So, I'm a huge LOST fan. Love the show. It's like a modern day version of the Twilight Zone, put into serialized form (similar to 24) with a smidge of exploration (what's on the island? where's the Orchid Station?) and a good roster of intriguing and engaging characters (personal fave: Hurley and Locke). Watched it since it first aired four years ago and have watched every single episode and have had a mountain of water cooler discussions with co-workers regarding each of the characters, as well as the island, the black smoke monster and everything in between. Tomorrow night is the Season 4 finale. The Season 3 finale blew me away so while I should temper my expectations for tomorrow night's season finale, I'm hoping to be as equally blown away as I was last year. I can't wait.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Great Wolf Lodge
Towards the end of April, the family went down to the Olympia area and stayed the night at the Great Wolf Lodge. Just by the name itself, you would think that it's just some glorified motel with a petting zoo populated with various types of wolves. But it's claim to fame is, not the wolf theme (and no, there wasn't a petting zoo) but it's indoor waterpark. Yup, inside the hotel (and sticking out its backside, viewable from the freeway) is a big waterpark, complete with waterslides, wave pool, kiddie pool for the little ones and a giant fort in the middle of the waterpark that gets every 10 minutes with 1000 gallons of water. Folks in the fort don't seem to care about the 1000 gallons of water falling upon them; in fact, they looked like they were looking forward to it. More information at:
http://www.greatwolflodge.com
In any case, the family went down there and stayed the night at this Great Wolf Lodge. What's really great about the hotel is that it had it's grand opening sometime in early April so it still has that new hotel look, feel and musty smell to it. Everything was clean and the hotel staff was cordial and attentive. We were able to check in early (Friday morning) and was able to get access to the waterpark right away. The Great Wolf Lodge has a great hotel room key/entry pass into the waterpark system. They use an RFID embedded wristband that all of the hotel guests must have in their body in order to enter the waterpark. The RFID wristband is only your entrance into the waterpark, but your entrance to your hotel room as well. No more keys or cards to carry around; just use your wristband. Want to pay for your meal or snack or something from one of the gift shops? Just flash your wristband and it gets charged to your room. It's a pretty nifty system and saves you the hassle of carrying around your hotel keycard AND wallet with you when entering the wave pool.
Emily and Ally had a good time. Both of them were at first somewhat cautious about entering the water but once their bodies got adjusted to the slightly heated water and got used to the fact that they were wearing life jackets (provided by the hotel), they were able to fit right in and have a good time splashing around. They're still afraid of the water slides but I don't blame them. Even some of the kiddie water slide looked pretty steep. I'm sure once they get older, they'll enjoy all of the good stuff the waterpark has to offer.
Aside from the waterpark, there's an arcade with some video games and ticket based games (kind of like the ones you find a Chuck E. Cheese), along with a kid's activity room (which costs money) and a older kid's activity room which had karaoke and Rock Band set up (this also cost money). But aside from that, there wasn't anything else to do at the hotel. And there's virtually nothing around the area where the hotel is, save the Dairy Queen and McDonald's/Shell gas station hybrid (I guess "fill'er up" takes on a new meaning here).
Overall, a good time had by all. A good one day getaway with the family and it wasn't that far from our home (only 1.5 hours). I'm sure we'll go again as the kids get older. Make sure to check out the website for more information. It's a chain so there seems to be spread out across the country. Have you been one of these indoor waterpark/hotel dealies before?
http://www.greatwolflodge.com
In any case, the family went down there and stayed the night at this Great Wolf Lodge. What's really great about the hotel is that it had it's grand opening sometime in early April so it still has that new hotel look, feel and musty smell to it. Everything was clean and the hotel staff was cordial and attentive. We were able to check in early (Friday morning) and was able to get access to the waterpark right away. The Great Wolf Lodge has a great hotel room key/entry pass into the waterpark system. They use an RFID embedded wristband that all of the hotel guests must have in their body in order to enter the waterpark. The RFID wristband is only your entrance into the waterpark, but your entrance to your hotel room as well. No more keys or cards to carry around; just use your wristband. Want to pay for your meal or snack or something from one of the gift shops? Just flash your wristband and it gets charged to your room. It's a pretty nifty system and saves you the hassle of carrying around your hotel keycard AND wallet with you when entering the wave pool.
