One of the neat gifts I received for Christmas was an Eye-Fi SD card for our digital camera from my brother-in-law. It is as easy and useful to use as advertised. My attention was then caught by the following article referring to the fact that the company plans to release a free iPhone app for it. I’m loving Eye-Fi!
Expo: Eye-Fi unveils iPhone app | iPhone Central | Macworld.
Earlier today I wasn’t feeling great and left work to go home and sleep most of the day. After waking up and feeling a little better, I decided to upgrade this blog to the latest version of WordPress (2.7). The process went quite smoothly. My immediate impression is that the admin interface is fabulously better than before, much more intuitive and user-friendly. It is also quite configurable to suit my tastes. In addition, I upgraded to the latest version of NextGen Gallery, the plugin that powers my photos page. It is, again, a much better version with some nice new features such as a CoolIris slideshow that works very well.
My brother, Dan, moved to Milwaukee a few days ago and started a new job there. He rented a nice house and invited us to come up and see it today. So we did. It was a beautiful day, nearly perfect weather. Most people who aren’t familiar with it think Milwaukee is a grimy, industrial-type of city. It used to be like that, I think, but these days it is really beautiful in places, especially along the lakefront. We loved Dan’s place and we also enjoyed eating lunch together at a nearby Mongolian barbeque restaurant. See a photo album of the trip here.
Saturday afternoon we met my brother Tim and his wife, Linda, and their youngest, Elsie, for lunch. Afterward we went to Volo Bog and had an interesting tour. We had a great time!
This weekend we were able to get a popup camper for free. That’s right, free. You can’t beat free, right? Free is good. Well, the camper needs some TLC and repair, actually, and it’s 36 years old. But still, we’re pretty excited about having it and we are already planning some camping trips. Below is a gallery of photos Michele took of it yesterday in our driveway.
[Updated 6/5/2008: My wife clued me into the fact that the link to the videos was incorrect, so I've updated that link to allow anyone to access them.]
From Thursday through last night I and my family were on vacation in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. We had a blast. So many interesting sights and events to tell about; I’m not sure I can remember them all. But we made sure to take lots of photos and I’ve loaded them into daily albums (Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, and Day 5). I’ve also loaded some short video clips here.
We went to Honey Rock Camp near Eagle River, WI. We’ve been there as a family one other time, about four years ago. That was when Michele’s symptoms first began. This time around she did fine and we all had a good time. The weather cooperated and although there were tons of mosquitoes and other bugs, I came away without one bug bite. Pretty amazing.
Among the wildlife we saw were the following:
Keegan caught a 32″ northern pike; Brian caught a muskie that was bigger than that. I caught a few smaller northern pike, some panfish, and a 2-3 lb. largemouth bass using my brand new spinning rod and reel from Gander Mountain.
This weekend we’ve had our share of fun and games. Yesterday the weather was cool and rainy but today it was perfect: sunny and in the high 60s.
In addition to getting another van, which was exciting enough on its own, we made a trip to the Chicago Botanic Garden along with 10 million other people (or so it appeared) to see the Spring blooms.
Cohen was a real stinker the whole time, running away when he was told to stay put, climbing on things he wasn’t supposed to, stepping in the flower beds, and on and on. Not sure what was wrong with him; maybe he was just more excited than usual. Brinley, on the other hand, was pretty quiet and meek the whole time. She has been unwell for a few days now with fever and sore throat so it’s no wonder. She slept on the way to the gardens and then sort of kept behind everyone else as we walked everywhere. Even though the place was crawling with people, more than we had ever seen before, it was worth the trip. The Spring flowers were gorgeous, especially the tulips.
We went on some walkways that led out into the lagoon a little bit and were amused to discover a great big ‘ol carp looking for us to feed it, surrounded by a large school of bluegills. (I wish I had had my fishing pole to catch those bluegills!)
Overall it was a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon. On our way home we stopped and ate a nice meal at Chipotle’s. Click here to see the full set of photos from the trip.
Yesterday we were determined to do something fun and outdoors since the weather was so nice. First we went to Farm & Fleet and bought new boots for everyone because we expected there to be a lot of mud and water wherever we went. Then we drove to Volo Bog, a unique and very interesting state natural site that is quite close by. Michele, Keegan, Tristan, and I were there once many years ago when Tristan was a baby, but we hadn’t been there since, even though we lived so close. It is a beautiful spot and we decided to go on a hike all the way around the whole area. Below are photos I took before the camera unexpectedly ran out of battery power.
