We all have heard about the HP TouchPad – Mayflys have had longer lives. Well the feeding frenzy than ensued after the Crazy Eddie price cuts echoed around the world . . .
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| You Might Like to Knowwww.thechristys.net | |
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We all have heard about the HP TouchPad – Mayflys have had longer lives. Well the feeding frenzy than ensued after the Crazy Eddie price cuts echoed around the world . . .
We passed another milestone in our continuing evolution. We bought a pickup truck. Anyone who has grown up in Texas or lived here for any amount of time will suspect something may be wrong with you if you don’t have a pickup truck in your family. We are misfits no more. Of course our conformity comes at a cost. Our drop top pony car has been sacrificed for our boat pullin, kayak haulin, high sittin vehicle. The Mustang was a GT Convertible Premium, it was a 2007 an had about 20K miles on it. Fast and fun it was both badass and a creampuff. Interests and priorities change and we thought our vehicles should be part of that change. We pretty much made an even swap for our (new to us) 2010 Ford F-150 XLT SuperCrew. It has quite a few more miles on it – 54K but it is in very good shape and should do nicely supporting our recreational habits. I will be adding a receiver hitch this weekend.
Wish us luck with the new vehicle and do not speak of convertibles this fall. Linda, Katie and I just got back from spending 4 days in the Rockport TX area. We rented a house on a canal that leads to Compano Bay. The house had a boat slip and even it’s own boar ramp so we took our fishing boat with us and boy are we glad we did. First stop was Goose Island State Park. We were a little early to check in so we went to the state part and put our boat in and went for a little spin. We love Galveston but the water and beaches are so much nicer down south. We cruised into St Charles bay and through out a few lines. In no time the girls were hooking up with Sand Trout, Catfish and Ladyfish. After a few hours we headed in to check out our vacation house. It was called The Boathouse, it is a small one room efficiency on top of a boat dock. It was surprising well appointed. The owners have a house behind the Boathouse and a giant carport/patio/hot tub area next door where they part their giant motor-home when they are in town. It was extremely convenient to the bay and perfect for our needs. We would recommend it to friends and stay there again. We fished every day, early and late, off the boat and off the dock and I think we caught our share. Most of the fish we caught were Speckled Sea Trout, we didn’t get any monsters but any lack of quality was made up with quantity. We did pull in a few hefty Gaftop catfish which we managed to release without getting poked. I would like to make an announcement . . . . my daughter Katie has moved her fishing game to the next level. Most of her fish were caught with plastic lures instead of live or dead bait. She can now fool them with plastic fish. Here are a few pics from our Rockport adventure. Anyone who fishes with any kind of regularity breaks fishing rods. They are so thin and long. Most rods are broken in car doors, tail gates, under foot and in general boat mayhem. Sometimes they are broken with a fish on the other end. I would have preferred to keep mine in one piece (instead of 3) but barring that option I would rather snap one bringing in a fish than stepping on it. That’s what happened today. It was a struggle and he took his toll (he also bent my landing net) but he was boated. Now that I have that out of the way – the next time I will just cut the line.
To see the terror of the deep that did this to me click HEREOur nephew Jeffery married Olivia a sweet Alabama girl in Dothan Alabama on July 16th. We got to see relatives on Linda’s side of the family that we haven’t seen in a while and it was a fun wedding. It was held in an old train station that has been converted to and event venue. Geoff is in the Marines and looked sharp in his dress blues. Olivia was beautiful in her dress and seemed to be enjoying herself. In fact everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, us included. On Sunday mooring we all met for breakfast at Shoney’s. We got to spend a little time getting to know Olivia while taking full advantage of the breakfast buffet. We just had to drive to Pensacola, Geoffrey and Olivia were driving to Norfolk VA that day! Geoff is stationed in Norfolk so that’s where will be living, at least for now. We wish them all the best in their new life together.
Today’s doodle isn’t notable because of what it pays tribute to, or how cool it looks or even the kind of interaction it offers. This one is special because it is built with HTML 5. I think this signals the beginning of mainstreaming of HTML 5. What is HTML 5? Simply put, it’s a open standard for programing multimedia on the web (sound, graphics, movies). In the past you needed to use proprietary tools like Flash or Quicktime. HTML 5 is an effort to open and standardize and open these tools. Should you care? Probably not, most of us don’t write code. But I think it’s notable because it represents to movement away from proprietary to open, and I think that is great. HTML 5 is new and isn’t included in the most popular browser yet (Internet Explorer), but it is in Chrome and Firefox. If you go to Google.com with IE you will just see an impage, if you use Chrome you will be able to play with the image. 
 How cool is this? You are waiting for your morning train (subway) to get to work when you remember you finished all the milk with your cereal this morning. What are you going to do about it now? Well, if you live in South Korea you might just walk over to a seriers of giant bill boards that look just like grocery shelves and do some quick shopping. You scan a few QR codes (like square bar codes) with your phone, place your order online and it will be delivered after you get home from work. An outfit called Home Plus has put this together and are using it to outflank their larger rival. It is one of the few inovative ideas I have seen in the online grocery space. Very cool. To see a video, click on the picture.
Another good thing about this transaction was all the extra stuff. When you buy a new kayak you usually get a big piece of floating plastic with cool nooks and crannies. You quickly figure out you are not going far without a paddle (you know what they say about being up the creek) so put one of those in your shopping cart. You also learn in about 12 seconds that you don’t want to sit in/on your plastic ship without a little padding and some back support, toss a seat into the shopping cart. Perhaps you may want to stay in one place for more than a few seconds, add an anchor to the list. You probably should attach that anchor to something – anchor line, that will work better. It doesn’t take an ancient mariner with a sextant to see where this is going. All this stuff and more was included in my acquisition. I did have to buy some kind of carrier. It’s not easy to heft a 14.5 foot long 85lb boat over your head and on to the top of your giant Texas SUV. I got me some Malone SeaWings and a Stinger, now it is possible although still difficult when you have noodle arms after paddeling all day. I dream of getting a trailer some day. Our first outing was a success, kayak was loaded, unloaded, launched, mounted, paddled, reloaded, unloaded and fish were caught somewhere in between. There was more water in the hull then expected but the ocean was choppy and how did I know what to expect anyway? Our second trip was over the holiday weekend. We went to Galveston Island State Park. It’s a real nice place. We hang out on the bay side. More loading/unloading/paddling/fishing and then . . . . my not so silent partner took to the seas – look at her go! After deftly mastering the rudder and working out the whole left, right, left, right paddle thing she was cruising the lagoon. She did quite well and said she would even consider going with me in a 2nd kayak some time (one with a motor in it). On our return home it was obvious that there was too much water in the hull even to our untrained eye. On closer examination I found that the repaired portion of the boat was no longer repaired, it reminded me of the SS Minnow. After much hand-ringing and some crazy ideas involving expanding foam we took the boat to Austin Kayak in SW Houston. They said they can fix it, they have it now, I am hoping for the best. So everything didn’t turn out exactly as I hoped, but I am still glad I got a kayak, I think it is going to cut into my motor boating. They should be able to fix my |
We have never owned a truck so I spent a fair amount of time doing research and I am still doing research but I am looking forward to the new experience. Next time I pull into Tractor Supply I can hold my head up high as I stroll from the parking lot. True storey – I was at one of these stores one time looking for a trailer part, in the parking lot there were 23 vehicles including our Expedition. I actually counted them. Care to guess how many trucks there were? Yup – 22. At least I had a big American SUV, had I showed up in a Honda a rain of spent chewing tobacco may have been my greeting.
