*-)- welcome aboard *-)-
just me. my current interests and stories for the interwebs.
I know that the title and post are redundant but it marks the day that I said the special two words, "I do" to my lovely wife. We've actually been dating for over ten years (wow time flies) but only married for three of those. Things have only gotten better and it couldn't be more perfect especially with the added bunting. Happy anniversary sweetie!
Celebrating month number one is exciting for new parents. Adelle and I also thought this would be a great idea. Who knew that cupcakes, representing each month in celebration of our daughter's special day, would amount to just a little over $270 in the course of a year!!! It was expensive but in the end, we got to gorge on cupcakes, take great photos and celebrate with friends and family! Here are each one of Norah Renée's photos along with her wonderful cupcakes from Sprinkles. We learned that the S'mores cupcake is our favorite, vanilla with sprinkles is a great treat but sometimes too sweet, and that if we invested the $270 dollars in Tesla stock instead, we would have quintupled our cash.
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On another note, if you haven't tried out Wolfram Alpha, you should give it a shot. I used the summation formula from Wolfram Alpha for a quick figure.
Exactly one year ago to the date and time, we welcomed my daughter into this world. Everyday since then, my wife and I have been living a truly blessed life with such a vibrant, loving, huggable, and curious little munchkin. As cliché as it sounds, I really can't believe how fast time has gone by. Happy Birthday to you Ms. Norah Renée. Momma and I can't wait to celebrate and share more life experiences with you! Here's a photo of Norah at six months pushing herself up and staring back at me. Not staged, not planned, my wife captured this wonderful moment. The photo below is also unedited.
I've also just entered the photo into the I Shot It Child Competition 2013 No 3 for kicks and giggles. So far, with my entry, I'm at number 470. Ends in five days and there are so many great photos!!! Wish us luck.
If you really want to know more about the composition and the photo, check out Jeffrey's Exif Viewer. Here are the basic details: Olympus OM-D E-M5 ISO 800 1/40 f1.4 25mm
Now this is an amazing jacket. I've been seriously considering a Scottevest for quite sometime and this might be the winner. Watch the video below. http://youtu.be/oY7elyTHWMk
You can hide both an iPad and a MacBook Air 13" and not have to bring cases makes this the ultimate coffee shop tech vest. Co-designed with #1 New York Times Best Selling author Brad Thor, it's set to debut next month in September. I was on a Mitch Rapp kick for a while but I'll have to start-up his series too when I'm finally done with Game of Thrones!
It's exciting when San Diego makes it into the top ten of anything and this time my beautiful home town squeaked into the top ten best coffee cities in America. This of course comes without surprise that the Travel and Leisure article mentions Bird Rock Coffee Roasters.
While you're here, I also wanted to add Dark Horse Coffee Roasters to the mix. Just a few days ago, I was able to take a trip down to Daniel's lovely shop where he was roasting on site. Let me tell you, the smell was intoxicating! I ordered a satisfying cold brew which was steeped 24 hours in a Toddy. If I didn't come off a mile walk, I would have easily gone for a hot cup where they use a Bee House Coffee Drip for their pour overs. Come check it out and grab a cup!
Yes you read the title right. airline tickets are cheaper than ever before. We might feel like we are paying more these days and complain about the cheap, no-frills experience but what do you want and how much are you willing to pay for it? Bottom line is this: tickets are on the rise, pilot pay is at an all time low with some companies asking for more concessions and the airplanes have never been this full. Can the ticket prices get any higher?
Unfortunately, maybe. Even my buddy passes have either disappeared or are impossible to use because of the high load factors.
In 1974, it was illegal for an airline to charge less than $1,442 in inflation-adjusted dollars for a flight between New York City and Los Angeles. On Kayak, just now, I found one for $278.
via The Atlantic: How Airline Ticket Prices Fell 50% in 30 Years (and Why Nobody Noticed)
13 hours and 29 minutes. That’s all you really need to know
If you are looking for a back-to-school laptop, there's a clear winner throughout the ENTIRE industry. From The Wirecutter and other reviews, particularly Nilay Patel's on The Verge, it's a no brainer unless you're naturally stubborn. For all the Wintel lovers out there, this might not be easy to swallow, but we all know which laptop runs Windows better. If you still can't tell which laptop it is, it's the Apple's new Macbook Air.
Once again, it's that time of year for Apple to unveil it's latest offerings in the crowded smartphone market. On September 10th, we can expect Tim Cook and the gang to take the wraps off the rumored iPhone 5S and maybe introduce a lower costing iPhone 5C. This would mark the first time in six years that Apple debuts a new lower tier model rather than moving the previous generation a step down.
As the timeline goes, Tuesday the 10th falls in line with the usual Apple event followed by ten days of hype until the official release on September 20th. We can expect reviews three days earlier.
Get your wallets and plastics ready. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that along with the new iPhones, we can expect the overhaul operating system, iOS7, to make it's final release. Are you going to be upgrading?
