I am trying out the new Apple Mobile Me service which allows me a faster way to share our photos and videos a little easier. So to see the latest photos check out :
Welcome to the new temporary home of Jedbeck.com. While trying to install this lovely Wordpress blog on the old server I found i was running an incompatible version of MySQL and that newer versions of the MySQL were not compatible with the Mac OS 10.2 i had been running on that server.
Well after i upgraded the server to OS 10.3, I am no longer able to get MySQL and PHP to communicate. So until I am able to devote a large amount of time to figure this problem out this will be my temporary home.
Enjoy and come back often.
Well Bayliff and I have created a brand new podcast called Beanbag Confessions. This podcast covers all things Comics, Movies, TV shows, Video Games, and Life. So if you like our special brand of stupidity check us out at BeanbagConfessions.com.
Wow, I can not believe it is the middle of August already. Where has this year gone? Most of you probably think from the text of my last article that I have wasted most of the year away playing my Xbox 360, while I have spent a lot of time playing that wonderful gaming machine I have actually picked up a few other old hobbies as well.
Besides playing my Xbox and working on other projects I have begun collecting comics once again and I am loving every minute of it. I will get into this hobby soon in another upcoming post and I promise it will not be another 6 months before the next post.
I guess the biggest reason I have not posted is the feeling that I have nothing important to say. However I must say that after reading some of my friends blogs like The Tigers Lair and HTML Samurai, I have found my self wanting to write and I have realized that every post does not need to be earth shattering. Each post is just kind of letting my visitors know what is going on with me and how my life is going. So I am going to try out this way of thinking and dust off this old blog and see where it takes me.
So until next time, take care, and I will post soon.
Who is the proud owner of an Xbox 360? No not Martin Landau, well actually I do not know if he owns one or not, but that is besides the point. I happen to be the said owner of the Xbox 360, and yes I am proud.
This is an amazing product and it should be considering the amount of time that I, and the rest of the world, had to wait to get my hands on one. For the first time since its launch back in November of 2005 the Xbox 360 was for sale to anyone who could find one. And I just happened to be lucky enough to get my hands on one 4 hours after they went on sale at Circuit City last Sunday.
After having some time to play the 360, I must say that it is an incredible device from the way the games look to how it functions online, it is just an absolute joy to play. I love how you can now download demos and trailers of new video games and movies to your game system directly from Xbox Live. It truly is a great way to get a feel for future purchases without having to find a store that allows you to try the game before you buy it.
The first game I purchased was Condemned Criminal Origins. This game is so amazing. It is basically a crime solving game. A serial killer is on the loose and ends up framing you for killing to cops and now you have to prove your innocence. This game is scary creepy in most parts, crazy drug fueled maniacs jump out of the shadows or prowl around the edges screaming obscenities at you really set the mood of this dark game. This creepiness is increased ten-fold if you have the Dolby Digital Sound hooked up through a surround sound system and the game really makes great use of this feature. More often than not you hear things scraping or shuffling around on the back speakers and if you are playing this game in the dark you may jump a few times at the sights and sounds.
As I am only on the third level of the game I can not give any deep insight into the game but if the first two levels are any indication, then I am truly looking forward to the many more surprises this game has to offer.
Overall, I am throughly satisfied with my new gaming system and I will keep you updated as I get new games or find out any new things about this awesome machine.
Last Friday night we went to go get our copy of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, when it was released at midnight at the nearest Barnes & Noble. Needless to say it was an absolute madhouse.
We arrived at Barnes & Noble a little after 11 pm and as we walked up to the front entrance we noticed a crowd of people standing outside. My initial reaction was that they closed the store at 11 pm like usual in order to place the book out and then let every one back in at midnight. However, when I looked to my right I saw that the B&N coffee shop was buzzing and packed with people. As we got closer to the door an employee dressed as a wizard in a long cotton beard was informing everyone that the store had reached its capacity and the Fire Marshall would close down the store if anymore people entered the store. Behind the wizardly looking man was a sign that read “Max Capacity 400.” It seemed as though we would be waiting outside most of the night for this one.
We walked past about 50 other people on our way to the end of the line that was just around the corner of the building. As we stood there in the humid summer night air we noticed the line was actually moving up very slowly as more people filed in behind us. Looking through the windows as we shuffled past we could see lots of people milling around the store killing time until the anticipated stroke of midnight. People were lining the windows of the second floor, while some were actually taking pictures of the line outside. This must be what the monkeys at the zoo feel like. We also noticed that some unfortunate people were walking out of the store allowing us to move up in line and making them have to go to the end of the line. Which was growing larger by the minute due to more people showing up and the aforementioned people wanting fresh air.
