icedlatte.com

…and it was fun.

The drive?  Long.

Driving to LA

The park?  Fun.

Big Thunder Mountain

After leaving Phoenix at about 5pm, we finally arrived at the hotel at about 11.  A few hours sleep later, and we headed out to the park and made the opening.  We almost made it to closing, but decided to head back to the hotel at about 10pm, but we were able to ride everything we wanted to.

I finally beat the wife in a ’shooting’ game..  The Toy Story Mania ride.  That, of course, is after she once again schooled me in Buzz Lightyear’s shooting game.  She’s just good at them, I guess.

The hotel, the Crowne Plaza Anaheim, was pretty good.  For the price we paid, it was excellent.  The room was large and the bed was very comfortable.  Their shuttle to Disneyland was great, too.

I’ve uploaded all the pictures to my Flickr page.  Check them out here.

No Comments »

We live in the boonies. The QC. Queen Creek, AZ. As a result, our cell phone coverage isn’t the greatest. We have Sprint, and all issues aside, we’ve been pretty happy with them. (Their costs and plans are routinely lower than Verizon, for example. And before you ask why I don’t have an IPhone, it’s due to a few reasons, such as not having great signal from AT&T in the QC, slow data speed, and not being able to customize the IPhone much.)

But unfortunately, we never received great Sprint signal here in the house. I purchased a cell phone signal booster a few years ago, and it does a great job, but I mounted it in the laundry room, since it was the center of the house. What did that mean? Well, it worked great if you stood in the hallway or in the laundry room. Not a great solution.

That’s why I was excited when Sprint announced the Airave earlier this year.  And it finally went on sale Monday.

So, did the Sprint Airave work out?  Click “Continue Reading..” to read my review of the Sprint Airave.

Continue Reading »

No Comments »

..are you doing reading this?  Well, finish reading this site, then go see WALL-E.

Easily one of the best movies of the year.  The spirit and caring you get in the first 30 minutes, with no talking, mind you, is amazing.

Nods to having Sigourney Weaver as the voice of the computer.  In the movie spoof of Star Trek, Galaxy Quest, she played a character who’s only purpose was to repeat what the computer said.

All in all, an amazing movie with incredible visuals.  And the short before the film, Presto, about a very hungry rabbit and a magical hat, was the funniest of their shorts yet.

It was a great movie to get that nasty taste of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull out of my mouth.  Man, that sucked.

1 Comment »

I have a confession.

I’ve had the same espresso machine since 2000.  A Starbucks Barista machine.

Okay, there, I said it.

A wedding gift, actually, from my Aunt. (Which I appreciated very much!)

Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing to have the same espresso machine for 8 years, but the machine has definitely been going downhill in the last year or so. Since the closest Starbucks (or any coffee house, for that matter) is about 10 miles away, I was missing my iced latte’s.

And, when your website is icedlatte.com, you have to have iced latte’s.

So I started looking around on Ebay to see if I could find any deals on espresso machines.  After looking and looking, and even bidding on a few, I did a “Buy it Now” for a Saeco Easy Espresso Machine.

I was originally looking for another ‘manual’ espresso machine, one where basically you have to do it all manually.  However, I got a pretty good price on this super-auto model.  That means that on this one, you just press one button, and off it goes:

1. Grinds the espresso beans.
2. ‘Drops’ the beans into the portafilter.
3. Forces water through the portafilter to make the espresso.
4. Pushes the espresso grinds into the dump box.
5. Is ready to go again.

Now, just because it’s a super-auto doesn’t mean that you can’t adjust anything.  You can adjust:

1. The grind (fine/course)
2. Amount of espresso per shot.
3. Amount of water to run through each shot.

Once you get all that adjusted, you just press the button on the upper left, and wait for it to make the sweet, sweet espresso.

All in all, I’ve been pretty happy with it for the week or so I’ve had it.  I’ve used it everyday, pretty much, and the espresso it makes is very good.

The downsides?  Yeah, it has a few:

1. Just one ‘red light’ to tell you about 3-5 things that could be wrong.  I’ve pretty much figured out that depending on when the red light comes on in the process, I can figure out what’s wrong.
2. A little bit of espresso drops down into the drip tray at the bottom.  That’s pretty common with super-auto’s, I discovered, though.
3. The size.  A super-auto is a little bigger on the counter than just a manual one, but again, that’s just something to get used to.

All in all? I’m very happy with this purchase, and I hope I’ll be keeping this one for 8 years or longer.

No Comments »

Back, “in the day“, and by in the day, I mean like 1994-95, I used to have and play an Atari Jaguar.

I remember the first time I played one, too.  I was having one of my usual, incredible, super-cool-people only parties (ie: me and my friends playing video games and probably have liquor.) and I rented a Jaguar and some games from the local video game store up the street.

