Cam I Am

You don’t have to very far back in my posts to learn that I recently got an iPhone. While I have had it for a little more than a couple weeks, I’ve had many opportunities to check it out.

First of all, I’m generally very happy with it. A co-worker just got a new HTC phone and isn’t very happy with it. That being said, I do have a few issues with this phone and new OS.

First of all, I’m very disappointed that there is no voice dialling available (especially with Bluetooth) unless you get the 3GS. It’s a feature that I will adjust to not having, but it is something that I would expect. The keyboard rotating and cut and paste options are definately nice to have, but I am noticing a lag/delay/temporary freezing occuring since the upgrade of OS. I can only assume that will be corrected in revisions of 3.0 in the near future, along with app software programmers tweaking their apps to work better with it as well.

In addition to this, it would be nice to create folders in the mail program. I understand that if I use IMAP it will sync everything over, including folders, but I seem to be reading 99% of my emails through the phone now..

That’s about it though. It’s much easier to type on a qwerty keyboard instead of a numerical keypad. And having the Internet available in the palm of my hand is really nice.

Today was the best Father’s Day I’ve had yet…

The day started off with me getting to sleep in; an amazing way to start off the day. After getting up, my wife immediately poured me a coffee with Bailey’s. Score!!!!

Once I had fully woken up, the kids and my wife gave me their cards and gifts. Afterwards, we went out for breakfast at IHOP and then on to the highly anticipated activity of the day. We were all going fishing.

Now, it’s important to understand one fact: I have never gone fishing before in my life. Yes, I know it’s hard to believe that at the age of 34, that I have never been. The only time I have done something remotely like fishing was for about 5 minutes, back when I was in Boy Scouts at a camp in the Haliburton area, and that was with a fishing rod that had no bait, and I’m fairly certain the lake had nothing but minnows.

So, we drove out to Mission to Sun Valley Trout Park where they have a small pond stocked with… well, trout of course! My wife had heard of this place on the TV show “The 100 Mile Diet“, and she thought that this would be something that would be fun to do for Father’s Day. With our brand new fishing rods in hand (that we had purchased earlier this week), we started setting the kids up. Fortunately, my wife used to go fishing a fair bit when she was a kid, so she showed me and the kids what to do. We set up our middle daughters’ rod first and let her get started. She cast out once, and within about 3 minutes, she had caught one! We still hadn’t finished setting up the other two kids rods and she had caught one! We helped her out, and then got our youngest daughter set up. Five minutes later, she caught one! Once we had helped her, we got my oldest daughter ready and then me.

After about a half hour, I caught my very first fish!

I have to admit, I was very happy! My oldest daughter was determined to catch one. Sadly, after another two hours, she still hadn’t caught one and was ready to call it quits.

After we left the park, we came home. Thanks to the power of the Internet and YouTube, I learned how to clean and cook trout. I’m happy to say that dinner turned out very well, considering it was swimming around less than 6 hours prior.

That was how I spent my Father’s Day! It’s always nice to spend time with my family and this day always makes me think on how I can be an even better dad.

About three weeks ago, we logged our 13th find. It was a new cache (we were the second people to sign the log) and we decided that we would deploy one of the two Canada geocoins that we had recently purchased and registered. We placed it and then logged that we had dropped it in that location.

Three other people have logged finds for that cache since we’ve been there. The first one left a generic TFTC, the second TNLN, and the third was logged a week ago and says that there is no sign of the geocoin in the cache.

So, my question is this… Do I try and find out what happened to the coin? Do I just write it off as lost?

I know that this is bound to happen eventually. People either don’t know what to to with them and keep them, or just don’t care and take them. Since this is our first coin deployment and it seems to have disappeared from the very cache that we placed it in, it’s kind of soured me on placing anymore. We had set a goal of it making it to Oshawa, Ontario. That seems unlikely now…

It’s been two weeks since it’s been identified as missing. Since we are still new at geocaching, what do I do?

At long last, I finally have an iPhone. After getting one for my wife in December, I have patiently waited until I was eligable to renew my contract with Fido and get a hardware upgrade.

Some people have asked why I didn’t wait until the 3G S came out (and in hindsight, I should have), but nonetheless, I now have it. I can’t believe how much I enjoy using it. In fact, this message is being posted from my phone.

I did have a couple issues to deal with. I’m disappointed that for a phone with Bluetooth technology, you can’t voice dial. On my last couple of phones, it’s been a feature that I’ve grown accustomed too, but I’ll survive. When I signed up for the phone and data plan, I was offered Fido’s 1 gig of data per month for $30, they failed to mention that they had (for a limited time) their 6 gig plan available for the same price. Thanks to a good friend that told me about this, I had that changed today.

My only other issue with Fido is that they told me that they have no plan in place for the Visual Voicemail in conjuction with a text message plan. This seems a little odd to me, so I’ll be looking into that some more.

That’s all for now! If anyone has some tips/tricks, I’d appreciate it!

This past weekend, we adopted a new family member!

We adopted him from the Maple Ridge BC SPCA on Saturday.  He was a stray, so the name that the shelter gave him was Charlie.  We’d like to change his name, but the kids seem attached to his current name!

And that was my weekend!!

