Droids are coming

After seeing the commercials during football yesterday I was completely impressed with the outright attack on AT&T that Verizon is beginning. Before, it seemed like all the commercials were just plain about Verizon and how great the network is. The lastest series promoting the upcoming Droid phone that paired up with Google is one of them while the other is a play on AT&T's "There's an App for that" with "There's a Map for that" and are in my eyes a couple of the greatest attack commercials out there. The Droid commercial points out the flaws in the iphone with the following statements:

iDon't Have a real keyboard.
iDon't Run simultaneous apps.
iDon't Take 5 megapixel pictures.
iDon't Allow customization.
iDon't Run Widgets.
iDon't Allow open development.
iDon't Take pictures in the dark.
iDon't Have interchangable batteries.

The commercial follows all of this up with "Everying iDon't, Droid Does..." Pretty cool add if you ask me. Also found these little pokes out there as well...
Looking for images of the phone should be as simple as Googling the phone but who knows what has actually leaked out there. There are a couple Droid phones shown but they may not neccessarily be the version that Verizon is going to launch. I seriously doubt that the iphone can be killed as people just want the ability to say "i have an iphone." The same thing happened with ipods and still goes on today. I guess I just don't understand wanting a phone just for it's name rather than what it does and what its capable of. Keep an eye out. I'm willing to bet the phone will be out sometime before Black Friday to draw people in....

The Set Up

During the last portion of dead time at work, Wendy and I had begun playing with some of the puzzle caches to see if we could solve them and get the caches off our lists. One of them being the Eagle Eye Stash cache (GCGGXG). Wendy was the one who successfully came out with the coords and explained how it worked. Having it solved was one thing, going to get it was another. During the same week, some other cachers by the team name of BenandTina had also solved the puzzle. We've met up with them a couple of times at an event as well as at a night time cache we knew they were going to be at and Wendy knows them through past friendships and it was mentioned that we should all try and go at the same time for this cache as well. Well, we finally decided to do it this Sunday and Cano will also be joining us. There will be 7 of us total as Meredith is working so I'll have the kids with me. It should be very fun and hopefully quite memorable as it will be my 500th cache. Thats not a huge milestone for a lot of people but for me right now, its kind of important. I was only at 186 with two events under my belt at the beginning of 2009. Having started caching in 2005, this wasn't anythin spectacluar. I had just purchased my new GPS last fall which prompted me to cache a lot more to try and get my moneys worth out of it. Looking back now at the stats for this year, I have had 291 finds with 3 events. I was sitting at 489 at the beginning of this week and decided that I wanted the Eagle Eye Stash to the big one. I respect the owner and his philosophy on caching, particularly on hides themselves, and am very impressed with his GSAK abilities, so I figured I'd make his a my milestone. In order to make this happen, I needed to get 10 caches on my day off so that I would be sitting at 499 for Sunday.
My day off goes this way...
Cooper had spent Wednesday night at the apartment so I had to run over the house first thing in the morning and get Cosmo to bring the duo to daycare. After I got them off, I went back to the house to take care of some bill box cleaning before heading out. I got done some of what I needed to and starting planning out the 10 that I could do to get all set up. I ran back to the apartment, got into my caching clothes, and headed out. I looked at caches around Route 46 as I had a bunch still printed in my car. I didn't really feel like heading out all the way towards Ellsworth again, knowing that the construction on Route 1 sucked the previous week, so I picked out a couple new ones that I hadnt done yet to start off with. Big mistake. By the time I had gotten to where the first was supposed to be, it was already 11:30. The gentleman that placed this is one that I don't know enough to understand some of his hides or hints. The cache was supposed to be in a stump. I searched every tree stump and fallen tree trunk within 50ft of where it was supposed to be wasting about 25 minutes. I didn't want to give up but I knew I had to move on to get 10 for the day. I continued down this dirt road towards another hide by the same person. Again, I don't know this person well enough to understand their thought process. The hint for this second one was "Dodge keeps my cache company". What the heck does that mean? There are no old pieces of a dodge here or anything...After spending another 30 minutes looking for a cache that just wasn't there, I felt like the day was going to be a bust. Two caches, two DNF's. How the hell am I going to get 10 when all the caches I planned on involved hikes?
Having given up on Hondohawk for the day because I just don't get him, I decided to go after Stone House Blues (GC4E32). I really screwed up on this one as well by entering in the wrong way. Looking at the map on my GPS, I thought I had pulled in to the dirt road that got me the closest I could and it being called Stone Hill Road, I figured I'd had it correct. The cache from where I parked was like 1.35 miles away. I started the trek up what is basically a small mountain, following what turned from a dirt road into a very lightly used 4x4 road. As I got a little ways up, I passed a truck on his way down and thought this must be the right way in if someone is coming down this way. It was a nice quiet walk once I hit the base of the blueberry fields. There were lots of birds picking away and I startled a ton of mice and chipmunks as I passed through the trees in between each field. Once I got about 3/4 of the way up, I got a really frustrated and realized that I had come for much longer of a walk than I needed to. I had reached a point where I could see what appeared to be the peak and what was down the slope from that a little but a damned Chevy Cavalier. I stopped for a minute, used my binoculars to see if maybe it was just a beater or abandond car that someone brought up but it was someones daily driver. What the hell? I enoyed the quiet hike up but have to admit, because I was trying to get 10 caches today and failed on the first two, I was pretty upset with my goof. As I continued up towards the Stonehouse cache, I started to think about what I had just done and looking around, thought it really wasn't that bad of a mistake. The little tiny optomist came out in me...I wasn't at work dealing the the stress, I was doing something I enjoy, I was in a place where I could see for miles and miles, a on a nice crisp October day, and it was quiet. After putting this spin on things, I picked up the pace a little to the Stonehouse. I quickly found the first cache, grabbed some Cabella's coins out of it and signed the log. Here are some of the surroundings at the location...