It turns out we spent much of the time playing just one game on it:  Tempest 2000.  A ‘remix’ of the classic arcade game, it had very strange visuals mixed with a pretty cool soundtrack.  Oh, and a sexy-chick voice that said “Super Zapper Recharge!” between each level.

What more could you ask for?

Later, a friend got me a used Jaguar and Tempest 2000, and all was well in the world.

Until, unfortunately, a few years later, my Jaguar was ruined in a water-heater failure in our apartment.  That ended my Jaguar.

Until the other day.

When I realized that the newest game on Xbox Live for my 360 was called “Space Giraffe“, made by a man named Jeff Minter.

Jeff Minter, in case you didn’t know, made Tempest 2000.  Oh, and he has a thing for animals and especially  llama’s.  Hey, whatever.

So, basically, Space Giraffe is an even weirder version of Tempest 2000.  No, it’s a little different than Tempest, but the game play is definitely there.

If you have an XBox 360, and are into funky, weird, and downright strange gameplay, then you have to buy Space Giraffe.  You owe it to yourself.

It’s cheaper than buying a llama.

No Comments »

It’s been busy.

Super-busy.

As you can see from my pictures lately,  I was in beautiful Las Vegas at the Riviera Hotel.

First off, I think Vegas is really beautiful only at night.  And only if you squint.

Then add the Riviera Hotel on top of that, and, well, it wasn’t the greatest.

But then again, I was there for DEFCON.  DEFCON 15 to be specific.   The last DEFCON I was at was DEFCON 5, so it’s been awhile.

It was definitely much larger than it was back then.  I guess they had over 6000 people, including one hidden NBC reporter.

I learned quite a bit, and picked up some cool stuff.  One of my happiest purchases was something that I’ve wanted since I was in college.

The Apple Newton MessagePad 120

This was one of the first PDA’s out on the market, back in the mid 1990’s.  I heard about them while I was working at the college I attended, and thought that since I was making ‘the big bucks’, I’d head on down to Compusa and pick one up.

That’s when I found out that they ran over $500; a little too much for a college student/employee.

It would be a few more years before I picked up a Palm Personal, one of the cheaptest/greatest PDA’s ever released. I think I paid $200 for it, then, years later, still a lot, but it was a splurge.

Okay, back to the Newton.

What made the Newton so cool was the fact that it actually read your handwriting.   Not well, sometimes, but yeah, it did.

I picked it up for only $15.  Quite a difference than the $500 it originally ran for.

No Comments »

For those of you that know me, you might call me a gadget freak.

For those of you that don’t know me, the people that do know me might call me a gadget freak.

One of those things is cell phones.

In the last two years, I’ve changed my cell phone three times. Not a lot compared to some people, but a lot compared to others.

It should be no surprise to some that I just upgraded to the Sprint 6800 “Mogul” phone.

Click below to read my review of this phone…

Continue Reading »

No Comments »

So, it’s now Sunday, and it’s the last week in February.

What does that mean?

Well, it means that the weather here in beautiful AZ is going to get warm soon.  And now they’re saying that our Summer is going to be hotter than ever.  Nice.  So, that means more running to the car and opening the windows for 20 minutes to let the hot, hot air out.  More driving with 2 fingers, because the steering wheel is hot, and parking 4 miles out because you found a spot with shade.

Check out Reno 911!: Miami the other day, and it wasn’t too bad.  Basically just a longer version of the show.  So if you’ve see that, you know what to expect, at least.

No Comments »

So the wife and I traveled to the Arizona Science Center today to see “Body Worlds 3“, an exhibit of human anatomy using bodies preserved using the Plastination method.

It was really pretty amazing, though.  We were kind of worried about feeling ill from seeing all real people that have been preserved, but neither of us really had any issues.  And as far as as the exhibit goes, it was amazing.  They did a very good job of showing how amazing our bodies really are.  Especially amazing was the growth of a child in the womb.

If you have the time, it’s something I think everyone should check out.  It was well worth the money.

No Comments »

Yes, Valentine’s Day. It’s now over.

Did I remember it? Well, of course I did. What did we do? Well, I cooked a tasty little meal for the wife. Got her some nice jewelry, which always makes her happy.

What’d she get me? Well, she picked up Warioware:Smooth Moves for the Nintendo Wii for me. So far, I’m not too far into it, but it’s very fun. I finished the Gameboy DS version of it a few years ago, and had the GameCube version almost completely done. This one, of course, makes good use of the Wii controller to kick it up to knotches unknown. I guess there is also a multiplayer version inside of it, but first you have to unlock it by playing the single player version. Not super-happy with that, but hey, what are you going to do?

I have Monday off, which, of course, will be really nice. Hopefully going to work on the yard more this weekend. That is, of course, if the weather holds up. It’s supposed to rain this weekend, again.

No Comments »