Recently, we’ve been having some problems with our cordless phones. Yes, Handset 1 has been acting up again!

We’ve noticed that in two of the three handsets, the batteries are no longer holding a charge.  In fact, one of them last for about 10 minutes after a full charge.  So, I went looking for some new batteries.  After some shopping around, I came to a disappointing conclusion.

It’s cheaper to buy a new set of phones than it is to buy replacement batteries. 

Seriously!  The batteries I priced out between $25 and $30 each..  I found a new set of phones for $69..

Something is very wrong with this picture.  In a society that is trying to be more enviromentally sound, this is unacceptable. 

The ironic thing is that batteries come with the phones.  Shouldn’t the phones cost more?

I haven’t written much recently, partially because of time, but mostly because I haven’t thought of anything to write about..

In the last month, my wife, kids and I and really gotten into geocaching.  With 13 finds now, we are enjoying the time out.  To me, it’s great to spend time out with the family exploring the area, and I get to play with an electronic toy..  It’s win-win!

We’ve booked our campsite for a camping trip this summer.  This year, we’ll be going up to Alice Lake near Squamish.  We have never really ventured up into Sea to Sky country, so it’ll be nice to get away!  Now, I just have to wait for July now..

That’s about it.. 

Last weekend, my wife and I took our kids on a mini-vacation.  Call it guilt or whatever you like, but we figured that if my wife and I could take a six day vacation with just ourselves, our kids deserved a little away time too.

With only having a couple days to go away, we decided to drive down to Seattle for the weekend.  It had been a few years since we had been there and we figured that we’d do the tourist thing for a couple days. 

Despite how close it is to Vancouver, I’ve been to Seattle twice and my wife once.  We haven’t done a lot of sightseeing there, so this time, we were really going to try. 

We stayed at the Springhill Suites by Marriott (I’ll leave our issues with them out of this!) which is in the downtown area.  After checking in, we had promised the kids that we would take them on a double decker bus tour.  My wife and I went on one in San Francisco back in March and found it interesting to see the city and some of the sights that we may want to check out.  But in Seattle, the 45 minute tour was lack-lustre.  Okay..  it was boring.  Their were a few interesting things, but I wasn’t “wowed” with Seattle.

Throughout the weekend, we briefly went to Pike Place Market, walked along the piers, took the kids to Woodland Park Zoo, and even went up the Space Needle.  The zoo was amazing as always and the Space Needle was expensive (as expected), but the rest of the city doesn’t seem to have a lot to offer.  And in the city where Starbucks started, try finding one open on a Sunday morning!   And one of our kids started getting a fever (and subsequently sick), what is with the drug store that was open, but with no children’s Tylenol.  YOU’RE A FREAKIN’ DRUG STORE!

All in all, the kids seemed to have fun, for the most part.  But Seattle left my wife and I with the same impression.

It’s just not a tourist-friendly place.

Recently, my family and I have started exploring the world of geocaching.  It all started with my wife talking to a friend who is an avid geocacher that asked if we ever did it.  My wife had never heard of it, but was interested.  She came home that night and asked me if I had heard of it.  I told her that I had, but never thought that she’d be interested in it.

We talked about it, did a little research about it, and talked to our kids.  With the kids, it was an easy sell. “Do you guys want to go treasure hunting?”  My three girls were excited about the idea of little treasures hidden all around the world..

So, we’ve gone a few times.  So far, in the last 3 weeks, we’ve found two caches in Maple Ridge, and two in Penticton, and enjoy spending some family time together, outside, and looking for treasure.  We plan to keep going, especially with the nice weather finally surfacing. 

It’s nice to find an inexpensive, fun activity that the whole family can enjoy; and I still get to play with an electronic toy!

Over the past couple years, my wife and I have been trying to paint the inside of our house.  When we bought it, most of the walls had this horrid looking sponge painting job done on them.  While this works for some people, it certainly was not our style. 

Since both of us work full-time and we have three daughters, it isn’t easy to get around to getting things done.  We’ve managed to paint our dining room, living room and two bedrooms, but the upper hallway and stairwell have been a task that we haven’t been looking forward too. 

When it comes to painting, I am pretty meticulous about it.  I take my time to tape things off, patch holes, wash and sand the walls.  In this case, we’ve had to put primer on the walls before the two (and sometimes three) coats of paint required to make everything look nice.  But this time, we decided to hire a painter to do the hall and stairs.  We figured that it would be easier and quicker than the several days (to a couple weeks) that I would take to do it between working and making sure that I do a good job.

We looked through the local newspaper and called a painter by the name of Steve.  He came over, had a look and gave us an estimate.  We liked his offer, and told him the colour we wanted..

Well, it took him two days to do the job, which was expected. The result was less than spectacular.

He missed a couple corners/spots completely, and I’m not happy with the overall job.  The only reason I don’t call him back to fix it is simple..

I didn’t have to do it.  I would have taken a lot longer to set everything up, tape everything off, sanding, etc..  He got it done in two days, while my wife and I were working..

My only other complaint would be that his “receipt” is questionable.  A piece of paper that he scrawled on..  But I’ve kept it, and will be using it as a tax write-off next year.

Next time, I’ll just do it myself..  at least that way, I’ll be happy with the end result..