Archive - Mar 30, 2008

So Steve is finally back from his epic cycling journey across New Zealand (incidentally, if you are interested - check out his blog for his day by day journal entries) and luckily we had a chance to swing by and see him and Jody this weekend before Steve shaves off his crazy beard. I'm not sure what Steve's original plan was when he set out on his journey, but after seeing a few photos of him just a few days / weeks into the trip, I was very impressed with the beard he had grown. I'm sure one of the reasons I was so impressed is because I definitely couldn't grow a beard anywhere near as impressive - even with twice or three times the amount of time, but I digress...

I encouraged him to keep it going, but sadly about a month (maybe more) into the trip he decided to shave it off. I expressed my disappointment and encouraged him to start again - this time without any trimming whatsoever. You see, at the time I was reading a book that Amy had given me for Christmas titled The Year of Living Biblically and the author had immersed himself into the bible, trying to follow it literally for a year. One of the rules was that he wasn't able to cut his hair (or shave his beard) and his beard was damn impressive! Anyways, I saw the same potential in Steve so I told him to go for it! And he did! You da man Steve!

I must say - it's even more impressive in person. Liam really liked it too - Steve even let him feel it which made him laugh. Maybe someday I'll get a chance to give it a try, but like I already said - I don't think I could come close to producing the face fungus that Steve managed in just a couple of months.

Welcome back Steve!

Amy just got back from a trip to Syracuse. While she was down there, I asked her to pick me up an AirPort Express at the Apple store. I could have ordered it online, but even with the Nortel EPP discount it was still more expensive than buying it in the states. Argh! Anyways, Amy was kind enough to buy it for me and smuggle it back into Canada. :)

Funny side story about Amy's experience in buying this thing for me: She went into the store with a printout of the webpage I had sent her to show her what to pick up. She said, "I have no idea what this is, but do you have these?" and showed the guy the printout. His eyes lit up and he responded with, "Yes, and it does everything you could want it do!" To which Amy replied, "You mean it'll vacuum and clean my house for me?!" The guy sadly didn't get the joke.

Anyways, I've unboxed it, plugged it in and tried it out. It's frickin' awesome! The only reason I bought it was for the 'air tunes' or iTunes music streaming - the plan being to have an easy way to pipe music to the back yard for when the deck is built (or being built I guess). True, I could have just used my old squeezebox but this thing integrates so seemlessly with iTunes that I just couldn't resist. Instead of having to use a web interface to control the squeezebox, I can use iTunes on any of my computers (including the new MacBook that is on the way) and I get all the great features like Party Shuffle! The other great thing is that iTunes allows you to output to both the airport express AND the local computer simultaneously which means I wont have to miss any tunes if I go from inside to out or vice versa. Awesome! I've only played with it very briefly so far, by using the speakers I've got plugged into the iMac, but I'll be heading to future shop sometime in the next few days to pick up a set of speakers (and subwoofer) to be used exclusively with this thing. I did a quick check and it looks like I can get a decent set for like $40 so... I'm psyched!