Emily and Ally had a good time. Both of them were at first somewhat cautious about entering the water but once their bodies got adjusted to the slightly heated water and got used to the fact that they were wearing life jackets (provided by the hotel), they were able to fit right in and have a good time splashing around. They're still afraid of the water slides but I don't blame them. Even some of the kiddie water slide looked pretty steep. I'm sure once they get older, they'll enjoy all of the good stuff the waterpark has to offer.
Aside from the waterpark, there's an arcade with some video games and ticket based games (kind of like the ones you find a Chuck E. Cheese), along with a kid's activity room (which costs money) and a older kid's activity room which had karaoke and Rock Band set up (this also cost money). But aside from that, there wasn't anything else to do at the hotel. And there's virtually nothing around the area where the hotel is, save the Dairy Queen and McDonald's/Shell gas station hybrid (I guess "fill'er up" takes on a new meaning here).
Overall, a good time had by all. A good one day getaway with the family and it wasn't that far from our home (only 1.5 hours). I'm sure we'll go again as the kids get older. Make sure to check out the website for more information. It's a chain so there seems to be spread out across the country. Have you been one of these indoor waterpark/hotel dealies before?
Friday, May 16, 2008
Updates Coming Soon
So, I was on vacation at the end of April, which was nice and relaxing. I should have blogged something but got lazy. Sorry. And then, during the first week of May, I came down with something that put me out of commission for about a week. I'm fully recovered now, thanks to a daily regimen of Airborne and Red Bull (and no, not at the same time). Now that I'm feeling better, it's time to crank up the blogging engine and generate some posts.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Electronic Bullet to the Hard Drive
I have three computers at home:
1. my regular computer, which I use to surf the web, send out email, play games on
2. my Media Center PC, which is acts like a Tivo and records TV shows
3. my Windows Home Server, which has all of my music, photos and videos
Well, last night, one of the hard drives on my #2 machine, the Media Center PC, died on me, nuking all of the content on it. There wasn't any irreplaceable on it. Just a bunch of recorded TV shows, like American Idol and Battlestar Galactica. The downer is that there were also a bunch of kid TV shows that got lost as well, including Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Little Einsteins and my favorite, er my daughter's personal fav, the Teletubbies. As you can imagine, both of my daughters were not pleased to find out that Tinky Winky and the gang "disappeared". So I'm in search of a new hard drive. If I don't get one soon, I'm tubby-toast.
1. my regular computer, which I use to surf the web, send out email, play games on
2. my Media Center PC, which is acts like a Tivo and records TV shows
3. my Windows Home Server, which has all of my music, photos and videos
Well, last night, one of the hard drives on my #2 machine, the Media Center PC, died on me, nuking all of the content on it. There wasn't any irreplaceable on it. Just a bunch of recorded TV shows, like American Idol and Battlestar Galactica. The downer is that there were also a bunch of kid TV shows that got lost as well, including Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Little Einsteins and my favorite, er my daughter's personal fav, the Teletubbies. As you can imagine, both of my daughters were not pleased to find out that Tinky Winky and the gang "disappeared". So I'm in search of a new hard drive. If I don't get one soon, I'm tubby-toast.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Getting Your Taxes Done
So, I'm finally done with my taxes. I'm not sure why it took me this long to get them done and sent out. I usually try to get them wrapped up by the end of March so I'm a little bit surprised at myself for waiting this long to send them in.
Our typical approach to taxes goes something like this:
What was interesting was that when I restarted my tax return in early March, I did the whole "update your software" thing and after Turbotax downloaded and installed the updates, I noticed that something was tacked on towards the end of the return. The question about what to do with your tax rebate (aka the stimulus package) was now in the form, asking you if you want your rebate direct deposited or send via snail mail. It's cool that Intuit included the update feature in Turbotax to update their product when necessary.
In any case, doing taxes isn't so cool but having Turbotax update itself so that it can direct deposit money to you ... well, heck, that's awesome. I probably won't find Turbotax so awesome next year since I probably won't see that question updated in Turbotax Tax Year 2008.