LATaco's interview with Tony Konecny from Tonx.org. I've now had one month worth of Tonx coffee and am a huge supporter and big fan! Try it for free if you don't believe me! http://instagram.com/p/XnBW0pFEgz/
I’d say the biggest misconception about coffee is that it’s expensive. It can feel expensive when you’re standing in a slow line in front of some prohibition-era cosplaying barista and shelling out 5 bucks for a cup – but even with that kind of a price premium, it is still almost a bargain.
For comparison, a pint of craft microbrew at a typical bar will set you back more than a great cappuccino or brewed coffee, even though the margins on that beer are much better and it requires less skill to pull a tap than to pull a decent espresso. But craft beer doesn’t suffer from quite the same perception of being an upscale, pricey luxury and it dodged a lot of unnecessary pretense as it became more mainstream.
When you make your own coffee at home, even the finest coffees become pretty cheap. We are buying and roasting some of the finest coffees available and our per-cup cost for our customers is barely 80 cents a pop. Much cheaper than most sodas, red bull, gas station coffee – and a hell of a lot cheaper than those popular k-cups and nespresso pods.
And we spend a lot of time fighting the misconception that you have to be a trained barista with expensive gear to make a good cup. Not remotely true. It is all about starting with really great, fresh roasted beans.
Verve Coffee Roasters' Colby Barr on the current state of coffee's "pretentious" fans.
On one level the “it’s just coffee” mindset is the old school, World War II, canned coffee for 25 cents with free refills idea — that whole culture of American coffee that it’s an industrialized nation and coffee’s the fuel for it.The other side of it is people that don’t resonate with words like hipster or foodie — it’s something they don’t relate to and if you don’t relate to it, you can be put off by it or be defensive.
Since the debut of Google's Nexus 7-2 / 7.b / Nexus 7 (2013) or whatever, the reviews have all mentioned the stunning screen. At $229, Google has placed it at $100 under the dated iPad mini and $30 over the Amazon Kindle Fire. You could also opt for the Nook HD being liquidated for $129, but we all know where Barnes and Nobles technology is heading. Here's Marco Arment's take.
I’d be tempted to get the new Nexus 7 “to play around with”, but last year’s model sitting in my closet reminding me I’ll never use it is a very effective deterrent.
I'm enamored by the pixel density of the screen and a good friend tweeted to me that he's in love, but is it worth upgrading my Nexus 7 (2012)? Being that it's been sitting idle in my bag for just under a year with an occasional here and there "wake" I'm much more along the lines of I don't care. Every time I hold my 2012 Nexus 7, there's complete apathy but with my 2012 iPad mini, I'm overcome with warmth.
I also love his second footnote with an emphasis on the last sentence.
I offered to give my Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire to Betaworks in the Instapaper acquisition, but they had so many of both sitting around already that they declined. Tech companies with mobile apps can practically tile walls with outdated Android devices. They’re the new AOL CDs.
On Monday, I made a trip to H-Mart in search for some Cronuts. When I arrived, they had sold out and apparently are selling out within an hour of baking. So instead, I bought a large assortment of pastries from Paris Baguette Cafe and looked forward to a delightful tasting with my wife when she got home from work. After I put our daughter to bed, I came back downstairs to see that the ants already started the party. To date, the ants have infested our family room dining table treats and are up 2-0. I was livid and our for revenge! The kicker is that I didn't even sample anything from the box as I anticipated a fun dinner. I looked up "ant killer" on Amazon and found Terro. With just under 600 reviews and 4.5 stars on average, I was ready to buy but I needed something now. We are subscribers to Amazon Prime, and love it, but it's was still two days away. I went to the local grocery store and bought some Raid Ant traps. The reviews on Amazon are sub par and in actuality pretty poor. I was on a full on war so I ended up buying both.
The Raid solution cost me $8 while the Terro came in under $7. I ordered the Terro on Amazon on Tuesday and it came next day!!! Unbelievable service and I am truly impressed more and more by Amazon. If I would have known, I might have forgone the extra money I spend on the useless Raid trap.
Within seconds, and I mean maybe 10 seconds, the ants were all over the Terro package. The response was tremendous! Continually throughout the day, it kept on attracting everybody while the Raid was the lonely child left in the cafeteria. I'm giving it 5 stars! Solid five stars!
I get a lot of questions on what tablet I use / prefer (iPad Mini) and if I still carry an e-reader when I travel. I do and I'll tell you why. To put it simply, my daughter has taken over my Mini. Some other quick thoughts are that the Kindle Paperwhite is lighter than the Mini 95 grams, the front light is amazing, the resolution is crisp, and lets not forget about the amazing ecosystem than Amazon has established.
I've never enjoyed reading on the iPad unless it's a news article or a magazine through Flipboard. I also end up getting distracted by all the applications that are on the iOS ecosystem. When I want to read a book and dive into it, I'm still in enamored by my Kindle. In fact, my wife prefers it too!