This was tipped over with a bunch of targets that had been taped to it at one point but had fallen off. The table had been shot up pretty good and had obviously been someones flamming beer pong table at one time.

It appeared that while people were up were hanging out and camping that if they had something that would burn, it was in fact burned...


After getting the three different caches that were up here on the mountain, I worked my way back to Bangor via Rt 46 and some other smaller roads to make sure I got the ten caches I needed. Although some were GRC's and others were easily obtained micros, I was able to complete the day to make it so that Sunday was exactly what I wanted it to be...Number 500 with a fun group of people.

Right, who gets out?

Today we had a dead period of about 30 minutes and I was able to really crank this one out. It wasnt overly complicated but the phones have been going non stop and its hard to do much more than cut out a piece here and there every couple calls. Truly, if you haven't seen it, doesn't it bother you that people quote this movie and you have no idea what the hell they are talking about? Go rent it already...

1...2...5!

The latest papercraft....The Holy Handgrenade of Antioch. For those that have no idea what the hell this is, it's the grenade that killed the most vicious rabbit in the world in the Monty Python movie Search for the Holy Grail.If you haven't see the movie, stop reading my blog and go rent it.

Frenchy Bobby

Cooper was really good the other night when we went to get his hair cut and asked if we could go through the pet store afterwards. He was so and sat still while I got mine cut as well that I had no objections. We took some time and looked at the bunnies, lizards, snakes and even the kittens. After we got done, we headed to the part of the store with the fish. Cooper took more of an interest than usual so I started looking a little at the small tanks and basic goldfish and betas. He asked if he could have a blue fish which was good because goldfish tend to last a couple weeks while the beta's are pretty darn hard to kill. I mean c'mon, they'll survive in a dixie cup if thats all you provide them with. We picked out a small tank and I let him pick out one decoration. He really wanted a sunken ship but they were all too big for the tank we were getting which was only a 1.5 gallon capacity. He ended up chosing a pineapple to be "under the sea" and then we moved on to rocks. We ended up going with his favorite color of green and he said it would look like grass. With all but the actual fish picked, we starting looking at all the containers for the least sickly looking one with the brightest blue. He picked a good one that had some red on it too and off we went.
The car ride home was all about trying to pick a name. After we filtered through all the gross names like booger, poopfish, and stinky, Cooper started to go into the names from what seems to be his most quoted movie lately which is Talledega Nights. He said Ricky Bobby once but then immediately moved to Frenchy Bobby and it stuck. I threw out some other names using aliteration with beta but he wasn't going for it. Whatever, his fish, he gets to pick the name...We got him home, adjusted the water a bit and he's all set...

Customer Service Week....Blaaaah!

So far this week has been pretty much a huge disappointment. Customer Service Week with Unicel meant we had fun. We had all sorts of things that were put together by the commitee to make the week something different. With Unicel, we had themed days where you'd come in dressed for that theme such as mismatch day, crazy hat day, or sports apparel day. With Verizon Wireless it's just jeans and a work shirt. No logos bigger than your badge, no warm comfortable hoodies, no hats. With Unicel, we'd come in and there'd be a donuts from Gosselins or Franks bakeries. With Verizon Wireless we get a cookie with and a little cup of milk. With Unicel, we'd get a company logo shirt, jacket, sweatshirt or some type of clothing. With Verizon Wireless, we got the mousepad and badge holder shown. Seriously? A mouse pad? Mousepads were designed for use in the days of mice that had balls in them. Today with an optical mouse, there is no need for a mouse pad. I don't even use a mouse, I have a trackball to save all the moving around. The badge holder is something everyone already has as well. I understand that they knew there was a chance that our center was going to close down so there really wasn't much of a budget but c'mon...We as a group starting off as a new center need something special to really kick things off. Pull the money from some kitty fund somewhere and make us feel like we're valued.
Going beyond CS Week, there are a lot of other changes to get used to. The biggest change is something little, but finding out about it was really big. Instead of PC's, we now have these Thin Client terminals at our desks. They are fully under the control of VZW and basically everything about them is so limited they may as well not be there. Yesterday, everyone was assigned to work a project that involved a large spreadsheet being updated as you contact customers. Well, as you work on it, like everything else, you save it from time to time. For ease of any project I work on, I have always saved what I am working on to the desktop. No more....Learning the hard way, we found that the Thin Clients always revert the desktop back to what VZW is broadcasting and everything else is wiped. Those that saved to the desktop lost a days worth of work. I just got done spending 45 minutes going back though the notes of the almost 50 accounts that I dealt with yesterday just to get back to where I was so I can try and complete my list today...Seriously, if something good doesn't happen today, I fee like just sitting here quietly doing nothing until 5pm.

No Signal

Montages are always funny and I love seeing work related stuff like this. I particularly like the clip from Joy Ride: Dead Ahead for some reason.