Our typical approach to taxes goes something like this:
- early January - get Turbotax coupon from Costco in the mail (along with coupons for other important stuff, like frozen chicken wings, kitchen paper towels and LCD TVs)
- mid to late January - go to Costco and buy Turbotax (and frozen chicken wings and kitchen paper towels; alas, no LCD TV this year) and use coupon
- early February - install Turbotax and do a high level pass on taxes to see what the damage is
- early March - start doing taxes in earnest; see what the real damage is
- end of March - find an envelope
- also end of March - find a paper clip
- also end of March - go to the post office and send off tax return
- beginning of April - relief
What was interesting was that when I restarted my tax return in early March, I did the whole "update your software" thing and after Turbotax downloaded and installed the updates, I noticed that something was tacked on towards the end of the return. The question about what to do with your tax rebate (aka the stimulus package) was now in the form, asking you if you want your rebate direct deposited or send via snail mail. It's cool that Intuit included the update feature in Turbotax to update their product when necessary.
In any case, doing taxes isn't so cool but having Turbotax update itself so that it can direct deposit money to you ... well, heck, that's awesome. I probably won't find Turbotax so awesome next year since I probably won't see that question updated in Turbotax Tax Year 2008.
Monday, March 31, 2008
On A Need to Snow Basis
So, it's the end of March and over the past weekend, Seattle got a good dumping of snow. Not a whole lot, mind you, but enough to build a couple of snowpeople in our backyard.
Emily and Ally (my daughters, 4 and 2) wanted to go outside and play in the snow so after bundling them up in several layers of clothes, we headed out to the wild wilderness that is our backyard and made a couple of snowmen ... or, well ... snowpeople. The snowperson on the left is Emily. Ally is the one on the right. The "Creator" is the one in the center. It's crazy weather though. Usually, we get snow in the December/January timeframe so it's surprising to us to see snow sticking to the ground in late March. Not that it was a bad thing since making snowpeople is always a lot of fun. For more pictures, you can check out my Flickr website at http://www.flickr.com/photos/skuramur/.
Emily and Ally (my daughters, 4 and 2) wanted to go outside and play in the snow so after bundling them up in several layers of clothes, we headed out to the wild wilderness that is our backyard and made a couple of snowmen ... or, well ... snowpeople. The snowperson on the left is Emily. Ally is the one on the right. The "Creator" is the one in the center. It's crazy weather though. Usually, we get snow in the December/January timeframe so it's surprising to us to see snow sticking to the ground in late March. Not that it was a bad thing since making snowpeople is always a lot of fun. For more pictures, you can check out my Flickr website at http://www.flickr.com/photos/skuramur/.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
The Meaning of Wham!
So, some of you probably know this already but I'm a big Lost fan. I think it's the greatest TV show ever conceived and currently the only game in town that consistently keeps me glued to the edge of my seat each week. I usually Tivo (or technically, record it on my Media Center PC) Lost and watch it post-live broadcast. Occasionally, both Tivo and Media Center will, due to the goofy time schedules that ABC plays with popular TV shows, where a TV show will run over the usual one hour time slot by several minutes, probably to intentionally mess up people's Tivo recording schedules, record a portion of the show that plays after Lost, which currently is a new show called Eli Stone. And the pilot episode of Eli Stone had George Michael in it (don't ask me why; go watch the show to find out why GM shows up).
In any case, after having watched that pilot, I've been on this Wham!/George Michael groove where I would play nothing but Wham! and/or George Michael on my iPod/Zune player(s). In fact, I'm currently listening to "Everything She Wants" and thinks that it rocks! Rocks hard! Like Michael Jackson during his Thriller days hard (that's another post).
I was joking to a friend of mine that there is bound to be a Wham! Reunion Tour spinning up sometime soon since 1) all of these other groups from the 80s (The Police, Van Halen) are doing these reunion tours; why not Wham!, 2) I'm sure George Michael is hard up for some public lovin' after all of the negative press during the past few years and 3) that other dude (Andrew Ridges ... or something like that) could use the visibility.
In any case, after having watched that pilot, I've been on this Wham!/George Michael groove where I would play nothing but Wham! and/or George Michael on my iPod/Zune player(s). In fact, I'm currently listening to "Everything She Wants" and thinks that it rocks! Rocks hard! Like Michael Jackson during his Thriller days hard (that's another post).
I was joking to a friend of mine that there is bound to be a Wham! Reunion Tour spinning up sometime soon since 1) all of these other groups from the 80s (The Police, Van Halen) are doing these reunion tours; why not Wham!, 2) I'm sure George Michael is hard up for some public lovin' after all of the negative press during the past few years and 3) that other dude (Andrew Ridges ... or something like that) could use the visibility.
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