It's finally been getting colder out. A few days ago we had some light periods of snow in Houghton, which was nice to see. I'd like it to snow early and often so that the skiing is good this year. Some of my friends who ski/snowboard are also going to get a season pass and go with me sometimes but they haven't decided if they are going to get one from MTU's Mont Ripley or Mount Bohemia which is apparently much better skiing but is 45 min - 1 hour away. Bohemia is also cheaper, as long as you buy the season pass on the $99 pass day.

Gmail has added IMAP support. Most people probably don't care but I'm really happy about it because it will allow me to upload all the e-mails I have stored on my computer so that everything is in one place. I'm almost done uploading them all. It's kind of funny reading e-mails that I had from as early as 2001. As of now Gmail says I have 12,579 e-mails on their server. That's a little ridiculous.

I don't remember if I mentioned that my "nicer" camera broke about a month ago. It all of a sudden would only take pictures with a bunch of horizontal white lines in them. After searching some website, I found out that Canon is saying it is a faulty piece of hardware causing the problem and has been replacing the part for free for customers. I sent it in and without about a week or two they sent me... a NEW camera. My old camera was probably about 4 years old so they must not have had the parts in stock anymore to fix it. I had a Powershot S1 1S and they sent me a refurbished Powershot S3 1S. It seems a lot nicer than my old one so I'm pretty happy about it. It's like getting a brand new camera for free. I went out geocaching the weekend after I got it and tested out some of the color modes and other various things. I'll eventually post the pictures on here, but until then you can find them here. And yes, some of those are in graveyards. Some of the geocaches I found that day were in abandon cemeteries from the 1800s (most were about 1850 or newer).

I've been considering getting one of the XBox 360 HD-DVD players. Some places have deals where you get a free copy of Heroes season 1 ($70), King Kong (comes with the HD-DVD player), and 5 other free movies. That offer should be enough to make anyone want to buy it, but I'm still a little bit nervous about buying into a format that might be dead in two years. Blu-ray seems to be winning the high definition format war, at least right now. I guess if I do buy it then I'd still be able to rip the movies and burn them as Blu-ray once all the technology is out. I'm not sure if it's worth the hassle to get it right now, but it would sure look awesome.

Labels: camera, geocaching, gmail, hd-dvd, skiing, snow

The TV shows have started again. The Office is as funny as ever and Heroes is still pretty good. A new show called The Big Bang Theory is absolutely hilarious. It's on CBS right before Heroes, if you want to check it out. It's about a bunch of nerds living next to an attractive woman. It's really, really funny.

It's been raining almost every day for the past week or so. A week ago I did go up to Copper Harbor geocaching. It was pretty nice weather, although a little windy. I took some pictures if you want to check them out. There are some pretty cool caches around the area that have to do with mines. I'd like to check those out sometime soon.

It's also been really windy when it hasn't been rainy the past week. I did find the time to go biking once or twice though. I ended up breaking my bike pump and I only bought it this summer. That's what you get when you buy some cheap thing from Wal-Mart I guess.

Halo 3 is pretty good, but didn't live up to the enormous hype that surrounded it. The campaign is pretty short but still decent and multiplayer is really good like normal. I think Bioshock is a better game overall, but I'm sure most people won't agree with me.

Labels: biking, geocaching, halo 3, pictures, tv

I'm all moved in at school now and we're in the second week of classes. After looking at my degree audit I noticed I didn't need one of my classes so now I'm only taking four and don't have class Tuesdays and Thursdays. I am working again Tuesdays and Thursdays though. However, like the title of this post says, school is boring.

The apartment here is pretty nice. The building is around 100 years old but the inside has obviously been renovated since then. There are more electrical outlets in my apartment than there were in the whole entire house I lived in last year. Eventually I'll get around to uploading some pictures of it as well as the house I lived in last year. The one problem is I wish that big trucks didn't drive downtown Hancock because it's hard to hear the TV or talk on the phone when you're near the window when it's open. I guess it won't need to be open for very much longer since it's been getting cooler out.

Microsoft finally sent me a repaired XBox 360. It was sent to Green Bay since they only ship to your billing address, but I should have it in the next few days. I'm glad it's back now because in 13 days Halo 3 comes out and I can't miss that.

I've found that biking here is a lot more tiresome than in Rochester. There aren't many bike paths here that are paved but even the ones that are have modest hills in them and I don't seem to ride hills very well. I've found a few roads that are a little hilly but are manageable that I've been riding on so I'll probably stick with those. Now that it's been getting pretty cold I've been shopping around more for a bike trainer. It looks like I might have to buy one online as the stores here aren't very helpful or don't know what I'm talking about.

The travel bug I sent out a while ago has made its way to Germany. I don't know if I mentioned that earlier or not, but someone took it from Texas to Germany and it has now moved around several times within Germany. I think it's pretty cool that it has wound up all the way over there. You can see where it's been by clicking here. I've done one geocache since I've been here that was around my apartment. I should look for a few more, since there are several within a short distance of my place, including one that is right across the street.

Labels: biking, geocaching, hancock, school, xbox 360

Cubs won again, this time versus the Brewers who are leading the NL central. They were losing the whole entire game until the bottom of the 9th with 2 outs when Aramis Ramirez hit a 3-run homerun to win the game. I was listening to Ron Santo announce the game at work and you could tell that the ball was hit really well because he screamed after the ball left the bat. Cubs and Brewers play again at 3pm today on Fox. Should be a good game.

I dropped a "travel bug" in a Geocache a few weeks ago. Travel bugs are dog tags which you attach to an item and give a 'mission'. When people visit the cache they take the travel bug and move it to another cache which corresponds to its mission (hopefully). A few days ago someone picked up the one I left and said he/she was taking it south. So I'm excited to see where it ends up. Check it out here.

Labels: cubs, geocaching

It was nice to have a long weekend, not that I really needed it or anything. It was nice to do stuff outside, watch movies, and that sort of thing. Went to a friends house Saturday to play some multiplayer Wii then spent some time outside on my bike and out on walking trails around Rochester.

I'd like to take my bike to a path near a river about an hour south of Rochester but I think I need to ride it a little bit more before I go long distances. This weekend I went out a few times and it was pretty fun but pretty exhausting. One of the times I ran into an older couple geocaching at a local park. I stopped to talk to them, since you don't see that every day. It was their first time and they were trying to figure out how to use their GPS. I'm not sure if they ended up finding anything or not.

Since I ran into other people geocaching, I thought it would be fun to do today. I went looking for three of them in the area. Two of them were from a park within walking distance and the other was a little further away but also in a really nice park. I actually couldn't find one of them but I'll try again some other time.

I'm watching the playoffs right now. The Jazz are losing by a little bit against the Spurs. I've only seen a few of the Jazz games this year, all playoff games. Deron Williams is really a great player. He's like John Stockton except scores more points. Although I think he does give up more turnovers and his defense isn't as good. But this is only his second year. It will be interesting to see how good he is in another two or three years. The announces constantly compare his passes to Carlos Boozer to Stockton to Malone passes. They run the pick and roll just as well as those two did.

The Cubs keep losing, no surprise there. Their team is really good except for their bullpen. I believe they are near the top of the NL in batting average but their bullpen has lost over 10 games for them already this season. They need to trade for some good relief pitchers. If it were up to me, I'd try and trade Matt Murton. He's really good and young so can probably fetch some decent pitchers. The Cubs have several good outfielders in the minor leagues so I think they could deal with losing one.

Labels: biking, cubs, geocaching, jazz