  

I woke up today to a startling, “you’re front yard is flooding!” and upon walking outside, the sprinkler system was busted right where the main line connects to the front yard.  Check out the pictures at trelijah.  I have a before and after.  I’ve never done any plumbing before and went to the Home Depot to buy some quick drying blue cement and a 1″ end cap just in case we needed to stop the system entirely.  TO sum it up, we were out of water for the 4 hours, I drained a couple of buckets worth emptying out the area where I needed to patch up the piping and then after more yardwork, I rested a bit.  Exciting way to start the day.  

I bid for my December schedule and got awarded my vacation allotment for 2009.  I’m off for a red eye back to ATL then I’ll be flying around the system for the next three days.  Catch me back in San Diego on Saturday night or Baton Rouge Thursday and Friday night.

The Chargers couldn’t lose because they had a bye week, JR and Veronica had their wedding shower, Adelle convinced me to head out to Disneyland before our pass privileges were set to expire, I got a chance to hang out with Dr. Nourani in Downtown San Diego, and I did a little work in finishing up my migration to my new MacBook Pro.

Disneyland was definitely a great highlight as the lines were short allowing us to ride what we wanted (California Adventures’ Soaring is still the best), the apple pie caramel apple was a delight and the biggest plus was seeing one of my college roommates as a Jedi Knight Instructing young Padawans on stage at a Disneyland show!  Mr. Stephan Oyoung, without a doubt has the best job.  Working 4 days a week teaching kids how to rid the world of the dark side with light saber techniques, what more could you ask in a post graduate occupation?!  Two thumbs up and kudos to you Jedi Oyoung.

On the day of voting, I got to witness a new dawn in Downtown with yet another college buddy, Dr. Nourani and was readily entertained with his residency stories.  I mention a new dawn only because it was about the time when Barack was making his acceptance speech and McCain ending his bid. Bobby’s stories make me wonder where I would have been at if I did do a post-bac program in lieu of flight school.   We ate at Marsala (an Indian restaurant of course) which was tremendous but a bit overpriced then made our way to Altitude Sky Bar where we got to see the Madonna Concert without the Madonna.  Good times all around, but once again I find myself commuting back to work.  It’s been a while since I’ve been at the crashpad.  I can’t wait to get the band back together.  

Finally a solution for an animated weather radar.  (thanks Zaphu)  There currently two applications that can do just this, but it requires a nominal fee of $0.99.  With the current reviews nearing the low 2 stars, I’m a little hesitant.  The author of Radar-In-Motion has mentioned that he will accommodate the quirks that others have been complaining about which might make it worth it later on.  

iWeathr

iWeathr is the best radar app for the iPhone that I have found so far. Navigate to iweathr.com and locate your nearest radar location. Note that you won’t be entering the city where you live but rather the location of a radar installation. For help finding the nearest one to you go here. This implementation allows both rotation and zooming in - very nice!

iWeathr.com

Another nifty weather iPhone web application can be found at http://iphone.my-cast.com/ It’s a basic forecasting web-app but all that more powerful and simple.

*Update: kurt mentioned below that he prefers i.wund.com for it’s simplicity and the mass information that is displayed on the iPhone screen for that particular location. I have to say that it definitely does show great information, but the moving map on iweathr.com is the basic one that is hosted by the government’s weather website: http://adds.aviationweather.gov/radar/ which is the one that prefer using when scoping out the weather prior to flying. Thanks for the comments!

There you have it.  I just uploaded my latest flying schedule to my Google Calendar but I’m of course trying to swap things out, so if I ever get approved for some swaps, you’ll be able to track them.  Hope to see you at the overnights. 

Day 2 included walking around flooded streets while attempting to find some breakfast.  Strolling into a hotel opposite of ours, we enjoyed a typical American breakfast only because the waitress told us that the Tico breakfast wasn’t that great.  Even though I asked for fried eggs, I guess Costa Ricans interpret them as sunny side up.  I’ll take that for the road next time I order to ask for fried all the way.  

The entire day continued to drench us and there would be no end in site.  We decided after hearing that there was a chance of bridge closures to forgo staying the night in Coco Bay and head back to Liberia via autobus.  We ended up hitching a ride back to the city with Jose and bought him and his son some lunch as thanks.  He then took us to a couple of different hotels but without getting any deals, we paid $52 USD for a crappy room with no A/C.  Not that we needed the A/C, the only upside was that it was near the locale. 

More pictures after the jump!

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Looks like Matty P and I got the best of the rain during our 3 day excursion to Liberia, Costa Rica.  Arriving Tuesday early afternoon, sitting in Delta’s First Class, we met up with what would have been our tour guide had the weather worked out the next day, Jose Avispas.  Avispas Adventures was highly recommended by my captain and after doing a little bit of random internet research, we knew that they would be a perfect choice for our quick trip.  It was easy working with the company and they came and picked us up as promised even on short notice.  They dropped us off at a hotel in Hermosa Beach, taking care of all the reservations, called Villa Huetares that they recommended costing us $45.00 USD /night w/o extras.  They did have WIFI using a long WEP key, two computers that were open for use, clean rooms but because of the timing, the villa looked like a ghost town.  The website shows a couple of pictures of the place it definitely shows off the best of what they have.  It wasn’t a 2 or 3 star place, but it was a cheap place and “better” than a Hostel. 

It wasn’t looking good for us at the time due to the torrential down pour, but it cleared up after a bit so Matt and I decided to head to the beach.  We met a local fisherman selling us a boat trip and with little haggling, we got a 3 hour trip for $120 ($100 + $20 tip).  Included was the boat, fishing poles, a crew of three (don’t know why) and the guarantee that we would have a great time “fishing.”  We caught two bait fish and hung out for a bit, but ended up with nothing.  The view was great, the boat ride gave us great views of the coastline including the all inclusive Four Seasons Resort, and I would have to to admit that it ended up being worth it.  Albeit disappointing with no catch and a couple of nibbles, but hey, it’s fishing and we were in Costa Rica!.  Little did Matt and I know that it be the last tourist thing we would do. 

 

I’m on DL353 from ATL-LIR (Liberia, Costa Rica) travelling with Matty P in row 4! What an awesome way to start out the trip on first class with a short rib meal and New York cheesecake. We planned out a 3 day / 2 night trip on the whim and are basically just winging it. Should be a blast though as some of the plans are coming together slowly but surely. A captain recommended me to use a company called Aviapas which is owned by an American women and her Costa Rican husband so we thought we would give it a try. So far so good in that she found us a $45/ night hotel at Playa de Hermosa and their trips seem definitely doable budget wise.

AT&T charges $2.29 per minute without the international rate plan ($5.99 month) which would lower the cost to $1.99 / min. Basically, you would have to break 20 minutes of talk time just to make it worth while. Text msging is defintely the way to go at 0.50 each way or better yet, I could find a wi-fi signal and try out fring! Data roaming is $0.0195 per KB which the operator told me would be quote a bit if I pulled up a YouTube video. She advised that one should turn off data roaming, push services, fetch services, 3G and any other extra curricular dealios on the iPhone in order to avoid any crazy charges. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that you could “purchase” 20MB for $24.99 which I think is a ridiculous ripoff. I wish that they just had a plan skmiliar to the Blackberry International pacakge. Oh well, I guess try still have a lot to learn…hopefully they will listen.