The Land of iZ

Last week, I touched a basketball for the first time in two years. 3 minutes later, I had a sprained ankle and was down for the next 2 days. This was the straw that broke the camels back, or at least wrenched it badly enough to put him in traction. My wife demanded that I get into shape (and round would *not* be considered a shape). After my offer to double my life insurance policy was soundly rejected, I came up with a plan. Being to lazy to come up with an original way to torture myself, I went with my tried and true method from last year. Running! Last night was my first time and I did 1.2 miles pretty easily. I impressed myself. Who knows, I might even start to enjoy it! As long as I don't remember what happened last year, I should be ok. (I really don't remember what happened last year so don't remind me!)

permalink posted by Israel Derdik @ 5:24 PM 1 comments
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Before you jump to contest the veracity of this posts title, allow me to explain. Coca Cola is running a promotional contest that requires you to look under the cap of your bottle to see if you've won. The label proclaims "1 in 12 wins!". I've gone through 30 bottles easily with no winners, and I take exception with Coke's faulty math. Today, I sat down to eat my pepper and onion and tomato and onion slices of pizza (2 total), french fries and coke. I twisted the cap off and felt an electric jolt tingle through my body. A ray of light emanated from the neon yellow cap and suddenly I knew this was no ordinary coke. Sure enough, I turned the plastic cap over with trembling hands and there it was. "You win 1 liter Coke product" OMG OMG!!!! I'm a winner. See Ma? I told you I would succeed at something!

permalink posted by Israel Derdik @ 1:54 PM 1 comments
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The FIOS has been working out well so far. There was a small glitch involving MTU blackholes and other fun things but those have since been resolved. The VoIP phones were acting up a bit after the switch as well but I'm monitoring them closely now and all seems well. The speed is insanely fast. I downloaded 2.5 gigabytes in 20 minutes. Not that I will ever need Sue Graftons entire Kinsey Milhone series on audio book, but hey, you never know.

We drove the new car down to Baltimore and back yesterday and it was awesome! The new car was great, the traffic minimal and the GPS was accurate. GPS is one of those technologies whose existence boggles my mind. Its up there with Lasik surgery on the coolness chart. I spent most of my tax refund to get it for my wife as a graduation present. She wasn't that impressed with it when I gave it to her but I think she's coming around now that we've actually used it. Anyway, after spending 8 and a half hours driving yesterday, its good to get back to the office for some down time.

permalink posted by Israel Derdik @ 11:28 AM 0 comments
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Living in the Northeast, I have enjoyed Cablevision's Optimum Online for the past few years. With amazing speeds of 10 Mbps downloads and 1 Mbps upload and nearly rock solid reliability, a geek like me should be in thanking his luck stars, right? Right! Well, mostly right. See, Verizon has been rolling out a service known as FIOS into a select few neighborhoods - including mine. FIOS provides internet access via fiber optic cables run directly to your home. In addition to sounding insanely cool, fiber optic connections can carry tremendous amounts of bandwidth. In fact, Verizon is offering 15 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up for the same price as cable! I gotta get that! (They also offer 30 Mbps / 5 Mbps but that costs almost $200 a month.) They also have plans to roll out TV through these lines as well sometime in the not-to-distant future. So my order is placed and the Verizon guys are scheduled to install it next Wednesday. I'll keep my Optimum Online connection until I'm positive that FIOS is reliable enough for me and then I'll be on a fiber-only internet diet.

permalink posted by Israel Derdik @ 3:06 PM 1 comments
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Well, the Demon Dealer turned out to be a pretty nice guy. Everything we agreed on was in place and he threw in several extra options at no charge because he couldn't find the car with out them. He also made a pricing error that he ate (of course he had to point it out so I'd know what a good guy he is and say how great he is.) Overall, it was quite pleasant.

The car is amazing, truly a pleasure to drive. It kicks our old minivan in the face when it comes to handling. Access to the 3rd row seat is a little iffy but thankfully we don't need it all that often and keep it folded down flat.

permalink posted by Israel Derdik @ 1:18 PM 2 comments
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Today is the day I pick up our new car from the dealer. I've never had a new car before so I'm really psyched. I'm also a little nervous about how the dealer will try to screw me at the last minute. Frankly, I've found the entire car buying process to be extremely intimidating. Kirby gave me the key to the whole process when he told me to pick a p[rice I want that's not an outrageous lowball and basically tell the dealer that if he wants the sale, it has to be at that price. Common sense, true, but the concept helped get me through it. But now I have visions of the evil dealer cackling over his calculator devising diabolical schemes to take more of my money while flames and smoke flicker and billow around his hunched form. The dealer-demon has been pretty civil thus far and came highly recommended so these fears must be the product of my own paranoia and nerves. Kind of the way people are afraid of dentists. Oh yeah, that's me too.

permalink posted by Israel Derdik @ 12:10 PM 1 comments
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My 4 year old son is an adorable kid. Like most 4 year-olds, he's extremely inquisitive and loves to ask questions. Lately, he's developed the annoying habit of asking for confirmation of every fact that he knows. "Right this is a ball?" "Right I just threw the ball?" "Right balls are round?" etc, on and on. We are trying to get him to rephrase his questions and start them with other words without stifling his inquisitiveness. Anyway, we were all eating together at the pizza ship when a rather large (fat) woman sat down in the booth next to us. My son pipes up, finger pointing and all, "Right that lady didn't have her baby yet?"

permalink posted by Israel Derdik @ 2:56 PM 3 comments
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