We finally made it into the store at about 10 minutes before midnight at which point we were directed to go directly to the information desk because only people with bracelets were allowed to buy the book that night. Luckily we were smart enough to pre-order the book at this store a month or two in advance because all customers who pre-ordered the book were to receive their copy before anyone who was just walking in off the street trying to get the book. All pre-order customers got a yellow numbered bracelet while all walk-ins got a orange bracelet. We were given yellow bracelet 159 and told we could get the book upstairs. A surprising number of people wearing the orange bracelets were milling around the store. When we reached the top of the escalator the amount of people we were surrounded by was almost claustrophobic inducing. There were people lining the shelves and shelves of books located on the top floor.
At about 1 minute till midnight an announcement came that they wanted yellow bracelets 1-100 in line and would not give the book to anyone with a number higher than that at the moment. And then people started the ten second countdown to midnight followed by cheers and whistles.
At this point we decided we best find our place in line. As we looked for our spot, people were a little pushy and mostly rude in the line for the book. It seems midnight is past some peoples bedtimes and that makes them grumpy and irritable. However we finally slipped in line just in time to pick up our copy of the book and be ushered downstairs to par for the book. We were out the door and back in our car by 12:20 am.
Overall we were glad we got the book the first night, but we both agreed that maybe we are getting a little older and dealing with all those people are not worth it. For the last book in the series we will probably buy it from Amazon and have it delivered to us.
Elsbee finished the book by Sunday afternoon and now is just waiting on me to finish it now that it is my turn to read it.
Well due to my stupidity the wonderfully long article I wrote yesterday about the Discovery launch will live on only in the minds of the people who happened to read it before I fell into my old moron habits.
I found a better picture of Discovery on the launch pad and wanted to update it. I then noticed that something was not working right in the administration section. I tried to fix it and it looked as though it was working, but I forgot to make sure all of the story text was there before I updated it. OOPS! So needless to say I lost all of the story text but the intro text. That will teach me to just assume. I hope.
So this one goes out to you fellow moron, may all your screw-ups continue to be noticed by everyone but yourself. So throw back a cold one and tell yourself “I did a good job today!.”
Well if you are still visiting this site you win the prize for persistence. You must either really like me or be a total glutton for punishment as you have gone so long getting your hopes up that there would be an update only to be turned away in disappointment after a few keystrokes. In either case I thank you for hanging with me during the life changes we have gone through this year.
Who knew that buying a piece of property would be so time consuming. Getting a mortgage is a really stressful process if you have never done it before and do not know what to expect. I swear that it took the mortgage company until the last minute of our closing appointment to get everything all worked out. They only had almost 2 months to get everything all ironed out. But i digress.
We are finally in the new place and we absolutely love it. It has been a lot of hard work and we have had to replace or upgrade a lot of things. The short list is we had to replace vertical blinds, remove wallpaper, paint all the rooms, repaint a room because the wallpaper remover kept the paint from adhering to the wall, and replace the dishwasher. It also looked as though the we would have to replace the garbage disposal, however it miraculously started working again. I once heard someone remark that once you own your own place something always needs replaced or upgraded and boy were they right.
Oh well there is tons more to tell and hopefully I will be back soon to tell you more. Please hang with me while I work out a new routine and try to add jedbeck.com back into it. And don’t forget the new Harry Potter book comes out on July 16th at the stroke of midnight.
In an effort to break into the Naples real estate market before the market out priced us, we have entered into an agreement to purchase a Condo in North Naples. The condo we are moving into is about 300 square feet more than we are currently inhabiting. This will allow us pull items such as our dining room table out of the closet and actually use it in a kitchen. However with the price of this condo being a tad more than we planned on we may not be able to afford anything more than Ramen Noodles to place our our table.
We seem to have developed a pattern in which we do not live in a place for a year. When we lived in Ohio we were only in our house for 10 months before we moved out in preparation for finding jobs that allowed us to make the most of our knowledge base. And with our closing date in the middle of May we will be about 2 weeks short of living in our current apartment for a year. However, I do think this is our last move for at least 5 years or more.
The new condo is a 2nd floor 2 bedroom and 2 bath condo. We have 2 screened in porches off of the 2 bedrooms with a really beautiful view of the complex pool. Click here to see a floor plan.
Here are more images of the place taken when we walked through our future home.
Well I thought I would post a quick update just to wet your appetite for more information.
The main reason for a lack of updates is just the number of things daily life keeps us busy with. There is always an errand to run or somewhere to be. The main distraction at the moment is looking for a bigger place to live.
A proposition that is almost too good to be true was made to us to make our dream of owning a piece of property a reality. And this is the perfect time to do it before the property values of Collier County rise faster than we can save for. So our nights have been filled with scouring the newspaper’ online and print edition looking for places that fit our price and the area we would like to be in. On a side note we did run across a piece of property that was selling for $12,000,000.00, needless to say we had to cross that one off our list as it was just a tad out of our price range. I think it might have been the 17 big screen televisions that the house came with that pushed it beyond our price point. 
I hope to start writing in this blog more in the future. I love to write all of our oh so exciting adventures out for the 5 people visit this site to read. I also have a few other projects I am looking to start with this blog in the near future.